Reflecting on "Epistemology" and "Genre" ... and Preparing for 10/20

Folks,

As I have fallen behind in most things over the past few weeks, I will try to synthesize a few thoughts here, primarily in the spirit of acknowledging where I think our discussions have taken us (and where I think your second exploratory took you), and secondarily to mention a few things I've considered after the fact.

Before I forget: While Amy Devitt offered a comprehensive summary of "genre" -- rehearsing its definitions from work to text to situation to ecology -- there are some other terms related to last week's discussion that we never did take up in our class time (e.g., structuralism, dialogic, discourse, langue vs. parole). I include a link here to our collective whiteboard notes from the past two class sessions, with some definitions I have offered gratis and a bit off-the-cuff. For anyone still grappling with heteroglossia, I can offer you a somewhat quirky example of how I distinguish it from other polyvocal phenomena. (Really, this is one of a genre of mediated performances that demonstrate heteroglossia as a kind of rhetorical critique. You probably know of others. Enjoy.)

Partial Perspectives Situated in Epistemological Linguistic Perceptions: i.e.: What?

A recurring theme that appeared through the readings and in our exploratory this week was the psychological and rhetorical impact language had during the Enlightenment period. In Bizzell and Herzberg’s introduction to the Francis Bacon, they mention how Bacon treated “the art of communication (delivery) as the means by which knowledge is used and incorporated into social institutions” (738). In this regard, language is the foundation of communication that forms knowledge, and they argue that Bacon thought that the heuristic qualities of the writing process “are a means of investigating how our knowledge can be formulated in effective language” (739). The emphasis language has on epistemology carries into the Enlightenment period. Bizzell and Herzberg mention that many philosophers during this time “called for broad language reforms in an attempt to purify communication” (792). John Locke expanded on this connection between language and epistemology by arguing that there exists a correlation between words and ideas in which we connect words to mental perceptions and universal sensations (798). He argues the signifiers can be “culture-bound, communal, or even individual” (798). Because language acts as a signifier that produces a mental image in our minds, language should be consistent, and, according to Bizzell and Herzberg, “Locke proposed ways to purify language for philosophy” (799).

Discursive Third, Epistemology, and In/Between Minds and Bodies

As Michael and I mentioned during our presentation, the biggest connection (or tension, perhaps) that we found with our terms during the concordance activity was between “mind” and “body.” The other terms seemed to work in/between the mind and body, constructing a relationship between external reality and mental conceptions.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how the Cartesian mind-body split has carried over to certain contexts in the present (even if it has been somewhat disrupted in other contexts). For example, some classrooms, disciplines, and universities still focus on the mind and do not necessarily acknowledge embodied experience as part of intellectual activity. I also find it interesting that our psychological models have not shifted all that far from the Enlightenment conceptualization of faculties of the mind. Noticing the lack of change is what caused me to pose this question during class: How might the mind’s faculties be redivided, redistributed, and/or reconceptualized based on a different (not Enlightenment) epistemology?

Floating Ngrams and a (re)Decentering of Language

I found the task of working with the concordances in association with the texts this week fascinating and challenging. The collaboration and tools offered a different view of our texts and authors, and it was an illuminating to add a different perspective. To borrow from Kirsch and Royster’s, these tasks forced a “tacking in and out, through the use of critical imagination as a dialectical and dialogical analytical tool,” (655) to put texts into conversation with one another and broader contexts. The tools were a places to play as we “learn[ed] to look more systematically beyond our own contemporary values and assumptions” (Kirsch and Royster 652). The use of the tools had us examining the situated knowledge of the texts through a feminist objectivity (Haraway 188). This alternative close and long view, combined with the reading, illuminated a different reading of the texts and their situatedness, especially when thinking about inclusions and exclusions. Using these machine readings helped to illustrate the “politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims” (Haraway 195). The tools offered a positioning and context that broadened and deepened our views of the texts.

