The Difference Between the Empirical and the Transcendental
It
is inevitable that we pass through some implicit or explicit theoretical
understanding or interpretation when participating in critical discourse.
Sometimes this understanding or interpretation is a matter of convention,
usage, expectation or otherwise anticipating structure.
At other times this understanding or interpretation is rooted more
specifically in traditional theoretical discourse.
Whatever the case, there is nothing we come to without, from the
beginning, adding something extra to the bare fact of our experience.
For this reason the notion of the bare fact, without anything added, is
impossible. If it were possible it
would be called the empirical. Empirical
experience concerns the experience of the here and now—our experience of
presently existing things like these chairs and tables and these other people.
Empirical experience puts us in a place and a time that we feel exist
independently of our experience of it. So
it is the kind of experience that we ought to be able to be confident about. However, as the history of philosophy shows, no one has ever
been able to isolate the empirical in a way that could be considered truly
objective. The closest we have come
to this ideal is through modern science, whose methods of judgment and testing
(empiricism) demand that our theories be made explicit and explicitly testable
according to the palpable existence of the things in question (rocks for the
geologist, for instance). However
these methods are always based upon certain clearly defined axioms and
postulates, which rest upon certain less well defined or understood assumptions
and interpretations. Opposed to the
empirical is the transcendental.
The transcendental refers to any form or pattern of being or thinking
which stands outside and exists independently of the empirical.
Mathematics is the best example but as the influential philosopher Martin
Heidegger pointed out, the mathematical simply means that which is “already
known.” In “The Age of the
World Picture,” he writes: “Ta
mathematica means for the Greeks that which man knows in his observation of
whatever is and in his intercourse with things: the corporeality of bodies, the
vegetable character of plants, the animality of animals, the humanness of man.
Alongside these, belonging also to that which is already known, i.e., to
the mathematical, are numbers. [...] Only because numbers represent, as it were,
the most striking of always-already-knowns, and thus offer the most familiar
instance of the mathematical, is "mathematical" promptly reserved as a
name for the numerical” (118-119). It
seems that there is no knowledge as such that does not pass through something
“always already known.” The
relationship between experience and the always already known
falls into the traditional and pervasive distinction between the empirical
and the transcendental. Modern
critical theory gets going by finding problems with this distinction.
There are some things, apparently, which cannot be reduced to this
difference (like difference itself, as we shall discover).
The literary text (and by extension whatever it is we mean by textuality)
is particularly resistant to the kinds of thinking based upon this distinction.
To get to the empirical one has to pass through perception—in its
crudest form, through the senses—and to get to the transcendental one must
pass through the intelligible (understanding and then to reason itself,
ratiocination, logic and the lofty mathematical and then on, it is supposed, to
the spiritual realm, which is, of course, fundamentally opposed to the crude
material one). But one never
achieves either the empirical or the transcendental in any pure way.
Instead, it seems, human experience is stuck somewhere between.
This somewhere between is defined and delimited by the standard notion of
a text.
Experience and TheoryTheory: an
explanation or system of anything: an exposition of the abstract principles of a
science or art: speculation as opposed to practice. [Gr. Theorema, -atos, spectacle, speculation, theorem, theoria, view,
theory--theoreein, to be a spectator,
to view.]
Science: knowledge:
knowledge ascertained by observation and experiment, critically tested,
systematised and brought under general principles: a department or branch of
such knowledge or study. [L. Scienta--sciens,
-entis, pr.p. of scire, to know.]
Theory,
especially in its modern form as science, has always been opposed to experience.
I intend to substantially weaken that opposition.
Consider the following description of a football match between Queens
Park Rangers, playing at home, and West Ham, the visiting team:
During
the first half the Hammers probed down the left flank. Revelling in the space, the speed of Sylvester Drayon was
always going to pose problems for the home side’s number two.
With scant minutes remaining before the half-time whistle, the black
winger cut in on the left back and delivered a searching cross, converted by Lee
Fredge, the East London striker, with inch-perfect precision.
