Anaesthetics of Existence

Cressida J. Heyes is H. M. Tory Chair and Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Alberta and author of Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies and Line Drawings: Defining Women through Feminist Practice.

“‘Anaesthetics of Existence,’ writes Cressida J. Heyes, ‘is a book about refusal, exclusion and liminality.’ More than this, it is a book about the unevenness of attention, about the tendency of bodies to flicker in and out of consciousness, and about extreme ordinariness and the increasing ordinariness of the extreme. This book is timely, original, and offers new insights within the philosophy of experience.” - Jack Halberstam, author of (The Queer Art of Failure) “Incredibly smart, wide ranging, inventive, and timely, Cressida J. Heyes's Anaesthetics of Existence offers a detailed and philosophically rigorous phenomenological exploration of experience. Heyes does not merely report on phenomenology, she does it with an aliveness to her prose and an expansiveness to her thinking that feels fresh, original, and exciting. A marvelous book.” - Gayle Salamon, author of (The Life and Death of Latisha King: A Critical Phenomenology of Transphobia) “Without a doubt, Heyes’ Anaesthetics of Existence is a marvelously written, timely, and exciting book. It is both a scholarly feat-impeccably researched and persuasively argued-and a pleasurable read that offers some respite and solace amidst the chaos of postdisciplinary time.”- Corinne Lajoie (Contemporary Political Theory) “Anaesthetics of Existence is delivered with impressive brevity and wit. . . . Anaesthetics of Existence is a remarkably timely text because, as we desperately hope for an end to pandemic time, we must also critically consider the prepandemic world we’ve missed and how, in light of this disruption, we might establish different habits.” - Lauren Guilmette (Political Theory) “Anaesthetics of Existence exudes a prescience for our current era unmatched by monographs composed in the period immediately preceding the COVID-19 pandemic. Heyes, a philosopher, undertakes poignant phenomenological case studies into urgent feminist issues, including date rape, the pressures of parenting, and childbirth.” - Evangeline Holtz-Schramek (Humanities) "Cressida Heyes’s interesting and exceedingly original, Anaesthetics of Existence addresses an astonishing variety of experiences; some of these are so far on the edge, or over the edge, that they might not be considered to involve 'experience' at all. The book discusses experiences on the boundary of experience, and itself pushes the boundary of what should be considered experience." - Lorraine Markotic (Hypatia)