S.R.Thomas - MRes - University of Lincoln

Derive and Jamesons ConceptualMaps

2012-02-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

Experience of derive has led to many examples of finding parts of uncompleted maps of cityscape much closer than imagined while following known routes... (add Map)

Metaphor of Knowledge, cultural languages and concepts across disciplines can be close but unknown...

The new technology can become a new alienating/isolating tradition quickly

Derive escapes the new technological /instrumental map and created cultural 'tradition' at once...

Insights occur... New maps can be drawn...

Isolated aspects of identity can ? (end) Cog styles/Discourses

Jamesons Maps... not empty or monocultural - levels of personal constructs (Kelly)?
Flows Massumi...

(Thanks m)

c.f

http://www.roberttally.com/uploads/4/9/4/0/4940675/jameson_cm.pdf

Signals & Classification Systems in the context of Post Modern Culture

2012-02-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

Classification Theory -

Cybernetic Theory - Signal Noise

Expert Systems/Expertise - Signal >Cue>Classification>Action

Eg in Iterative Design Cycle / RequirementsAnalysis

Context of PostModern Theory

We have different cultural languages , cannot assume common agreement (Hegemony/Ideology)

Options?

Inclusive Listening, (While maintaining awareness of /retaining access to own position)
Empathy

Metaphor - Cultural Boundaries are like doors often as dualistic though can create projection of 'other'

Eg Corporate culture may see Value in prototype App (RandomResearchCo) re Lateral Thinking/Reminders (as a ray of light above the door) for its own functional reasons,
But its definite of 'Noise" may be a lot less self-organising, its cultural may be much more segmented ,hence some of the creative collectivity needs to be removed from the 'Branding' of the Creative Source..
(Does not want to look behind door - projects the other extreme caricature (e.g. 'anarchy'<>'nazi').

e.g. This is arguably a product and couse of instrumentality..

How relate to Systems Movement and Tools,

re Boundaries and Feedback...?

Soft Systems tools are Meta Tools?
concerned with a top down view (hence dismissed by poststructural/postmodern as hegemonic)

However they are attempting (as is discourse analysis) to enable communication between cultures
internal and external by generating a generating an inclusive discussion around 1 perceived boundaries and 2 feedback ( e.g. see Checkland re Iterative methods)

IS such a focus hegemonic? ( it tries to use apolitical language so all the parties can come to the table)

Does Discourse Analysis choose another focus

eg flows, language analysis, social analysis (Ideological) etc...

Its more overtly political in language...

Can the two methodologies learn off each other...?

IS Soft systems analysis method s like SSM adequate is it democratic ( See discussion Systems thinking systems practice re Habermas)

Education & Technology - Randomness & Values (Chomsky)

2012-02-14T18:52:00.000-08:00

Research Institutions: Post Grad

Science progresses by the need to question authority and doctrine, search for alternatives, use imagination
, act freely, cooperative work with others...

New Technology: changes are significant but others were more communication, - c.f. random?

Technology is neutral - like a hammer
If you have a framework --conception of what matters (Needs to be adapted changed)
- a clear framework directing research what put aside what used what challenged -
internet can be a useful tool

well directed conceptual apparatus required (that is criticized revised regularly) (i.e. iterative)
Knew what to look for what is significant but also question if framework is right (KeyWords)

- random searches without a framework can lead to cults..?* due to cherry picking knowledge and connections

Measure by economic growth - ? free creative independent individuals = people who increase GDP?

Bertrand Russel John Dewey> better human beings

Public Sector

Lively educational/cultural system geared towards creative exploration
Independence of thought, crossing segments/boundaries , challenge beliefs > new technologies...

Exams can be useful for individual and instructors as a learning tool,
Test results not that important... can if contributes to purpose of education

System is geared to pass hurdles - like horse race...
Searching Enquiring - exploring pursue topics that engage excite us...

Doesn't matter what we cover it matters what you discover,inspiring stundents to discover on their own, challenge if don't agree, look for alternatives if they think better, work through great achievement of past

get to point where learn on own

http://blip.tv/learning-without-frontiers/noam-chomsky-the-purpose-of-education-5925460

*Contrasts with postmodern view of tech as biased to instrumentality and imposing specific 'gaze' (Foucault) / (--re hegemony ?) Whereby 'science' is considered just another cult with no more validity in terms of "truth"... (and possibly equally as 'dangerous' due to fixing subject positions and dualism/ exclusion ignoring Hume etc...)

Do I agree... currently I see the collective value of science to move towards a consensus on method...Process (i.e. peace ?and understanding?)
Re fixed truth - not sure - science must try to be clear about its limitations (Maxwell) and hidden assumptions re induction/gaze/instrumentality... and its contribution to alienation and danger of conflict

Is the drive to disprove always the best, (Popper(Falsification)) not always as some experiences may depend on belief and leaving them open may be better and safer than closing them to a collective materialist/insrtumentalist driven model ...

Whence Inclusive Listening /Awareness (c.f.."Randomness"/"Noise")?
The domain seems to me both difficult and of great promise, fertile yet open to misunderstanding and prejudice
in terms of Habermas communicative competence in this area, clear research and social discussion is important...

aside:
Language issues have not been resolved... (Typing, although Deleuze, Guatarri and Massumi get close to addressing this() the social sciences are always open to theoretical sabotage by the right...
It is harder to hide/distort valuable theory in the management theory realm as many corporations must be socially effective within its boundaries to achieve its optimum in the long term... the corporations may well use those same effective theories or adapt them to collectively act against social progress at other levels
The appropriation of GST and Hyeck etc and consequence move against GST in the social sciences could be an example...

General Systems Theory - Social Theory what contemporary link?

2012-02-13T17:15:00.000-08:00

Austrian biologist, Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy, developed the idea of the General Systems Theory (GST). The GST is a multidisciplinary approach of system analysis. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari are the two postmodern thinkers who advocate systems theory approach in social sciences.

(Not in a coherent language as postmodern assumptions (& conventions) *Flat plane of competing have ensured that any coherent argument will be quickly 'identified' (Barthes) and destroyed ) they cannot write an objective text so they simply (or complexly (spellin mistake meant) 'riff' on various cross departmental/theoretical subjects ensuring the level of complexity is high enough that most dare not attack it and those who do leave themselves open to counter criticism ( not by them they don't bother answering their 'critics' directly)

knowing well as they do that to criticize or 'mark' anything (from a strong postmodern perspective is to simply create an interpretation of a multifaceted plane beyond the grasp of the human and his instruments... reflecting godels theorem - a theorem is meaningless or unprovable.... ( the crisis of representation)

To some extent Massumi B is addressing this

Main Concepts in Systems Theory

[edit]Non-representational and non-referential

One of the central elements of the systems theory is to move away from the representational system to the non-representation of things. What it means that instead of imposing mental concepts, which reduce complexity of a materiality by limiting the variations or malleability, onto the objects; one should trace the network of things. According to Gregory Bateson, “ethos, eidos, sociology, economics, cultural structure, social structure, and all the rest of these words refer only to scientists’ ways of putting the jigsaw puzzle.”^[2] The tracing rather than projecting mental images bring in sight material reality that has been obscured under the universalizing concepts.