After the interval Rangers’ fortunes revived as they exploited their
superiority in the air. Bobby
Bondavitch’s men offered stout resistance and the question remained: could the
blues translate the pressure they were exerting into goals?
In the seventy-fourth minute Keith Spare produced a pass that split the
visitors’ defence, and Dustin Housely rammed the equalizer home.
A draw looked the most likely result until a disputed penalty decision
broke the deadlock five minutes from the final whistle.
Keith spare made no mistake from the spot.
Thus the Shepherd’s Bush team ran out surprise 2-1 winners.
How,
if at all, does the description make the match itself accessible to you?
Do you have to know the rules and conventions of football to understand
what is going on? Do you have to be
familiar with the conventions of sports reporting in the press or on television?
Would it be possible to produce another account of this match (which we
will presume we have never seen) on the basis of this description?
We could say: “Queens Park Rangers won 2-1.
Lee Fedge scored the first goal for West Ham in the first half. Keith Spare scored the equalizer for Queens Park Rangers in
the second. Just before the end a
penalty in favour of Queens Park Rangers allowed Spare to score the winning
goal.” Abstracting fewer details,
what we might think of as the most significant ones, we nonetheless repeat the
same pattern although we change the order a bit, revealing the result at the
start and then giving an account of the match.
What the quotation represents is a version of a specific and recognisable
art (implying no value judgment by this). There
are certain rules that this very specific way of describing a football match
adheres to. You don’t for
instance use the same phrase twice to describe a team.
So West Ham are “the Hammers, East London, and the visitors” while
Shepherd Bush are “the home side, Rangers, Bobby Bondavitch’s men, the blues
and the Shepherds Bush team.” If
you study the quotation you may find evidence to suggest that the account,
whilst apparently objective, is given from the point of view of a supporter of
the winning team. You have probably
identified the style of the account as belonging to the sporting media, a
newspaper possibly, or a television or radio commentary.
It is a conventional way of seeing a football match.
Imagine an account by someone who knows nothing of the game and has just
watched this one for the first time. Then
imagine an account by someone who does know about football but who doesn’t
read the papers or watch it on television. Each time the account would be quite different.
So much depends upon knowledge that is often taken for granted.
This particular example gives us an extremely stylised way of describing
things. To an extent, for those of
us who did not see this match, it is a cipher that allows us to see it.
The description itself is a way of seeing.
I
have used this example for three reasons. First,
this very specific structure or pattern of seeing should help to emphasise that
all descriptions of things that occur follow patterns and rules, however
loosely. Secondly, the example of a
football match gives us an event that is itself a repeatable rule-governed
activity. It has two teams of
eleven players each. The match is limited by strict duration divided into two
halves. Strict rules govern the
scoring of points and a referee with a team of linesmen arbitrate. It is a strictly structured event with an unpredictable
outcome. Thirdly, as you will have
guessed if you didn’t already know, if only because of the silly names of the
players, the account is a fiction,
a rather obvious parody of a rather crude style.
Let the account as you read it represent “theory” in a basic form.
It is a structured, rule governed, style of seeing something.
Let the match itself stand for experience.
It is something that happens and can be witnessed; it is an event governed by rules, conventions and expectations but undecided
until it is over. The parody, which
allows us to “see” an event that never took place, suggests that theory, in
its basic possibility, is neither constrained by experience nor governed by
science. Experience is structured.
Theory is structured. The
following sections will give an account of how this structuring occurs.
Object, Concept, aim: what theory is and why it is necessaryThe
most basic problem for theory is the need to formulate concepts that can stand
over against objects, as traditional science does. A scientific theory might, for instance, provide an
explanation, a system and a set of principles which would explain, describe and
predict processes in the natural world. In
the arts and social sciences, however, theories need to be formulated that can
explain, describe and predict processes involving persons, events and historical
situations. Traditionally this need
has been met in diverse ways by separate disciplines, like sociology,
psychology, anthropology, history, in the social sciences; and music, literary
studies, art history, and linguistics in the arts. Since their respective developments during the 18th
and 19th centuries, and until recently, these disciplines have been
more or less content to pursue their own individual paths towards the aim of
scientific objectivity in an academic atmosphere of mutual distance and respect.
