Text and Method: A discussion of Reed Way Dasenbrock’s Truth and Consequences

Reed Dasenbrock’s Truth and Consequences has given me much to think about. It is a relief to read a text so devoted to argument and evidence rather than unsupported claims. Admittedly, my own work and others seems to sometimes do this. In this text, Dasenbrock connects early analytic philosophy with some contemporary literary theory under the rubric of ‘conventionalism’, critiques this tradition, but then offers an alternative to conventionalism: an interpretive method based primarily on Donald Davidson.

Dasenbrock presents an array of philosophers, but rather than gloss his opponents with ready-made summaries, he attends to their texts with care and respect. These positions are not only put forward and critiqued with care, but are evaluated in terms of what Dasenbrock conceives as their pragmatic value. Unlike much contemporary “theory,” Dasenbrock retains the use of evaluation, including evaluating current theoretical positions currently taken as self-evident; theories needing no further argumentation than a citation of a theoretical authority (i.e. “As Foucault says, knowledge is a product of the will to power). Dasenbrock’s supports his interpretation--even of his opponents-- with evidence and arguments. I would argue that he is often more true to the philosopher/critic’s text than many disciples.

Take Dasenbrock’s Derrida for instance. Dasenbrock derives Derrida’s position (“anti-intentionalism) from Limited Inc. and then contrasts this position with Derrida’s practice in his defense of Paul de Man. Dasenbrock argues that Derrida refutes his  anti-intentionalism when he consider’s de Man’s intentions in writing for a Nazi supported journal. According to Dasenbrock, Derrida treats de Man and himself as individual authors, but people he disagrees with as “texts” to deconstruct.   Dasenbrock argues quite convincingly that we must treat other people as people and not merely as texts: “We can treat texts deconstructively as long as we can consider them as texts, but if they are works for us, products of a person we recognize as a person, we read in a rather different manner” (104). Moving from his defense of De Man back to Limited Inc, Dasenbrock argues that we can see Derrida critiquing Searle’s argument for intentions of an author, but Derrida himself retains his sense of authorship in practice. In other words, Dasenbrock shows that deconstruction’s anti-intentionalism cannot always be put into practice consistently.

I found Dasenbrock’s critique of Derrida convincing—not because I want to abandon my reading of Derrida, but rather because it forced me to go back to Derrida and ask WWDD (What would Derrida do?). In an interview in Positions, Derrida says

No more than I have dealt with Sausurre’s text, or Freud’s, or any other as homogenous volumes [. . .] I do not find the texts of Marx, Engels, or Lenin homogenous critiques (63-64).

This raises an interesting question: Must we derive a homogenous position from Derrida’s text that we can assign as authoritative? If Derrida does not read texts as homogenous, feeling the need to work through them, then can we really critique Derrida for his inconsistency in his work? Text here seems to replace the idea that we have to argue a position—this may frustrate the hell out of Dasenbrock and I think that it should on ethical grounds. Dasenbrock’s attentiveness to the different rhetoric of Derrida in the de Man piece, the Searle piece, and then Derrida’s own defense of his own text shows that Derrida thinks he can consider some others as texts and some (people he knows and himself) as people. Perhaps this reveals an inconsistency in Derrida’s methods, but Derrida himself has critiqued the idea that ‘deconstruction’ is really a method at all. Indeed, Derrida’s relationship to a text seems an encounter between a powerful reader and powerful writers. Also, as Dasenbrock does admit, Derrida’s later work contains a kind of ethical turn inspired by Levinas, where he is a bit more attentive to the personal dimension (but not necessarily reviving the humanist subject).

Furthermore, I still maintain that it is difficult to present Derrida’s work in terms of a definitive position. In The Future of Invention John Muckelbauer argues that discussions of foundationalism vs. anti-foundationalism is ultimately useless because both positions do the same thing—repeat. Although Muckelbauer seems concerned with methodology, his methodology is nomadic and cannot really be “represented.” Clearly, Muckelbauer would argue against Dasenbrock’s reading of Derrida’s work as a “position.” Indeed, one of the admirable things about Muckelbauer’s own text is he struggles against the tendency to cite the theorists that inspire his own readings, because it would defeat his own argument for fighting appropriative repetition: “this appropriative repetition necessarily follows once deconstruction becomes subject to a logic of identity, once it becomes a signifying content” (Muckelabauer 32).

Rather than orient toward intentions (as Dasenbrock does), Muckelbauer tries to attend to the “singular rhythms” (a rather obscure Deleuzian inspired neologism) of the text, asking what the text “can do.” However, we are never really quite sure what “singular rhythms” ‘are’ because they cannot be represented. This is not to say that Muckelbauer does not attempt to represent them,

"I am not so much interested, for example, in getting Plato right (in discovering his intentions). I am more interested in orienting toward the singular rhythms that circulate through his writing (what it does and what it can do), though, and this is just as important, I am also concerned with doing so in a fashion that can’t simply be dismissed as wrong (singular experimentation is not the same thing as subjective play"

Muckelbauer attends to his texts (or at least as I perceive it) just as carefully as Dasenbrock and indeed, seems to come to pedagogical conclusions that Dasenbrock would probably agree with. For instance, Muckelbauer wants readings of texts that seem to transform ourselves in light of that engagement. The difference is that Muckelbauer thinks the methodology we use to get there is besides the point. Many methodologies—with the right ‘orientation’—can achieve these same goals:

"The practices of a generalized methodology can be neither necessary nor privileged [. . .] Instead we must inhabit them differently in order to actualize the singular and inventive responsiveness by provoking permeability"

What does it mean to “inhabit a text differently?” Well, Muckelbauer cannot really tell us—just show us through his readings. In direct contrast to Dasenbrock (and his main source for his argument, Davidson), Muckelbauer does not put the focus on “understanding” but on style. Muckelbauer’s work has less to do with “simply accepting or rejecting the content of any particular proposition and more to do with altering the style through which we engage in everyday practices of reading, writing, and responding” (Muckelbauer xi). We have to understand what ‘style’ can be opposed to.

Dasenbrock makes a clear distinction between style and method, claiming New Historicism is a style: “a styles shows others what can be done; a method suggests how things ought to be done” (Dasenbrock 192). Muckelbauer may agree witht his distinction, but whereas he wants to find those styles, Dasenbrock wants to find a method. This idea of “what can be done” with something is attractive, but ultimately may lead into useless juxtapositions of ideas. The Deleuzian logic of rhizomatic linkage has its issues.

But what are the consequences if we lack a consistent method? Are they ethical or philosophical? Dasenbrock thinks so and I agree wholeheartedly with Dasenbrock’s critique of conventionalism and believe, along with him, that ‘truth’ as a regulative idea (or, as he puts it, “limit-concept”) is necessary, particularly if we believe that we need evidence for our claims and arguments. Indeed, as Dasenbrock points out several times in the book, that I am even writing this blog and evaluating Dasenbrock’s argument adds force to the point. Ultimately, Dasenbrock thinks that it is this loss of ‘truth-talk’ (as Rorty would put it) has resulted in a lack of funding and support of what we do. Truth should not be considered a being but a limit-concept and ideal—something to shoot for. Indeed, I think I have made a similar argument: Was it was this pursuit for truth that pushed philosopher’s to do their work? True, the great system philosophies have been challenged, but is it not their rigorous search that we admire, respect, and that keeps us reading and re-reading them?

The institutional and disciplinary effect is one pragmatic consequences of our conventionalist paradigm and our lack of method. As literary critics, rhetoric and composition scholars, philosophers, and teachers, we want our work to have consequences. Frequently, I have described my own profession as self-indulgent masturbating with our pen(is)s (forgive the masculine emphasis). We use buzz words like praxis and action, but these seem to be empty words.  We can also take a theory and apply it to something, confirming that the theory has value because we can see it in texts or in culture. Or, alternately, we can come up with new metaphors or tropes for understanding culture, the classroom, etc.

