The Practicality of Particularism?

[Sorry folks, this turned out to be too long to post as a "comment." --SG]

During class, we raised, but did not answer, the question: what are the implications of Shotter’s exposition for social science research? Tatiana, Ela, and Efe all touched on this in their blog posts in different ways:

I am first going to pretend that I accept Shotter’s argument 100%. If we accept this argument, meaning is entirely contingent, each “meeting” (encounter of any kind between two living things) is unique, and so on. What, then, can social science—or we can even change the term to social research or social theory—do? It seems to me that it becomes utterly impossible. We cannot generalize, we cannot categorize (as Efe argues we otherwise can), and we cannot say anything general about how humans interact except that it is always unique, always fresh, always another “first time.” We could sit in a public place and listen and look voyeuristically at individual encounters, but we could not even write up our notes—we would be missing all the visceral elements that Shotter finds so central. It seems all we could do, as Ela suggests, is to write literature—poetry, drama, novels, films. Is Shotter proposing the end of social science (or social research or social theory)? Did he climb that ladder only to kick it away?

Somehow I do not imagine so. What if we understood his work differently—if we understood it as a plea to social studies (if you will) to merely inch away from general theories, away from Cartesian mind-body dualism, away from language-as-stable-meanings? Does he really mean that language has no stable, external meanings, or merely that we have given it too much credit for doing so? Does he really mean that one social encounter bears no resemblance to another? I think not—only that there is less resemblance than we might assume. His argument might be read, then, as a critique of social science, an argument in favor of acknowledging more contingency of meaning, more mind-body unity, and more uniqueness of each social situation.

With this modified interpretation of Shotter in mind, NOW what are the implications of his writings? Maybe the best that comes out of it, as Tatiana points out, is that “I might understand myself better, and how I interact in the social world, or even how others interact differently based on the vocabulary and values we assume.” Is that enough? As Tatiana continues, “but how does that translate to research and knowledge that others can find valuable?”

I am (relative to others in the academic setting) a very practical person. I enjoy asking questions like the following: How do we eliminate large-scale violent conflict? How do we eliminate poverty? How do we improve governance and promote democracy? If we accept Shotter in the modified way I suggested, not as meaning what he says literally but meaning it relatively to the rest of the social science literature, then the implications for practice are rather interesting. We would ask, not, “How do we eliminate large-scale violent conflict?” but rather “How do we eliminate this particular large-scale violent conflict?” We would not ask, “How do we eliminate poverty?” bur rather “How do we eliminate poverty in this particular place and time?” Not “How do we improve governance and promote democracy?” but “How do we improve this particular piece of this particular government, or how do we help this piece of government become more transparent to and inclusive of this particular population?” We would be compelled to go and look and listen and absorb at least a bit of the richness, the uniqueness, and the ever-evolving nature of the particular population involved in a particular time and place before acting.

I, for one, am not interested in abandoning all search for general answers to the more general questions posed above. It seems to me, however, that if practitioners asked themselves these more particular questions, we might end up with solutions that are more practical, more responsive, more respectful of the wisdom of local populations, and less imposed from on high, less expert-driven, and less, perhaps, imperialistic. I still feel that one can indeed generalize across cases and develop explanatory theories that can be utilized in practice, but I see how Shotter’s view of the world can help us hold our theories (and resulting interventions) with an appropriate level of humility.

Textual analysis vs. discourse analysis

This began as a Facebook exchange, but I think it's pedagogically interesting enough to reproduce here and add one more comment of my own, then see where the ensuing discussion takes us.

Efe Sevin: this might be one of the best pieces I have read recently....
An Array of Qualitative Data Analysis Tools: A Call for Data Analysis Triangulation.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson: As though "rigor" and "replicability" (and "reliability," in the fairly narrow sense of "observer-independent") were synonyms. That, I would say, is a very contestable proposition indeed.

Efe Sevin: I think it all boils down to 'data analysis is a systematic search for meaning' understanding. So, there is actually a meaning hidden somewhere in the qualitative data and it is possible to extract it through rigorous analyses. Especially domain analysis, taxonomic analysis, and componential analysis are, I would say, promising tools to explain meaning in a context (in a replicable way). The words are not synonymous but they are closely linked to each other.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson: The key move here is to assume that "there is actually a meaning hidden somewhere in the qualitative data." And that is the leap of faith, I think: that meaning is there to be found, instead of co-produced by the act of looking for it.