Yet even within any one of these diverse disciplines controversial
debates constantly arise and are seldom resolved to the satisfaction of a
consensus. In other words the
integrity of all autonomous academic disciplines in the arts and social sciences
has always been on the verge of crisis.
Over
the last quarter of the 20th century theoretical issues have played an
increasingly significant role for such disciplines, reflected in the fact that
“theory” has come to define specific and often central strands for most
kinds of course. Not only does
“theory” now seem to describe a field within which new disciplines like
Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Film Theory, Literary Theory, Social Theory,
Feminism Postcolonial Theory, Media Studies, etc., all in many senses meet.
But it also describes a development within which, to a large extent,
otherwise diverse disciplines have begun to interact.
However
the recent history of theoretical developments has not been one of organic
growth, mutual tolerance and support. Theories
abound that contest and explain each other, each from their own particular
points of view or chosen grounds. Herein
lies a paradox. If theory develops
through contestation and debate, each perspective contesting others while making
specific claims to objectivity or truth, then what or who can ultimately provide
sound objective principles for academic work in these disciplines?
Even to say that there are no such principles is to implicitly lay down
such a ground, and that too requires theoretical explanation.
The
answer to this problem lies with the root of theory itself.
The very word carries residual historical associations that we need to
understand as having been transformed by the more influential recent work.
It will be useful to discuss this transformation here because it embodies
the process or pattern by which traditional modes of thinking generally have
undergone transformations in contemporary theory.
Our aim is, on one hand, to reveal how contemporary theory develops
through the constant transformation of both traditional and common sense ways of
thinking and, on the other hand, to show that the possibilities for this kind of
transformation have been implicit in philosophical and theoretical texts
throughout western history.
We
must first return to the common and traditional senses of the word “theory”
itself. What does it mean
traditionally, and what does it mean in everyday language?
Traditionally, a science or an art can be thought of as the application
of certain principles that may be abstracted in explanation, exposition, or as a
system. So a theory is an
explanation or a system of anything, an exposition of the abstract principles of
a science or an art. Theory is the
speculative, abstract aspect in contrast to the actual practice of that science
or art. A poet would make use of
what is called “prosody” as a theory of poetry, including rules for rhyming,
metre, assonance, dissonance, etc. The
actual practice in this case, and this will be instructive, may well involve
creatively breaking some of those rules. In
science, just think of Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity or Albert Einstein’s
theory of relativity (E=MC2), both abstract systems that account for all known
possibilities in their field (the movement of bodies in space).
Sigmund Freud’s theory of repression and the unconscious, as well as
Darwin’s theory of evolution follow this pattern, but with some subtle
differences. For now we note merely
that traditionally theory is coupled either with a practice (for which it
supplies a set of rules), or with a situation (for which it supplies an
explanation). In any given
discipline theory in fact usually plays both these roles.
Theory always involves either working with methods that provide the means
to formulate explanations, or working with explanations that provide the means
to understand objects. It is
unlikely that any discipline could do without some sort of theory.
If
we now investigate the conventional concept of theory further we find that it is
in fact a modification of a wider ranging concept. This modification has occurred through long term historical
trends and across languages. We
need to return to the language of the ancient Greeks to see how and why this
modification, which has many parallels, has taken place.
We do this not to find the “real” meaning of the word theory–the
real meaning of a word is not simply what it used to mean–but it can help to
show the kind of trends in thought that occur over long stretches of history.
In ancient Greek theoria means
“way of seeing” or “setting in view”; and this root provides not only
our own current sense of the word theory but also the notion of the theatre, the
place where dramas or events (like plays or operations) can be viewed; theory
indicates the role of an audience too. The
root, at base, involves the sense of seeing, and this sense is precisely what is
carried over into the meaning of the word theory.
