BERNEVAL

Matthew B. Crawford
The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

Rethreading some passages in a different order so as to bring out the future-directed topos.

On dialectic (p. 210)

[T]his orientation toward the future requires a critical engagement with the designs and building methods of the past. They learn from the past masters, interrogate their wisdom, and push the conversations further in an ongoing dialectic of reverence and rebellion.

On the erotic (p. 67)

[W]e are erotic: we are drawn out of our present selves toward some more skilled future self that we emulate. What it means to be erotic is that we are never fully at home in the world. We are always “on our way.” Or perhaps we should say that this state of being on our way to somewhere else is our peculiar human way of being here in the world.

On individuality [as opposed to individualism] (p. 250)

I suggested that it is by bumping up against other people, in conflict and cooperation, that we acquire a sharpened picture of the world and of ourselves, and can begin to achieve an earned independence of judgment.

There is something Epicurean at work here. The future emerges from our orientation (and attention) to the world and others. The world presents novel situations and the situated self responds.

And so for day 2811
23.08.2014

Sometime, oh sometimes, I have to admit loving the thrust and parry found in the reviews. Witnessing courteous delivery of comeuppance appeals to a sense of justice.

Where language is concerned, Sokal and Bricmont, bigots to the last, lose the plot altogether, and sink to the low point of declaring that their gallery of impostors have no title to any ‘poetic licence’ (a concept I was startled to discover was still in the land of the living), for ‘their intention is clearly to produce theory, and … their style is usually heavy and pompous, so it is highly unlikely that their goal is principally literary or poetic.’ The noise you hear, reading an insultingly simplistic sentence like that, is of the ocean rushing hungrily back to fill the channel dividing those time-honoured adversaries, the Two Cultures.

John Sturrock “Le pauvre Sokal” (London Review of Books, 16 July 1998) reprinted in The Meaninglessness of Meaning.

For an insightful set of lectures on the history of the controversy over the arts-science divide see Lisa Jardine’s 2012 Tanner Lectures.
https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/Jardine%20Lecture.pdf

And so for day 2808
20.08.2014

Dear X

Your analogy of the exchanged glasses offering a different view has inspired me to elaborate.

I begin with the observation that the embodied I is reflected in the imagined you. We come to speech via a model of who we wish to address.

I note that in your analogy of the glasses that the “you” gains perspective and moves from a position of not knowing to one of knowing. This could easily be construed as a conversion narrative (“I was blind and now I see”) but I think you are striving for a conversation narrative. I think in your practice, the “you” is formulated as an interlocutor willing to listen, to entertain a perspective (whether new to them or not). In a sense you are inviting the interlocutor to come along on a trip to visit some terrain and see what might be discovered — even if it is a well-traveled trail there is always serendipitous events along the way. In your ideal interlocutor, there is a willingness to be surprised. That is at the core of the conversation (which you model in yourself).

[…]

I speak because I trust the other is willing to listen. This amounts to a trusting of silence at the core of my own speech.

The pronouns don’t always matter. You could conduct a whole conversation with the first person plural and still structure it as a conversation, a set of invitations to ponder something from a particular angle … “if we consider …” “let us pause and reflect …” These are the phrases that entice the listener to try on the glasses being offered. To embrace an apparatus that will allow them to perceive differently.

I guess there is a koan at play: speaking to listen.

You are running with a pack. I, you, we. They are yours to occupy and spring from.

[…]

Your devoted auditor,

F

And so for day 2804
16.08.2014