Limit-experience

In continental philosophy, limit-experience (French: expérience limite) is a quality of experience that approaches the limits of possible experience. This can be in terms of its intensity, and it being seemingly impossible or paradoxical. In Lacanianism, a limit-experience dissociates the subject from the experience that it exists in and identifies with, leading to a confrontation with the Real. The concept first appears in the work of Karl Jaspers and later, in the work of the French philosopher Georges Bataille; it subsequently became associated with French philosophers Maurice Blanchot and Michel Foucault through their use of the concept.