This is all well and good but I have a hunger.  I want my texts to hold sway over me and I want to be able to evaluate them based on criteria that can make these texts are worthwhile—and to argue why they are or are not. I want the text to talk back to theory as well as the theory talking to the text. Furthermore, along with Dasenbrock, I do not believe that we can abandon aesthetic and ethical criteria in the formation of a new canon because we still have to decide what individuals in any given social group we should include or write about. In an earlier post, I complained that writing about Twilight preserves it as a text to write about.

But this brings me to the textual status of Theory. A lot of theories seem less to make “arguments” in the traditional sense of the word. Rather, they engage more in a Rortyian change of vocabulary (or ‘re-description’)  in order to look at something from a given perspective. In this sense, a lot of theory seems to differ in style rather than propositional content or any sort of ‘position’ we derive from it. The use of these theoretical texts may be in what Muckelbauer calls the “style of engagement” just as we can look at formal and stylistic properties of texts and ask what they do for our understanding.  For example, to reduce Baudrillard’s text to the claim about hypperreality (and to endlessly cite this point over and over again) is to deny its other dimensions. Baudrillard’s “argument,” which really shouldn’t be called an ‘argument’ but a ‘claim’, is used as support in literary theory or critical works—it is part of a theoretical authority that we as academics all understand as legitimate descriptions of the world (whereas, many people who are not academics steeped in high theory may disagree). Baudrillard’s style polemically makes claims such as ‘ we are now in an age of the ecstatic—the  “more ___ than ____.” While this may be useful to fill pages of academic work (a recent work of my own included) is this ever argued for? And if not, should we be able to use this as “evidence” in our own arguments that engage in a different discussion? The question, then, is the status of theorists like Baudrillard’s texts. Baudrillard’s Fatal Strategies for instance, re-describes rather than argues the world, but can we merely take these as ‘evidence’ and ‘fact’? Is not Baudrillard’s (and others) closer to a “work of art” because of its style? Can we accept citations of theoretical texts as accurate descriptions of the human world? If so, should we not evaluate the consequences of where that leaves us? (as Dasenbrock does so brilliantly?)

In an analysis of a poem or novel, I make a claim and then cite the poem for evidence for that claim. What we call “reading” connects this argument and evidence in order to make the reader of an academic article see the critics interpretation of the text. Along with the text, I may refer to the context of its production or the author’s life or perhaps another text by the same author. I am basically seeking what the text implicitly ‘argues’ about human life. By analogy, in critics interpretations and use of “theory”, the theoretical text takes not the place of a claim (this thinker has already made that claim and, presumably, ‘argued’ for it) or argument, but in the position of “evidence” that supports my claim. But is this taken in the same way that “evidence” is taken in a reading of a poem or a novel?

Do poems, novels, and theoretical texts (particularly of the French variety) re-describe the world in the same ways? Are they implicit arguments about how the world should be (and therefore are primarily prescriptive)? Are theories like narratives and narratives like theories? Can we evaluate a given theory like we can evaluate a work of art (or should be evaluating works of art?) Are there ‘good’ theories and bad theories? Are there ‘right’ theories, or theories that are “closer to the truth”? So there are really two questions here:

1.)  Can we evaluate theories based on their arguments, descriptions and whether or not this corresponds to our experience?

2.) Should we not have to evaluate these theories (in some way) before we can then use them in our own arguments? Do these texts have a responsibility to be consistent or us to be able to use them in our methodology?  

These are all questions I cannot, for the moment, answer or even begin to address in full. However, this blog’s purpose to elaborate questions for further debate and discussion not to answer them.

If Dasenbrock is right that the aesthetic and ethical elements of art still need to explained and considered when forming a canon, or even when engaging in criticism, do such matters concern Theory’s ‘descriptions’ too? Dasenbrock clearly shows the consequences of some contemporary theoretical positions (as well as points to their inconsistencies), but is there still value in reading these texts? If so, how should we read them? Are they worth reading? Do they stand the test of time (and will they?) because people are still interested in them and constantly re-reading them?

On a personal level, we seem to evaluate theory (if we are to be honest) based on premises of works of art rather than the ‘truth’ of their argument. I tend to like Baudrillard, Derrida, Heidegger, Gadamer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Sometimes I get frustrated with the later Heidegger because it sounds almost mystical, but at the same time there is an aesthetic attraction there. I like Baudrillard, but less his main points about the hypperreal and more his rhetoric and writing (which is, by the way, why I do not like his earlier ‘System of Objects’ as much). To rip a quote from Baudrillard and present it as evidence is problematic, since he tends to (at least to me) exaggerate his claims; or, if not that far, he tends to make claims without arguing for them. If Baudrillard does not argue for his positions and I use him as evidence, then the credibility of my argument is based on the authority of Baudrillard’s reputation rather than the usefulness of the statement.

As I write that last sentence, though, I come to another possibility. Perhaps Baudrillard himself does not argue for his aphorisms—that is the job of others. If I take a claim from Baudrillard and say—hey look—this idea that Baudrillard has works in this text and this text with Baudrillard gets us these consequences, then we may find it useful. Perhaps we just have to make sure that we draw out the consequences through argument and evidence.

But if we take a claim from Baudrillard (or any other theorist) apply it to the text (rather than use it to develop our methodology. In this case, we would have to agree with Dasenbrock that the methodology should be consistent) then we are not prepared to not have control over the text—to let it transform us. For Dasenbrock, the encounter with literature (and the classroom) is a scene of learning. Drawing on Donald Davidson, Dasenbrock argues that we assume an interpretive charity (that x is like us) until it is proven otherwise and then we have to create a “passing theory” to connect the two. Starting from a theorist and pointing to where in the text that exists (thus validating the theory) does not get us very far in understanding the claim the text makes on us. This may be where the force of the aesthetic comes in. Why do I feel personally like Cormac McCarthy’s texts make a larger claim on me than Harry Potter? Why do I feel like I learn more from such literature? Why do I feel like forcing students to encounter an essay of Swift or Montaigne is more useful (if they choose to engage it) than showing them a youtube video?

And yet, as I work through the purpose of my own teaching, particularly in technical communication, I find that I have framed my own impact like so. If I can just get my students to look at the everyday objects, texts, and websites that communicate to them a little bit different—to show them different ways that they can engage with everyday life that make it more fun and challenging—than I will have done my job. In the case of technical communication, my purpose is to make everyday objects and documents into things that resist our understanding; rather than seeing a tax form as something I do, I see it as something I read, a document that has a purpose, which has consequences and assumptions that I rarely critique. Rather than thinking that I have leveling great works of art down to any other text, I prefer to think that I am elevating everyday texts to aesthetic (literary?) and rhetorical analysis.

But the fact remains that these texts do not tend to jar our understandings (although, the W-4 form might). I truly believe that it is my working through heavy philosophical and literary texts that allows me to look at these objects in a certain way; perhaps more importantly, I believe that it is this training that has allowed me to enjoy looking that these texts in this way and learn something from doing so.

Perhaps we still read high theory that redescribes rather than argues because it challenges us to make sense of non-sense—or, to make sense of something that is not necessarily trying to make sense. Perhaps the challenging encounter of these texts has allowed us to work usefully on other texts. This is why I find it so important to read “primary” texts rather than summaries of someone’s “argument.” This is why I feel like theoretical soundbites do not get us very far. Trying to make sense out of nonsense is fun and challenging. What we may call nonsense makes us stop and think: at its best it spurs dialogue and debate. It also pushes the boundaries of language, which is what some of the best literary fiction and poetry has always done. 