Theory is fundamentally a way of seeing things or of setting things in
view. When someone begins a
sentence with the phrase “in my view ...” we may expect, however humble,
contradictory or crude, at least the trace of a theory.
(“In my view the Communist Party would do a better job than the PAP”
indicates at least a basic political theory; “Friends is funnier than Under
One Roof” suggests the vestiges of a theory of comedy.)
So in the broadest sense we each use theory all the time, or at least
while we are awake, certainly while we think, speak or write, for it is in
thinking, speaking and writing that theory is unavoidably expressed.
So
the conventional meaning of the word theory can be seen as a
modification of a more general meaning, a modification designed perhaps
to avoid the pitfalls of everyday language with its imprecision and lack of
systematic foundation. Here, however, we face a paradox. For we begin to see that no theory, however systematic one
tries to make it, can escape its own foundations in the shifting, often quite
vague sphere of everyday understanding and common sense. Theory in the sciences and arts is each time a powerful
modification of everyday understanding, infected with a common sense and
informed by a historical background.
Now
this is only rarely a problem for the various well founded arts or scientific
disciplines. Each discipline is
informed by a tradition of customs and practices supported by theories and
methodologies that are ideally suited for their purpose.
If, for instance, theories of human motivation help managers manipulate
the behaviour of their workforce so that it is more efficient and productive, so
much the better if the theories are in tune with the common sense thinking of
most managers. But every now and then a crisis occurs where basic
assumptions and principles may need questioning and perhaps setting up afresh.
Contributions to the development of a given discipline are generally made within
existing rules and any changes are painlessly gradual.
Without rules one could hardly function at all, so one puts up with
nagging problems with the odd basic principle.
But a crisis in any given discipline involves a reexamination of first
principles and basic grounds. A
striking and famous historical example would be the so called Copernican
revolution in which it was discovered, to the shock of the scientific world,
that the planets circled in orbit around the sun rather than around the earth.
Not only was this discovery “counter-intuitive” in that it went
against the common sense but it went against the most entrenched teaching of the
church whose authority at the time was of course all powerful.
In this case a theoretical discovery not only contradicted the rules but
actually broke the law. The kind of
“decentring” that occurred over the following hundred years or so is typical
of the adjustments that need to be made during a crisis. Now try to imagine a discipline that is constantly in crisis,
continually questioning its own basic premises. Critical theory often seems to be in this state: continually
in crisis, without faith in any founding frame of theoretical reference,
constantly questioning its own or others’ basic principles.
But this is only the way it seems. Critical
theory only seems to be in crisis because of its basic field of analysis, which
is the rhetorical, historical and cultural background from which all theories
must have at some time emerged. It
is this background of intimate, residually historical, culturally focused ideas,
feelings and opinions that make up a confused yet apparently coherent everyday
understanding that contemporary theory turns its attention to. Theory, in other
words, is turned around and applied to its own grounds in both traditional and
everyday understanding. Thus we
tend to find a more or less consistently applied self-reflexivity accompanying
most influential forms of critical theory, because in the first place the only
concepts available are those we use in traditional and everyday practice.
So
we should now be able to see the difference, on one hand, between traditional
and conventional concepts of theory and new meanings of the term, on the other.
The new sense involves a practice which concerns itself with the very
grounds of theory generally, the limits of any theory.
So, you might ask, why do we still call it theory?
But what else could we call it? We
are from the beginning limited to what we can say by concepts derived from the
evolutionary patterns of rhetoric, so we must use the terms available, even if
it means extending and transforming them as we have with “theory.”
And that is the basic method of contemporary theory.
As we look back over the history of the term we find that there has
always been this tension between a “theoretical” (systematic, abstract)
point of view and a “pre-theoretical” (everyday, common sense) one.
By investigating the nature of the so called pre-theoretical background,
contemporary theory radicalises the very notion of theory itself, undoing the
grounded certainty of traditional theoretical positions.
