Rough Theory

Theory In The Rough

Yearly Archives: 2007

Much Ado About Nothing

Leave a comment Posted by on January 9, 2007

So I’ve been feeling a bit retrospectively mortified for the past few days, over having written a post about nothing… ;-P It was one of those posts that seemed as though, really, it probably should have been kept to myself… But I’m currently feeling a bit better about the issue, having yesterday come across the following passage in Hegel’s Phenomenology (yes, LM, I’m behind in my reading… and writing… but today is devoted to Hegel – I promise…):

The completeness of the forms of unreal consciousness will be brought about precisely through the necessity of the advance and the necessity of their connection with one another. To make this comprehensible we may remark, by way of preliminary, that the exposition of untrue consciousness in its untruth is not a merely negative process. Such a one-sided view of it is what the natural consciousness generally adopts; and a knowledge, which makes this one-sidedness its essence, is one of those shapes assumed by incomplete consciousness which falls into the course of the inquiry itself and will come before us there. For this view is scepticism, which always sees in the result only pure nothingness, and abstracts from the fact that this nothing is determinate, is the nothing of that out of which it comes as a result. Nothing, however, is only, in fact, the true result, when taken as the nothing of what it comes from; it is thus itself a determinate nothing, and has a content. The scepticism which ends with the abstraction “nothing” or “emptiness” can advance from this not a step farther, but must wait and see whether there is possibly anything new offered, and what that is – in order to cast it into some abysmal void. When once, on the other hand, the result is apprehended, as it truly is, as determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen; and in the negation the transition is made by which the progress through the complete succession of forms comes about of itself. (79)

Lovely passage – with Hegel’s typical concern over how his form of presentation deviates from his content – expressed in his reminder that what he saying here is only “by way of preliminary”. Hegel focusses here (as in the surrounding paragraphs) on distinguishing scepticism from his own critical “scientific” approach. Scepticism figures here as an abstract negation – as a form of rejection that doesn’t comprehend the necessity of what is being rejected, and therefore fails to transcend what it criticises (an error, however, that Hegel characterises as more than a simple mistake – instead, Hegel suggests, this form of thought is immanently plausible, because it reflects a view “natural consciousness generally adopts”). Hegel’s approach, by contrast, seeks a determinate negation, in which critique builds precisely on its understanding of the necessity, and therefore the determinate limitation, of what is being critically transcended – and grasps its own relationship to the object of critique … Where an abstract negation allows no more than an endless chain of sceptical rejections of whatever content is presented to it – and thus remains bound intrinsically to what it rejects – Hegel understands his approach to enable critique to find its ground, and therefore drive toward something more substantive than the “abysmal void” to which scepticism leads.

I’ve made a commitment to write about this week’s Hegel readings at greater length – we’ll see how I go… But I couldn’t resist highlighting this passage in isolation, if only to point out that I’m not the only person trying to make the argument that nothing is, when you think about it, really something… ;-P

Critical Theory, Negations, Philosophy of History, Reading Group

Timelines and Borders of the Interdisciplinary

Leave a comment Posted by on January 7, 2007

LMagee and I have had occasional conversations this past year on the ways in which the interdisciplinary transmission of ideas takes place. One recurrent theme in these conversations has been the issue of time lag – how concepts and works from outside one’s core discipline or sub-discipline are so often appropriated in the form they occupied decades ago, with little appreciation for how subsequent specialist discussion might have transformed a tradition – whether enabling a tradition to address pivotal early critiques, or causing a tradition to be rejected in spite of its early promise. Another recurrent theme has been the issue of marginality – how texts and concepts can sometimes come to have interdisciplinary resonance, and even – in the minds of non-specialists – come to signify a discipline, when that discipline’s own practitioners might regard those texts or concepts as dubious, marginal, dated, or mundane statements of the obvious.

The fact that a disciplinary discussion “moves on” – that specialists are no longer so taken (or may never have been taken) by specific works as are those of us looking into the discipline from the outside – is not automatically grounds for rejecting an interdisciplinary appropriation. It may in fact be that a work is simply more valuable for the thoughts it sparks outside its home ground, that specialists have become jaded through familiarity, that the influence of a foundational work has come to be so taken for granted that its novelty and importance are no longer recognised within its own field – or that, as Sinthome has suggested, pressures driving toward novelty in academic production have created a cottage critical industry that, for all its volume and detail, takes nothing away from the overarching brilliance of an earlier text.

