From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-mail.com>
Subject: BHA: RE: Ways of knowing
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 19:31:03 -0400


Thanks Ruth.  I'm not sure if Mervyn's definition of "knowing" really is
wider than mine, since basically I'm trying to provoke a discussion of the
criteria by which we call a cognitive activity "knowing."  My concern might
be described as this: from certain pomo perspectives, the fact that science
has ideological elements devolves into a claim that science is simply and
purely ideological (or if you prefer, an exercise of power).  It's a
relativism that depends on power relations.  Probably any realist can take
that one apart.  However, it seems to me that TDCR is playing footsie with
the converse claim that any discourse that has some referential basis in
reality is tantamount to a science, or more generically, it's a form of
knowledge or a way of knowing.  This quickly becomes another kind of
relativism, one of referentialty or somesuch.  I don't think Mervyn actually
holds this view, but whether he does or not, I think the question of
defining "knowledge" is an interesting one.  For what it's worth, the arts
clearly have *some* relation to science, at least from the developmental
perspective, since children who take art and music classes tend to do better
in math and science classes.  I'm not sure what exactly that tells us
though.

Actually I have to agree with Mervyn on one thing: I haven't got a lot of
time to pursue this discussion either.  (Too busy pursuing the American
Dream: I'm buying a house.  A multi-unit, actually -- I get to become my own
slumlord.)

Anyway I'm pretty certain that at some point or other, Mervyn, you did say
something about art being a type of knowledge, but it was a while ago and
maybe in an individual correspondence.  But I won't flog that horse anymore.
Besides, at this point I'm still quite far from having a counter-theory to
offer.

>                 I take it you're not disputing that art does
> sometimes come to know (achieve profound insight about the world), and
> sometimes ahead of everyone else: cf what was prefigured about the world
> in the great modernist burst of creativity 1911-13.

I agree that art can achieve great insights (even though I'm not at all sure
what the phrase means), and there's no question that it can impart knowledge
or understandings developed elsewhere (though it doesn't always do so).
Often it embodies ideologies, either representationally or performatively.
The trouble for me arises in (at least) two ways.  One is the way the "great
insights" notion can, and I think usually does, slide into the idea that
true art communicates universal truths about humanity, a thesis that teeters
precariously between a concept of species being and bourgeois humanism, but
generally diving into the latter.  The other is the very contingency by
which art does or doesn't achieve profound insights, which implies that such
insights are not necessarily part of art.  Which is blindingly obvious when
you recall that there's plenty of great art that invokes appalling politics
or outright lies, and there's dreadful art with great politics or important
truths.  So if art were a form of knowledge, one would have to ask,
"knowledge of what?"

>     Even [sic] Bug's Bunny says something profound about the
> infantilization of the subject in post/modernity).

Indeed, he does tell us something profound, though I don't think it's about
infantilization.  Never underestimate Bug's wit and perversity.  Mickey
Mouse he ain't.

> BTW, why say 'discourse' rather than 'practice'?

Because in this particular conversation, I'm focusing on issues of
representation and semiosis.

Thanks,

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce





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