In other words, today we find the same patterns at work in both
theoretical and pre-theoretical domains of thought, a tension that describes the
intractable mutual relationship between the two.
Object and Concept Traditionally,
all objects that are set-into-view by a science are set down under
“concepts.” A concept is a
“general notion,” a notion that can account for a range of examples.
Thus theory is nothing without concepts.
The concepts of a theory are designed to account for the range of objects
that fall under its domain. In the
“natural” or “physical” sciences, for instance,
we find that a concept like oscillation can account for a range of
motions: the vibrations of a stringed instrument when struck or bowed, the
swinging of a pendulum, the movement of a needle on a lie detector, the body’s
shivering when exposed to cold. The
concept oscillation accounts for an abstract relationship between each of
these motions and thus pays no attention to the particular, idiosyncratic
aspects of our examples of it. Thus
oscillation is simply “swinging to and fro; vibration” and we need make no
reference to the cello, violin or guitar, no reference to the lie detector and
no reference to a body.
We
should also be able to see that each of these examples falls under a single
concept by analogy. There can be
few more decisive concepts in theory than analogy, for analogy is the very
concept that describes the process of making concepts.
Think about the ways in which the concept of oscillation gets used to
describe–by analogy–types of text, like theoretical texts, as well as
fictional and mass media texts. A
critic may say that the arguments of Walter Benjamin oscillate between the
historical and the mystical; or one might argue that the narrative in George
Eliot’s Daniel Deronda oscillates
uneasily between her two plot lines, or that the popular British TV series Crocodile
Shoes oscillates between representations of the North and the South of
England, as well as between England and the USA.
In each case the term oscillation presupposes that the textual elements
referred to can be separated out into contrasting poles, differences which can
be represented through the analogy of oscillation as opposites or contrasts.
All
the concepts in theoretical arguments have their basis in the use of analogy,
which is a means of abstracting typical trends, patterns and processes in
concepts that can be regarded as general. By
the same account critical theory develops often by pointing out the sometimes
inappropriate uses of analogical concepts and by developing new ones more
appropriate to the situation under study. That
is to say that one cannot use any concept in contemporary theory uncritically.
One must be aware of the history of its development as a concept, of the
specific uses to which it has been put, of the ways in which it has become
currency in theoretical discourse. Many
thinkers will go to great pains in defining terms precisely as their argument
develops, and this is very important as it helps readers get a firm sense of
what is being argued. However,
given what I have said about the relation between theoretical discourse and
everyday discourse, we should be aware that no precise definition will be able
to neutralise or pacify the clamour of historical, cultural and everyday
discourses that necessarily inhabit and infect the theoretical term that is
fundamentally parasitic upon them. Thus
there is no real alternative to the consistently self-critical, or
self-reflexive use of theoretical terminology that characterises so many of the
most influential thinkers. You will
doubtless find that much theoretical writing today fails to consider this
important point and this results in apparently jargon-laden texts which reflect
the fashion of the moment for certain concepts that have achieved academic
currency (and which often filter into use in the popular media).
Notice
my own use of analogy here, the analogy of currency, likening the use of
current coinage in a relatively closed economy to the use of language in
relatively closed institutional contexts. The
concept of economy is, as we shall see, very important and has wide ranging uses
in contemporary theory. What it
disallows in theoretical language is the use of any term that can stand alone,
outside or beyond the system that gives it currency.
In other words all concepts have an integral relation not simply to
others in a relatively closed system, but to all other concepts in a language,
as well as to a range of sometimes quite difficult choices with regard to
translation. The concept of
oscillation, for instance, might indicate frequency or periodicity, concepts
associated with regularity and recurrence; but it also might, rather
differently, indicate changeableness, under which term it shares similarities
with fitfulness, transience and agitation.
Oscillation is also understood in relation to concepts regarded as
opposite to it, like disorder and discontinuity (if oscillation is thought of as
periodisation), or stability, permanence and fixture (if it is considered as
“chopping and changing”), which reveals that the single concept
“oscillation” is capable, depending on context, of meanings that are
potentially opposite to each other and therefore mutually exclusive.