Being unaware of these broader specialist debates becomes more of a problem for interdisciplinary work, however, when people succumb to the temptation, not only to be inspired by a work from another discipline, but to steal some of the aura of that discipline to add a kind of nonconceptual force to their re-presentation of a borrowed idea. LM and I have recently been discussing some examples of this in relation to social science appropriations of quantum mechanics and set theory in particular, where occasional authors have quite selectively appropriated very specific interpretations of highly contested issues within a complex specialist discussion, and presented these appropriations to nonspecialists as “discoveries” – as established and firm bits of factual knowledge or analytical technique. These kinds of “auratic” interdisciplinary appropriations often strike me as attempts to raise the prestige of a claim by exoticising it, removing it from the everyday experience of intended readers and interlocutors, and effectively placing the claim within a black box of inherited authority, in which position it is shielded from critique…

As someone quite committed to interdisciplinary work, I always find myself a bit frightened by the risk of “auratic” appropriations: I don’t think such appropriations are always intentional, or are consistently recognised for what they are, and I want very much to avoid falling into this practice. This is why I so often emphasise the metaphoric nature of concepts I appropriate from other fields, and try to remain tentative and agnostic about extrapolating the significance of empirical work from distantly-related disciplines, assuming that, as in those more familiar disciplines closer to home, exotic fields will also have their intractable debates, their unaccountable fads, and their creative interpretive frameworks that are massively underdetermined by the evidence… Like any tourist, the interdisciplinary researcher needs to take special care not to overlook potential dangers whose existence would loom large to a disciplinary native… At the same time, interdisciplinary travels are the only way that certain kinds of questions can be answered – often, in fact, the only way that certain kinds of questions can be perceived. Fear of what might go wrong therefore must not undermine our willingness to undertake interdiscilinary work. The question becomes, not whether to conduct interdisciplinary work, but how to do so at a high level.

All of this is a very long prolegomenon to mentioning that I am currently reading Manuel DeLanda’s A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History – which Russ suggested to me some time back, and which I really ought to have read long ago, given that it is an attempt, like my own work, to reason through the philosophical implications of historical experience within a materialist framework. DeLanda’s materialism is of the expansive form associated with the Annales School – seeking to embed human history within a much broader and subtler field of material life than most other “materialist” approaches. DeLanda draws on a very wide range of scientific and social scientific disciplines – mined particularly, I gather, for their insights into potentials for spontaneous self-organisation and “emergence” – as inspiration for his philosophical work, which attempts to understand the implications of complex and nonlinear trajectories he regards as characteristic of material systems and of human history.

I’m too early in the text to comment meaningfully, but am fascinated by the ambition and scope of the work – and am also enjoying reading an author who attempts to dig deeply into the relationships between philosophical concepts and historical experience. I am also particularly interested in how the work navigates the interdisciplinary minefield I mentioned above – how it might draw inspiration, while avoiding the risk of aura, when the disciplinary appropriations are themselves so multi-faceted, and the object of analysis so complex and vast. I’m eager to dig into the details… If others who have read DeLanda would like to comment, I’d also be interested in learning what different folks have taken away from DeLanda’s work.

Interdisciplinary, Math and Science, Philosophy of History, Social Science

Apropos of Nothing

Leave a comment Posted by on January 6, 2007

I’ve been struggling for the past several weeks to work out how to explain the existence of a particular problem. I’m not there yet, but am stuck in a way that made me hope that writing might help shake things up a bit. I thought I’d post around the issue, focussing on some thoughts provoked by reading David Bloor’s (1976) Knowledge and Social Imagery, which among other things sets out the principles underlying the “strong programme” in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Aside from trying to get my thoughts moving in a productive direction, this post foreshadows a tangent the reading group may undertake in the new year, when we’ve discussed incorporating an arc on the sociology of knowledge, and also picks up on a few of the themes that have emerged in the ongoing conversation between this blog and Larval Subjects, for those who have been following that conversational arc.

In Bloor’s account, the strong programme seeks to develop a sociology of scientific knowledge with the following attributes:

1. It would be causal, that is, concerned with the conditions that bring about belief or states of knowledge. Naturally there will be other types of causes apart from social ones which will co-operate in bringing about belief.

2. It would be impartial with respect to truth and falsity, rationality or irrationality, success or failure. Both sides of these dichotomies will require explanation.

3. It would be symmetrical in its style of explanation. The same types of cause would explain, say, true and false beliefs.

4. It would be reflexive. In principle its patterns of explanation would have to be applicable to sociology itself. Like the requirement of symmetry this is a response to the need to seek for general explanations. It is an obvious requirement of principle because otherwise sociology would be a standing refutation of its own theories. (pp. 4-5)

In terms more commonly used on this blog, the strong programme commits itself to an immanent, historical and self-reflexive account of scientific knowledge, and thus shares some common interests with critical theory as I generally define the concept here. The strong programme is thus critical – as I also am – of approaches that seek to explain scientific errors in historical and sociological terms, while behaving as though scientific truths are not similarly subject to historical and sociological analysis. It aims itself at approaches that (tacitly or explicitly) behave as though errors arise from artificial historical and sociological distortions of an underlying natural truth, while the recognition of truth – whenever it might occur – requires no explanation, as though truth itself were a causal factor in bringing its own recognition into being…

At the same time, the strong programme’s commitment to a particular vision of historical causation – and a related lack of attention to questions of how one might use an immanent analysis to ground non-relativistic standards for assessing historically-available forms of perception and thought – differentiates this approach from critical theory in ways that ultimately, I suspect, would undermine the strong programme’s ability to achieve its own ideal of self-reflexivity. For present purposes, though, I want to leave aside this issue – which I suspect would require a fairly elaborate argument, and which in any event I might not be ready to discuss adequately at this point – to focus on a more overt, surface-level problem for self-reflexivity within Bloor’s account.