Efe Sevin: ‎'Meaning is to be found' is an assumption that I do not entirely disagree.

Efe Sevin: let me try to rephrase that - I do not think the co-production, or production of meaning in a specific context, necessarily means that meaning cannot be analyzed systematically.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson: Ah, but your two comments are quite different, since systematicity and externality are two very different claims. Systematic co-production and systematic discovery are not, after all, the same thing.

Efe Sevin: Right- but there is no prerequisite relation among them. I am trying to claim there can be a systematic discovery of co-production. A rigorous/systematic analysis does not need to assume that there is an external reality.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson: Granted. But "discovering meaning in the text" does presume that there is an external reality, in a way that "co-producing meaning with the text" does not.

Craig Hayden: If I may wade in here... cannot the researcher simply just foreground his/her value commitments or other reflexive predispositions before entering into any systematic analysis? You don't have to be a rigid "realist" to acknowledge that there are structures (patterns, institutions, etc.) that exist externally - in so far as they are identifiably and contingently external. Sure, this is a double hermeneutic problem, but that doesn't mean that you have to buy scientific realism wholesale. Simply that you have to acknowledge the limitations of our own systematically. Once we speculate on the enduring externality of structures, we wade into the "magical thinking" of realism.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson: ‎"External" to what?

Craig Hayden: You know, I keep struggling to comprehend my own fundamental inclinations toward realism, while recognizing that it's not really compatible with co-production. If qualitative data exists in some form somewhere (say, a corpus of textual artifacts) do they still have meaning *external* to the researcher? Or, for example, can someone really be a structuralist at all? I suppose it's about the ambition (or pretension) you bring to your claims.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson: I think there's a difference between "external to the researcher as an individual" and "external to processes of knowledge-production." Accepting the former doesn't make one a realist in any significant way; it just makes one not a solipsist. Accepting the latter -- and saying that meaning inheres "in the text" would, I think, be accepting the latter, since it would place meaning in the realm of "brute facts" that are definitionally the case whether one apprehends them or not -- makes one a realist of some sort. Denying that there are any brute facts makes one a subjective idealist; denying that it is sensible to talk about brute facts or other mind-independent externalities makes one some variety of social constructionist.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson: And none of this has anything at all to do with systematicity. I'm a huge fan of systematic procedures of data collection and data analysis; I'm just very skeptical about "triangulation" and the collection of ontological baggage that it brings with it.

Craig Hayden: Yes, that makes sense, and is what you say (repeatedly) in your book. And I'm on board with systematic procedures, if only to make for the better argument.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson: Of course, we might have to ask ourselves *why* systematic procedures make for the better argument ... but that's a conversation for another time, and probably not for Efe's wall ;-)

Efe Sevin: Well, I actually did enjoy the conversation :) I have two things to add - first what I believe the systematicity in one sense includes an apprehension of social reality. The hidden assumption is that reality can be 'categorized' prior to da...ta gathering or analysis. Secondly, the main argument of the article comes back to what Dr. Hayden mentioned. There is indeed a body of qualitative data waiting to be analyzed. The methods offered in the article just enable the researchers to get the best out of the data set. (However, then again 'getting the best out of the data set' inherently includes a conceptualization of reality external to the researcher, and argues that it is possible to extract contextual meaning from a text - and I am okay with both statements.)

Craig Hayden: Well... a lot to say here. Probably best over coffee.

So my final comment would be that this discussion provides a good account of the difference between the content analysis of a text and a discourse analysis that uses text. Content analysis attempts to isolate the meaning of a text so as to use that meaning in an argument, perhaps correlating that meaning to some outcome, perhaps explaining that meaning in terms of the interests it serves or the relations it obscures. The point is that the meaning is an attribute among other attributes. But a discourse analysis of a piece of text would try to use the text to get at the practical context surrounding it -- in Shotter's terms, to move from dead already-spoken words to living words in their speaking, with the emphasis here firmly on "in their speaking" as a practical context. So what's of interest in a discourse analysis is not the text (which is why, parenthetically, Foucault is rather dismissive of "interpretation" as an activity, and this formed part of the argument between Foucault and Derrida to the extent that Foucault accused Derrida of diving too far into the text), but the effect that the formulations in the text have, how they contribute to an over-ongoing flow of events and happenings. Killing the text by subjecting it to automated techniques of content analysis (or to doctrinaire decodings in terms of some given notion of ideology) is, in this respect, the polar opposite of a discourse analysis. Epstein should help us grapple with this distinction in the context of a concrete analysis.