[edit]Non-Cartesian

Since the European Enlightenment, the Western philosophy has placed the individual, as an indispensable category, at the center of the universe. René Descartes' famous aphorism, 'I think therefore I am' proves that a person is a rational subject whose feature of thinking brings the human into existence. The Cartesian subject, therefore, is a scientific individual who imposes mental concepts on things in order to control the nature or simply what exists outside his mind. This subject-centered view of the universe has reduced the complex nature of the universe. One of the biggest challenges for system theory is thus to displace or de-center the Cartesian subject as a center of a universe and as a rational being. The idea is to make human beings not a supreme entity but rather to situate them as any other being in the universe. The humans are not thinking Cartesian subject but they dwell alongside nature. This brings back the human to its original place and introduces nature in the equation. The systems theory, therefore, encourages a non-unitary subject in opposition to a Cartesian subject.

[edit]Complexity

Once the Cartesian individual is dissolved, the social sciences will move away from a subject-centered view of the world. The challenge is then how to non-represent empirical reality without reducing the complexity of a system. To put it simply, instead of representing things by us let the things speak through us. These questions led materialists philosophers such as Deleuze and Guattari to develop a "science" for understanding reality without imposing our mental projections. The way they encourage is instead of throwing conceptual ideas we should do tracing. Tracing requires one to connect disparate assemblages or appendages not into a unified center but rather into a rhizome or an open system.^[3]

[edit]Open System and Closed System

Ludwig Bertalanaffy describes two types of systems: open system and closed system. The open systems are systems that allow interactions between its internal elements and the environment. An open system is defined as a “system in exchange of matter with its environment, presenting import and export, building-up and breaking-down of its material components.”^[4] For example, living organism. Closed systems, on the other hand, are considered to be isolated from their environment. For instance, thermodynamics that applies to closed systems.

[edit]

If we don't come together to 'discuss' these layers of complexity , specifically the boundaries and the feedback
we are left with the linier interpretations and flat planes that suit instrumentality - see . the constructed denying the value and attacking the morality of the collective natural...and emergent...

Global Hegemony - Chomsky

2012-02-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

Manufacturers and Merchants defined selves and masters of mankind... principle architects of policy ..ensure their own interests are served no matter effect on others... -

Adam Smith

c.f Construction c.f. Emergence ---(Constructions of) eg constructions of GST
(Follow the money ( c.f Ferguson T)

Systems including education systems are designed so people don't understand what is happening?

Trojan Horse - defund the public body then give to private hands

Social- Environmental

2012-02-13T10:16:00.000-08:00

With a few exceptions, none of which should be hard to remedy, delivering social justice and protecting the environment are not only compatible: they are each indispensable to the other. Only through social justice, which must include the redistribution of the world's ridiculously concentrated wealth, can the environment and the lives of the world's poorest be defended.

The social justice line is set by the eleven priorities listed by the governments preparing for this year's Rio summit. These are:

• food security

• adequate income

• clean water and good sanitation

• effective healthcare

• access to education

• decent work

• modern energy services

• resilience to shocks

• gender equality

• social equity

• a voice in democratic politics.

The destruction line is set by the nine planetary boundaries identified in Stockholm in 2009 by a group of earth system scientists. They identified the levels beyond which we endanger the earth's living systems of:

• climate change

• biodiversity loss

• nitrogen and phosphate use

• ozone depletion

• ocean acidification

• freshwater use

• changes in land use

• particles in the atmosphere

• chemical pollution.

We are already living above the line on the first three indicators, and close to it on several others.

The space between these two lines is the "safe and just space for humanity to thrive in". So what happens if everyone below the social justice line rises above it? Does that push us irrevocably over the destruction line? The answer, she shows, is no.

For example, providing enough food for the 13% of the world's people who suffer from hunger means raising world supplies by just 1%.

Providing electricity to the 19% of people who currently have none would raise global carbon emissions by just 1%.

Bringing everyone above the global absolute poverty line ($1.25 a day) would need just 0.2% of global income.

In other words, it is not the needs of the poor that threaten the biosphere, but the demands of the rich. Raworth points out that half the world's carbon emissions are produced by just 11% of its people, while, with grim symmetry, 50% of the world's people produce just 11% of its emissions. Animal feed used in the EU alone, which accounts for just 7% of the world's people, uses up 33% of the planet's sustainable nitrogen budget. "Excessive resource use by the world's richest 10% of consumers," she notes, "crowds out much-needed resource use by billions of other people."

The politically easy way to tackle poverty is to try to raise the living standards of the poor while doing nothing to curb the consumption of the rich. This is the strategy almost all governments follow. It is a formula for environmental disaster, which, in turn, spreads poverty and deprivation. As Oxfam's paper says, social justice is impossible without "far greater global equity in the use of natural resources, with the greatest reductions coming from the world's richest consumers".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/feb/13/protecting-environment-social-justice

Systems Thinking (Interpretations)

2012-02-13T04:01:00.000-08:00

Thinking about Complexity

Focus on boundaries and identify the unit of analysis...
Understand feedback loops - input to output

1. Systems thinking is not a natural act...
2. Western, educational system inhibits systems thinking
3. Systems thinking cannot be taught to everyone
4. We can improve systems thinking through experiential learning.

Systems Thinking Competencies
1. Ability to define the “universe” appropriately – the system operates in this universe
2. Ability to define the overall system appropriately – defining the right
boundaries
3. Ability to see relatonships – within the system and between the system
and universe
4. Ability to see things holistcally – within and across rela;onships
5. Ability to understand complexity – how rela;onships yield uncertain, dynamic, nonlinear states and situa;ons
6. Ability to communicate across disciplines – to bring mul;ple perspec;ves to bear
7. Ability to take advantage of a broad range of concepts, principles, models, methods and tools – because any one view is inevitably wrong

Why is systems thinking not a natural act?

• Human evolu;on has favored mechanisms tuned to dealing with immediate surface features of problems
– “programmed” human tendencies

• Mechanistic/reductionist approach in decision making
– Driven by educa;on
• Complexity of the systems overwhelms our cogni;ve

capabili;es
– Bounded ra;onality, predictably irra;onal – Magic number 7, plus or minus two
© Ricardo Valerdi 2011

Examples of Systems Thinking

Essential Phenomena	Human Abilities	Human Limitations	Enhancing/ Overcoming
Estimation: How to assess what is happening or will happen?	Good at recognizing familiar patterns and mapping to action	Inaccurate mental models and perceptions of the state of the process	Stochastic forecasting models and displays of filtered, smoothed & predicted states
Stakeholders: How should stakeholders’ interests be balanced?	Good at specifying interests and importance of associated attributes	Difficult to deal with stakeholders’ differing and conflicting interests	Multi-stakeholder, multi- attribute models that enable tradeoffs and decisions
Future: How should future uncertainties be considered?	Good at imagining alternative futures and possible consequences	Difficult to consider future contingencies and specify long-term returns	Decision models that provide economic assessments of the value of contingencies
Challenges: How should management challenges be addressed?	Good at running the “as is” business to achieve familiar objectives	Tendency to be tactical rather than strategic & too focused to see situation	Toolkits that enable systematic addressing & pursuit of the essential challenges
Change: How should fundamental change be pursued?	Good at articulating a vision and leading people in pursuing this vision	Difficult to recognize forces for change and then commit to change	Methods that address value deficiencies, work processes, decisions & social networks

Rouse, W. B., People and organizations: explorations of human-centered design , Wiley 2007.