Bloor argues that the view that truth requires no sociological explanation derives from an – often tacit – teleological conception of knowledge, one in which truth drives toward its own historical realisation, such that historical and sociological analysis is required only for those causal factors that impede this teleological drive. Bloor asks:

What can it mean to say that nothing makes people do or believe things which are rational or correct? Why in that case does the behaviour take place at all? What prompts the internal and correct functioning of an intellectual activity if the search for causes is only deemed appropriate in the case of irrationality or error? The theory that tacitly underlies these ideas is a goal-directed or teleological vision of knowledge and rationality… (pp. 7-8)

Bloor opposes this teleological model to what he calls the “causal model” characteristic of the strong programme. Where the teleological model, Bloor argues, confines historical analysis to a “sociology of error”, the strong programme seeks a form of sociological analysis capable of understanding both “true” and “false” forms of knowledge as the products of similar causal forces:

How does this [teleological] model of knowledge relate to the tenets of the strong programme? Clearly it violates them in a number of serious ways. It relinquishes a thorough-going causal orientation. Causes can only be located for error. Thus the sociology of knowledge is confined to the sociology of error. In addition it violates the requirements of symmetry and impartiality. A prior evaluation of the truth or rationality of a belief is called for before it can be decided whether it is to be counted as self-explanatory or whether a causal theory is needed. There is no doubt that if the teleological model is true then the strong programme is false. (pp. 8-9)

What I find most intriguing about Bloor’s analysis, however – particularly with reference to the ideal of self-reflexivity – is how he concludes this section. For much of this discussion, Bloor has set up a clear opposition between the teleological model and the strong programme. His account suffers somewhat from how it stands poised on the Weberian abyss of uncertainty over how, having defined the two models clearly, and established that both can be regarded as internally consistent, it might justify the choice of one above the other (Bloor suggests, in the end, that “methodological considerations” might drive the choice of one above the other (p. 9) – an explicit position clearly weaker than the tacit passion he manifestly feels about the issue). For present purposes, I’ll pass over this problem to focus on a different issue: the quite extraordinary pulled punch that Bloor throws in the conclusion to this section, where he suddenly and unaccountably mentions that, in spite of his prior critique of the teleological model, he must nevertheless acknowledge that the strong programme still retains some of the teleological model’s core assumptions. I’ll quote Bloor’s own words at some length, to provide the context for his comments:

If explanation is allowed to hinge on prior evaluations then the causal processes that are thought to operate in the world will come to reflect the pattern of these evaluations. Causal processes will be made to etch out the pattern of perceived error, throwing into relief the shape of truth and rationality. Nature will take on a moral significance, endorsing and embodying truth and right. Those who indulge their tendencies to offer asymmetrical explanations will thus have every opportunity to represent as natural what they take for granted. It is an ideal recipe for turning one’s gaze away from one’s own society, values and beliefs and attending only to deviations from them.

Care is needed not to overstate this point, for the strong programme does exactly the same thing in certain respects. It is also based on values, for example: the desire for generality of a specific kind and for a conception of the natural world as morally empty and neutral. So it too insists on giving nature a certain role with respect to morality, albeit of a negative kind. That means it too represents as natural what it takes for granted.

What may be said, however, is that the strong programme possesses a certain kind of moral neutrality, namely the same kind as we have learned to associate with all the other sciences. It also imposes on itself the need for the same kind of generality as other sciences. It would be a betrayal of those values, of the approach of empirical science, to choose to adopt the teleological view. Obviously these are not reasons which could compel anyone to adopt the causal view. For some they may be precisely the reasons that would incline them to reject causality and adopt asymmetrical, teleological conceptions. But these points do make clear the ramifications of the choice and expose those values that are going to inform the approach to knowledge. From this type of confrontation, then, the sociology of knowledge can proceed, if it so chooses, without let or hindrance. (pp. 9-10 italics and bold text mine)

What an extraordinary concession! And from a theoretical approach that puts forward an ideal of self-reflexivity! Bloor is here saying that his approach relies on an explicit, but ungrounded, concept of nature as its normative standpoint – that this concept will remain ungrounded – and, moreover, is a central normative concept structuring, not only the sociological technique, but the object to which that technique will be applied: scientific knowledge! Bloor has here, in my opinion, gone well beyond declaring that the strong programme will not be able to achieve its self-reflexive ideal: he has conceded that a significant dimension of his object of study will forever remain beyond his analytical reach… I find this nothing short of astonishing – although, to be fair, I think that many approaches tacitly fall into exactly this position, but lack the honesty and clarity with which Bloor acknowledges the problem, and for which he should be commended.

