Locating Experience in Language: Towards a Poststructuralist Theory of Experience

Abstract

Experience, although a key concept in adult learning, tends to be conceptualized within the framework of humanistic psychology and thus to be seen as asocial and subjective. This article argues that the relationship between meaning and experience should not be grounded in subjectivity. The insoluble problems of such a grounding are illustrated by the deconstructive analysis of a text (Jarvis, 1987) centered on a humanistic approach to meaning and experience. An alternative theorization is presented that stresses the constitutive role of language in experience. This shows how the meaning of experience is located in the play of language and the power of discourse. Experience, therefore, potentially has no single, fixed, and invariant meaning. Seeing experience in this way allows for a reconceptualization of adult learning which more readily takes account of the neglected social dimension.