Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 372.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
[1] From: "Stefan Gradmann" <stefan.gradmann@rrz.uni- (28)
hamburg.de>
Subject: AW: 17.363 reification; or, a complaint
[2] From: Aimée Morrison (40)
<aimee.morrison@ualberta.ca> (by way
Subject: RE: 17.367 reification
[3] From: Jascha Kessler <jkessler@ucla.edu> (20)
Subject: Re: 17.367 reification
[4] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk> (40)
Subject: imagination vs hand-waving
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 06:49:04 +0000
From: "Stefan Gradmann" <stefan.gradmann@rrz.uni-hamburg.de>
Subject: AW: 17.363 reification; or, a complaint
Dear Willard & others,
ok, here we go: this complaint by Willard seems absolutely justified in my
eyes but far too weakly uttered - and possibly inconsequently. Among the
reifications we then also should have our go on even shallower metaphors
such as 'digital libraries' or 'e-learning' and other related (und utterly
stupid) constructs such as 'e-books' should be considered, at same time
making clear (and here things get tricky) why we keep using these non-sense
terms in fund raising contexts (at least I admit doing so ...), since they
make the people who keep the money think that they have understood what we
are doing. And that they even steer what we do. Without having understood
the very essence of it (which is *questions*, not answers!) - but that
doesn't matter, as long as we can feed them with these handy metaphors, grab
the money and - have to invent some shiny stories at the end to sustain our
credibility.
But do we believe in all this? Rhethorical questions may be admitted in this
forum ...
And as a consequence: should we seriously invest time in such a discussion
(I believe we should!) with no result visible outside our community (this
would be useless!!)
Kind regards again from HH & goodnight -- Stefan Gradmann
************************************************************
Dr. Stefan Gradmann / Virtuelle Campusbibliothek
Regionales Rechenzentrum der Universität Hamburg
Schlüterstr. 70, D-20146 Hamburg
Tel.: +49 (0)40 42838 3093
Fax.: +49 (0)40 42838 3284
GSM : +49 (0)170 8352623
E-Mail: stefan.gradmann@rrz.uni-hamburg.de
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 06:49:31 +0000
From: Aimée Morrison <aimee.morrison@ualberta.ca> (by way
Subject: RE: 17.367 reification
dear all,
another reification wrinkle.
my immediate guess when seeing the words 'hypertext', 'reification', and
'complaint' as i scanned willard's email, was that the substance of said
complaint would be to lament that *hypertext* is often taken to be the
*reification* of postmodern theories of textuality.
i've been thinking about this lately. many early and passionate promoters of
computing technologies for the humanities, among them george landow as
exemplary case, employed a strategy whereby computing was justified for its
instantiation/embodiment/reification of french theories at that time
circulating to great controversy in the academy. in this vision, hypertext is
the barthesian text v. work *literalized*, a double gesture that marks the
former as theoretically sound or at least relevant to the work of the
humanities, and the latter as material or reified and thus incontrovertibly
existing. neat trick. certainly rooted in a particular historical moment in
the american academy, but still, outdated and worth taking apart, i think.
this particular reification of pomotheory/hypertext does a disservice to both
processes/ideas/theories/practices, as, justifying one in terms of the other
in a closed circle, we do not get to debate the nature of 'hypertext' on its
own evolving terms, nor to understand postmodern theories of textuality as
practices rather than objects. (that is, a 'work' or a 'text' in the
barthesian sense is a matter of reading practice, not instantiation in a
particular book or e-text form).
in short, my complaint would be the trick of using *reification* as
*justification*.
(to be silly and invert descartes, in this case, the maxim would be "it *is*,
therefore it is worth thinking about.")
but it seems this is not what willard was getting at. i'm interested in his
idea of the reification problem too, but thought i'd drop this into the debate
as well.
cheers,
aimee
. ++++++++++++++++++++++++
Aimée Morrison Office: 4-14 Humanities Ctr.
PhD Candidate, Dept. of English Phone: (780) 492-0298
University of Alberta Fax: (780) 492-8102
T6G 2E5 Email: ahm@ualberta.ca
"If we examine the Lives of all the Poets, we shall find that they have all
been miserable."
-- Susanna Watts, c1802
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 06:50:08 +0000
From: Jascha Kessler <jkessler@ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: 17.367 reification
Dear Willard:
I think it might be helpful in this thread for people to go back a long way
to Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE IN THE MODERN WORLD, an essential
primer, especially for Humanists. His chapter on THE FALLACY OF MISPLACED
CONCRETENESS deals with this issue, and thoroughly once and for all, from a
mathematician, one who knows what symbols are, etc. It is a sine qua
non. Poetry, if read at all these days, is something that is usually
misread, and Whitehead, talking about Romantic poetry in Chapter 1, shows
how this all works. Freud, of course, is another thread, but that leads
elsewhere.. Koryzbski, one of the founders of Semantics in the 1st half of
the 20th Century, has a vast work on this process. But most of these
foundations are quite forgot, alas,
jascha kessler
Jascha Kessler
Professor of English & Modern Literature, UCLA
Telephone: (310) 393-4648
Telephone/Facsimile: (530) 684-5120
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~jaschak/
http://www.jaschakessler.com/
http://www.xlibris.com
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 07:03:53 +0000
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: imagination vs hand-waving
I like Steve Ramsay's analogy, as it summons to view a situation so full of
promise that so often results in cost-overruns and disappointments. But the
analogy is weak:
>Let us imagine a young married couple about to build their first home.
>"We're so excited about the house."
>"It has four bathrooms!"
>"You can see the mountains from the back bedroom."
Many young married couples have lived through this experience. The range of
outcomes is well known, as is the nature of the entities "house",
"bathrooms", "mountains" and "back bedroom". Seeing mountains from a back
bedroom is well understood. Things may go wrong, as I suggested, but even
the range of bad outcomes has been charted so many times as to be perfectly
familiar. But in the case of "the" semantic web, there is widespread
disagreement on what "it" might be. (Marshall and Shipman usefully
discriminate three different things "it" could be.) No one can honestly
claim "it" to be a familiar thing or even finite set of things. Despite
that fact, many talk about "it" as if "it" were a known quantity, then go
on to infer a number of other things. No such thing.
There is of course the practical problem of how to motivate people, get
grants and so forth. How to sell the idea. The architect wanting
commissions from such fortunately well-off young couples will promote
pedestrian dreams of the kind Steve has referred to. In writing grant
applications we of course promise to change the world for the better,
improve our national economies and so on and so forth. (I try honestly to
formulate the first of these so that I can actually believe in what I am
writing, but as for the rest....) All ordinary stuff, to which here I am
making no objection. What I do think is wrong is the slopping over of
promotional, salesman's rhetoric into what we say to each other.
As I said, I've no problem with us imagining something that doesn't exist
and has never existed. The basic problem I have is with pretending, to
ourselves, that such a never-existent pseudo-thing like "the" semantic web
is analogous to a house that hasn't yet been built. Worlds of difference.
Yes, language is a complex, very human phenomenon, no doubt reflecting all
our shortcomings. But the subjunctive mood works well for imagining things.
Yours,
WM
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
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