Bloor’s defense of this remnant of nature at the core of his analytic approach deserves further attention. While acknowledging that his approach does rely on a concept of nature, Bloor suggests that this concept is rendered less problematic because it is “morally empty and neutral” and “of a negative kind”. Interestingly, this morally negative, empty and neutral concept still functions as a normative standard: it is used to assess and reject other understandings of nature that are judged to be less empty, neutral and negative. Bloor doesn’t appear to perceive a contradiction between describing his concept of nature as “morally neutral” while also deploying it to make normative judgments. Bloor’s “neutral” concept of nature apparently also drives specifically toward the search for “general” knowledge – a concept of knowledge whose qualitative specificity would not seem, in an intuitive sense, to be empty, neutral or negative in its implications, but which here is mentioned in passing as though it possesses an obvious compatibility with notions of what nature ought to be like, when stripped of its positive moral attributes and reduced to an absence, a lack, a negativity…

It may be very difficult for me to express why I find this position so significant. I have a long-standing interest in the ways in which critical values in recent history are so often articulated as negations – as what remains, once all qualitative attributes are stripped away – as voids. The concept of nature Bloor uses above; the common narrative of “secularisation”; the Weberian notion of “disenchantment”: all of these approaches, and many others besides, tacitly or explicitly position themselves as speaking from the standpoint of an absence: they focus attention on what is qualitative, specific, historical and social, while treating the alternative as nothing more than what remains when those qualitative, specific, historical and social trappings have been stripped away. The negative itself is conceptualised as pure absence, pure lack – and therefore seems not to be in need of explanation, at least not of an explanation that would seek to account for its particular qualitative character. This remains the case even when, as above, quite specific qualitative attributes are explicitly ascribed to the negative – such as the determinate quality of capturing what is general or universal in experience.

One of the questions I am trying to figure out how to ask – so that it then becomes easier to consider what type of answer might be adequate to the question – is how we might understand the history and the sociology of what presents itself to our perception as an absence. How can we denaturalise what appears to our experience as nothing more than what remains, when everything artificial has been stripped away? How do we grasp the determinate positivity of what we experience as a negation?

My intuition is that this will prove to be a multifaceted historical problem, necessitating that we come to terms with the constitution of a complex historical context that simultaneously: (1) casts certain specific forms of social practice – concrete institutions and cultural forms and social practices – as social, as artificial human creations with an identifiable history and a sociology – and thereby gives us unprecedented historical access to concepts like “social context”, while also (2) generating another layer of social context that, although just as much the product of historically-specific social practice, has a very different qualitative character: not sharing many of the attributes we have taught ourselves to perceive as social, it is therefore plausibly perceived, when contrasted to more concrete elements of our social context, as nonsocial – it provides, in fact, an experiential basis that renders intuitively plausible some of our dominant conceptual models for nonsocial environments.

Such an historical experience, I would suggest, has the potential to react back on our perceptions of physical nature – shaping our expectations about the sorts of knowledge we expect to find, and the sorts of experiences which we will recognise as generative of meaningful and relevant knowledge about the natural world. I would therefore expect an approach focussed on understanding such a complex historical context to lead to a very different kind of sociology of scientific knowledge than an approach that – like Bloor’s – holds at its centre, unquestioned, a form of perception constitutive of the phenomenon it hopes to explain.

To be fair to Bloor, he does try to provide a type of self-reflexive account of why there might be key forms of perception at the core of scientific thought that are not readily subject to interpretation: he does so by appealing to Durkheim’s analysis of the sacred – arguing that all societies hold sacred certain fundamental concepts derived from the organisation of social life, and that scientific concepts hold this status in our social world (ch. 3). This form of argument is potentially useful in foregrounding the notion that perceptions of the natural world might relate in some qualitatively specific way to our experience of the social world. It also, though, tacitly treats all societies the same – reaching for the “generality” of explanation that Bloor takes to be a “morally neutral” standpoint for his analysis – and therefore doesn’t explore the potential that doxic concepts might actually become so for different reasons, and perhaps in qualitatively distinctive ways, in different forms of social life.

As well, I am not clear that Bloor has given us greater clarity by telling us that key forms of scientific perception are treated as “sacred” in our society: when Durkheim uses this concept, he maps specific relationships between qualitatively specified perceptions of nature, and qualitatively specified stratifications and institutionalised practices within particular societies. Bloor doesn’t offer an equivalent analysis for our social world to account for our equation of “nature” with “morally neutral”, “negative” and “general”. Without this kind of determinate analysis, I’m uncertain whether his application of the concept of the “sacred” to modern science casts greater light on our central question – or just restates that question in other words…

At the same time, I’m also concerned about the centrality Bloor accords to causation as the definitive target of historical and sociological analysis. I’m concerned first in the sense that the pride of place accorded to causation, particularly when combined with the emphasis on causes that are general in nature, seems to understate the descriptive and analytical task that motivates any search for causes: the search for causes is integrally bound with how we construct the object of our analysis – and qualitatively divergent visions of causation might be required to understand the creation and reproduction of different kinds of historical objects. Second, I’m concerned at the mechanistic and lockstep understanding of causation suggested by elements of Bloor’s text – as expressed, for example, in his discussions of how his approach might be able to derive predictive laws of historical development (pp. 15-19). If I’m correct about the complex and layered character of our historical context, this kind of mechanistic vision of historical causation might prove insufficiently nuanced to allow us to grasp what I intuitively suspect is an unusually dynamic and fluid social context, with complex feedback loops between mutually constitutive, but loosely coupled, forms of historical agency and constraint.