Understand complexity

• Develop prototypes before
full scale produc;on
• Focus on the human as a key element of the design
• Combine methods to arrive at the op;mal solu;on

Four Things Every Engineer Should Know About Systems Thinking
1. Systems thinking is not a natural act
2. Western educa;onal system is the
biggest inhibitor to systems thinking
3. Systems thinking can be taught (but not to everyone, unfortunately)
4. The best way to develop your systems thinking abili;es is through experien?al learning

A Glimmer of Hope from Religion & Educa?on
• Buddhism
– Systems view as a systems experience
– Appropriate level of analysis for any problem – Cause and effect (karma)
– Cycles and con;nuous flowing (Sangsara)
– Constant flux due to external condi;ons (Annica)

• Scien;fic Habits of Mind – Systems based reasoning
– Model based reasoning
– Understanding feedback
© Ricardo Valerdi 2011
29

Inhibitors to Systems Thinking
• Western educa;onal system – No system thinker lee behind
• Environment/ins;tu;onal constraints – Incen;ves, tradi;on
• Work organiza;on – Over-‐specialized job func;on

http://sdm.mit.edu/news/news_articles/webinar_082211/20110822_Valerdi.pdf

Sorting Out my Keywords

2012-02-13T01:19:00.000-08:00

Subject Position(Foucault/Whitley),
Noise (Schafer),
Emergence(Cilliers/Urry),
Perceived Affordance(Norman/Gibson),
Discourse Closure?
Classification System (Checkland, Foucault), (Episteme)
Appreciative Judgement (Vickers),
System Boundary(Bertalanffy) ,
the Other(Derrida),
Experimental Texts (Denzin),
Inclusive/Comparative Value,

Do I need to split into theoretical perspectives? Does such a split interfere with the point of my research? How?

Emergence?

2012-02-13T01:16:00.000-08:00

Explaining emergence in language can be complex, it occurs perhaps best by example, for me its always in potentially inclusive situations when I notice that subliminally I had been (perhaps objectifying) a a part , perhaps as 'noise and excluding it , judging it as irrelevant or not good enough...... when i start to accept it (perhaps only for its potential) (by inclusive awareness/listening?) there sometimes appears to be a shift or movement in the system, the whole thing seems to evolve in a positive direction (errors included)

Reorganisation of Work - Feb

2012-02-13T01:14:00.000-08:00

Consistent Style, New Mapping Software, Reduce Keywords
Essay > Kathleen
Link RRC- Business Model

Types of Noise

2012-02-11T22:21:00.000-08:00

Artificial - Designed Physical and Conceptual (e.g. Spam)
Natural - Emergent, Collective,
?

c.f Signal/Noise (Weiner) , Signified/Sign (Sausserre)
Volosinov.?

Boundary of Signal-Noise (Weiner etc)

Boundary of Natural - Designed e.g. (Boulding)

Boundary of Discourse? Type of boundary not either or...?

Inclusive Listening <> Valid experiments <> appreciative mode

communication between theoretical positions...

Boden M (2004) The Creative Mind - Myths and Mechanisms

Cascone, K. “The aesthetics of failure: post-digital tendencies in contemporary computer music,” in Computer Music Journal 24(4), 2000, pp.12–18.
Ikeshiro I (2010) Generative, Emergent and self Similar Structures : Construction in Self ICMC New York
Oppenheim, A V.; Schafer, R W. (1975). Digital Signal Processing. Prentice Hall. p. 5.

Noise & Inclusive Listening

2012-02-11T22:19:00.000-08:00

passive/not listening - noise in background - ignoring
pretend listening - also called 'responsive listening' - using stock nods and smiles and uhum, yes, of course, etc.
biased/projective listening - 'selective listening' and intentionally disregarding/dismissing the other person's views
misunderstood listening - unconsciously overlaying your own interpretations and making things fit when they don't
attentive listening - personally-driven fact gathering and analysis often with manipulation of the other person
active listening - understanding feelings and gathering facts for largely selfish purposes
empathic listening - understanding and checking facts and feelings, usually to listener's personal agenda
facilitative listening - listening, understanding fully, and helping, with the other person's needs uppermost

A classification of Listening

LaBell B, Background Noise Perspectives on Sound Art

Data Gathering

2012-02-10T18:46:00.000-08:00

Qualitative
Personal Narrative:
3rd Person via Website/Questionairre/Transcription/Interview

Quantitative
Technology, Webstats etc.

Sources

Primary
Subject Positions?

Secondary
Groups

Tertiery
Books, Internet, Databases

Framing of Narrative (Textual)

2012-02-10T18:28:00.000-08:00

Representation and the text:

re-framing the narrative voice (Google eBook)

William G. Tierney, Yvonna S. Lincoln

(1997 but of value if examples changed)

Modernism/Constructivism and Space for Emergence

2012-02-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

<<< (Appreciation of ) Emergence >>>

Modernist Reproduction < Present Ground > Constructivist Iteration
(Reductionism?) (Complexity/Mystification?)

Negatively Framed Ground (The Commons?)

The constructivist response to modernist reproduction, (i.e. post structural theory) offers the possibility of positing an assumed ground / commons of 'inclusive value' e.g. Massumi Manning (Field Effect(2.)), however the modernist forces of (re)production ( both material (mechanical/electronic) and academic (textual)) impose an assumed 'comparative value' driven by the metric $$$...(Marx)

Is potential space for / discourse on emergent form/agreement from a common source (e.g. Appreciative Judgement (Vickers) in the academy/public sphere obscured by comparative expert judgement and language games?

Are the commons and emergence framed negatively ie perceived as a threat from each 'opposing' constructed metric? (Massumi/Hicks)

eg the theory of 'emergence' (Hyeck /Delanda) - appropriated by the closed/exclusive designed economic metric system and dismissed as such by the forces of textual reproduction based on closed discourse? when emergence is a property of natural open systems(Wynne B( 2005)

The increasing complexity of such constructed expert language games and the stereotyped reductionism of Modernism provide a fertile ground for endless argumentation, (reducing sensitivity?) also the expressive dominance of performative iteration (Austin/ Kristeva) can obscure/block collective sensitivity to a common creative emergence ?
Can this also block progressive (non competitive) innovation and automation in the modernist realm and theoretical? (eg Logical Typing/ General System Theory/Complexity theory > Deleuze)

Should space for communicative discourse (Habermas) take account of this (symbolicly distorted communication) by actively including the random flows and and layerd textured surfaces of natural environments that facilitate emergent agreement ?

