Experience as Trajectory

Aporias pose a problem to a subject’s progression along a (lifetime) journey of experience. In discussing aporia, Derrida also considers the word problem, for its Greek translation signifies meanings of projection and protection (1993: 11-12). Now, protection, like a shield, is a tool to protect oneself from the dangers of the environment through an artificial distance via a boundary. In contrast, to project is to cross this boundary, into the unknown dangers of space.

The problem of aporia negotiation in order to fulfil one’s goals then is unified in the experience of speed; for with the projection of one’s self through an environment (automobility), or the projection of the environment around the self (media reception), the protection from the environment is provided by the buffers of the interface. Thus, the very essence of artificially enhanced speed requires a buffer of some sort.

If an aporia is a problem, then the existence of aporias signify an intermediary of experience. Metaphorically, aporias are vehicles for the experience of life; that to experience life, one has to experience aporias. Enjoyment of life then is the successive experience of epiphanies that result from the successful negotiation of aporias. Life is experienced through the assemblage of the kinematic subject, vehicles, and aporias.