Armen Avanessian is an Austrian philosopher, literary theorist, and political theorist. He has taught at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, the School of Critical Studies, California Institute of the Arts, USA, and at the Art Institute, HN Academy Basel, Switzerland. He is the co-editor, with Suhail Malik of Genealogies of Speculation (Bloomsbury 2016).

Fusing speculative realism, analytical and linguistic philosophy this book theorises the fundamental impact the experience of reading has on us. In reading, language provides us with a world and meaning becomes perceptible. We can connect with another subjectivity, another place, another time. At its most extreme, reading changes our understanding of the world around us. Metanoia- meaning literally a change of mind or a conversion-refers to this kind of new way of seeing. To see the world in a new light is to accept that our thinking has been irrevocably transformed. How is that possible? And is it merely an intellectual process without any impact on the world outside our brains?
Innovatively tackling these questions, this book mobilizes discussions from linguistics, literary theory, philosophy of language, and cognitive science. It re-articulates linguistic consciousness by underlining the poetic, creative moment of language and sheds light on the ability of language to transform not only our thinking but the world around us as well.

Introduction by Levi Bryant

I Poetics
Principles of Ligual Poiesis
The Poetic Function of Language (Jakobson)
The Potentializing Function of Language (Guillaume)
Poietic Linguistics
The Myth of the Arbitrariness of the Sign
Speculative Poetics

II The Analytic Circle
The Ligual Creation of a True World
Triadic Logic of the Sign (Pierce)
The Poetic Triad
The Linguistic Turn, or: the Signified as Predicate of the Signifier
S means X by Y (Kripke, Meillassoux, Harman)
Lingual Things and the Ontology of Individuals (Strawson)

III Speculation
Aspects of a Poetics of Thought
The Speculative Triad
Subject - Object - Other: our Methodical Constellation
Abduction as a Poietic Procedure
Poeticizing Philosophy
IV Cognition
Metanoia is an Anagram of Anatomie173
The Recursive Structure of Cognition (Metzinger and Malabou)
The Coevolution of Language and the Brain
Aspects of Universal Grammar (Chomsky v. Leiss): Generative, Extra-linguistic, Cognitive
Semiotics of the Brain (Deacon)

Epilogue
The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth!
Matters Ethical (and Religious)
Going Beyond Thought: Temporality

Glossary
Notes
Index