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Editing and Mind: The Search for Meaning

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A Poetics of Editing

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Abstract

This chapter offers a unique cross-cutting account of writing and editing drawn from psychoanalysis, neurology, cognitive science and the philosophy of language. Greenberg’s original argument is that we cannot fully understand editing, either in theory or in practice, without understanding how the human mind mediates experience, makes distinctions and exercises judgment. In the process, the chapter builds a case for non-binary, triangulated model to explain how people make sense of the world through language, based on a carefully defined concept of objectivity: the capacity to take a step backwards from an acknowledged point of subjectivity. It notes the associations between breaking through the surface of a text and breaking through the surface of habitual patterns of thought, and charts the elusiveness of unedited thought and the trauma of unmediated experience.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Roehampton, Roehampton, UK

    Susan L. Greenberg

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  1. Susan L. Greenberg
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Correspondence to Susan L. Greenberg .

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Greenberg, S.L. (2018). Editing and Mind: The Search for Meaning. In: A Poetics of Editing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92246-1_3

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