Can they talk?

Revisiting Ethnography through Shotter

Reading and engaging with Shotter, Wittgenstein, even Foucault has caused me to revisit my thought on the utility and limitations of ethnography as a methodology and or a tool( method). I still think ethnography is pretty cool and reflects my curiosity about the world and the types of things my creative mind is generally interested in knowing. However, I find my self caught on questions of culture in ethnography and in its use as a variable in positivist (as in things should be measured empirically) studies.

If Shotter is correct, and "different people in different positions at different moments will live in what they formulate as different realities" (14), then I've been looking at research all wrong. Despite all my "critical thinking" I've made the assumption that I can observe and reason and even make general observations about trends within a groups of people and make true and right conclusions about what I observe. Perhaps we call this a stereotype for a reason. I'm coming to terms with the fact that perhaps I can never really understand everything in full. However, instead of wallowing, and wondering what is it exactly that I aspire to do here, with my perceptions of how the world can be a "better place" and how I intend to discover it, I've been intrigued by the question of whether there can be a collective consciousness.. I think even among social/cultural understandings, (which at times we assume to be at least in some form, homogeneous), they are not (according to Shotter) as congruent as we have been thought to believe. But what are the implications of this for our studies or knowledge of culture? (even our own)

We constantly say that culture matters. But there is something very disconcerting about a variable or factor so important yet we cannot measure it empirically it let alone "accurately" perceive it. And what of the many cultures we belong to? (our ethnic backgrounds, cohort, families, et al?) In terms of structure is there a formula for when some rules are followed or subjected to others? If so, would we be able to map it? Shotter also makes an interesting point about how we can be confused by the languages we employ. p197 "...talking amongst ourselves about the difficulties of human relations we face as problems that can be solved, can lead us into 'bewitching' ourselves with our own linguistic constructions. Right from the start we inevitably formulate such problems in terms of supposedly hidden entities, things which none of us have actually ever seen--we talk of thoughts, ideas, of mental processes, of states of mind, attitudes, [culture]...."

Considering ethnography, how can one fully imbed themselves within a group of people to fully understand its culture? Is that exercise even fully possible? Even within a "cultural group", not everyone ascribes to the dominant cultural understanding. Would it be better to say ethnography allows us to observe and experience nuances within a cultural group? When if at all does heterogeneity become so diverse that its difficult/impossible to draw generalizable conclusions? And how do we reconcile that with our own perceptions of how research should be done and what we can do with it?

Shotter also says that we deceive ourselves into thinking that this exercise is not a task for explanatory theory in dividing the correct or true view (61), but then what do we use it for? It seems that I might understand myself better, and how i interact in the social world, or even how others interact differently based on the vocabulary and and values we assume, (63) but how does that translate to research and knowledge that others can find valuable?

Is language a lens to a culture?

Structure and Agency According to Shotter

(This is from Ela, not me :) ).

Ela Rossmiller

I propose that we explore Shotter’s philosophy in light of The Great Debate in the social sciences over structure and agency. Recall that early French structuralists (e.g. Levi-Strauss, de Saussure) proposed models of structures that explained the durability and patterning of social phenomena. Some reacted against this, accusing the classic French structuralists of a linguistic and/or social determinism that minimized human agency. Giddens and Bourdieu “saved” structure by offering more subtle, sophisticated models that allowed for greater human agency, e.g. with concepts like “the duality of structure,” and allowed for change over time, e.g. with concepts like “structuration.” Moreover, they explained how structures, capital, and one’s habitus can be not only constraining, but also enabling.
Then along comes Shotter.
Shotter minimizes structure and maximizes agency. While he is not entirely against structure (see p. 14), he does seem to view it as constraining and beside the point. In this vein, he also disparages or minimizes mental models, scripts (p. 17), metaphors, pictures, and, well, even explanations. These don’t really explain human behavior but instead blind us to the possibilities inherent in each moment to engage with life and people in a relationally-responsive way. Our reality is constructed through spontaneous, bodily, expressive conversation with others, and we should view ourselves not as a collection of individuals, but as part of a chiasmically-intertwined whole. The past does not predict the future; we are constantly facing situations for the first time. The situations in which we find ourselves require a fresh response, not the application of a theory constructed from past experience.
While these views may appear radical within the social sciences, they are taken for granted in other fields, e.g. the arts, philosophy, and mysticism. As I read Shotter, I heard echos of Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” and “On Intersubjectivity.” Buber had studied art and philosphy before moving to Hebrew University in 1938 where he taught anthropology and sociology. But the days of such free-ranging interdisciplinarity are over. Social science has never been the same since structuralism, and Shotter wants to stage a jail break.
Indeed, Shotter bemoans the disciplinary constraints of the social sciences and wistfully pines for more creative expression: “In fulfilling our responsibilities as competent and professional academics, we must write systematic texts, objective texts, for we run the risk of being accounted incompetent if we do not. We cannot write literature, novels, poems, or plays.” (p. 23) Of course, Shotter *can* write literature, novels, poems, or plays; however, this raises the question: “But is it social science?”
So, here are my questions for the group:

