File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0203, message 49


From: "Lois Shawver" <rathbone-AT-california.com>
Subject: RE: totalizing
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 10:32:42 -0800


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Re: totalizingInteresting, Judy.  When you join a conversation, you do bring
up interesting wrinkles in the discussion!  I like your working definition
of "totalizing" as a kind of "generalizing" -- but a generalization that
forgets the differAnce.  And I like your transvaluation of it.  Mostly today
I think it is used derrogatorily, but you are suggesting it might be used
positively, and perhaps for political purposes, presumably identity
politics. I wish you'd talk more about this.

Thanks for your notes, too, Hugh.  Are you saying that totalizing relates to
the metaphor "resists"?  Or are you saying that you don't like the
personification that results from saying that langauge or philosophies
"resist" (or presumably "fight" "seduce" "confuse",etc.)

Richard (long lost internet friend) I am finding your comments about D&G and
totalizing fascinating but mysteriously unintelligible (to me) this morning.
I hope it will all click and make sense to me at some point.  Please keep
talking, and remember,  that you are talking to someone who at this point
isn't following you. Or maybe someone else can help me grasp what Richard is
saying.

Thomas, could you give me a reference for the Sartre piece you were reading?
Sartre is an interesting precursor of today's French poststructuralists.  I
would like to know more about the reference so I could look at it with you.
You said you were not completely sure of what he meant by "totalizing" but
that he seemed to use it to "grasp history as a whole".  This seems to
relate to Judy's notion about totalizing.

Another aspect about "totalizing" that I think would be interesting to
discuss is whether 'generalization" always totalize.  if so, then aren't we
always totalizing?  Doesn't the term become useless?  Can we break down
"generalization" so that it includes examples that are more or less
totalizing?

Thanks for your intersting discussion, folks.

..Lois Shawver


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of Judy
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 11:04 PM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
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:

Re: totalizing
Interesting, Judy.  When you join a conversation, you do bring up interesting wrinkles in the discussion!  I like your working definition of "totalizing" as a kind of "generalizing" -- but a generalization that forgets the differAnce.  And I like your transvaluation of it.  Mostly today I think it is used derrogatorily, but you are suggesting it might be used positively, and perhaps for political purposes, presumably identity politics. I wish you'd talk more about this.
 
Thanks for your notes, too, Hugh.  Are you saying that totalizing relates to the metaphor "resists"?  Or are you saying that you don't like the personification that results from saying that langauge or philosophies "resist" (or presumably "fight" "seduce" "confuse",etc.)
 
Richard (long lost internet friend) I am finding your comments about D&G and totalizing fascinating but mysteriously unintelligible (to me) this morning. I hope it will all click and make sense to me at some point.  Please keep talking, and remember,  that you are talking to someone who at this point isn't following you. Or maybe someone else can help me grasp what Richard is saying.
 
Thomas, could you give me a reference for the Sartre piece you were reading?  Sartre is an interesting precursor of today's French poststructuralists.  I would like to know more about the reference so I could look at it with you.  You said you were not completely sure of what he meant by "totalizing" but that he seemed to use it to "grasp history as a whole".  This seems to relate to Judy's notion about totalizing.
 
Another aspect about "totalizing" that I think would be interesting to discuss is whether 'generalization" always totalize.  if so, then aren't we always totalizing?  Doesn't the term become useless?  Can we break down "generalization" so that it includes examples that are more or less totalizing?
 
Thanks for your intersting discussion, folks.
 
..Lois Shawver
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu [mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of Judy
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 11:04 PM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
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


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