The Excess of the World

This chapter attempts to answer what comes to be a very complex question: what is it that we call world? I use Martin Heidegger to show how central world is to the human’s understanding of itself, while at the same time exposing the anthropocentrism at the heart of the concept of world. The result is a concept of world that always works to undo itself. The material excess of the world itself cannot be captured or grasped by a concept. Belief in the world becomes an affirmation of this excess. Believing in this world, in this plane of immanence, means being affected by this excess. I turn to the works of Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Deborah Danowski, and AmeriIndian myths that challenge anthropocentrism as a means of expressing this excess.