1. Are the social sciences so defined by the structure/agency debate that you cease to be a social scientist if you exit this debate?
2. Is it a problem that Shotter can’t write novels and be considered a social scientist?

Habermas-Enlightment=Shotter?

Similar to several other scholars we read this semester, John Shotter also takes a look at the concept of 'reality' and defines it in relational terms. I learnt four important things from his work:

Wittgenstein actually makes sense. He has ideas and even a robust methodology.

It is possible to talk about time in spatial or dynamic terms.(For some reason, this reminds of time dilation and relativity.)

Disease can be interpreted as dis-ease. (Also, see Seasonal Affected Disorder)

Enlightenment might not be that good. (The subject I will be writing about in this post).


I thought Enlightenment was 'cool'

The very notion of being enlightened - simply stated as the attempt to live one's life in light of reason, not a victim of the mere opinions and prejudices of others - was that of people being able to be self-determining in the conduct of their own lives (p.19).

And this has been my interpretation of the Age of Enlightenment. Individuals, who have been enchanted by traditions and religious thoughts, broke their intellectual chains. What I was not aware was the ontological approach brought in by Enlightenment. As Shotter describes 'observation' was seen the way to analyze objective (i.e. the one that exists outside our minds) reality. Enlightenment approach also claims that it is possible to create representations of the world to understand complex social mechanisms. Given the fact that Shotter claims reality is pretty much created through dynamic dialogue processes, it is not surprising to see that he accuses Enlightenment of confining our thinking... But wait! How can a 'school of values' confine our thinking? As Shotter also refers to Descartes (and as I found a nice short video), I want to pay a short visit to his ideas:



Analyzing Social World - It Ain't Easy

Let me reiterate two concepts:

1- Methodological skepticism: We should doubt everything. It is not possible to know the existence of anything for sure (except existence of ourselves).
2- Cartesian Dualism: There are physical objects and mental concepts. They are, well, separate.

I argue that Shotter will not have strong objections to methodological skepticism at a fundamental level. Because the main point in skepticism is not to take any knowledge for granted. However, the methodological part might cause some problems as Descartes argues for a logical inquiry of physical objects and mental concepts.

And this is the point I find it difficult to agree with relativist and/or interpretivist approaches. A social phenomenon might be created dynamically within a local context. However, does that necessarily mean it cannot be systematically and rationality analyzed? Shotter argues that we should replace a Cartesian view of the world with one 'in which the thins and events within are more intrinsically related to each other' (p.89). In Chapter 6 he uses the term 'eventings', experiences that occur for yet another first time (p.133). Why cannot be they categorized? Yes, they are unique events by themselves but does that necessarily mean a cross-case comparison is impossible? Chocolate ice-cream and apple pie are quite unique things, and probably have unique meanings (tastes?) to people. Yet, I am pretty sure if I am to describe the relationship between individuals and desserts - I can. There are subtle similarities (family resemblances?) among different desserts and social interactions that can be rationally extracted.

The complexities of social interactions might make such an attempt impractical, but impossible - I don't think so. Let it be a phenomenon that already exists or one that is developing (p.68), can't we still aim to explain them? Isn't a case-based detailed description of how our ways of making sense work (p.6) just one short step below explaining how our ways work?

So, two questions from me:

- If we are to assume that Descartes is right about mind/world duality, what happens to a form of rationality-achieved-through contrasts, rather than rationality-as representation (p.67) understanding?

- What if, reason and rationality (or logical inquiry) is the right way of analyzing social structures?