Heidegger and Burke on Communication and Rhetoric

Both Heidegger and Kenneth Burke get talked about a lot in a particular group of scholars in rhetoric and composition (Thomas Rickert, Byron Hawk, Victor Vitanza, just to name a few). I have just introduced myself to Burke intensely in the past few weeks and its making me think about whether Heidegger’s thought is useful for my current work. Both Burke and the (early) Heidegger seem to be ‘humanists’ in a certain sense of the word and both of them believe that language sets man apart from animals (after all, if logos is associated with reason, logos meaning “word,” then man is the animal who uses words), but both of them look at language in a different way, Burke eventually arguing for “symbol-using, mis-using, and making” creature and Heidegger eventually posits language as a kind of metaphysical entity primordially linked to Being. Let us begin with Heidegger.

For Heidegger, Dasein is separated from other animals because “being is an issue for it” (Being and Time 32). But this is not to just say that being strives to persist in its own being (Spinoza’s conatus) or that we are motivated merely by self-preservation, but rather that “Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s Being” (32). Heidegger argues that this makes Dasein the only ‘ontic’ being that is  ‘ontological’. We question our own being, our own acts, etc.  Heidegger’s task is to question the “meaning of being.”  In order to discover this, Heidegger uses Dasein (the inquirer) as a paradigm—what is the meaning of our being—our human being: “Therefore, fundamental ontology, from which alone all other ontologies can take their rise, must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein” (Being and Time 34). Since Dasein uses language, Heidegger takes our language as a starting point. This is one of the strengths of Heidegger’s work—he literally asks what the meaning of the copula “is” is: When we say that something “is” this, what do we mean? The scientific ‘state-of-mind’, which is also the way philosophers have thought about this forever is that the ‘is’ is a substance. The world is a space which contains substances and objects. This thinking of “is” reduces the object (or the person) to what Heidegger calls “presence-at-hand,” which is a certain way we can look at objects. However, for Heidegger, and for Burke, the world is not just ‘there’, we are engaged in it and indeed see things in terms of its use. It is this kind of pragmatic view of Heidegger that a lot of rhetoric and composition people focus on—that and his concept of the world (something we may return to in another post).

Burke too believes that the ‘is’ covers up a mode of being (an act) rather than revealing a substance in itself. Burke asks in the Rhetoric, “)—“is [Plato] not here seeking for the verb, “to be a house,” as the universal in which every particular “being-a-house” would participate?” (Rhetoric 153). This is why Heidegger asks the question of being, because for him, the primary act is being. This is Heidegger’s task from the get-go. For Burke, however, we cannot look into the ‘to be’ in order to find the ‘meaning’ of Being as such. But by going from the idea of “this is this” to “to be a ____”, which is an act and attempt to put it back into a meaning for Burke is somewhat pointless. This is because Burke is primarily interested in actions, which are related to ethics, something with which we all know Heidegger had his issues. This is because, I think, Heidegger tries to place the emphasis on the side of Being rather than the side of action. In other words, whereas pragmatic thinkers like Burke and Dewey want to infuse instrumentality with a sense, (late) Heidegger wants to argue that ‘thinking’ itself is an act that somehow transcends practice and action. As if thinking was something different than acting! (is it?) This is the power of Burke and, I think, Dewey: thinking/acting may be instrumental, but not merely instrumental (see Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy). Heidegger wants thinking to be the primary activity (also seemingly obvious in his metaphors of ‘dwelling’, ‘house of being’, etc.). In his “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger writes, “The answer is that thinking is neither theoretical nor practical. It comes before this distinction,” which seems all well and good until he says “such thinking has no result. It has no effect. It satisfies its essence in that it is” (259).

           

For Heidegger, especially in his later work, language reveals the world in ways (again, we have to look at the Heideggerian language of ‘alethiea’—this is present even in Being and Time)—for Burke? It argues the world (strange way of putting it, I know). Language only uses us insofar as each word is infused with moral content regarding our actions. But let us return to Heidegger’s Being in Time and see if we locate where this difference comes from.

Dasein (we) understand ourselves in terms “of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself” (33). This implies a kind of freedom for human beings (a term that will be made much of by later existentialists, like Sartre).This does not mean that we are unconditioned—this is a mis-reading of much existentialism. However, this does seem to imply that our actions are most related to what we are—our authentic being—rather than acting on the world. We will see what Heidegger thinks as most “authentic.”  My question, as I delve into one of the most useful and complicated sections of the first part of Being in Time, Ch. 5 “Being-in as such,” is: how is Heidegger’s ‘fallenness’ and Burke’s several characterizations of ‘original sin’ different? What are the rhetorical and ethical implications in Heidegger’s articulation of understanding, assertion, discourse, idle talk, and curiosity, and, most importantly, communication?

For Heidegger, we are most authentic when we are most concerned with our own being—when we are reflecting on our possibilities. The state-of-mind (or ‘mood’) of Fear/anxiety/dread (pick your translation of the German) calls us to consider our freedom of possibilities—it takes us away from our ‘involvement’ in the world and lets us reflect on our state in the world. But this is only one side of Dasein, the other being understanding. Richard Polt’s Heidegger, an Introduction explain’s Heidegger’s sense of understanding

But consider our everyday experience of getting to know someone by asking what she does. She answers ‘I am a sculptor’…The statement ‘I am a sculptor’ means (if it is a truly revealing statement) that the possibility of sculpting is an important possibility for her. She understands herself and her world largely in terms of  it…her very identity is formed by her ability to sculpt. In general, our Being is an “ability to be” or “can be. (Polt, 69)

Thus, although this makes a lot of sense, it formulates our being-in ‘as such’ as a process of identity formation—what we want to be. We might also want to look at this in terms of Burke's "occupational psychosis" that he discusses in Permanence and Change. Before we move into Heidegger’s treatment of our interaction with others, let us look at Heidegger’s articulation of Interpretation, which is related to our primordial understanding. I am directly copying from a précis I wrote on Heidegger’s chapter in college:

The as-structure

“That which has been circumspectively taken apart with regard to its “in-order-to”, and taken apart as such—that which is explicitly understood—has the structure of something as something” (Heidegger, 189). For example, we see the hammer as something to hit nails with. The hammer is already interpreted and understood before we perceive it as “ready-to-hand.” Heidegger wants to make sure we understand that this means that an interpretation is not something “added” onto a present-at-hand, but that anything we encounter in the world is already interpreted as something with which we concern ourselves.

The fore-structure

Richard Polt says that the explanation of the 3 main terms here (fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception) is rather vague in Heidegger: “but the main point is that, in various ways, we must already have a ‘take’ on something, as we say, before we can interpret it” (Polt, 71). (If the reader wishes to delve into an attempt at distinguishing these terms and an excellent concrete example, see Gelven’s Commentary pgs 94-96).

Meaning

Meaning is not another way to understand interpretation, but rather it is the term for both the as-structure and the fore-structure together: “When entities within-the-world are discovered along with the Being of Dasein—that is, when they have come to be understood—we say that they have meaning” (Heidegger, 192). Only Dasein is meaningful (Heidegger, 193) because meaning is not a property attached to something present-at-hand, but is inherently related to Dasein’s being. Because Dasein is the only being that can have meaning, it is the only thing that can be meaningless (this is different from “unmeaning,” which characterizes present-at-hand things as “essentially devoid of any meaning at all” (Heidegger, 193).

Michael Gelven points out explicitly how different this is from traditional conceptions of meaning: “For such a rendition of meaning places the focal point of meaning not in the words, but in Dasein” (Gelven, 96). In this next section Heidegger will tell how assertion (statements in words) are derivative of this sort of meaning of Dasein.

