The In-between

​Francois Laplantine’s book The Life of the Senses debunks the myth of Western rationality and category thinking. Instead, he argues for a life that is enmeshed in the flow of our senses, which defies neat compartmentalizing. What is the implication for spatial and object designers, and those who teach design? How can we breakdown the silos of learning, and take up the challenge and the opportunities that a life fully engaged in the senses bring? He wrote,
 
“ Category thinking eschews that which is formed in crossings, transitions, unstable and ephemeral movements of oscillation. It opts, in a drastic manner, for the fixity of time, movement and the multiple, and opposes, in so doing, the tension of the between and the in-between. Yet, these exist. Between presence and absence, there is melancholy and its Lusitanian inflection that bears the name saudade. Between darkness and light, there is chiaroscuro. Between the retracted and the rolled out, there is the movement of loosening. Between wakefulness and dreaming, there is dreaminess. Between the expected and the unforeseen, the suspected. Between trust and mistrust, the slight doubt. Between the certainty of that which is named and the designated (the definition) and refusal to speak is that which can be suggested (Mallarmé) or shown (Wittgenstein). Between life and death, there is the spectral: ghosts, or as thry say in Haiti, Zombies, revenants as well as survivors.”