PS: I have to say something about his understanding of science fiction... In Chapter 6, he says that "science fiction writing....enables us to imagine other ways in which we might make sense of our own forms of life (p.133)". This is an interesting argument we need to focus on "the changing relations occurring in our inter-activities, between ourselves and our surroundings"(p.133). Science fiction is practically a way of writing about the present without calling it present. But isn't it actually changing one (or more) aspects of the social mechanisms to speculate about what might happen? What if an outer space council monitored the behavior on Earth ( The Day the Earth Stood Still)? What if resources are literally controlled by one authority (Soylent Green)? What if there is an 'all-knowing' government (1984, Logan's Run)? What I am trying to say is, science fiction is also about replacing one of the cogs of contemporary social mechanism with a less probable one and re-discussing social relations. Therefore, it is more analytical than poetic in one sense (at least for me).

PS 2: I forgot to talk about the title. Shotter's conversational reality understanding sounded very similar to Habermas's communicative action minus Habermas's stress on reason, rationality, and to an extent end-oriented approach.

New Yorker article on sex-ed books for kids...

A great read that reinforces Foucault's point that we talk an awful lot about sex (and in super awkward ways).

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/10/18/101018crat_atlarge_lepore

'Sexuality,' 'Biopower' and the 'Society of Normalization'

Reading Foucault, one perhaps feels a certain claustrophobia with the notion of ‘living within language.’ Or even its (language’s…) mere ‘subject,’ inscribed upon by discourses developed elsewhere—governmental rationalities, likely—often wielded by others, like a weapon of sorts. This is how I imagine Foucault feeling, and in a way, then, he was his own advocate, critically analyzing ‘the society of normalization’.

And yet there cannot ever be an ‘escaping from power’. Only perhaps a greater awareness of its history and constellations—its discourses and rationalities—in this case, as concerns the human sciences and concomitant ‘expert’ knowledges of pleasure and desire. We may fairly ask: is to show the construction of something like (the discourse of) ‘sexuality’ also to make its dismantling imperative? Probably not, I think. But it does place a certain onus, I would also think, on those who would perpetuate certain exclusionary discourses. The case of the simple-minded farmhand, for example, does seem to pose very uncomfortable questions here.

Foucault should make us consider the notion of emancipation, since I (perhaps in ignorance) take this to be, in broad outline, his project. Yet if we begin from the premise that the idea of ‘absolute freedom’ is probably meaningless, what the hell is emancipation? (Which is to say: What should we make of this word?—How should we employ/deploy it?) Is it anarchy? Or just living more like a bonobo? I suppose emancipation could be conceived of (minimally) as the minimization of exclusions through constant critical reflection (reflexivity?) on the price paid in any classificatory scheme—any act of naming.

To offer an example from an area I’ve researched a bit--drug policy, which may be marginally less uncomfortable for some to discuss, than, say, rape—Foucault’s History of Sexuality has been drawn upon by researchers who argue against the ‘pathologization’ of ‘users’. They often do this from a less punitive, more ‘health-based’ (biopolitical?) ‘harm reduction’ perspective—while critiquing certain practices of harm reduction itself. Foucault’s analytics have helped here, also, to show how the discourse of the (neo)liberal subject ‘has a problem with pleasure,’ with ‘unruly bodies,’ so that the consumptive behavior of ‘users’ cannot be spoken of with reference to (legitimate) pleasure, thereby making the behavior appear rather confusing or inexplicable. This helps account, for instance, for certain radical disconnects between the discourse of ‘controllers’ and ‘users’, while highlighting how certain harm reducing practices already circulate amongst users—in their words—which are enthusiastically passed along to others, as a cultural practice. (It may also be worth noting here that drug control generally, it seems to me, might be seen also as a product of biopower, concerned first largely with maintaining the ‘purity’ of white societies from Oriental pollution (e.g. via laws prohibiting the smoking of opium), and later more generally with the overall health of populations.)

We might say that Foucault entreats us to think critically about the human sciences and their relations to ‘governmental rationalities’—namely biopolitics—and to be less squeamish about pleasure. None of this seems to help, though, in trying to provide an answer to Namalie’s question about rape. Does considering male rape make a difference here? And our question may also be posed differently: Why might we not be better off in thinking about these dreadful practices more in terms of violence than in terms of sexuality?

