Structured Liberal Education lecturer, Michaela Hulstyn, discusses her recent book, UNSELFING: Global French Literature at the Limits of Consciousness. 

What happens to the self during altered states of consciousness? Do experiences like hallucinatory drug transports, mystical transcendence, acute psychological pain, or ecstatic pleasure serve to sharpen or blur the sense that we have of ourselves? What narratives do we craft in the wake of these experiences at the limit of self-consciousness?
 
Hulstyn’s book explores the shapes and meanings of “unselfing” through the framework of the global French literary world, encompassing texts by modernist figures in France and Belgium alongside writers from Algeria, Rwanda, and Morocco. Together these diverse texts prompt a re-evaluation of the consequences of the loss or the transcendence of the self.

Lecture will be followed by a sushi reception. Event is free and open to the public.