Support the Vision: A Glimpse into the Paleophenomenological Imagination
Get the slides from Mat’s talks exploring the roots of consciousness, symbolic landscapes, and the primal spark of meaning-making. These PDFs are both souvenirs of thought and seeds for reflection, offered as a gesture of connection and mutual support.
Paleophenomenology and the Hidden Self: Uncovering the Underscape of Human Consciousness
Saturday 10th May 2025, 12pm GMT
Speaker: Matilde Gliubich Tomat (Bangor University)
This paper introduces the framework of paleophenomenology to explore the psychological underscape of human consciousness, drawing connections between Plato's allegory of the cave and the cave art of early humans. Through an interdisciplinary approach that merges Jungian psychology, phenomenology, and paleoanthropology, I aim to investigate the hidden selves that emerge in subterranean spaces — both literally and figuratively. In Plato’s allegory, the cave represents a place of shadow, illusion, and hidden truths. Similarly, the caves where early humans created art offer glimpses into the emergence of consciousness, revealing hidden layers of self-awareness, symbolism, and the impulse to leave a mark on the world. This paper seeks to "mine" these hidden depths, uncovering how ancient landscapes and human interaction with them mirror the psychological process of individuation and the evolution of awareness. By situating the psychological underscape of hidden selves within the context of Neanderthal cave art, I propose that these ancient spaces can be seen as liminal zones where the boundaries between conscious and unconscious blur. This exploration of the psychological underscape challenges traditional approaches to archaeology and human history, offering a new paleophenomenological lens through which look at the “self”.
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I am very grateful to The Association of Welsh Writing in English [AWWE - www.awwe.org] for giving me this opportunity to present paleophenomenology and my PhD research.