Re: [-empyre-] a book, dna and code

Judith Roof <roof12@comcast.net> · Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:24:23 -0400

Sorry, that comment was based on my earlier missive about the odd  
shift to ethics that enacts an avoidance of analysis of the  
problematic inter-relation of language to language.  I do not think  
that the book necessarily endorses the truth value of any discourse,  
only the incommensurability of particular ways of thinking (based  
loosely on the habits of structuralism and narrative in contrast to  
systemics broadly understood).  I see these as frameworks of  
possibility, neither more true than the other, but each which  
produces certain predictable results--and the one--systems--still  
overwhelmed by the attractions and pay-off of the other- 
structuralism.  Structuralism, as Foucault has shown, always returns  
to its own terms, appearing to secure in place that which is  
obviously not observable--such as, for example, binary gender as a  
biological fact (which it is not).  Systems is not a godsend, but at  
this point in history more productive perhaps of something not  
binarist--of course, it will have its own habits.
It may be vaguely ethical to try and show how these ways of thinking  
appended to metaphors and narrative affect the ways phenomena are  
operated and suffuse discourses on a grander scale.  Obviously in  
them I locate certain means of reproducing fictional distinctions  
that enable certain kinds of disadvantageous relations--patriarchy,  
capitalism, erroneous conceptions of scientific practice that  
perpetuate some sort of research which may or may not be wrong-headed  
(such a attempts to find a "gay" gene or a "fat" gene, or to locate  
membership in population groups as if that brought along an entire  
ensemble of capabilities, social prejudices and a wardrobe).
This is the cultural work and in some ways it seems quite obvious.   
But it is also simultaneously a caveat about the operant presence of  
this complex set of discourses by which concepts are rendered, i.e.  
representation.  This is the humanists' gig, I think, and we haven't  
done a very good job of insisting that thinkers pay as much attention  
to how they say things as to what they think they are saying, or at  
least the the mode of representation is always up for analysis and  
that things usually mean quite a bit more and often also the opposite  
of what they seem to say..  This ignorance is what enables some  
social scientists, for example, to think that they can distill  
statistical data from subject interviews--they think they mean what  
they say and their subjects mean what they say and there is not  
slippage or ambiguity and it is all countable according to certain  
protocols they have developed.  But more important, somehow the  
practice of ethics seems to outstrip all over again any consciousness  
of the ambiguity of language, especially in so far as those who  
indulge in such exercises try to be so careful about what they think  
they mean.  Suddenly, again, they become the knowing subject (or the  
subject-supposed-to-know) who, even if their insistence is that we do  
not know, can, as I do now, assert such a claim by occupying the site  
of knowledge, a Pythagorean fifth so to speak. Ethics tries never to  
betray the unconscious that drives its will to mastery, which occurs  
under the guise of a humble drive of correction.
In this sense maybe all critique is ethics, but it is precisely this  
collapse that I resist at least by pointing it out.  Ethics shifts  
the site of activity from analysis to conclusion, from quest to  
knowledge.  It is a difference in attitude, where attitude refers to  
an aeronautical concept.
And, the statement is not nonsensical given the the tricky relation  
between analysis, critique, and the ethical that has happened  
repeatedly in this site.  But that is also the subject for a  
protracted analysis--the next book.
Judith
On Oct 18, 2007, at 9:42 AM, sdv@krokodile.co.uk wrote:
judith,
That is a nonsensical statement. Your reluctance to comment is  
becoming understandable, I asked because I was interested in seeing  
the analytical tools in operation. It seems that given the  
relationship to truth, value and fact that you maintain in the  
text, all that remains is an appeal to ethics and judgement.
But that's not what was asked - i'm not reading a text by an  
ethicist, a philosopher and so on, rather I'm reading a  
'posthumanities' text which argues for 'certain kinds  of cultural  
work to be done'.
best
steve

Judith Roof wrote:

Well, there goes that instant shift to ethics and judgment again.
On Oct 18, 2007, at 4:21 AM, sdv@krokodile.co.uk wrote:

How then would you understand the current condemnation of  
Watson ?  On the one side condemned for racism and on the other  
for being a  bad scientist.  Where is the ambiguity here ?
Curiously it reminds me of a statement of Chomsky's which argued   
that: even if it's proven that one group of people are more   
intelligent than another, this is of no more importance than if  
one  person has green eyes and another brown eyes.
steve
Judith Roof wrote:
Probably not.  In this view the real, whatever that is, is  
always   intricated with language and image.  Culture is no more  
"true"  than  empiricism, but my point is even more introductory  
than  that-- language has a sneaky way of being ambiguous no  
matter what  its  referent is.

Judith

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