But I should also say that I’ve read Bloor’s book very, very quickly, so the chances of my missing central aspects of his argument are somewhat high, and I’m very happy to be corrected on these gestural critiques…

All of this – as with everything else I seem to be writing these days – is terribly underdeveloped, and almost certainly able to be thought in better ways… I’ve posted this only because I’ve felt recently like I’ve been spinning my wheels on this issue without achieving any forward movement, and my hope is that a post – of however mediocre quality – might get things moving on my end. Apologies for the draftiness of the work…

Conversations, Critical Theory, Philosophy of History, Reading Group, Sociology of Knowledge

Reading Group: the Gathering

1 Comment Posted by on January 6, 2007

LMagee and I are both struggling with Hegel. It’s oppressively hot in Melbourne, which makes thinking about anything difficult and, for my part, I keep unaccountably wasting valuable time by doing things like getting trapped in elevators…

LM, though, has put our mutual intellectual torpor to better use than I have. From an email received last night:

On the upside – I have envisaged a reading group card game, with various Attack and Defence points, along with suitable spell and trap cards. Searle of course would have high Attack and low Defence points; the Hegelian dialectic would have to be a spell card, designed to confuse and stun the opposition; Derrida perhaps a trap – as in “a trap for young players”. In any case I see ample potential for entrepreneurial exploitation – perhaps an opportunity for a future ARC project?

Anyone want to add their own suggestions?

Procrastination, Reading Group

If I Have to Be Trapped in a Lift, You Have to Read About It…

Leave a comment Posted by on January 5, 2007

So I just spent a couple of hours trapped in a lift with a colleague. After a meeting meant to clear the air about certain things that haven’t been discussed here. Sometimes life has a fantastic sense of irony…

Our adventure began when we had almost reached our floor, heard an almighty *SNAP*, and felt the elevator begin to fall. Before we’d had much time to panic, the elevator came to a stop on the same floor the library occupies, and the doors opened a crack. We tried to force them open the rest of the way – no dice. We tried the emergency telephone button inside the elevator – no dice. We then spent an interesting several minutes calling out to students and staff wandering right past us on the way into the library – so intent on their reading, apparently, that it took some time for us to find someone willing to peer into the gap we’d pushed between the elevator doors, and listen to our calls for help.

The library staff were more attentive, calling security and sending someone out every few minutes to check on us. Security, when it arrived, asked how many of us were trapped inside. “Two of us!” we answered, only to hear the security guard say into her walkie-talkie, “There are only two of them” – which prompted my colleague to shout, “But we’re very important!!!”

The security guard then berated us for having contacted the library staff, rather than calling security directly by pressing the emergency telephone button. We advised that we had tried to do this. She didn’t believe us, and asked us to press the button again. We did (not that this seemed particularly relevant, now that they were on the scene, mind you – but we weren’t in what one might call a strong negotiating position…). The security guard said, “No – we need you to push the emergency telephone button.” “We are!” we replied. “No,” the security guard informed us, “not that button – the emergency telephone button.” Since we could see what we were pushing, and the security guard could not, we wanted to know, “When you say ’emergency telephone button’, do you mean the orange button in the bottom right, with the telephone on it?” The security guard indicated she would call the elevator repair company…

Left by ourselves for the time being, we discussed the sorts of things one discusses when trapped in a lift. Films we had seen recently. Holiday events. Small talk of various sorts. I mentioned that I should have brought the book I’m currently reading. I flipped through my notebook to see what it might have inside, and found a printout from someone else’s blog. My colleague wanted to see it – flip, flip, flip – clearly not reading a word. They then started talking about the fictitious rock group their son had formed on MySpace, which now apparently has its own Wikipedia page. I quietly despaired that this is everyone’s immediate association when I mention academic blogging…

The security guard returned, telling us that the elevator repair company would arrive in 10 minutes -20 at the most, and asking us whether we were okay. When we said yes, the security guard tried her best to suggest reasons that, in spite of our assurances, we might not be: “Are you getting too hot in there? Is it too stuffy? Are you thirsty or anything?” No. No. Not at all. “That’s good then – the librarian will check on you in a few minutes – you be sure to tell her if you’re not okay.” The security guard wandered off. Amused, I asked my colleague what good it would do, if we told the librarian we weren’t okay – what could she do about it? Noticing the strained look that flitted across my colleague’s face, I decided not to make any more comments like that…

Ten minutes passed. Several more minutes after that. Then the librarian wandered out to tell us that the elevator repair folks would be there in 20 minutes. “Twenty minutes from now?!” my colleague asked, voice sounding somewhat higher pitched than normal. “Are you okay?” the librarian wanted to know. I tried not to make eye contact with my colleague…

More lift discussion… How much does child care cost these days… How often do you make it back to England… etc.