Michael Gelven makes a good point. For Heidegger, meaning (and Interpretation) is not in ‘words’ but in Dasein. Words form assertions. Assertions are derivative from Interpretation. Communication can only happen in the realm of assertion, but look at how Heidegger claims assertion mainly describes:

Heidegger defines assertion as “a pointing-out which gives something a definite character and which communicates” (Heidegger, 199). Heidegger explains that the reason assertion is derivative of interpretation is that there is a change in the as-structure: “In its function of appropriating what is understood, the ‘as’ no longer reaches out into a totality of involvements. As regards its possibilities for Articulating reference-relations, it has been cut off from that significance which, as such, constitutes environmentality. The ‘as’ gets pushed back into the uniform plane of that which is merely present-at-hand” (Heidegger, 201). Assertion thus covers up the readiness-to-hand of an object and reveals it merely as a presence-at-hand with a certain “property” rather than involved in a totality.

Somehow, once we put things into ‘words’ and sentences, Heidegger argues that the as “no longer reaches out into a totality of involvements” (199). Somehow, assertions are cut off from the non-verbal world of experience and the assertion transforms Interpretation into presence-at-hand. On one level, I think Burke would agree with this. Indeed, his project is to restore the actions and moral implications (and really ‘force) in words and sentences—but Heidegger does not consider this aspect. Sure, the ‘as’ structure or the ‘action’ of a hammer is covered up by asserting something about the hammer: ‘the hammer is steel,” but assertion (and communication) is not merely descriptive and it is not always signifying. For Burke, assertions (language,words) are tied up with the non-verbal in a forceful way rather than as a kind of ‘derivation’. Heidegger’s “assertion” contains no force. John Muckelbauer argues in The Future of Invention that rhetoric as persuasion is a “constellation of forces,” and is not “primarily concerned with understanding or even with the effort to prevent misunderstanding” but as a consideration of its effects (Muckelbauer 18). If we remember, late Heidegger in Letter on Humanism privileges thinking as something which participates in being rather than acting in the world. Thus, Heidegger leaves no room for a consideration of effects of thinking (this is different from considering the consequences of an act).

In order to really get at the problem with Heidegger putting aside persuasion, we have to move into his discussion of communication. I quote an extensive passage from Being and Time:

‘Communication’ in which one makes assertions—giving information, for instance--is a special case of that communication which is grasped in principle existentially. In this more general kind of communication, the Articulation of Being with one another understandingly is constituted. Through it a co-state-of-mind gets ‘shared’, and so does the understanding of Being-with. Communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of another. Dasein-with is already essentially manifest in a co-state-of-mind and a co-understanding. In discourse Being-with becomes ‘explicitly’ shared; that is to say, it is already, but it is unshared as something that has not been taken hold of an appropriated. (205)

This is a hard passage. But what I think Heidegger is getting at is how communication involves a primordial sharing among Da-sein. But the funny thing about this mit-sein, this publicness of Dasein in the world, is that Heidegger characterizes this as a fallenness and inauthenticity. Heidegger writes, “Thus Dasein’s understanding in the ‘they’ is constantly going wrong in its projects, as regards the genuine possibilities of Being. Dasein is always ambiguously ‘there’—that is to say in that public disclosedness of Being-with-one-another where the loudest idle talk and the most ingenious curiosity [my italics] keep ‘things moving’” (Heidegger 218-219). Heidegger is quick to add that this ‘fallenness’ isn’t ‘bad’ but is just part of how the world is. However, one senses his reservations for this public being-with-one-another. It seems that Burke describes this ‘fallenness’ in detail, which is the rhetorical situation. For Heidegger this ‘being-with’ actually masks other intentions: “Being-with-one-another in the “they” is by no means an indifferent side-by-sideness in which everything has been settled, but rather an intent, ambiguous watching of one another, a secret and reciprocal listening-in. Under the mask of ‘for-one-another’ and ‘against-one-another’ is in play” (219). Even though Heidegger says that this is the pre-condition for care and the possibility for understanding, it still seems as though Heidegger does not think this is the goal/purpose of Dasein. The they-self is where people are at odds and yet, at the same time, ‘with’ one another.

For Heidegger, as I’ve already pointed out, the point of communication and understanding  is to reveal the world so as to genuinely understand things. This comes out in his understanding of ‘ambiguity’ as part of the ‘they’ self:

“Ambiguity deals with the impossibility to tell what is genuine understanding and what is not: “When, in our everyday Being-with-one-another, we encounter the sort of thing which is accessible to everyone, and about which anyone can say anything, it soon becomes impossible to decide what is disclosed in a genuine understanding and what is not” (Heidegger, 217)

            For Burke, language is not primarily related to meaning, understanding, and being, but to actions. Heidegger points us in the right direction, arguing that we must move away from our everyday understanding, but makes the mistake that the criteria of judgment should somehow be ‘understanding’ or meaning. What Burke makes clear, is that language is used and has force and related to moral acts. Later Heidegger moves more and more into an understanding of language as such, which he finds in poetry.  Michael Gelven writes, “We understand language as language only as poetry.” Language is primarily understood as something that we “use” to express ourselves, but, it is only when someone speaks well that we recognize language as language and not as a “tool.”     

But this is precisely what Burke is arguing against: even poetry contains motives that relate to the realm of acts and morality. Poetic language is weighted language: no words are ‘neutral’.

Wheras for Heidegger, we are the “preservers” of being, we watch over language, we attempt to preserve its mystery, Burke de-mystifies. Heidegger dreams of poeisis: “And art was called simply techne. It was a single, manifold revealing. It was pious, promos, i.e. yielding to the holding sway and the safekeeping of truth” (339). Perhaps it is this ‘pious’ attitude that Burke seeks to de-mystify. Its not that piety in itself is bad—on the contrary--but rather than adhering to the piety of a kind of destined and unified truth/Being, Burke seeks to break these pieties by “perspective of incongruity” (see Permanence and Change). There are many pieties: “Piety is the sense of what properly goes with what” (74). And a new piety involves the displacement of an old piety, which involves exhortation. This is why for Burke, assertion really is an ‘assertion’—it exhorts someone to see something a certain way. I love these lines by Burke:

Morals, shaped by the forms and needs of action, become man’s most natural implement when exhorting to action. As implicit in censorial words, they are the linguistic projection of our bodily tools and weapons. Morals are fists [my italics]. . .From this point of view, the moral elements in our vocabulary are symbolic warfare. (P&C 192)

Our ‘fallnness’ for Burke, our ‘categorical guilt’, is not inauthenticity, or impiety towards the revealing of truth, but rather in our material (though non-verbal) relations to one another. Indeed, language as such has an implicit hierarchy. It is this hierarchy that Burke calls the ‘social mystery,’ which, though not the only mystery, “gains in depth, persuasiveness, allusiveness and illusiveness precisely by reason of the fact that it becomes inextricably interwoven with mysteries of these other sorts” (Rhetoric f277). It’s in classification and the motives for each class (not necessarily economic class) that creates a hierarchy. Burke writes in the Rhetoric, “The ‘invidious’ aspects of class arise from the nature of man not as a ‘class animal’ but as a ‘classifying animal’” (282). Thus, persuasion, conflict, and appeal in language would still exist in a ‘communist’ society (as indeed, we have seen by historical example). This is because, so long as we use language, there will be a principle of hierarchy. Language is not descriptive or revealing of reality, but “hortatory.” Language, in its essence, is not to describe, but  to convert to a certain point of view or orientation: “Spontaneous speech is not a naming at all, but a system of attitudes, of implicit exhortations” (P&C 177).

If this is true, then the ‘state-of-mind’ that Heidegger finds within Dasein is transferred to language itself. Language itself, as a creation by man (and woman), has prejudices and motives. As such, language is always ethical and concerned with actions.  