While I hope that we all might agree that Foucault’s analytics are cogent and useful (for a recent application in IR, see perhaps Neumann and Sending’s 2010 book Governing the Global Polity), they also may be by turns confounding in their potential implications. While he may make us a bit less comfortable in our ‘linguistic homes’, though, at least he doesn’t seem as bad on this respect as someone like his fellow countryman Lacan, for whom language, apparently, was in the post-Freud era no less than ‘torture-house.’ Like much inquiry, then, our final question may be: How well must/can we know ourselves? Our research projects may, then, always be a certain, subsequent, praxis. Unless ‘knowing oneself’ is a largely empty notion.

A Brief Summary of Foucault's The History of Sexuality

Not that this replaces a reading of the book, but if you need a study break and are interested in watching a rated-R, Schoolhouse Rock-type retelling of The History of Sexuality, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-JzKR1FwsQ. Fair warning: the chorus of the song in the video WILL get stuck in your head.

(I would embed the video in this post, but because of the continued repressive nature of the discourse on sexuality, I do not want to worry about administrative consequences of phallic images on future Conduct of Inquiry students).

Let's Talk about Sex...

In History of Sexuality (1990), Foucault charts the analytics of power surrounding sex and how sex has become a scientia sexualis in Western culture. Foucault details how instead of the usual belief that our society was once sexually repressed in the olden days and is now becoming more sexually liberated, it is in fact trapped in the power of discourse that has relegated sex to a dangerous secret that everyone knows about. Since we could not talk about sex directly, we could only justify talking about it in terms of it as a medical problem – “perversions” such as masturbation, the hysterical woman and homosexuality.

How can we use Foucault’s History on Sexuality as a heuristic device to understand contemporary matters related to sex and power? His argument seems most easily related to questions connected to feminism and homosexuality. Based off this work, where would a Foucauldian analysis of issues such as rape, abortion, female genital mutilation (FGM) and gay marriage lead us exactly?

To me, it seemed like an interesting gap that Foucault did not talk about rape when talking about sex and power. Rape is power transformed into sexual violence – it has been used as a strategy of warfare, an exercise of dominance. Would Foucault view rape as such? Or am I not heeding Foucault’s advice to break away from the agency of sex and instead again falling for the repression hypothesis? Am I only thinking of sex “in terms of law, prohibition, liberty and sovereignty” (90)? In order to avoid this problem, Foucault suggests that we focus instead on “bodies and pleasures”, but how is that possible when dealing with a subject like rape (157)?

Take the example of the “simple-minded” farmhand who paid little girls for sexual favors (or “inconsequential bucolic pleasures” according to Foucault), and who was then shipped off to a psychiatric institution to be “studied” (31). Foucault seemed to be a bit saddened about the farmhand’s fate and used this as an instance of how the state controls sex as a scientific subject. While I do think that there is some truth to how sexual “perversions” have been controlled by institutions of knowledge and power, I still think I would see the farmhand as committing statutory rape – a perspective that Foucault did not seem to address. However, even as I write it out, I realize that the definition of statutory rape was created by the state – so am I still falling into the trap of imbuing sex with a repressive power? If that is the case, does that mean that we should only view rape as an act of violence, and completely separated from sexuality? Isn’t such a view problematic?

Continuing on this idea of sex, power and women, is the controversy over abortion a sign of how the state and parts of the public wish to exercise control over a woman’s body? What about FGM – is this a cultural practice or another form of power wielded over women to manage their bodies, sexuality and their ability to experience pleasure? FGM is sometimes promoted by women themselves – is this an example of how power and sex has been diffused throughout discourse so that it has become internalized?

Can we view Foucault’s discussion on how the political economy of population became a dominant aspect of the discourse around sex – to be controlled, monitored, and kept within the realm of the mother-father bedroom – as one of the reasons why gay marriage is still struggling to be legal in the States? If masturbation is a problem because the solitary pleasure does not lead to babies, then that argument could be extended to gay marriage, for if sex is for procreation only, then same sex relationships do not fit the bill. But what would Foucault think about the gay rights movement in general? If we take the view that the movement is operating on a platform of sexual orientation, is it in fact “part of the same historical network as the thing it denounces (and doubtless misrepresents) by calling it ‘repression’?” (10). In a sense, is the movement using the same language that tried to repress it in the first place?

As you can see, I have a lot of questions about Foucault’s analysis of power, sex and discourse. While at first the idea that power is a pervasive force throughout society is a compelling one, when trying to see how I can free myself from this repressive idea of sex, especially when it came to rape, I found myself more confused than illuminated.

