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Part of
Surprise at the Intersection of Phenomenology and Linguistics
Edited by Natalie Depraz and Agnès Celle
[Consciousness & Emotion Book Series 11] 2019
► pp. 23–42

Chapter 2
Shock, twofold dynamics, cascade

Three signatures of surprise. The micro-time of the surprised body

Surprise is commonly seen as a sudden instantaneous, intensively emotional, exclamative interjective, bodily startling “shock”. I would like to show that it would better be also understood as a processual dynamics, which presupposes a deep transformation of its commonly taken-for-granted experiential meaning as a shock. Such a dynamics unfolds along multifarious vectors, exemplarily time, emotion, cognition, language, inter-subjectivity and body. Since I already focused elsewhere on four of these vectors of the dynamics of surprise, namely time, emotion, cognition and language, I will deal here with the bodily time of surprise and reveal how the latter cannot be reduced to startle but refers to a multifaceted generative embodied process.
Keywords: surprise, body, microphenomenology, time, shock, twofold dynamics, cascade
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The motor-bodily shock: An unseen unfolding
  • 2.The double-stage rhythmic dynamics of body-emotion-cognition
    • 2.1A two-fold body-emotion dynamics: A first sub-signature of surprise
    • 2.2A two-fold body-cognitive dynamics: A second sub-signature of surprise
    • 2.3A two-fold cognitive/emotional dynamics: A third sub-signature of surprise
    • 2.4Some atypical dynamics
    • 2.5The layered threefold synchronicity of an integrated surprise
  • 3.The third signature of surprise: The ‘cascade’ as illustrating an overlapping generative process
    • 3.1A visuo-motor-cognitive cascade
    • 3.2A sensory-startle-emotional-multifaceted cognitive cascade
    • 3.3A cognitivo-cognitive process of cascade
    • 3.4Ch. S. Peirce’s series of surprises
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ceb.11.02dep
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