Do/Should Discourse Analysis based Methodologies (e.g. Mouff / Fairclough) take account of this

Is this an exclusive dialectical framing of theoretical perspective... excluding sensitivity to middle ground?

http://browse.reticular.info/text/collected/massumi.pdf

Massumi & Manning A Continuum of Modes of Perception - Neurodiversity

re : Human language (with its inherent conceptual boundaries & dualism?) <> Textured Perceptual Relating (Co-creation & Emergence)

1 http://spiderfights.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/panics-promise-massumis-the-future-birth-of-the-affective-fact-the-political-ontology-of-threat/

2. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/erin-manning/videos/coming-alive/

Vickers, Sir Geoffrey (1995) The Art of Judgment – A Study of Policy Making. Sage

Publications. Centenary Ed.

+ Massumi: Artspace into the Diagram
Creative Involution Deleuze & Guttari

Self-Organisation in Social Theory

2012-02-08T19:53:00.001-08:00

http://www.self-organization.org/results/papers/pdf/hsicpaper4.pdf

Christian Fuchs

How is Research Creation?

2012-02-01T12:36:00.001-08:00

http://www.senselab.ca/inflexions/htm/node/Massumi.html

Occupation Games and Inclusion

2012-01-29T14:04:00.000-08:00

A game has been constru(c)ted...

There is a (g)ame being p(;)ayed

The game is an abstract system

Those who can play it bond with others who can play and win

Those who cant are excluded

But the game ultimately, is not able to survive by excluding the natural

Which everyone is...

Yet some believe the game can only survive by exclusion as this strengthens the bond of the (winning) players?

The game is rewarding people by its own metric

It is not natural

Based on the production and reproduction of the game itself

Lang(gu)ae is part of the (g)ame

Money is p(a)rt of the game

Extending( complexityis) part of the game

(Unsustainabilityof) production and hence its sustainable reproduction is part of thegame

The inclusive winning of the (g)ame cannot be achieved in terms of the game

It's not just a clever word game, (an exclusive one)

Althouh part of it has been turned into one

For the reasons stated above

The mind wants to?is trained to exclude and identify patterns that fit..

From a backgtound of noise

THe 'noi9se' is excluded

A subtle process

Of exclusion

An identification

At the root

Once that process, of appling a filter to the layers of undefined complexity

HAs been bypassed/'completed',

Thinking comparison and classification can begin.

Refs

Hofstadter, Douglas (1996). Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern. Basic Books. pp. 70–83.

^ Suber, Peter. "Nomic: A Game of Self-Amendment". Retrieved 2 August 2010.

Here I (experiment) with not correcting my (m(i)stakes)
I bracket them
As to correct them would be to assume I know
Where the quality lies (Which is 'best) (the mistake or correction)
An exclude the other...

The (self-similar) source of quality...love

the present ground

the inclusive natural

was this excluded?

(I am not even sure there is time for us to rely on the (competitive) egoism of individual academic papers and blogs any more)

Dualism & Complementarity as Intellectual foundation?

2012-01-29T10:15:00.000-08:00

Flat oppositional dualism is a product&generator of our language/category systems ( and often automated in designed abstract and physical systems)

Complementarity (on the other hand...) relates to natural organisation. In many situations, understanding the 'difference' gives us a chance of intelligent progress...and cooperation...

Complementarity is inclusive , oppositional dualism isn't...

Oppositional dualism can be-appear 'functional' as a part of a productive process. but the value of the productive process in terms of its environment and all the subjective needs it is intended to fulfill cannot be measured simply in those terms...

Such issues form the basis of intellectual thought and must be included if an intelligent an potentially progressive discussion is to take place

References (to add)

Foucault M

Beer S

Checkland P

Fairclough N

Social Technologies Deconstruction, subversion and the utopia of democratic communication Inke Arns[1]

2012-01-29T08:19:00.000-08:00

Social Technologies

Deconstruction, subversion and the utopia of democratic communication

Inke Arns[1]

Subject Position, Sustainablility and Profit?

2012-01-19T10:19:00.001-08:00

Is it possible to design/manufacture a sustainable (economically) profitable system (and individual economic security..) that ensures sustainably empowered subject positions?

what happens to our perception of the possibilities of nature/spirit (the layered textured surface/everythingbeinganything) in the context of the (apparent) forces of production

On Critique Massumi

2012-01-13T08:45:00.001-08:00

http://www.senselab.ca/inflexions/volume_4/n4_t_massumihtml.html

Methods/Techniques

2012-01-13T05:56:00.000-08:00

Update Jan 2012

My focus is on Framing (Schon & Rein) and the extensive critical discourse analysis of Fairclough

The work of Wodak concerning allusion seems relevant..

(I need to figure out what Fairclough includes of Schon and Rein and Wodak...)

The academic discourse and the public discourse perhaps require different approaches...?

I am concerend with exploring if/how those (instrumental (Habermas)) people/systems concerned with market segmentation set/limit the subject positions and access (c.f doxa (Barthes)?) and how those people/systems from different (communicative (Habermas)) positions (eg those concerned with depicting the post structural complexity in academia) set/limit the subject positions and access... (c.f paradox (Barthes)?)

(and possibly as a consequence the bridge between the public and the academic discourse, or lack of it...)

The 'Holy Moment' and the 'Narrative Wrapper'

2012-01-12T04:33:00.000-08:00

"Truffaut always said the best films aren't made--

The best scripts don't make the best films...

because they have that kind of literary, narrative thing that you¿re sort of a slave to.

The best films are the ones that aren't tied to that slavishly.

So, um-- So-- I don't know--

The whole narrative thing seems to me like--

Obviously, there's narrativity to cinema 'cause it's in time,

just the way there's narrativity to music.

You don't first think of the story of the song, then make the song.

It has to come out of the moment.

That's what film has. It's just that moment, which is holy."

'Waking Life' (Animation) Linklater R. 2001

The Moment - inclusive source, the Narrative - exclusive wrapper?

Distinctions between social movement(s)...

2012-01-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

"What was special about the 60s was that there was only one thing happening, one movement. And that was the civil rights movement. There were different organisations coming from different angles because of geography, but in essence everybody had the same objective. It came so suddenly, from so many different angles, things happening in so many different towns and cities at once, that the "powers that be" were caught off-guard.

Until the 60s, "the movement" had been the exclusive property of middle-aged and old people. Then it became a young people thing, and as the 60s opened up, the key word became "activism", with Stokely Carmichael and the SNCC [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], "freedom rides" [challenging segregation on interstate buses], and sit-ins. There was a new feeling of power in black communities. And once it got started, it was on the powers like paint.