The elevator repair person finally arrived, looked at us through the crack in the elevator doors, said, “Hmmm… the doors are stuck open”, and then closed them. No further communication. We discussed whether this development, which now leaves us in an airless, enclosed space, represents something that should, strictly speaking, be considered progress. A few minutes later, the elevator moved – just enough to stop between floors. Better and better.

Over the next half hour, we watched the lights for random floors switch off and on. With no apparent correlation, we felt the elevator move – up, down, up, down. Then we heard someone walking on the top of the car, exclaiming: “What is going on here?!” Small suggestion: this is probably not the best thing to say…

Just as my colleague had reached the end of their tether, and was pressing the (obviously nonworking, but I wasn’t going to point this out) “emergency phone button” to try to get someone to tell us what was going on, the doors opened again, and we could finally escape…

It’s a funny thing: on my own, I never take the lift to my office – shows me the dangers, I suppose, of hanging out with the wrong crowd… ;-P

Updated to add: I’ve been watching an email exchange on the incident flit around this afternoon, initiated by my colleague’s complaint to the powers-that-be, who responded – instantly – with a satisfying flurry of emails both up and down the food chain to make sure the incident would be properly investigated, followed by a very concerned individual response to us:

This is terrible news…I have already written to the respective people to get this looked into….are both of you okay is there anything we can do???

All of this is making me feel terribly guilty, even though I’m a mere “cc” on all this action: I feel like I should have broken a limb at least, to justify this level of solicitude…

My colleague has replied:

Thanks for giving the urgent notification to those that needed to know, and for your concern.

N. and I had a pleasant conversation, and managed to suppress for that time the anxiety of the lift dropping out of the sky! The Library staff were also very attentive. No major physical or psychological injuries apparent.

Miscellaneous

Determinate Peregrinations

Leave a comment Posted by on January 4, 2007

Just wanted to post a pointer to a conversation over at Larval Subjects, where Sinthome has posted a lovely piece titled “Forcing the Event”, which discusses how to conceptualise dramatic historical transformations and revolutionary moments.

Critical theory – to the extent that it attempts to remain within an immanent, non-metaphysical explanatory framework – faces an unusual conceptual challenge: how to explain how social creatures, conceptualised as embedded within their context, can come to be critical of the context in which they are embedded, and can direct these critical sensibilities into conscious political practice that transforms the context itself.

The discussion at Larval Subjects revolves around this issue – talking about limitations in common attempts to understand historical context and causation, and asking whether there might be better ways of conceptualising both, if we want to understand the potential for transformation as some kind of determinate negation, rather than as an essentially random break with history. Although the discussion is motivated by a shared interest in problems related to immanence and critique, many of the issues discussed would also be relevant for those interested in how to conceptualise historical context and causation in a more general sense.

My own contributions – which were probably a bit long for polite posting on someone else’s blog (sorry Sinthome!) – should probably be described as speculative, but I’ve still found the discussion extremely productive, and wanted to place a pointer here, for any readers who might otherwise miss the exchange.

Conversations, Critical Theory, Philosophy of History

Note to Other

2 Comments Posted by on January 4, 2007

To the person who came across the site on a Google search for: “Can an acme klein bottle be used for drug use?” – apologies that my klein bottle post was not more helpful. However, your question is addressed on the Acme Klein Bottle FAQ, which states:

Would you make one of these for smoking?

Nope. I make Klein Bottles, not bongs, not hookahs. A Klein Bottle is homeomorphic to a sphere with 2 crosscaps. A waterpipe (or bong) needs an input and an output, so it’s likely to be homeomorphic to a cylinder, and therefore not a Klein Bottle. It’s possible to make something resembling a Klein Bottle into a waterpipe, but I’m not interested in doing so. There’s too many other nifty topological shapes to create!

Miscellaneous

Note to Self

Leave a comment Posted by on January 4, 2007

Note to self: no matter how irritating the photocopier situation at your office, try not to forget when you send long print jobs to the photocopier, containing your fragmentary notes on Hegel… This practice attracts undue attention and necessitates much explanation the following day – particularly from the folks who have already been dropping in, wondering why you have so many books in your office…

Miscellaneous

Re-irritating the Differences: Missives from the Misreading Group (II)

6 Comments Posted by on January 3, 2007

A belated post for the new year, this post covers the second part of our Derrida-Searle reading. To recapitulate, we had worked through:

J K Austin, “How to do Things with Words”, 1962

Followed by:

J Derrida, “Signature Event Context”, 1971
J Searle, “Reiterating the Differences”, 1977

And now follow on with:

J Derrida, “Limited a b c”, 1977
J Derrida, “Afterword”, 1987

Unlike the previous post, which (somewhat tediously) laboured through the arguments presented by Derrida and Searle respectively, I will be taking a more cursory look at the argument in total. An aspect of this which interested our group was the structure of the argument, which I will abbreviate as:

a. Austin makes a case, albeit with some caution and reluctance, for a theory of speech acts.
b. Derrida performs a deconstructive reading of Austin, via Corneille and Husserl, highlighting the exclusion of particular speech acts on the basis of a characteristic (paracitism, citationality) which turns out to exemplify communication in general (iterability).
c. Searle replies briefly and dismissively, seeking to rebut a number of Derrida’s criticisms, and demonstrate Derrida’s own argument is incoherent under its own terms.
d. Derrida replies in turn with a long, point-by-point and equally dismissive repudiation of all of Searle’s rebuttals.
e. A decade on, Derrida, through a series of responses to readers’ questions, clarifies and reinforces aspects of his reply, places this in the broader context of the history of deconstructive writings, and further discusses, among other things, the question of an ethics of discussion.