In principle this capability is a feature of all language.
When
the need to translate a concept arises, quite precise attention to the context
is necessary, as well as a knowledge of current uses in the language it is being
translated into. Oscillate in the
German might be oszillieren or schwingen
if the context is physical; or it could be schwanken
for the lie detector as well as for a great many of the analogical meanings that
we have used where oszillieren would
sound odd in the German. The
concept of “translation” too works to an extent in analogy with the concept
of “currency,” as coinage can be translated (“changed”) by virtue of a
“rate of exchange” into any other currency.
The same is true, of course, for any word, although precise translations
are impossible because one cannot at the same time translate the whole system to
which the one word belongs. Such a
system is by no means fixed and unchangeable but undergoes a continuous process
of transformation. As I will show
throughout this book, theory must operate very much on the boundaries of fixity
and change in critical thought, and is consistently concerned with the family of
concepts concerning translation, analogy, and exchange.
Having
complicated the notion of “concept,” I will now discuss the ways in which
the concepts of critical theory relate to their special objects.
First, what is the object or what are the objects of theory?
Before we can answer that question we must ask, what is an object?
As with all important concepts used in theory, it is necessary to explore
the constructions, histories and conventional uses of the concept “object,”
in order to tease out the deeper implications of its use.
In the physical world, it would seem, there is no difficulty in
establishing what objects are. An object is simply a thing presented or capable of being
presented to the senses. What this
means is that an object is something that can be observed.
If we begin with the least problematical examples we can easily see what
is involved. The most basic kind of
object that can be observed is a material thing, something in the world like a
rock, a tree, a dog or cat, a man, a woman, a child.
Leaving aside for the moment (although we will come back to this
directly) the fact that rocks and people are conventionally considered to be
objects with very different qualities, their shared status as objects in the
most basic sense remains the same. That
is, each thing can be regarded as existing outside and as being independent of
the mind observing it. This
indicates already that the concept “object” has its most basic sense in
relation to a correlative concept, that of the “subject” who does the
observing, who is in possession of “a mind” and is thus capable of
understanding the concepts (like rock, tree, dog, cat, man, woman, child) which
stand over against the objects in the world (the things to which those concepts
are said to refer). Now, because
the concept of “subject” is supposed to refer to the very being that does
the observing, it is not surprising that it is one of the most difficult and
important concepts in the history of theory.
The subject is the one who sees and who sets things into view.
An
object is, therefore, not simply some discrete thing standing passively around
in the world but something in the world that has been set into view in some more
or less specific way by the subject who observes it, or at least by subjects who
habitually observe things in specific ways.
In other words, rocks, trees and people share the same status as objects
but are viewed in very different ways by different people, i.e. as having
different qualities. An object is something upon which attention, interest or some
emotion is fixed. A botanist will
see an oak tree in a very different light–will “set it into view” in a
different way–to the way a painter or a person walking in the country or a
lumberjack or timber-merchant would. It
is possible to say that each of these different people have different interests
in the tree, and thus see it as a different object when their respective
attentions are fixed upon it. In
the case of people, things get very complex.
A child might be the object of a parent’s love or irritation, siblings
may be the objects of each others’ envy; a stranger may be the object of
someone’s secret desire. In
principle the situation remains when rather than an individual a whole group is
taken as an object. An
identification of “racial type” or a gender is a way of objectifying a
group, possibly as being “other” or “different.”
These concepts can then be (and often are) applied to individuals in a
way which also reflects the attitudes of the subjects who have set their objects
into view in this way. There are
also concepts, like virtue and crime, that seem not to refer to any object that
is in any basic sense “in-the-world.” This
reveals all the more that concepts denote objects in an active, productive way,
creating their objects, rather than simply reflecting or representing them.
