Walking Notes: Latour on Heidegger

I was thinking today about Latour's move to Heidegger in "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam". He notes that it might strike many as odd, a hyper-realist turning to one among the most speculative of phenomenologists. But Heidegger's fourfold moves us away from matters of fact because it moves us away from a conception of the Real (of) Being in terms of abstraction.

Yesterday, in my new media class, I introduced Ulmer's anti-definition assignments via a discussion of tables. Aristotle, if chasing down the "reality" of the table, would seek to cut away anything peculiar to a particular table. These he would call accidental qualities. His aim would be to arrive at the elements common to every table (the essentials). Western philosophy spent the better part of 2000 years following Aristotle's lead.

But the 20th century saw a turn away from Aristotle's quest for the Ideal table. Slowly, an appreciation grew for the peculiarities of particular tables. A cut in the wood from the time your brother ran his tricycle into a table leg, for instance. Tables become permeated with memories. So, the question I pose to my students was this: "don't tell me what you think when I say table, spend sometime telling me how you feel when you hear that word. What is the first memory that pops in your head? This is what Ulmer might call the affective table." To which one student responded: "yes, but why are we talking about tables at all? Why does this matter?" Aristotle would be proud? This question I leave open to them.

Back to Latour: his interest in the fourfold lies in its opposition to chasing down the one Ideal, abstracted table, divorced from time and space. The fourfold represents for Latour a method for reconceptualizing our relation to the world (see Rivers here for an extremely smart explication of how "world" in Latourian discourse deconstructs the West's foundational nature/culture binary, 196-197). Method is actually too strong a word--what we are talking about here isn't even a heuristic--rather I would identify it with Ulmer's term heuretic. It is a way of opening a way of thinking about the world. As Hawk emphasizes, it is not a predetermined system but rather a kairotic sensibility to the possibilities a context makes possible (see Hawk 206). Its elusiveness, which Bay and Rickert explicate so wonderfully, is its very charm (which, to a positivist, will stink of magic, deception, and pastry-baking).

How I Pick My Battles

One of my friends asked a provocative question over facebook this morning. Those familiar with this blog's history will likely know its source. But it is a great question. My answer might be a little "blue," but I think it is pretty direct.

Here's the question (edited a bit):

I'm still sort of unclear about the process "Rhetoricians" (y'know, Sophists, etc.) practice *before* they get to arguing. That is, how do they decide which side of the debate they'll take?

Here's my response:

Somewhat in my Kairos piece, and explicitly in a few other things I am trying to finish, I argue that rhetoric _should_ take the side of the less empowered other. Rhetoric becomes a tool for identifying and combatting hegemony. Of course, we can't universally back the other, because sometimes the other is bat shit crazy. So part of the rhetorical process that I inherit from Levinas calls for us to compare the other and the neighbor. The basis of the comparison concerns which is more attentive to the other's respons-ability. Who acts in a gesture of welcome? Who seeks to totalize and control? An ethical rhetoric, I argue, always view control, disembodiment, Idealism, etc. skeptically.

Productive Mess Hits the Airwaves

Here's some shameless self-promotion: the new issue of Kairos includes my article with Nathaniel Rivers and Ryan Weber "Productive Mess: First-Year Composition Takes the University's Agonism Online." The article has two main arguments: first, it discusses how to better integrate CMSs into FYC. Briefly: increasing interaction and productivity requires careful, well-planned structure (arguing for heuristics)--going digital doesn't necessarily mean more engaged students. And the article provides one particular structure that we found effective.

Second--the article questions the purpose of FYC, and, in greater scope, of University education. I believe I will be writing/publishing on this more in the future. Essentially, I think the growth of digital technology will increasingly move us away from the Enlightenment University (as a center of knowledge production) and more toward the university as a center of civil discourse and engagement. Those who know me know my appreciation for Bill Readings' University in Ruins; I want to spend some more time with that book. I believe Readings' themes permeate the entire article, even if there is limited discussion of his work.