Zoom: Across Archives 'n Ngrams

My group’s approach to “Across Archives ‘n Ngrams” could be compared to a camera’s focus options. While the purpose of the assignment was to consider patterns using our chosen terms (to zoom out and examine terms across texts and over time), we honed in on the details of those terms. We focused carefully on the individual instances and patterns presented in the archival tools themselves, noting the local inconsistencies and surprises they revealed. We recognize that our close and deliberate analysis needed to take a big step backward.

To look at this:

In the larger scheme of this: 

(what do those little orange locations tell us about the term in this text and in the others?) 

To respond to Dr. Graban’s prompt, the archival tools addressed and illumined my understanding of the texts. My post will consider the use of perception and language, both as the basis for Locke’s theory of understanding and as guiding terms for Campbell’s “The Philosophy of Rhetoric.”

Re-Thinking the Nature of the Enlightenment: An Exercise in Self-Reflexivity

As our readings for this week suggest, the Enlightenment has been characterized as a time marked by greater attention to science, philosophy, sociology, and politics. Accordingly, philosophers of that era are often associated with the study of the physical world, the source(s) of knowledge, and psychological processes. As Bizzell and Herzberg state in their “Introduction” to the Enlightenment, “These vast social and intellectual changes inevitably affected the ways that language, communication, and rhetoric were understood during this crucial period” (791).  One of the ways in which Enlightenment thinking shaped rhetoric is by emphasizing the connection between language and epistemologies. Some argued that rhetoric clouded the truth with ornamented language, and accordingly, advocated for rhetoricians to use plain and direct language (792). As a result, many philosophers proposed “broad language reforms in an attempt to purify communication” (792). Additionally, with the Enlightenment came more attention to the psychological processes of perception and the faculties of the mind. Both of these concepts seem to have played a role in influencing John Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” and George Campbell’s The Philosophy of Rhetoric.

Recontextualizing My Logic

I have to say, in a very not-formal manner, that I had so much fun working on this exploratory! It was 100% different from what I’ve always done to learn the concepts and ideas from readings, and work in group projects, but using these online tools to get a sense of what the readings have to offer using online tools was absolutely amazing and so, so cool. The tool that I resonated with the most was Alex’s catalogue of electronic texts; when we filled out the chart in our google doc, I was trying to hide the amount I wanted to bounce in my seat because I was drawing so many comparisons and making connections between the readings and within each term that we explored. If I succeeded, you’d have to ask my group members.

Enlightening the Enlightenment: Extending Three Texts through E-Exploration

The larger portion of our project, trying to transcribe the data we collected into meaningful results, had us going through some pretty odd leaps in logic—especially when it concerned mapping longterm results of the texts and authors. Amanda keyed on some pretty sharp ideas about how Ngrams showed the texts moving through the actual Enlightenment, noting the shifts of each after their original publication and how most, especially Hume’s Human Understanding, took dramatic falls very shortly after publication. These shifts showed how long it took for the texts to exert any kind of influence.

With Imperfect Tools: Language, Learning, and the Sharing of Knowledge in the Enlightenment Era

The triad of tasks presented this week included exploration of Enlightenment texts with three tools: the online concordance at ALEX, a digital archive, and finally Google N-Gram viewer. Rob and I selected the terms perception, learning, writing, language, and philosophy, then worked through each tool individually to independently identify patterns we noticed. During our presentation, linked here (http://prezi.com/2cnle8ntx5an/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy), we discussed surprising trends and connections between all of the words and their corresponding ideas.  Close reading through ALEX revealed the frequency, context, and location of each term, and the concordance did so for Campbell in slightly less accessible ways. Personally, I found it odd that writing did not appear more frequently considering the heavy use of language and despite the fact that both Locke and Campbell were writing; for the most part, writing was confined to an act or was used in reference to other writers. For this blog post, I’d like to focus specifically on learning and language, rather than on the set as a whole, but in doing so, I may likely refer to the other terms. With this approach, I hope to grapple with the possible relationship between the two in the context of the Enlightenment.