The latter two texts are long, and by turns, amusing, defensive, elliptical, pointed, aggressive and tedious. It is hard not to agree that in large part Searle has misread Derrida – a point in which the reading group, following Derrida, were unanimously agreed upon – and Derrida employs considerable rhetorical force and legal defence in Limited Inc to demonstrate a) Searle frequently misphrases Derrida; b) rebuts by unwittingly using Derrida’s own arguments from “Signature Event Context”; and c) contradicts his own positions expressed in “Speech Acts” and other places. Whether a line-by-line reading would find points of difference to Derrida’s critique becomes progressively less relevant; the two questions that were raised by my reading were: “Why would Searle, elsewhere a more considered and polite interlocutor (though not always), not only misinterpret Derrida’s essay, not even doing an obligatory undergraduate level of research into Derrida’s ‘tradition’, and yet employ such dismissive and contemptuous language?”; and in turn, given this, “Why would Derrida expend so many words in a protracted self-defence?”. The strangeness of Derrida’s style merely serves to emphasize, at least to the casual reader, what great care is invested in defending and attacking argumentative positions, when there is no possibility of any dialectical resolution being realised. Strangely perhaps, given the extreme scepticism often imputed to Derrida, of the two his texts veer far closer close to desiring, if not resolution, then at least clarification, elucidation and insight.

I had thought to bemoan the fact that here was an opportunity for “two prominent philosophical traditions” to engage in fruitful debate, and quite clearly, the opportunity was lost. But with this loss (which assume that Searle and Derrida could speak for these traditions), possibly there is a gain of quite a different sort. Rather than seeing these texts expound various positions in relation to a given theme (for instance, the methodological correctness of excluding a given class of citational speech acts), or as contrastive styles of particular traditions, I found this instead to be an instance of a particular type of dialogue. No doubt skewed by the nature of the academic debates our reading group has been following (Chomsky/Whorf, Pinker/Lakoff, Searle/Chomsky, Pinker/Chomsky), which to greater or lesser degrees have involved significant theoreticians talking past each other, this debate exemplifies the kind of dialogue in which positions are taken, argued for, enforced and defended – but never vacated. What is common in the structure of these debates in general is that the possibility of dialectic is foreclosed by the very nature of the debates. This is not a matter of two thinkers failing to find agreement, but of failing to engage in the kind of dialogue – dialectic or otherwise – which might find agreement. What might motivate this kind of dialogue? Certainly it would be possible to impute all kinds of psychological motives (career advancement, jealousy, a phlegmatic temperament). But I think such imputation misses the point: that in certain kinds of positions, there is a necessary antipathy to other kinds of positions, brought about by both the context of the debate and the goals of the speaker. Having struck such a position – which I think Searle does, for example – it then becomes impossible to find conciliatory ‘moves’ in the course of the dialogue. This in turn ensures the kind of vituperative, perhaps justified, reaction Derrida supplies. Of course this is not to say that a speech act theorist must be antithetical to a deconstructionist (although there may be the sorts of obstacles Derrida finds to reconciling deconstruction with speech act theory). But it may be to say that when one founds, or continues the founding, of a particular theoretical movement; when one competes against other theories, not only for recognition, but prestige, funding, space in the academy; when one finds in other kinds of discourse the sort of criticism which seems ephemeral, beside the point and, most critically, failing to follow the rules one has assiduously applied oneself – then in these circumstances the tactically correct ‘move’ in a dialogue is not one of conciliation, but open and hostile attack. While a focus on context, rules and goals – in short, a focus on describing dialogue as a form of game – might seem to be reducible to psychologism of sorts, it is possible under this model for the same speaker to occupy different positions, no less determined, in other debates, with the same or other interlocutors.

With presumption typical of our reading group, though without the nuance typical of this blog – and blithely ignoring prior theories of the dialogic – I’d like to graduate this suggestion to that of a tentative theory of dialogic acts. Under such a theory, it would be possible to create a set of types which contrast, for instance, the ideal of the dialectic from the all-too-common polemic; and perhaps encompass a broad range of other possible conversational acts as well. Notwithstanding the attractiveness of elaborating such a theory in full here, it would only be polite for the moment – as a guest on this blog – that this elaboration be deferred…

