GASTON BACHELARD'S THE POETICS OF SPACE AND METAMODERNISM
GASTON BACHELARD'S THE POETICS OF SPACE AND METAMODERNISM

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to analyze Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space in relation to metamodernism. The article posits the compatibility of Bachelard's thought with our present cultural moment and illustrates how the Bachelardian subject, through its communing with space, embodies the contemporary cultural paradigm that emphasizes oscillation, reconstruction, and negation of the negative. Due to the Bachelardian subject's experience of space as simultaneously evoking (modernist) desire for sense and (postmodernist) senselessness, as atopos emphasizing effort in light of the inevitable failure, Bachelard's space gets situated in the metamodern "between" category. Then, the oscillation between doubt and naivety, enacted by the subject communing with space and acquiring (self-)knowledge, shows that naivety is indispensable in an attempt to reconstruct being, while doubt can be productively repurposed. Furthermore, the navigation between affect and detachment evidences that the Bachelardian subject is affect-informed, open to contradictions, advocating for rediscovering authenticity in the spatial experience despite the detachment of the self occurring in the process. Instead, this 'negative' detachment figures as a productive force, opening the self up for future transformation.

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