a philosophy of stroke

In my first contribution to the blog, Stroke Passages, posted in Enable Me on 25/08/26. I wrote about how both Nina Wilde and Sophia Anna-Faria seemed to articulate survivor lived experience of the “not-yet” (Lyotard, 1983/1988, p. 13) defined space through which other survivors might express themselves also. Voula and Damian have hinted at this passage, too (apologies to those whose articles I’ve yet to read and contemplate). This undefined space of “lived experience” is often acknowledged by the medical professionals charged with re-enabling human functionality. But, as I understand scientific thinking, their methodology precludes contemplation of the indefinite.

But this does not preclude us survivors from contemplating it – from a different perspective. What is suggested here, and the Enable Me contributors above have hinted at it in their own words, is that we (survivors) are already thinking, theorising lived experience long before the noun of thought has been imposed upon us by someone else’s studious observation. Stroke survivors are already dreaming of a passage back home from across the tumultuous sea of brain injury, under their own, intentional initiative. We need a philosophy of stroke composed through the lived experience of survivors. A philosophy that follows on from the possibilities of human ingenuity, as discussed in the major work of the 17 cent., European philosopher, Benedict de Spinoza. In his Ethics, he wrote: “The human mind is capable of perceiving a great many things, and is the more capable, the more its body can be disposed in a great many ways” (1994/1996, p. 44). What Spinoza is saying to us from across time and place, in other words, is that brain injury is no barrier to thinking: imagination, however, is.

Reference

De Spinoza, B. (1994/1996). Ethics. Penguin Books: England.

Lyotard, J-F. (1983/1988). The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. University of Minnesota: UK.