People
collectively are actually the objects of disciplines like anthropology,
sociology and psychology, in which case concepts like “behaviour,” “group
dynamics,” “personality” or “attitude” govern the ways in which people
are set into view. And because
those disciplines aim for scientific status, they must find legitimate criteria
for objectivity, to help reduce the tendency for subjective interests to inform
observation. So means are found for
making generalisations. People can
then be understood objectively thanks to empirical methods like the statistical
analysis of measurable segments of society.
But the scientific viewpoint is itself a “point-of-view,” or more
specifically, a particular way of setting objects into view.
And the “subject” of a scientific viewpoint is no less subjective for
being scientific. This is not to
suggest that contemporary theory should abandon science, but rather it is to
suggest that the scientific viewpoint is, in contemporary theory, made more
self-critical in its awareness of the styles by which different disciplines
(both theoretical and practical) set their objects into view.
There is no pure objectivity. Traditionally
objectivity would be a condition under which objects could be described and/or
acted upon that was not coloured by sensations or emotions. In a more significant formulation it would also be a
condition under which objects could be described and/or acted upon uncoloured by
any way or style of setting things into view at all.
But there is no way of setting things in view that is not coloured by a
way or style of doing so. There can
be no pure objectivity because the attitude of the subject always intrudes and
intervenes in an active way. Take
the example of science. We have got
so used to adopting a technological way of speaking in the modern world,
especially where academic disciplines are concerned, that we often fail to see
that technological ways of speaking themselves constitute a positive style.
In other words, while such ways of speaking attain to a condition of
transparent description and, ultimately, to objective truth, they are in fact
part of a system, a set of tendencies, habits of thought and conventional laws
of operation.
In
order to attain to the level of scientific objectivity one must first learn all
the rules and terminology that characterise the science in question.
Once that has been done one needs to deny or at least ignore the fact
that this privileged viewpoint is no less a subjective setting-into-view than
the random and confused thoughts of an “unlearned” person who must rely on
myths and hearsay. As I have
suggested already, neither the blindly technological nor the naively
conventional ways of setting things into view is really desirable if we are
genuinely concerned with these questions (interested in, affected by and even
fixated on them). But in
contemporary theory the technological way of thinking and writing is subtly
altered in accordance with the following realisation: as a style, as a
specifically historical and cultural way of setting things into view, the
technological way of thinking is potentially the best one available to us (not
least because it is so powerful), so long as we are sufficiently aware of its
own situation as a particular and not necessarily more objective viewpoint
amongst others, with which it shares a more general, historical and cultural
background. That background
can be made more visible.
So
the concepts that are developed in contemporary theory are designed to allow us
access to elusive objects. But
these “objects” are very often the creation of the system which gives their
concepts currency. And their use
often implies a breakdown in any hard and fast distinction between subjects and
objects. The concept for this
chapter is “theory” itself, and I have demonstrated the way in which a
theoretical point of view can proceed by questioning the very grounds of the
theoretical point of view itself, which is simply one specific way of setting
objects into view. We can use the
analogy of framing and say that theory frames its objects in specific ways. You can take this to mean both in the way pictures are framed
to provide tidy boundaries around what they depict, and in the way a person
charged with a criminal offence might complain that s/he “was framed” or
“set up,” meaning that s/he didn’t do it.
The first sense indicates the way objects must be defined, conceptualised,
bounded and brought into view in a particular light. The second sense indicates the intrusive, active way in which
concepts “produce” meanings, add meanings onto an object (an object does not
necessarily mean anything independently of the concepts attributed to it) or
even produce their object (an object may not exist independently of its concept,
as is the case with Hamlet or the unicorn). There is no alternative to the potentially criminal
production of meanings, the risks we must take of “mis-representing” our
objects; all theoretical work insists that concepts are created and used, and
such use is always an addition and an intrusion.
So contemporary practices generally accept a responsibility not only for
making their own backgrounds and presuppositions clear but also for questioning
them, as I am doing in this chapter. This
questioning is not negative and destructive, as some people think, but is
productive. It develops concepts as
it goes for theories that are intended to account for the very specific
situations that require questioning in the first place, situations that are
cultural and historical and thus always in a process of change as they fall
inevitably into their unknown but often surprising future.