At this point, I’d like to look at two later essays of Burke: “The Definition of Man” and, especially, the brilliant and dense, “A Dramatistic View of the Origin of Language.”

Here are the 5 statements Burke makes about man:

1. Man is the symbol using animal

2. Man is the inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative!)

3. Man is separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making

4. Man is goaded by the spirit of hierarchy

5. Man is rotten with perfection

(See Language as Symbolic Action pg 16 for a summary)

To me, this is a powerful definition. Burke elaborates on most of these, but particularly the use of the ‘negative’ in the penultimate essay of Language as Symbolic Action. In this essay, Burke traces the negative “as such” back to its possible origins. For Burke, the use of the negative is the essential distinction between the verbal and the non-verbal (LSA 420). Although he allows that, following Bergson, there is no negative in nature (everything is positive), Burke locates the importance of the negative in morality:

a Dramatistic approach would look for the ‘essential’ instance of an admonitory of pedagogical negative—and it would find this to perfection in the negatives of the Ten Commandments. Hence we would ‘start’ in the thought of the negative command” (422).

We can understand how this might be problematic for someone like Victor Vitanza. The mention of “pedagogical negative” and the Christian connotations of Burke’s work (whereas Vitanza draws on Lyotard’s ‘pagan’ philosophy). But I think Burke makes a very convincing case for the negative as a useful aspect of language. As Raul Sanchez pointed out to me the other day, there are a lot of thinkers who are trying to get passed dialectic, which also means getting past the negative. But can we get passed the negative—and—if the negative really is the ‘genius’ of language, do we want that? Burke writes at the end of “A Dramatistic View of the Origins of Language,” “In their positive,  material nature as powers, our many might new technological devices cal for a corresponding set of admonitory controls, or negatives, which are best sanctioned how?” (LSA 479).

Burke explains the negative as an idea as opposed to an image. Why? Because Bergson’s argues that we cannot picture nothing—we have to picture something that ‘means’ nothing. This leads Burke to argue that ideas do not have to be “things,” rather, ideas are in “the realm of action” (430). This is not to say that once a negative is expressed, it does not also include an image: “ ‘Thou shall not kill’ is in essence an idea, in its role as imagery it can but strike the resonant gong: ‘Kill’” (431). This gives me an interesting take on Hegel’s determinate negation: not-kill contains the image of kill, but the idea of a command. This is why not-A, when expressed in words, is something completely different than the ‘opposite’ of A, or ‘nothing’.

Heidegger does not consider ‘ideas’ in this way. In Being and Time, he argues that “even a command is given about something, a wish is about something” (205). Rather than emphasize the ‘something’ (which is the ‘image’), Burke emphasizes the command (and thus the rhetorical, persuasive aspects).

I will probably return to Burke, Kant, Bergson, and Deleuze in my next post, but I think this is enough for now. I think I can also see how this later essay of Burke’s could lead many rhet/comp people into an exploration of Levinas (see Diane Davis). 

Works Consulted/Cited (abridged because of laziness)

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives

Burke, Kenneth Language as Symbolic Action

Burke, Kenneth. Permanence and Change. 

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. 

Heidegger, Martin. "Letter on Humanism." Basic Writings. 

Muckelbauer, John. The Future of Invention. 

Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Sociology: A Commentary on Deleuze and Guattari, Randall Collins, and John Muckelbauer

Drawing on theories Deleuze and Guattari and Jacques Derrida, John Muckelbauer attempts to map out a new orientation toward rhetoric. While not explicitly citing much of their work, Muckelbauer is clearly working within the frames set out by Deleuze and Guattari in What is Philosophy. While What is Philosophy focuses on laying out how philosophy as a creation of concepts differs from the tasks of science, logic, and art, Muckelbauer’s book seems to be oriented toward a theoretical pedagogy; we may look at Muckelbauer’s book as an attempt to create a “pedagogy of the concept, which would have to analyze the conditions of creation as factors of always singular moments” (D&G 10). Rather than use the loaded term ‘concept,’ Muckelbauer creates the term “singular rhythm” to designate a certain way of inhabiting a text or an idea. Furthermore, following Derrida, Muckelbauer is more attentive to texts and their particular contents rather than describing the concept as such.

Muckelbauer seeks an “affirmative” rhetoric rather than one based on dialectical negation; at the same time, he realizes this is strictly impossible to describe, but can only be attempted as performance or demonstration. Thus, he splits his book into two parts: a description and a demonstration. As with D. Diane Davis, Muckelbauer wants to pay attention to the asignifying functions of language (what Davis calls, citing Levinas, the “saying”) rather than the content communicated. While D&G avoid a confrontation with rhetoric as such, they argue that philosophy primarily concerns the concept, which is always “a force or a form,” but never a function (D&G 144). Muckelbauer reads the term “force” in terms of rhetoric’s dealings with persuasion rather than communication: “persuasive rhetoric attempts to make the proposition compelling, to give it a certain force [. . .] its ability to evoke particular responses in specific audiences” (Muckelbauer 17). In other words, the act of persuasion is not concerned with “what the proposition is” but what “the proposition does,” even though we cannot escape that the asignifying function implies the signifying, we focus on its movement (Muckelbauer 18). Muckelbauer moves on to argue that if we focus on the movement of both humanism and anti-humanism, we can see that both do the same thing: appropriation rather than creation.  However, this is only true so far as we think of these ‘movements’ (and inhabit them) as definitive positions. Muckelbauer writes,

That is why all anti-foundationalisms are necessarily already            foundationalisms. Because they advance themselves as a position, as a    content that locates itself in relation to some             other position, they cannot     help but partake of the logic of identity and the dialectical movement of   appropriation it enables. (32)

Thus, even though we must repeat, everything hinges on how we repeat—what variations are used. Muckelbauer can only go so far as to explain what he means and he attempts it many times. For instance, in discussing Deleuze’s impatience with “critique,” Muckelbauer argues that critique is an “external orientation toward the extraction of constants” and that in order to attend to the singular rhythms “requires a kind of performance, an immersive responsiveness” (42). Muckelbauer will demonstrate this as a type of orientation in the following chapters, where he argues that “what the ideal student will learn through imitation is not only a style or an ethical rule; he will require the capacity to respond itself” (76). Echoing Diane Davis[1] and many thinkers we may call “postmodern” this capacity to respond can be reinforced by cultivating permeability of identity so that we may be affected by others (see Muckelbauer pgs 98, 122)

I realize that most of my comments will be in the mode of critique, but I am not so sure that we can just take D&G’s word that criticism cannot be creative. D&G baldly state that “those who criticize without creating [. . .] are the plague of philosophy” (28). Criticism is a mode of judgment different from what D&G will call “taste” (which I will have to return to) as it is based on communication, which is caught in mere “opinion.” In parts of this text, communication and conversation are dirty words to D&G: “nor does philosophy find any final refuge in communication, which only works under the sway of opinions in order to create ‘consensus’ and not ‘concepts’” (6). And again: “when it comes to creating, conversation is superfluous” (28). This kind of polemic against communication, as I pointed out in my last post on WIP, from D&G’s understanding of communication as having only one goal: universal liberal consensus. However, we may understand D&G’s frustration with communication if we look at yet another bold remark: “We do not lack communication. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present” (108). This sentiment stems from the most explicit political chapter in the book: geophilosophy. I have already critiqued (yes, I know, I’m not getting anywhere with critique) them on this point (see previous blog post). However, because philosophy inevitably must be communicated and distributed, they try and relegate all three not-philosophy to “figures” or “functions”: “contemplation, reflection, and communication” (92-93).