Confessions of a Non-Wittgensteinian

I cannot tell a lie: I hated reading Wittgenstein. I found the experience frustrating. Wittgenstein’s endless questioning struck me as lazy—why not venture an answer to some of these questions, rather than merely musing on them? On the bright side, the exercise of reading Wittgenstein seems to have helped me clarify my methodological tendencies. I learned that I have a strong preference for empirical approaches to gaining knowledge. To the extent Wittgenstein’s questions are of any value, they serve to set out a research agenda on language and cognition.

Some examples will help clarify contention that the questions Wittgenstein poses can and perhaps should be studied empirically. Let us take his questions on the ability of an animal to experience hope an anticipation:

One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled. But hopeful? And why not? A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day after to-morrow?—And what can he not do here?—How do I do it?—How am I supposed to answer this? Can only those hope who can talk? (174).

This is an excellent question for some experiments, both on animals and, I would suggest, on human children at various stages of development. What happens when the animal (to start with) experiences pleasure? Does the tail wag, the heart rate increase? Do the ears perk up, the pupils dilate? In the next step, let us imagine that every day before the dog’s master comes home, the dog can hear the master’s garage door open. Now let us see if the dog shows the same signs of pleasure—this might be interpreted as anticipation. We might go further and see if the dog shows such signs at the time of day when the master usually comes home. These of course do not directly show “hope,” and it is not difficult to accept that we cannot directly witness such experiences. Indeed, psychologists are busy studying emotions such as “hope” and trying to determine to what extent these are physiological experiences and to what extent they are constituted by verbal messages in our minds. The answers are not yet clear, but we can go a long way towards answering the questions Wittgenstein poses through empirical study.

Another example from Wittgenstein is his discussion of the meaning of a word such as “if,” or rather how one experiences the meaning (181-82). Is the meaning a feeling, an atmosphere or “corona,” the “experience one has in hearing or saying it,” or something different each time depending on context and use? Is that feeling separable from the word itself? Linguists in the sub-field of semantics study just such questions. My frustration with both Wittgenstein and the linguists is the leaving out of the social aspects of meaning. Wittgenstein hints at it; linguists (except sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists) assiduously ignore it. One way study the meaning of meaning is to study child language acquisition—the way children try out a new word, sometimes use it incorrectly, and get corrected by their caregivers. Another is to study brain scans as a word is used, perhaps in different ways in different contexts. Yet another is to study aphasia patients—those who have lost function of certain language-related parts of the brain due to stroke. To be sure, this leaves out a certain element of experience that cannot be directly observed or communicated; perhaps this is the very part with which Wittgenstein is most concerned. Nonetheless, how do his scenarios and questions get us any closer to understanding these phenomena?

The next example concerns visual recognition: “I meet someone whom I have not seen for years; I see him clearly, but fail to know him. Suddenly I know him, I see the old face in the altered one. I believe that I should do a different portrait of him now if I could paint. Now, when I know my acquaintance in a crowd, perhaps after looking in his direction for quite a while,—is this a special sort of seeing? Is it a case of both seeing and thinking? or an amalgam of the two, as I should almost like to say?” (197). Indeed, cognitive psychologists are eagerly pursuing an understanding of these questions and visual recognition more generally. There are big payoffs to be had for understanding this process—it could then be replicated by computers, with enormous profitability in the arena of security. Some progress has evidently been made: I get into my health club by pressing my index finger against a device that recognizes my fingerprint. The ability of humans to recognize a face that has aged considerably since last view is surely much more complex, yet one that technologists are no doubt interested in replicating.

My final example involves the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon:

’The word is on the tip of my tongue." What is going on in my consciousness? That is not the point at all. Whatever did go on was not what was meant by that expression. It is of more interest what went on in my behaviour.—‘The word is on the tip of my tongue’ tells you: the word which belongs here has escaped me, but I hope to find it soon. For the rest the verbal expression does no more than certain wordless behaviour. James, in writing of this subject, is really trying to say: ‘What a remarkable experience! The word is not there yet, and yet in a certain sense is there,—or something is there, which cannot grow into anything but this word.’—But this is not experience at all. Interpreted as experience it does indeed look odd (219).

It is funny Wittgenstein should mention the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon—as an undergraduate linguistics major, I had a professor perform an experiment with the class on this experience. He asked us to recall the name of the lead actor in a particular movie. Those of us who either had no idea of the answer or who recalled the actor’s name without difficulty were disqualified. The rest of us had the name “on the tips of our tongues.” Under questioning from the professor, most of this smaller group were able to accurately recall something about the name, like the number of syllables, the first letter, or the major vowel sounds in the name. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon clearly can be studied empirically.

