Abstract
The paper presents a phenomenological investigation into experiencing boredom in everyday life. The analysis is grounded in several concrete experiences that the reader is invited to participate in and imaginatively stage for him or herself. Based on these thought experiments, and theoretically proceeding from the work of Husserl, Heidegger and others, the paper argues that boredom has to be seen as a particular way of experiencing time, namely, experiencing it as being non-eventful. The characteristic feature of experiencing a situation as eventful depends on the possibility of filling the time of the situation with meaning by colonizing and domesticating it with narratives, purpose, usefulness, etc., whereas in boredom we are facing the not yet domesticated, not yet cultivated, not yet narrativized time that is perceived as empty, uncanny, and unhomely. The time of boredom is experienced as “not mine,” and, in its most alienating form, as inhuman.
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Notes
- 1.
Mood is discussed by Husserl in M-manuscript from the years 1900–1914. He also discusses the structure of mood in the manuscript A VI 34, written in 1932, titled “Zur Lehre von der Intentionalität in universaler oder totaler Betrachtungsweise” (A VI 34,1931).
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the European Union through the Estonian Research Council project, Landscape approach to rurbanity” (PRG 398).
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Viik, T. (2023). Experiencing Boredom: A Phenomenological Analysis. In: Hornbuckle, C.A., Smith, J.S., Smith, W.S. (eds) Posthumanism and Phenomenology. Analecta Husserliana, vol 125. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10414-5_4
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