The Fundamental Field: Thought, Poetics, World

The Scottish poet Kenneth White and the Australian philosopher Jeff Malpas came together by chance when Malpas heard an interview with White on ABC radio. Malpas contacted White, and from there they exchanged books and ideas. They arranged to meet at White's place on the Breton coast, where a conversation about poetry and philosophy developed over four days. Inspired by poets from John Donne to Hlderlin, and philosophers from Nietzsche to Heidegger, they discussed the world, place, narrative, language and politics. This book records that conversation. The Fundamental Field is made up of two essays: the first is by White on Malpas; the second is by Malpas on White. The volume closes with a set of three new philosophical poems by White.

Table of Contents:
Foreword I. Kenneth White – Talking Topology in the FinisterrasPrologueDay 1: Ploughing through the problematicsDay 2: Crisis and Catastrophe in PhilosophyDay 3: Crisis and Catastrophe in PoetryDay 4: The General Outlook II. Jeff Malpas – ‘Where Hegel Meets the Chinese Gulls’PrologueFirst Sighting: The Question of WorldSecond Sighting: Placing ThinkingThird Sighting: Narrative and PlaceFourth Sighting: The Dynamics of PlaceFifth Sighting: The Language of WorldSixth Sighting: Poetics, Politics, and Critique III. Kenneth White – Three Philosophical PoemsThe Etna LettersNietzsche in NiceAt Skjolden Afterword Biographical NotesBibliographyIndex

About the Author :
Jeff Malpas is an Australian philosopher and is currently Emeritus Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania in Hobart and Distinguished Visiting Professor at LaTrobe University in Melbourne. He was founder, and until 2005, Director, of the University of Tasmania's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Ethics. His work is grounded in post-Kantian thought, especially the hermeneutical and phenomenological traditions, as well as in analytic philosophy of language and mind, and draws on the thinking of a diverse range of thinkers and writers including, most notably, Albert Camus, Donald Davidson, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, he is the author, among other works, of Place and Experience (Routledge, 2018) and Heidegger's Topology (MIT, 2006). He lives in the Huon Valley in Tasmania. Kenneth White was a Scottish poet, academic and writer. He published numerous works of poetry and prose, with volumes and essays in French as well as English. His work has also been translated into several languages. He was the recipient of many awards and honours, in Europe and Scotland, including the Grand Prix du Rayonnement Francais by the Academie francaise for his work as a whole (1985), the douard Glissant prize from the University of Paris VIII for his 'openness to the cultures of the world' (2004) and Prix de poesie Alain Bosquet for Les Archives du Littoral, a bilingual poetry collection (2011).

Review :
When the substantial poetics of Kenneth White meet the conceptual philosophy of Jeff Malpas, what takes place is a fundamental renewal of world-space and a keen sense of living on earth. White and Malpas gift us a book of conversations and blurred lines. Poetry and philosophy, the sensory and conceptual, the particularities of location and the possibilities of connection: all arise on the ‘fundamental field’ of place and the wider openings it founds. A closely crafted and wonderfully generous book.