…On a more sedate note, using a game metaphor to describe this and similar debates naturally brings its own assumptions – chiefly, that one or more of the dialogue ‘players’ has a hidden motive which is masked by a superficial failure to obey the laws of good academic, which is to say dialectic, discourse. Of course this is easily denied. That a particular thinker uses an aggressive, argumentative style, which does not meet some standard of politeness, tolerance, etc., need not entail the thinker has something to hide. Or if it does – could not every argument be analysed in terms of some sort of similar hidden motives? Using background knowledge, that one does this or that due to some external circumstance that we, qua interpreters, have contingent knowledge of, might be arguably be itself an invalidation of the rules of engagement. Here it might also elicit the response: if Searle attempts (poorly?) to response to the Derrida of “Signature Event Context”, and not the Derrida of such and such a tradition, such and such a body of writing (Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference and so on), is he not simply conforming to the rules which bind a different game (perhaps that of a strain of analytic philosophy, which treats an argument as a logical series of propositions, without requisite reference to a context)? Might the requirement to understand the context, tradition and so on be a requirement only of a particular kind of argument, which, for example, suits the style, aims and orientation of Derrida, deconstruction and so-called ‘continental philosophy’ in general, tipping the hand towards the player with the preferred game? Finally: is it therefore a question of preferring one game, with its set of rules – recourse to context, literary effect, the implied knowledge of a lifetime of reading of particular “philosophical tradition” – over another? Even assuming Searle critically misreads Derrida, as he himself suggests – not quite sincerely – that indeed he might, might not he just have got it wrong, even under the terms of his own tradition?

However speculative this analysis – and that of the reading group was no less so, though conducted with greater sobriety – the enjoyment of following the threads of the Searle-Derrida argument is precisely that it elicits such open-ended questions. Some commentarists have assumed the argument resolves in favour one way or another; despite Derrida’s laying waste to the Searle critique, in my view, the lingering atmosphere of the argument is not one of victorious elation – it is instead one of irritation. Irritation of Searle with Derrida; irritation of Derrida with Searle; the explicitly acknowledged irritation of Derrida’s readership with his patient, step-by-step refutation in Limited Inc; Derrida’s subsequent irritation with the broader misreadings of deconstruction voice in the Afterword; and the irritation, mingled with the enjoyment, of pursuing a polemic which, without a common set of rules, fails to get off the ground, much less supply the sort of ideal dialectic resolution that is promised by “confrontation between two prominent philosophical traditions”. The answers, really non-answers, to the questions I pose above, are that in the game-theoretic model I follow, positions need to be elaborated by players for goals which may well be “outside the text”, outside the specific purposes we assume exist in the normative, that is to say dialectical, “confrontation” between theories, thinkers and the like. Of course, having no more than partial access to this context we as readers may continue to interpret imperfectly, take our own imperfect positions, conduct our own imperfect polemics, and so on. The dialectic remains, as the author of this blog likes to say, a counterfactual ideal towards which, however illusory, our arguments would like to tend.

Linguistics, Reading Group

Unusual Literacies: Scott Eric Kaufman’s MLA Talk Online

Leave a comment Posted by on January 2, 2007

For those who participated in – or at least followed – Scott Eric Kaufman’s preparations for his MLA presentation, just a note that Scott has now posted his talk to Acephalous. Aside from posting the talk itself, Scott also provides a lovely introductory discussion about the process of preparing for an academic presentation (hint: Scott is a bit more prepared, and a bit less neurotic, about the whole process of converting an academic concept into a talk than I tend to be… ;-P).

Given how many links I’ve scattered in the paragraph above, I’ll provide the direct link to Scott’s talk here, for those seeking to avoid the backstory… ;-P

I particularly love Scott’s description of the original theme of his talk:

the role blogs could play as virtual parlors devoted to the professionalization of sharp minds with rodential social instincts.

(People who know me in person will probably guess why this line might appeal… ;-P)

More seriously, the post contains some very good reflections on the distinction between written and oral presentations, while the talk captures particularly well some key elements of what I agree is a strange confusion over academic blogging, even amongst those who participate in the medium. Trying to slice through some of this confusion, Scott invites us to set aside our technophobia, distinguish professional blogs from more confessional online diaries, and recognise when objections commonly framed as specific to blogging boil down, on reflection, to criticisms of fairly garden-variety violations of professional conduct that could arise in other forms of communication. Scott challenges us to think seriously about what blogging contributes as a distinctive mode of professional practice – and puts forward the recommendation that blogging may provide a particularly important means of overcoming the forms of disciplinary hyper-specialisation encouraged by other forms of academic writing.

Or, in Scott’s own words:

Perhaps reading academic journals at 8 p.m., after having worked since on my dissertation since 8 a.m., strikes some as indulgent (insane, even); and perhaps trying to reformulate that into something a genuinely educated audience can understand, strikes some as a waste—but to me, the former indicates that I list “literary theory” among my hobbies, the latter that I’m interested in processing it Cornell-style and communicating it to those outside not only my increasingly specialized sub-discipline but my profession, so that I might better understand it myself. Consolidating what I’ve learned and rethinking what I’ve written occupy large chunks of my evening and are, I believe, essential to my intellectual and professional development.

But you really should go read the talk for yourself… ;-P

Blogging, Links

← Older posts

Newer posts →

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started