But at some point a difference was created between "equality", "freedom" and "civil rights". Those differences were played up because something had to be done about the sudden unity among black folks all over the country. Folks got more media attention whenever they accentuated the differences. There were media-created splinters. Otherwise the civil rights movement would have been enough, and would have been more successful. Accomplishing the aims of the movement would have made "gay rights" and "women's rights" and "lefts and rights" extraneous.

But divide and conquer was the aim of programmes such as COINTELPRO [the FBI's covert attempt to infiltrate and disrupt groups deemed "subversive"]. And even though it ended up working damn near backward, it worked. They separated the fingers on the hand and gave each group a different demand; we lost our way. *

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/08/scott-heron-wonder-martin-luther-king

*How different is this from the interpretation of post structuralism that classifies any commonality as metanarrative?

The "separate fingers" : the "Organs without a Body " to invert Deluze's "Body without Organs"

How can we acknowledge the complexity and difference of the subject/subject position and maintain some inclusive ground?

What is that inclusive ground now?

Is it the inclusive noise that enfolds the exclusive 'signal'?

Systems Theory - Appreciative Judgement - Hegemony

2011-10-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

Defn Emergence " the characteristic organization of a system is `other than' the mere sum of its parts"

(von Bertalanffy, 1968, p. 55)

Defn : Appreciative Judgement:

... to see, to value, and to respond to situations in familiar ways that, while they last, exclude the power to see other possibilities (). Vickers 1995 p. 69

„...a set of readiness to distinguish some aspects of the situation rather than others and to classify and value these in this way rather than in that‟ (ibid, p. 82).

My concern is with enabling popular access to the commons of emergent phenomena (Checkland), the definition of emergence suggests this occurs via awareness of the whole system not just the sum of the parts. While some actions segment and restrict appreciative judgement(they are exclusive), some open up appreciative judgement (they are inclusive), this could be extended to the post-structural concept of 'subject position'(Davis and Harre).
Examples of activities that may open up awareness include:

* random journeying(Debord ),
* appreciation of natures layered textured surfaces and their 'random' movements,
* other forms of 'random' expression.

These could be termed experimental activities, but given the history of the term 'experiment' and its association in qualitative research with positivist science, perhaps the term "appreciative modes/sensing" could be used? (c.f Vickers (1995))

The relation of post-structuralism to the concepts of systems theory and complexity has been addressed by the like of Byrne, Cilliers, Urry, and Wynne in Theory Culture and Society 2005.

My concern is centered around the horizontal concept of 'emergence' (Johnson S) as, although certain types of undifferentiated horizontal concepts may exhibit prejudice and stereotypes, some types potentially enable popular access, across a number of disciplines, and the systems theorists would argue, a common langauge beyond the interpretation of post structuralism as a flat plane that is succeptible both to mystification and the whims of those who profit from the vertical organisation and the placing of 'distinction' above its dialectical parter 'union'... the random journey is just one example of a means of triggering inclusivity and accessing emergence (From the social network plan "thebridge") that I may focus on at the next stage of my MRes.

Johnson, S. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. by Chris Leslie. J
Vickers

Theory Culture and Society "Complexity" 2005

Topic

2011-10-26T03:27:00.000-07:00

Exclusive Inclusion? The academic and commercial/'public' framing of /discourse around () 'emergence' (Vickers/Cilliers/Urry) from the infinite layered textured surface that is Barthes post structuralist "text" and methods of accessing it such as for example the Random Journey (c.f Debord)

Re the evolution of my topic

The previous focus on the 'expressive' in "Random Expressive Flow" (or the interpretation thereof) ,can perhaps provoke an emotive response related to the (appropriate) academic bias towards the cognitive, returning my focus to the more passive "appreciative space (c.f Vickers 1996) for emergence(Checkland/Cilliers) (or emergent field effects (Massumi))" may be more open to subtlety of construction. The method of language/frame analysis (Eg critical discourse analysis (Fairclough) and its distinciton from/relation to the topic should be made clearer perhaps...

The closure/opening of appreciative judgement(Vickers) and how it relates to ideology/ hegemony is central...

It's interesting that the careful listening that is central to qualitative research is at the heart of this but not just listening to the dominant group discourse...of course... staying away from the group has made me consider why some of the seeming tension (whether a 'good' or 'bad' thing) was, for me, there, the concept 'Random Expressive Flow' could be seen as a block to listening and a source of a controlling insensitive (perhaps invasive) discourse... but that was not the whole story meant by the term "Random Expressive Flow" perhaps I did not play the role of a good /balanced (between listening and expression) advocate/researcher of such a concept in the group, if so I regret that... but I also felt my subject position (and the 'shape of my working texts) within the group being interpellated? push-flowed into an 'oppositional / more extreme space/caricature at certain times... that position in the group "constellation" is a product of what? I believe it is to an extent dominated by the effect of the role of exclusive filters the tutors have? to play to keep their jobs in the modernist hierachical institution... that is my personal bias of course... I feel qualitative research is very important, perhaps too important to be subject to the level of exclusion created by post-structuralist language games stripped all the concepts offered by serious attempts at inter-subject communication such as general systems theory.

(The attempts to appropriate systems theory by the hard systems movement and the neoliberals is perhaps at the base of the fear the post-structuralsts have (Cilliers2005) )

Deleuze and Guttari have attempted to reinstate some of the systems language in a socially liberating way, but the denial of such meta-narrative by the post structural meta-narrative appears to have left a flat plane of entwined messy struggle with contradiction (as no clear distinction is left between living systems? (self-similar complementary aspects of a whole) and category systems(fixed bounded-often oppositional)?) (eg defining "univocity") leaving me not sure whether they are posing or being purposely obscure, perhaps they are attempting to create a 'more open text' c.f the "infinitely complex post-structural layered textured surface" that Barthes proposes...an infinite ground in which to stake an academic claim perhaps but a ground that is shuttered off from many by it's labarynth like complexity . Is this a view from either side of the bridge?

On a more personal level, my concern with creativity has evolved from a concern with active construction (c.f austin/iragray) in an individualist and romantic sense to a concern with collective emergence
from beyond language (the animate ecological?) and how language frames our access to this, in that sense perhaps the construction of the 'random journey' is the perfect vehicle for this, as each encounter with a 'text' is potentially a random journey although the framing ('practical' /ideological/ 'hegemonic' etc) usually closes this potential... and the simplicity of the "random" becomes the background (of the gestalt), is it excluded...like the commons? via comparative value?

( as we perhaps edge back towards the important social theoretical foundation dimension of Marx? via admitting the motivation for the designing into our academic language games ? the 'perceived affordance' *(Norman)? of extended complexity - a (rather worthless?) example of which this is?)

*"The designer cares more about what actions the user perceives to be possible than what is true. (emphasis added) [4]" Norman

Studying Emergence

2011-10-25T08:25:00.000-07:00

Our restatement of Steven Johnson's "five fundamental principles" (pp 77-79) as tips for modelling self-organising systems are:

More examples are better: Studying a few ants will never lead to an understanding of the global behaviour of the colony.
Low-level ignorance is useful: Lose a few ants and it doesn't make much difference.
Notice how the system responds to random encounters: Individual ants will stumble across a new resource which increases the adaptiveness of the whole (and reduces the possibility of getting stuck on a 'false peak').
Notice the patterns in the signs: Ants respond the the frequency of ant encounters and the gradient of pheromone trails, not to messages from individual ants.
Components pay most attention to their neighbours: In this way swarm logic leads to global wisdom.

