Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 23:03:50 -0800
From: Judy <jaw-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: totalizing



>  I wonder if  you folks would be willing to ponder with me about 
>what the pragmatics of "totalizing" are.  Does one totalize simply 
>by making grand generalizations?  or are there are language moves 
>that are totalizing? This is a question inspired by my reading 
>Shawn's recent remarks this morning when he said that certain things 
>(like the concern with differend, justice, etc.) "resist" 
>totalization.  I presume he means that they resist totalization for 
>the individual who has such concerns.  Are there language moves that 
>set up linguistic force fields that lead conversationalists to 
>totalize in the local culture?  Or not to do so?
>
>What do you folks think?
>
>..Lois Shawver


"Does one totalize simply by making grand generalizations?"
[or]
"are there language moves that are totalizing?"

Lois,
I'd like to hear a little more about what you are asking here, I'm 
not sure I understand it.  I'm not familiar with Shawn's remarks.  Is 
what you are saying here "How shall we use the term 'totalizing?'" 
Are you opening up a conversation in which people can talk about how 
they want to use the term?  If that's not what you meant, then I 
don't know what you meant, please say more.  Or, say more anyway.

I think of totalizing as being a consequence of generalizing, it 
emerges in the  completing of gestalts.  As I use the word, I mean 
something unconscious, that is, something that involves unquestioned 
presuppositions.  It's a disregard of differAnce, or a failure to 
acknowledge differends, as i want to use the term.  It involves a 
hypostacization of presumed legitimacy as absolute.  And it has 
obvious (or what i would wish to be obvious) inherent potential 
political effects.

Used this way, I think totalizing implies that much of our language 
use is inherently totalizing, or rather, the function of our 
cognition, to the extent our representations involve generalizations 
and the need to act on the basis of their presumed absoluteness. 
Resistance to totalizing, as I mean it, involves being reflexive 
about the artificiality of such assumptions based on absolutized 
generalizations.  As Wittgenstein says in On Certainty, when we say 
"I know," we tend to forget the times we said, "I thought I knew." 
Resistance to totalizing, I would say, involves remembering the 
phrase, "I thought I knew."

To some extent I would say that reflexivity can be voluntary and 
deliberate, the result of what could be called an individual's 
wisdom, an acquired humility, a prioritizing of learning over 
concluding, but it doesn't not happen in a social vacuum.  My 
understanding is that such reflexivity is a social phenomenon, and 
that it's a function of heterogeneity in particular.  Exposure to 
difference, particularly the experience of incommensurability of 
values and of meanings, encourages the acquisition of reflexivity 
about totalization.  You and I have talked about this before.  I use 
the term paralogy to mean such a social milieu in which, as Lyotard 
portrays in discussing the paralogy of postmodern science, the 
postmodern value on generating new statements involves the 
encouragment of calling presuppositions into question--such 
questioning, such privileging of dissent, is what I would say is 
resistance to the totalizing inherent in the necessary use of 
generalization in language.

So with respect to particular language moves, I would say that any 
stated or implied generalization can be a totalizing move, and its 
absoluteness can also be called into question, which would be a move 
of resistance.

This is all separate from the question of the value of totalizing or 
resisting totalizing.  I would say that in some contexts, totalizing 
is adaptive and in others, not.
Judy

HTML VERSION:

 I wonder if  you folks would be willing to ponder with me about what the pragmatics of "totalizing" are.  Does one totalize simply by making grand generalizations?  or are there are language moves that are totalizing? This is a question inspired by my reading Shawn's recent remarks this morning when he said that certain things (like the concern with differend, justice, etc.) "resist" totalization.  I presume he means that they resist totalization for the individual who has such concerns.  Are there language moves that set up linguistic force fields that lead conversationalists to totalize in the local culture?  Or not to do so?

What do you folks think?

..Lois Shawver