Contemporary
theory does not simply rely on past theoretical systems, developed say in
philosophy, social theory, anthropology, linguistics, and textual criticism.
These must be used, certainly, because we have no already developed
system of concepts that could possibly account for the situations that call for
understanding and interpreting. But
theory too must be questioned and read in a carefully critical way, so we can
use it to arrive at new conceptions, whilst as far as possible avoiding the deep
seated prejudices that underlie all of our thinking (just by using available
concepts we are making implicit judgments).
Thus theory operates on two levels.
On the level of objectivity, now understood as being impossible in any
pure sense, we need to identify the situation that we are both conceptualising
and intervening in. On the level of
conceptualisation itself, we must self-critically develop our concepts and
arguments through careful readings of existing theory, locating contradictions
and problems, and developing each time a workable framework for the specific
engagement that we wish to make.
Contemporary
theory cannot be thought of as belonging to any specific discipline.
Theory informs many disciplines, especially in moments of crisis and
self-questioning, but it occurs generally as a process that is not reducible to
any discipline (certainly not “its own” which would be a contradiction).
Theory puts the notion of a discipline under constant interrogation—not
so traditions can be undermined in any naively subversive sense (although much
contemporary theory is subversive)—but so traditions can be opened up to the
possibility of their changing in productive ways, both in terms of their
concepts and in terms of their activities, in short, their politics.
But while theory has its own mode of proceeding and must be regarded as
operating outside the strict boundaries of existing disciplines, it cannot be
thought of as existing simply independently of any discipline.
Theory is what happens when the grounds or the boundaries of disciplines
are questioned and altered, certainly, but nothing like that could happen unless
theoretical terms and concepts already existed.
And only traditional and everyday discourses have them.
If contemporary theory became an independent and autonomous discipline
with its own philosophy and conceptual framework, it would no longer be theory
but yet another discipline in the arts or social sciences, itself vulnerable to
theoretical critique and resistant to anything perceived as “not belonging”
within it. In this respect it is
instructive that the most influential authors, texts and arguments in
contemporary theory consistently resist easy disciplinary categories.
A critical approach can work productively and often subversively within
as well as between disciplines and traditions.
SummaryAs
I have shown, the problems that tax traditional theories in academic disciplines
are general. The difficulty of
arriving at stable concepts that can accurately stand over against often
enigmatic objects troubles all participation in everyday talk, as well as the
discourses of the mass media and all practices that characterise a given
culture. And, just as the
traditional sciences must ignore these difficulties in order to proceed, so too
must the participants in everyday discourses ignore their own problematic
grounds in order to get on with their lives.
What I am calling contemporary theory aims to expose those problematic
grounds. So concepts used in
everyday discourses may be regarded as constructions, meanings that have been
imposed on objects and which thus to an extent create those objects.
Everyday concepts, no less than those of a science, are specific ways of
setting things in view, and framing them. For
participants in those discourses, however, these concepts will often appear
natural or transparent. In other
words, only their objects will appear and they will appear is if independent of
the system of concepts that has played such an important role in constructing
the way that they appear.
One
final observation now needs to be made. Despite
the need in academic disciplines for consensus, that is, a set of shared
assumptions and definitions upon which practical and objective work may proceed,
a brief history of any period in a discipline’s development will invariably
reveal dispute and criticism at the deepest level.
If this is the case in science and philosophy, it is even more so in
everyday discourse where meanings are by no means shared.
Meanings should be regarded as sites of constant struggle, which implies
that a culture tends to be made up of individuals who are related only
tentatively by shared values and norms, and those relations are often better
characterised by mutual antagonism, incompatible interests, and struggles of
power. A concept in everyday discourse gets its naturalised sense
only at the cost of other contradictory senses that would reveal it is
historically and culturally overdetermined.
Phone:
874 3054
e
mail:
elljwp@nus.edu.sg