Johnson's other "four core principles" are "neighbour interaction, pattern recognition, feedback, and indirect control." (p. 22)

http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/194/1/What-is-Emergence/Page1.html

It should be noted that some of the language could be interpreted to evoke the scientific "gaze"

PIRC -Values and Frames- Advertising

2011-10-20T02:35:00.000-07:00

"Conclusion

This is an ambitious set of proposals. It is a contribution

to the start, not the culmination, of a debate. Undoubtedly, more work

is needed in thinking through the detail of these proposals, and in

developing further responses.

All those concerned about social and environmental challenges—whether

they work in business, government or the third sector—can find common

cause in contributing to this work. Yet responsibility for developing this

debate further must fall particularly upon the third sector. It seems

unsustainable for civil society organisations—almost irrespective of the

issues upon which they focus—to continue to largely disregard the

cultural impacts of advertising. "

Public Interest Research Centre

Values and Frames - Link for Report

A discussion of Frames

Emergence

2011-10-18T03:28:00.000-07:00

According to (Checkland 1999, p. 314), Emergence is “the principle that entities exhibit properties which are meaningful only when attributed to the whole, not to its parts.”

(replace by Cilliers etc 2005 if not acceptable)

Questions that arise from this definition include: What kinds of systems exhibit emergence? Under what conditions do they exhibit emergence? Are emergent properties predictable? Can emergent properties be planned?

http://www.sebokwiki.org/index.php/Emergence

Explaining emergence in language can be complex, it occurs perhaps best by example, for me its always in potentially inclusive situations when I notice that subliminally I had been (perhaps objectifying) and excluding a "section" or aspect of the environment (inner and outer), judging it as irrelevant or not good enough when i start to accept it (perhaps for its potential) there appears to be a shift or movement in the system, the whole thing seems to evolve in a positive direction- that's what it means to me...

eg Sunlight on a Wall

One example of emergence is sunlight dancing on a wall... a common occurence you may be able to see around you now, and yet the combination of sun, wall, interference from plants/trees and the position of the subject all combine to create the unique experience...

The post structural concerns itself with the uniqueness of the subjects position and this affects the experience yet it is the whole system of light, wall, plant and subject position that enable the experience to happen.

Example 1 : Canopy Rorscharch

Example 2 : Canopy Church (At night)

Example 3 : Treelight

The experience represented by this photo occured in the context of a random journey I took recently, a combination of the position I was stood in, the sun, a spider's web and some resin from the tree led to the apperance of a diamond like a bright light shining from the centre of the trunk.

(the awareness of such emergent qualities/experiences and openness/access to them may relate to appreciative judgement (Vickers) , the relationship of appreciative judgement to hegemony is of interest (Gramsci) ?) (to mix theory and topic)
This leads us to a positive angle on the issue of frames (c.f Schon and Rein), what appreciative openings do we have/allow? (c.f. inclusive value/comparative value )

... to see, to value, and to respond to situations in familiar ways that, while they last, exclude the power to see other possibilities (ibid, p.

69). Vickers 1995

„...a set of readiness to distinguish some aspects of the situation rather than others and to classify and value these in this way rather than in that‟ (ibid, p. 82).

Plagiarism? Repurposing?

2011-10-16T11:07:00.001-07:00

http://chronicle.com/article/Uncreative-Writing/128908/

Logical Typing <> Research: Bateson

2011-10-09T00:33:00.000-07:00

Definitions of Logical Types

In the index of Bateson’s book Mind and Nature (1979), he writes this under the list of “Logical Types.” A series of examines is in order:

The name is not the thing named but is of different logical type, higher than the thing named.
The class is of different logical type, higher than that of its members.
The injunctions issues by, or control emanating from, the bias of the house thermostat is of higher logical type than the control issued by the thermometer.
“Acceleration” is of a higher logical type than “velocity.”

In another place Bateson defined logical types in the following way:

Logical Type: 1) The name is not the thing named but is of different logical type, higher than the thing named. 2) The class is of different logical type, higher than that of its members. (Mary Catherine Bateson, 1987, pp. 209-210

This use of language in classification seems to relate to the whole subject of metanarrative, and how qualitative researchers reduce phenomenological compexity to a written / themed analysis.

Mind and Nature (1979)
Angels Fear (1987)

As his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson wrote in her 1999

Introduction to Steps to an Ecology of Mind, "by giving a portion of his own intellectual

autobiography, two or three key moments of patterning recognized, he endeavored to lead

readers along the paths to his own conclusions" (x). His fear of "the monstrous atomistic

pathology" that spreads virally from individual mind to cybernetic Mind, from obsessive

self-interest to strident identity politics, from parochial paranoia to nationalistic

isolationism, is reiterated again and again throughout the course of his body of work.

Rodney Donaldson writes that "if, as Bateson asserts, all we can know is difference, then

it becomes at least plausible that the bulk of our personal, interpersonal, international, and ecological problems arise ultimately from the simple turning of a distinction into a

separation, and the separation into an opposition" (xvi). As we have already read, Badiou

stresses that alterity is what is—that to exist is to exist in difference, and that self-

reflection is "by no means the intuition of a unity but a labyrinth of differentiations"

also
Bealer A H (2008) Connecting the work of Gregory Bateson, Giles Deleuze and Alan Badiou

Steps to and Ecology of Mind : Catherine Bateson

Social Construtionism - Pilurality and Complexity

2011-10-06T07:02:00.000-07:00

" the idea that chaos and self-organization limit each other,

we think, is under-explored. The challenge of exploring the relationship

consists in the former being formally designated, while the latter demands

qualitative inquiry. "

After the ‘complexity turn’ it appears that sociology may instead be a

specialist branch of a general ontology of eco- auto-organization.

This has enormous bearing on the ethical responsibilities

of sociology itself. Where social construction through language is

stressed, the ethical outcome is the demand for pluralism since there is no

reasonable cause for constraint. The rise of fundamentalism showed us how

narrow that view was: pluralism is easily recognized by othersas prescrip-

tive.

Now there is the combined effect of global warming, the shortage of

water and the depletion of fossil fuels. Is the sociology of pluralism appro-

priate here or are we faced with different kinds of ethical choices? Has soci-

ology rediscovered imperatives? Imperatives will not square with sui generic

social phenomena, however, unless we agree that ‘they’ generate their own

limits – by which we clearly mean ecological viability. Sui generic

phenom-

ena suddenly look like everything else that is auto-eco-organizational. Their

previously separated status seems to rest in our view on the ability to

construct ‘without reference to’. In what ways does complexity theory differ

from this? The answer again lies with Prigogine. Complexity cannot arise

from individual particles or even, in this case, from a class of phenomena

that can operate ‘without reference to’. The requirements are large-scale

macroscopic interactions in which all parties are ‘real’ contributors;

crucially, chance is only one of those contributors. Only on this basis is ‘the

complexity turn’ properly grounded. Otherwise it is a needless elaboration.