Now we must get into D&G’s distinctions between figures, functions, and concepts. On the one hand, figures are vertical, paradigmatic, transcendent, projective, hierarchal, and referential concepts, on the other hand, are “syntagmatic, connective, linking, consistent, and not referential” (88-89). Concepts are the more complex entities that we must seek to understand, or to dismiss (as I want to do) as a word standing in for an ideal being that because we cannot have access to it, is a useless formulation. D&G claim that the concept cannot be evaluated externally by any criteria other than the criteria it sets up for itself: “a possibility of life is evaluated through itself in the movements it lays out and the intensities it creates on a plane of immanence,” its evaluated by the “tenor of existence” or “intensification of life.” Thus, it seems as though we can only ‘feel’ or ‘sense’ whether a concept is worthwhile. This is D&G’s appropriation of Kant’s ‘tatse’ through Nietzsche: “Nietzsche sensed this relationship of the creation of concepts with a specifically philosophical taste, and if the philosopher is he who creates concepts, it is thanks to a faculty of taste [. . .] that gives each philosopher the right of access to certain problems” (79). Concepts are evaluated based on their addressing of problems, but problems that are on the plane of immanence: “if the concept is a solution, the conditions of the philosophical problem are found on the plane of immanence presupposed by the concept” (80-81). For D&G this is how Philosophy is inspired: “categories like Interesting, Remarkable, or Important that determine success or failure” (82). However, the criteria for this seem to be readers: “they [many books of philosophy] lack importance or interest, precisely because they do not create any concept or contribute an image of thought or beget a persona worth the effort” (83). However, the interest of a particular concept (text?) is a subjective feeling—how can this be the basis on which texts, ideas, and positions are transferred to the next generation?

Figures and concepts, although different, are also related:  “figures tend toward concepts to the point of drawing infinitely near to them” (92). The ‘functions’ that D&G describe are ‘referential’ in the sense that they pin down the infinity of thought into “states of affairs.” Even logic (and by extension mathematics) must be referential because its truth claim in itself is “empty,” so it has to be attached to the states of affairs. Ironically, in their quest to rid philosophy of transcendent impulses, they may mis-characterize the origin of science in their obscure jargon, and thus assign it as starting from a transcendent point: “Science passes from chaotic virtuality to the states of affairs and bodies that actualize it” (D&G 156). This does not take into account that science goes from the states of affairs to a ‘virtual’ realm—or a realm of positions that are networked together in struggle and sympathy at various times. Science as well is an intellectual discipline that abstracts from the concrete events and particulars to what D&G want to call the ‘non-referential’, but really they are just moving to another level of abstraction.

D&G’s positive philosophy of creation, to me, seems to leave out major concrete and material practices that cause philosophy to bloom. I think that Randall Collins’ Sociology of Philosophies can help us demystify some of D&G’s terminology and, I hope, to eliminate some of the “real beings” posited by them—which just leads us into either a realist metaphysics or another metaphor for describing existence (another Ur-doxa to use their terminology).

For all of the scholarship that has used D&G to radically destabilize our conception of self and other, we find at the end of the day that What is Philosophy formulates thinking as an infinite movement of the brain (the individual) rather than a social process: “It is still necessary to discover, beneath the noise of actions, those internal creative sensations or those silent contemplations that bear witness to a brain” (213). Also, they posit real mental beings: “ideas can only be associated as images and can only be ordered as abstractions; to arrive at the concept we must go beyond both of these and arrive as quickly as possible at mental objects determinable as real being” 207). One more quotation: “Will the turning point not be elsewhere, in the place where the brain is “subject,” where it becomes subject? It is the brain that thinks and not man—the latter being only a cerebreal crystallization” (210).  De-emphasizing communication and circulation, D&G forget that creation is motivated by “opinion” just as much as the virtual realm of concepts (if that even exists).

D&G talk a lot about the ‘plane of immanence’. The plane of immanence is referred to in many ways throughout the text, including the instituting of philosophy: “the plane is clearly not a program, design, end, or means: it is a plane of immanence that constitutes the absolute ground of philosophy [. . .] the foundation on which it creates its concepts” (41). Now, the ‘plane of immanence’ in this formulation recalls to my mind two other ideas from other philosophers: Heidegger’s fore-understanding and Plato/Derrida’s “chora.” I find the “chora” to be a more useful and poetic concept, because it is not a foundation on which all concepts are layed out, but, according to Greg Ulmer, implies a sacredness and, furthermore, a personal locale. The plane of immanence seems a bit more grandiose and, to me, idealist. Heidegger’s “pre-understanding” is our experience of the world. It seems as though D&G here mean something different, but cannot quite specify what it is: is it the less formulated, fractured and ‘abstract’ Hegelian sense experience? Or is this happening in some ideal land—Plato like?

Another way of explaining the “plane of immanence” is to demystify it, as I believe Randall Collins does in The Sociology of Philosophies. For Collins, thinking is a social act involving the engagement of intellectuals. While keeping philosophy a separate and distinct realm from science, mathematics, and art (though the last is not really discussed), he tries to put it in terms of networks. Collins begins with describing, very accurately, the “interaction rituals” of intellectuals. Contra Deleuze and Guattari, Collins argues that communication, discourse, and face to face rituals are the grounding of intellectual activity. Rather than making bald ontological claims, as Heidegger and others have done (mit-sein), Collins describes intellectual activity in terms of sacredness and energy, drawing heavily on the theories of Durkheim and Pierre Bordieu. As I pointed out in a previous post, intellectuals get Emotional Energy from engaging with other intellectuals face-to-face, which moves them to create. Intellectuals gain Cultural Capital when they produce work that opens new spaces: “Great intellectual work is that which creates a large space on which followers can work. This implies that the imperfections of major doctrines are the source of their appeal” (32).  This, I believe, is part of what D&G try and describe the ‘plane of immanence’. However, the plane of immanence is not only related to the conceptual realm, since it is the “instituting” of philosophy. Collins believes that intellectual work always must be supported by a material base: “This outermost level of macro-causality does not so much directly determine the kinds of ideas created as given an impetus for stability or change in the organizations which support intellectual careers and this molds in turn the networks within them” (51). Rather than going from the inside-out, Collins works from the outside in, claiming that what we call individual thinking is “fantasy play of membership inside one’s own mind” because as we think we are engaging with others. Furthermore, Collins offers a psychological description of ‘intensity’ of concepts: “symbols are charged up with intensity” and this can fuel creativity (Collins 49). I doubt many intellectuals can deny that coming back from a lecture, or reading an inspiring book, charges one up emotionally so that we can engage once again through writing and thinking.

Ultimately, Collins points toward the main problem I have with D&G’s distinctions: reference. D&G seem to think that philosophy exists in a special realm that is not ‘referential’ or referring to the ‘states of affairs’ in any way, as if the realm of concepts could transcend the discourse, discussion, and communication about them. Philosophy for Collins is a separate realm, but not because it is not referential.  Collins offers a very quick sociological interpretation for the distinction between sense and reference: “The reference of words is their pointing to something outside that segment of conversation; the sense of words [. . .] is their symbolic connection to social solidarity, that is, to their past histories and present usage in interaction ritual chains” (Collins 47). Philosophy usually does both of these, as it refers to its own tradition and it connects us socially to a group.

For Collins, philosophy is characterized by abstraction and reflexivity. In this sense, Collins is able to put philosophy, science, and mathematics on a continuum rather than completely separate disciplines; to use Bergson’s terminology Deleuze is so fond of, he makes it a difference in degree more than a difference in kind: “[philosophy], as the purest form of the abstraction-reflexivity sequence, philosophy is constantly re-digging its foundations, moving not (789). It’s not that science does not abstract and reflect, but that they stay on a “fixed level of abstraction” (789).  Thus, science still abstracts, but scientists agree on a common level of abstraction—a fixed plane of immanence, if we wish to use D&G’s terminology.

