Concluding Discussion: Poetic Reason and Expressive Subjectivity

Abstract

In the preceding chapters, it has been shown how Zambrano’s experiences of exile led her to develop an exile ontology in which the human being is part of being through continous expression. In this concluding discussion Zambrano’s concept of sentir originario, originary sensing, is discussed and related to her poetic reason. It is first shown how the idea of originary sensing was modelled on Kant’s notion of reflective judgement. It is then argued that the categories of experience in the formed subject are both generated and acquired, and that subjectivity is nothing but a specific relational form in the intersection between embodied expressions. It is finally concluded that the poetic reason can be understood as the critical investigation into the conditions of possibility of the human (and non-human) transcendental functions that take part in being by recreation and embodiment through expression.