Another way to say this is that complexity theory becomes necessary only

when ‘eco’ is added to auto-organization.

A great deal of extremely interesting work (as well as Luhmann’s) is founded on

operational closure. However it remains riddled by the problems of previous

phenomenology where everything is ‘constructed’ by cognitive processes. See for

example Petito et al. (1999) or Lakoff and Núñez (2000).

Smith and Jenks (2005)

Complexity and Discourse Closure

2011-10-02T01:57:00.000-07:00

Some of those attracted to ‘complexity-thinking’ appeared to understand

it as a new ontology involving moral recognition of the falsehood of

ambitions and pretences of prediction and control, thus perhaps as a non-

hegemonist epistemology (de Sousa Santos, 2003; Haraway, 1997; Sarewitz

et al., 2000). Yet despite these insights, in conventional discourse-practices

control (with tacit externalization) remains a persistent expectation, as a

moral and intellectual given. According to this latter ontology, complexity

is simply a complex object per se, but one ultimately amenable to control.

Even if lack of control (‘uncertainty’) has to be admitted, it is only as a

temporary, strictly limited problem (which deletes ignorance or lack of

control under the misleading label of acknowledged ‘uncertainty’). This of

course suggests the question: what is being bracketed – and what is being

affirmed – when the chronic postponement of ‘lack of control’ (‘complexity’)

is performed in discursive practices? What imagined public context is being

implicitly cultivated?

By the time complexity comes into focus, it will always have been framed,

translated and domesti-

cated somehow, like everything else. So a question should be not simply

how to expose and critique these simplifications and reductions, but, better,

how to render them more poetic, modest and human? However, this should

not licence any degree or form of reductionism as the common discourse

that might be able to claim more informal human richness and representa-

tive legitimacy. So how complex can such formal public discourses be, even

while they accommodate practical moral recognition of the strictly unspeak-

able, that is, contingencies and unknowns? The more that neoliberal

commercial cultural pressures pervade science, the less room there seems

likely to be for these more modest, complex sensibilities.

Wynne, B. (2005) Theory Culture and Society

Discourse Analysis - Slideshare

2011-09-30T03:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.slideshare.net/bohemicus/discourse-analysis-for-social-research

Current Stance Updated Sept 2011

2011-09-26T01:14:00.000-07:00

1. General/Living Systems Theory - Emergence - Wholeness (Vickers, Von Bertalanffy)

2. Post Structural - Openness of Potential of reading (Barthes), and movement Massumi)

(c.f Derrida - My reading of Derrida is that closed systems of Language/Concepts can restrict/filter our view - c.f. Appreciative Judgement Vickers of a multilayerd ground of inclusive value(c.f 1)

( While language offers some freedoms of interpretation it also can shutter out/bias our view of eg Wholeness/Self similarity/Emergence (BwO) - some forms of post structuralism attempt to deny any common ground of being ( )- I consider that while this can free the local from some general metanarratives it can also enclose the 'individual' subject in an isolated 'free' position, susceptible to 'textual' and symbolic forces of positioning . Perhaps the emphasis on this is due to capital forces, perhaps it is due to binary basis of the linguisitic concept.

3. The forces of capital also tend to impose a closure on thought, movement and the subject? (Fairclough, Gramsci ), eg by appropriating aspects of General Systems and Complexity theory for their own exclusive purposes (eg Hyeck - neoliberal 'free market' ideology)

Also by:
Allowing / promoting forms of Opennes/Creativity/Freedom that maximise flows of capital(Massumi) - Internal Combustion engine etc

Reducing/ stereotyping by allusion (Wodak) forms of Openness/Creativity/Freedom that don't maximise capital flows.

c.f Inclusive Value <> Comparative Value (Marx)

Hence a need for Critical Theory - Habermas(1971 ) (They also address the binary with ideas such as Unity in Diversity (Ref)
And a Theory of "the Other" Derrida / Habermas

This suggests a balance of certain Post Structural insights (re constituative?) and understanding of Ideology/hegemony from the likes of Habermas.

> Critical Discourse Analysis - Fairclough (1989, )
> Wodak - (2006)
> Van Djik

Barthes (1977),Image,Music, Text Hill et al :New York.
Derrida J (1976)Of Grammatology, trans. (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press
Fairclough N. (1989) Discourse and Social Change
Habermas J. (1971) Knowledge and Human Interests,

Vickers, Sir Geoffrey (1995) The Art of Judgment – A Study of Policy Making. Sage

Publications.
Wodak R, Pragmatics and Critical discourse Analysis

Social Theory and Systems Theory : Luhmann

2011-09-23T02:43:00.000-07:00

Luhmann's systems theory focuses on three topics, which are interconnected in his entire work.^[6]

Systems theory as societal theory
Communication theory and
Evolution theory

The core element of Luhmann's theory is communication. Social systems are systems of communication, and society is the most encompassing social system. Being the social system that comprises all (and only) communication, today's society is a world society. A system is defined by a boundary between itself and its environment, dividing it from an infinitely complex, or (colloquially) chaotic, exterior. The interior of the system is thus a zone of reduced complexity: Communication within a system operates by selecting only a limited amount of all information available outside. This process is also called "reduction of complexity." The criterion according to which information is selected and processed is meaning (in German, Sinn). Both social systems and psychical or personal systems (see below for an explanation of this distinction) operate by processing meaning.

Furthermore, each system has a distinctive identity that is constantly reproduced in its communication and depends on what is considered meaningful and what is not. If a system fails to maintain that identity, it ceases to exist as a system and dissolves back into the environment it emerged from. Luhmann called this process of reproduction from elements previously filtered from an over-complex environment autopoiesis (pronounced "auto-poy-E-sis"; literally: self-creation) (Closed constituative?), using a term coined in cognitive biology by Chilean thinkersHumberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Social systems are autopoietically closed in that while they use and rely on resources from their environment, those resources do not become part of the systems' operation. Both thought and digestion are important preconditions for communication, but neither appears in communication as such.

Luhmann likens the operation of autopoiesis (the filtering and processing of information from the environment) to a program, making a series of logical distinctions (in German,Unterscheidungen). Here, Luhmann refers to the British mathematician G. Spencer-Brown's logic of distinctions that Maturana and Varela had earlier identified as a model for the functioning of any cognitive process. The supreme criterion guiding the "self-creation" of any given system is a defining binary code. This binary code, is not to be confused with the computers operation: Luhmann (following Spencer-Brown and Gregory Bateson) assumes that auto-referential systems are continuously confronted with the dilemma of disintegration/continuation. This dilemma is framed with an ever-changing set of available choices; everyone of those potential choices can be the system's selection or not (a binary state, selected/rejected). The influence of Spencer-Brown's book, Laws of Form, on Luhmann can hardly be overestimated.