If we take the plane of immanence to be roughly equivalent to the external material base that ‘institutes’ philosophy, we can better understand why D&G bring politics into the middle of their work. D&G argue that what we lack “resistance to the present,” and that this can be heralded by philosophical concepts. Furthermore, they speak of revolution as the absolute deterritorialization:

As concept and as event, revolution is self-referential or enjoys a self-positing that enables it to be apprehended in an immanent enthusiasm without anything in states of affairs or lived experience being able to tone it down, not even the disappointments of reason. Revolution is the absolute deterritorialization even to the point where this calls for a new earth, a new people. (101)

. . .Or, according to Collins, revolution (or any major shock to the material base) is what produces the conditions for new concepts: “Continuous movement in the abstraction-reflexivity sequence depends on repeated shocks to the external base” (793). Indeed, this seems to me to be a better explanation, as it does not rule out the creative possibilities of commentaries, which Collins argues do not make philosophers necessarily unoriginal. For instance, the Scholastics, as much as D&G may disagree with their religion or politics “constituted one of the most intensely creative periods in the history of world philosophy, exemplary of the abstraction sequence at its most dynamic” (794). Furthermore, novelty and creation does not just arise out of nowhere. Collins makes the rather easy observation that weak positions are synthesized and strong positions fracture and compete (Collins 116). In fact, we can see that Deleuze is another instance of a grand synthesizer. While he does not tackle the entirety of philosophy, he creates a canon of philosophers who he interprets in his own language; Heidegger did the same thing (particularly with Nietzsche).

It’s not that D&G are completely at odds with Collins. Indeed, Collins makes similar claims (with different jargon) about individual thinkers: “If the process [of thinking] is often accompanied by a feeling of exultation, it is because these are not merely any ideas but ideas that feel successful” (52). However, the test for Collins is a social reference.

And so we return to the problem of reference once again. Collins also has a bit of a problem when it comes to ‘reference’, and he tries to argue his way from a position he calls ‘sociological realism’: “Social constructivism is sociological realism; and sociological realism carries with it a wide range of realist consequences” (858). This implies that social networks “exist,” and whether or not we buy the following arguments concerning mathematics and science is based on whether we think these networks are “real.” This is a bit problematic as the networks involve some interpretation, in order to categorize them into positions. However, I think that Collins’ concrete descriptions of mathematics and science are more likely and avoid needless metaphysical assumptions.

As I pointed out above, I think Deleuze and Guattari mistakenly attribute science a top down approach, from the ‘virtual of chaos’ to ‘actualized’ bodies, as if scientists were drawing something out from a realm of Ideas. In order to avoid the problem I see in D&G, Collins makes a distinction between the network of intellectuals that make up the scientific community and the lineage of research equipment that mediate experimentation. He describes their relationship:  “The genealogy of equipment is carried along by a network of scientific intellectuals who cultivate and cross-breed their technological crops in order to produce empirical results, which can be grafted onto an ongoing lineage of intellectual argument” (871). Abstractions and phenomena in our everyday language come when “standardized equipment, or some offspring of it, is shipped out of the laboratory” (872). More importantly, “the obdurate reality acquired by some entities of science comes more from their material grounding in equipment than from their theoretical conceptualization (872).

Ultimately, Collins understands the difference between science and philosophy not by positing the ‘virtual’ or ‘chaos’, but by arguing from the process of abstraction:

Since their level of abstraction stays fairly constant, scientists are unconcerned with problems of reflexivity, especially the deep troubles of  high degrees of self-consciousness which have been reached in philosophy since 1900. (878)

Of course, I am not content with letting Collins have the final say. As a philosopher (theorist? Whatever the hell I am) I must question the assumptions of even Collins’ very strong and, most importantly, careful arguments. Collins himself points to one the weaknesses of his overarching text: “The weak resolution of the telescope makes it easy to slip back into reifying personalities, the personal names treated as noun substances who are the normal topics of intellectual historiography” (53). Indeed, although Collins emphasizes the networks on both the vertical (intergenerational) and horizontal chains, and though he may not “reify personalities” he does reify thinkers into positions and schools.

The main challenge I have with this book (and why I probably won’t read all 900 something pages of it) is the lack of citation of primary texts[2], because I believe, as Derrida does of the Marxist text, that the text of philosophies are multiple and not unitary. Collins insistence to turn the history of philosophy into a network of positions is admirable, but does not seem to be attentive to the “creation” of novelty that he wants to describe. There is no attention to the ‘styles’ of these philosophers, which one could argue has as much to do with their possibilities for thought than the ‘position’ they advocate within their contemporaries and the surrounding tradition. D&G I believe make this mistake as well, perhaps even more so, generalizing in the chapter on “Geophilosophy” about national characteristics limiting the possibilities for thinking[3]. This is my problem with Collins’ assumption that he can reduce post-structuralism to a branch of sociology: “The widespread poststructuralist notion that the world is made up of arbitrary oppositions has its roots in classical sociology” (11). I am not denying that this is not true—clearly Derrida is greatly indebted to Marcel Mauss and Claude Levi-Strauss, but I think Collins assumes that post-structuralist’s like Derrida think they have created something ex nihilio. The strength of post-structuralism is its pushing the boundaries of language and thought, not its position on language.

Of course, this leads me all the way back to Muckelbauer’s critique of the appropriative movement that comes from making something a position. I think that Muckelbauer tries to show the difference between an orientation toward identification in opinion (doxa) and how one can be oriented toward the “singular rhythm” (which we may call event or concept). Perhaps this will help us understand why Deleuze and Guattari do not see opinion as philosophical movement. They write,

opinion triumphs when the quality chosen cases to be the condition of the    groups constitution but is now only the ‘image’ or ‘badge’ of the                        constituted group that itself determines the perceptive and affective model,   the quality of affection, that each must acquire (Muckelbauer 146).

Thus, one is oriented toward identification with the group as an entity rather than what motivated the group to form? But if we take Collins seriously and agree that intellectuals do want to ‘belong’ to the group, then are we not back to a kind of question of ‘authentic’ modes of existence (a la the existentialists?)? In other words, are we oriented toward the group correctly when it does not concern ourselves, but rather to serve the purpose (goal?) of the group—to foster innovation and novelty? Can we do this?

This orientation seems to be Muckelbauer’s position, as one of the most concrete examples in his book illustrates. Muckelbauer uses the concrete fact that everyone can have the same opinion as an “indication of the singular rhythms within opinion, a kind of movement that actually enables the identifying logic of possessions itself (that allows us to ‘have’ an opinion)” (162). In a way, this seems like a mystification/abstraction of the ‘liberal consensus’ that Deleuze and Guattari criticized so harshly. However, Muckelbauer uses the example of the IDEO corporation to show how certain practices may foster a different orientation: “a group’s key feature concerns the dynamics within it, the group’s inclination, for example, to waste and discard and experiment with their ideas rather than attempt to own them” (163). Because  “the problem with individuals, in other words, is that their relation to their inventions tends to be one of identification” the IDEO corporation forms and then dissolves groups (163). By keeping individuals circulating in different groups for different (purposes? Innovative problems? I don’t know) IDEO creates many new ideas.

The danger in all of this may be that this too falls prey to what D&G call the “market” version of the concept, because it relies on collaboration and communication. Collins, even moreso than Muckelbauer, relies on ‘market’ and economic metaphors to describe his theories. He argues that there is a “law of small numbers” that makes it possible for only 3-6 major positions circulating at a time. This seems like it could be true, but within an increasingly stratified and interdisciplinary academic market, these 3-6 major positions would depend on the specificity of one’s own research, reading, and discipline. Furthermore, Collins argues that the energizing force of an intellectual career is the “motivation to make oneself a sacred object” (36). On one level, even I as an intellectual cannot deny this aspect of intellectual work. This very blog is an instance of what Collins so bluntly puts as my tacit desire for people to listen to me, and thus make my way into intellectual attention space.