What, then, is the point of approaching these kinds of subjects philosophically? Wittgenstein was probably not setting out to establish a research agenda for future linguists and cognitive psychologists. I think he was instead trying to highlight the impossibility of fully penetrating the individual experience of such things as emotions, pain, color perception, and the meanings of words. With regard to language, I think he was pointing out the maddening difficulty of truly pinning down meaning, despite our tidy dictionary definitions, and the mind-boggling mystery of our ability to more-or-less understand one another in spite of this. I grant that his questions are interesting food for thought, but I, for one, am more interested in the search for answers.

A game in which there are more questions than answers

*A disclaimer here: after reading Philosophical Investigations II, I find that I cannot write outside of the first person. I cannot claim to either summarize of critically challenge the book, and I cannot escape from my own experience in reading it. Accordingly, this blog entry is going to be remarkably self-centered (or, perhaps unremarkably, depending on how you see it). For my ego that is represented below, I do apologize.

When I look at my computer screen, I see a series of lines and dots. Or, rather, that is what I should say. I don't see something as a series of dots. That would be ridiculous. Well, actually what my mind tells me is that I see a series of words, contextualized in sentences, and ordered into paragraphs.

This is interesting--what I see and what I perceive. Like Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit (a word I am sure is more robust in the German) example, I know that we perceive things in different ways. Does it matter that we perceive them in different ways?

Let's take another example:


What do you see here? What do you see this photo as? Does how you see it or how I see it change the meaning of the picture? Look again. Do you see something different? Does its meaning depend on how you see it?

And what is meaning? How is meaning of words determined? How can we even discuss how meanings of words are determined if we are, ourselves, using words themselves for such a purpose?

Before my fingers begin to type, I reason to myself. Should I choose this word or that one? What will this word mean versus that one? But if I do not say this out loud, or if I do not type it, I have not communicated it. Before I “reasoned,” I had to know what “reasoning” is, and therefore, I had to learn how to reason in my head only by learning to reason (Wittgenstein 220).

And what about pain? Can we objectively understand pain, or is it merely subject to our own experience? Is there such a thing as objective pain? If there is not such a thing as objective pain, then should I just stare passively if someone is writhing on the floor, crying and grimacing?

I am inevitably left, after a reading of Section II of Philosophical Investigations, with more questions than answers...

(And since my questions are internal, and stated within my head as I read them, are they valid questions? Are they only valid when I write them down in this blog entry?)

...which, I am coming to experience,...

(I purposely say experience, because rather than trying to simply make me understand, Wittgenstein makes me experience what he is trying to convey.)

is the point.

With a more critical view of language, taking into account ontological "reality," and epistemological "subjectivity," my view of the world shifts to an expending--no, a shattering--of the boundaries and boxes that I had previously constructed for myself. It is in this space that Wittgenstein dares me to begin to be creative in my reasoning. It is in this space that he challenges me to keep trying until I realize that, while it might be futile, the activity of language is... well... just is.

My one question here, which can be discussed in the comments, is what assumptions has the experience of Wittgenstein shattered for you?

Fractals in Action- Visual Learning

I probably should have taken this picture head on but it does help visually jog my memory of what we discussed.

A quick question game

In light of the Wittgenstein reading and the rest of the course material we've already tackled, I'd like to present a few questions of my own (sans any actual answers though).

Before I start though, I would like to note that after reading part one, I may be beginning to understand why parents often get annoyed when children ask so many questions. For normal parents, there comes a point in which you are backed in a corner with a question that you don't actually have an intelligent answer for. Children are like Wittgenstein, they expose your assumptions and lack of logic application that is supposed to be the mark of adulthood and humanity (in this case, academia).

Are we supposed to be just grappling with the material? or demonstrating mastery over it? Metaphorically, are quotes my medals of honor and discussion points my battle stories? (scars included)

We've talked about the fractalization of the discipline and its presentation as a nicely outlined family tree of sorts, and the importance of understanding the scholarly heritage of those in the field we choose to cite, but what about research interest areas that are not limited to political science/IR? For example, development literature, depending on the path you take crosses many disciplines, POLS, Econ, earth science, I've even seen work in sociology journals and this list is by no means exhaustive. How can we ascertain the scholarly heritage of scholars in fields in which we are not familiar?