But what if we could make the move toward an orientation of the ‘extraction of the common’? Muckelbauer’s discussion of the IDEO corporation reminded me of a common technical writing/corporate writing practice of forming collaborative groups to produce a document. As one writer points out, the writer’s have to merge all their ideas into the document, sacrificing their individual voices in order to become the ‘voice of the company’. This sounds terrifying, but perhaps the difference between the technical documents creation and the innovation of IDEO is that there is no distinct already planned purpose or goal to the formation of the group and that the purpose/goal emerges as the group discusses ideas—it’s like a collaborative Kantian “purposive without purpose,” but this is another discussion.

Perhaps given D&G’s assumption that Kant got it right, I should read in its entirety Critique of Judgment—perhaps I will find there a sweeter philosophical taste.

Works Cited

Collins, Randall. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual

            Change. Cambridge: Belknap, 1998.

            Davis, D. Diane. “Addressing Alterity: Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and The                                                    Nonappropriative  Relation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric. 38.3 (2005) pgs 191-212.

                        Web.
 

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. What is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and

            Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Muckelbauer, John. The Future of Invention: Rhetoric, Postmodernism, and the Problem

            Of Change. New York: SUNY, 2008. 

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[1] Learning is a “trauma, a shattering of self and world” (Davis 199).

[2] I am also shocked that Collins did not cite letter exchanges between intellectuals (such as the ones between Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Sartre). Forgive me if he does cite those in the later chapters (which I intend to read), but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that that would have made his book a million times longer. Perhaps the better way to view this absence is that Collins book is a ‘great intellectual work’ that opens up the space for considering how a network of intellectuals helped form their ideas, which we have sometimes done with literary figures (ex: Bloomsbury).

[3] This is quite ironic to me since it seems that many of the particular cultural studies theorists have jumped on D&G as a proponent of deterritorializing identity and disturbing boundaries. Its remarkable how conservative What is Philosophy make them out to be! 

Randall Collins’ Sociology of Philosophies: Learning My Role as a Burgeoning Intellectual

“All of us, from stars to bystanders, are part of the same field of forces. The network that links us together shapes and distributes our ideas and our energies” –Randall Collins

After listening to Byron Hawk’s fascinating talk on intellectual networks in the rhetoric and composition community at the 4Cs this year, I bumped into him in the hotel and asked him to tell me again the name of that book about sociology and philosophy. He told me it was by Randall Collins. We chatted about it for a couple minutes and he continued to one bar and me to another. Meeting and talking with Hawk about Collins’ book filled me with what Collins calls Emotional Energy (EE), which drove me to eventually order Collins book, read the first two chapters, which again filled me with EE, which gave me the impetus to write this blog. Indeed, the 4Cs conference was a successful networking adventure, as I met (and in some instances, got intoxicated with) several people whose books and articles I had read. I wasn’t even presenting at the conference, but it was probably my favorite conference experience. The intellectual energy was partially in the lecture rooms, but mostly it was at the bars. 4Cs is a major “interaction ritual” for the rhetoric and composition community.

My experience at the 4Cs and other conferences seem to provide personal empirical evidence for the way Collins describes intellectuals. Perhaps it is a bit early for me to meta-reflect on my own intellectual development and connections, but such reflection is necessary in order to enter an academic community. Furthermore, there are three forces that make me want to think about this issue: 1) Collins’ book, 2) conversations I have had with my friend, advisor, and mentor, Dr. Blake Hobby 3) my current environment.

Point 1 is pretty self-explanatory, so let’s turn to point 2. I remember like it was yesterday a very important conversation between Blake and I regarding emotions and intellect. I had just been to a counselor who would talk about how I was cutting my emotions off (he used the analogy of cutting off an arm) by over-intellectualizing every situation. Now, I won’t deny that I sometimes use intellectualization as a defense mechanism, but it was very clear to me that this counselor did not understand that intellectuals are emotionally driven by their intellectual activity[1]: thinking, communicating, writing, networking. I have never thought of my ‘feelings’ as apart from questions of ontology, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. Blake let me know that that is common for intellectuals. We get excited about ideas, we get depressed by ideas, we get frusturated by ideas, we can hate ideas, we can love ideas. Our emotions are inevitably tied to our intellectual productivity—we need what Collins’ called “symbolic payoff.”

Furthermore, we love interacting with people in focused conversations about particular ideas or figures. This brings me to my third point. Currently, I am living away from my network of English student intellectuals in North Carolina. I have repeatedly told people that I love NC, where I am, and who I am living with but that I feel “disconnected” from the network of people that provide me with support—and—intellectual energy. I am reading books and blogging, but I feel like I have no direction to my research. There are connections sure—and these connections may foster a productive research direction, but right now, I am dwelling on a horizontal plane of texts, where I see connections and distinctions, but lack focus. Collins argues that it is this focus and reflexivity of our activity that makes us intellectuals. Ideas and creativity does not form in the isolated mind of a genius, but rather through the flows of connections and discussions of individuals on a micro and macro level.

This may be a reason why many of us who teach undergraduate students—particularly in rhetoric and composition—have a hard time seeing them as “intellectuals.” All college students are not intellectuals. They are more concerned with a social network of friends than a network of colleagues who help develop ideas. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly from a pedagogical standpoint, Collins’ clearly echoes many things I have said about the importance of text and lecture in the classroom: “The key intellectual ritual, the lecture, is one that has been prepared for by reading a relevant background of texts; and its contents are typically on the way to becoming published” (Collins 26). The importance of a background of texts—or even text—gives focus to a discussion. If students haven’t read the text (or watched the film) there is no common ground or context for intellectual discussion. Do we ask too much of our students, who may not always be intellectual, to retain a focus (in an oral situation) on one topic? If so, what happens to the discussion model of the classroom—particularly if that classroom is oriented toward teaching writing, which is tied up in teaching reading (a book, a film, a commercial, an ad, an artwork, etc.)? Are we modeling our classrooms one our own experience as intellectuals? If the university is a place for intellectual gathering, why do we find it a pre-requisite for any job on the market, where a technical school would do just as well (if not better)? Why as a culture do we want to make everyone an intellectual?

These are scattered thoughts and anecdotes. A more focused discussion of Collins’ book will be forthcoming. I plan to put him into conversation with Muckelbauer’s The Future of Invention. Muckelbauer, strongly influenced by Derrida and D&G, argues that we must “inhabit” texts in order for an affirmative invention to occur. His task is to see if there is a way to get away from the necessity of dialectical negation in order for change to occur. Collins’ book seems to be a very “position” based approach in one way, but I also think by paying attention to concrete interactions of people he may be “inhabiting” these connections historically as Muckelbauer does textually. Also, I want to place Collins’ book in context with my recent thoughts on Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy? I see overlaps between the two works, and I particularly want to discuss the relationship between the “intensity” of a “concept” and Collins’ explanation of “emotional energy” and “cultural capital.”

Works Cited

Collins, Randall. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge: 

        Belknap, 1998. Print. 

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[1] I am also reminded of another distinction from a  more current friend of mine—coincidentally also named Blake—who told me there were two kinds of people who go to graduate school: one type consists in the type that know their niche, they like doing that thing, and that is their career. And then, these are what he calls “intellectuals.” I think that using Collins’ book, I might be able to make his distinction more clear and say that these “intellectuals” are the ones who derive emotional energy from their research, writing, and focused conversation.