Although Luhmann first developed his understanding of social systems theory under Parsons' influence, he soon moved away from the Parsonian concept. The most important difference is that Parsons used systems merely as an analytic tool to understand certain processes going on in society; Luhmann, in contrast, treats his vision of systems ontologically, saying that "systems exist". That is, Luhmann in fact suggests to substitute the paradigm of systems theory for the ontological paradigm: the difference system/environment (which also signifies a relationship).

Luhmann himself described his theory as "labyrinth-like"or "non-linear" and claimed he was deliberately keeping his prose enigmatic to prevent it from being understood "too quickly", which would only produce simplistic misunderstandings.^{[4] (nothing new there)}

It seems clear there is lack of understanding between the systems and post-structural schools of thought

The relation between the term "System" and "Text" : c.f the "Text" creating subject positions (Discourse Analysis)

Frame Analysis

2011-09-20T02:32:00.001-07:00

Primary frame: Natural c.f Social
Goffman

Nested Frames
Minsky

Meta Frames
Dombos (2009)

Frames can be used to promote negative/positive image, Johnson (1995) persuade or be deliberately obtuse (Wilson 1990)

Object > "Problem"
Positive and Negative Framing

http://bristol.academia.edu/MHope/Papers/259680/Frame_Analysis_as_a_Discourse_Method_Framing_Climate_Change_Politics

Goffman, E. (1979, 1984) Frame Analysis – An Essay on the Organization of Experience,

Boston: North-eastern University Press.

Schön, D.A. and Rein, M. (1994) Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of

Intractable Policy Controversies, New York: Basic Books.

Open Systems - Assemblage

2011-09-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

The key for me is the notion of the “consistency” or

“assemblage” (a flexible, open system, what Manuel calls a “meshwork”).

Traditional systems theory, as well as its cousin cybernetics, was fixated on the

notion of homeostasis, which measured a system’s ability, via negative feedback

loops, to return to a set point after environmental shocks. The key point here is

“stability”: how much of a shock can the system withstand and still return to

“normal”? An open system, on the other hand, possesses “resilience”: the ability

to form new patterns and thresholds, either as the result of an environmental

shock or as the result of endogenous “evolutionary drift”, to use the term of

Francisco Varela. What’s great about Deleuze and Guattari is that they give us a

wide-ranging and nuanced ontology with which to think about the difference

between such systems. And this ontology seems to resonate with the latest

science. Stuart Kauffman’s latest work in Investigations, in which he talks about

the expansion of biospheres into “the adjacent possible” seems to me to fit right

into the DeleuzoGuattarian notion of an open, expanding, creative, multiverse.

Deleuzian Interrogations: A Conversation

with Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi and

Torkild Thanem

Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi and Torkild Thanem

De Landa, Manuel. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory And Social Complexity. Continuum. November 14, 2006.

Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization

Science (www.tamarajournal.com).

Questions, Reductionism and Balance

2011-09-18T06:25:00.000-07:00

Once my initial question* was put aside at the suggestion of my tutor, I returned to a tripolar concept of

From "thebridge" a social network prototype concerning creativity

where 1.Clarity concerned the rationality (originally based on Personal Construct Psychology)

2. Concerned Awareness/Listening and relates to my experiments with Textured Layered Surfaces

3. Concerns Random Expressive Flow and Random Journeying

This was considered far too wide

The difficulty lay in reducing this concept without splitting it destroying its Balance

eg Random journeying can get framed as insensitive and intrusive

Rationality /Method in the form of P.C.P can get framed as Modernist/Structuralist

Awareness can get framed as irrelevant/a waste of time.

How can I keep the issue of balance in my question?

My concern is with understanding and balance between the importance of critical rationalism (as communicative social space**) and in addressing prejudice and the simplicity of random expressive flow.

* Original question/method

Personal Constructs, Binary Oppositions and

Deconstruction

Lupton (1994) notes that western culture since plato / aristotle has been

govened by various linguistic oppositions, and has valued one side of the

them over the other. One of the tasks of Deconstruction has been to identify

these oppositions. Identify the dominant terms and redress the balance.

We all have our own biases which can be identified in terms of such

oppositions

They can be explored using the methods of Personal Construct Psychology

They can be used in a number of ways, in relation to primary secondary, and

tertiary research data for example:

Researching and Identifying popular dualities/binary oppositions in regard to

the constructs Linguistic Flow.

If we take the example of Poetic Culture

For example a survey or literature search may reveal the following construct :

<--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

FORM FLOW

'Poetry' 'Slam' MCing' 'Spitting' '

If we add other constructs from an individual/cultural group we may discover

correlations:

'Knowledge' 'Intuition'

'Elitism' 'Popularism'

'Mature' 'Immature'

'Normal' 'Abnormal'

To restate, it is possible to explore the definition an individual has of

"Knowledge" (Form) and "Intuition"(Flow), are these considered opposite?

Is knowledge a part of intuition , or intuition a part of knowledge?

Is knowledge a dirty word? (e.g. INTUITION<'squareness'><'shit'>)? Is

intuition a dirty word? (e.g. KNOWLEDGE <'irrelevance'>]<'madness'>). Here

is depicted the drift towards logocentrism: where one side of the duality is

exclusively valued as positive (good) and the other negative(bad), or perhaps

less fundamentally Normal – Abnormal, and Boring – Interesting]. Is it

possible to faciilitate the individual to explore other, perhaps complimentary

constructs?

** Communicative social space itself could be argued to have a rational aspect and awareness aspect and a flow aspect. ( perhaps this is where the critical theorists and the post-structuralists and Deleuzians/General Systems Theorists for example can be reconciled)

Critical Theory - Social and Literary

2011-09-17T05:02:00.000-07:00

To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jürgen Habermas in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] (Knowledge and Human Interests), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics, i.e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions—including the interpretation of texts which are themselves implicitly or explicitly the interpretation of other texts. Critical social theory is, in contrast, a form of self-reflective knowledge involving both understanding and theoretical explanation to reduce entrapment in systems of domination or dependence, obeying the emancipatory interest in expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination.
From this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on interpretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian sense. Critical theory in literature and the humanities in general does not necessarily involve a normativedimension, whereas critical social theory does, either through criticizing society from some general theory of values, norms, or "oughts," or through criticizing it in terms of its own espoused values.

In the 1960s, Jürgen Habermas raised the epistemological discussion to a new level in hisKnowledge and Human Interests, by identifying critical knowledge as based on principles that differentiated it either from the natural sciences or the humanities, through its orientation to self-reflection and emancipation. Though unsatisfied with Adorno and Horkeimer's thought presented in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Habermas shares the view that, in the form of instrumental rationality, the era of modernity marks a move away from the liberation of enlightenment and toward a new form of enslavement.^[8]

His ideas regarding the relationship between modernity and rationalization are in this sense strongly influenced by Max Weber. Habermas dissolved further the elements of critical theory derived from Hegelian German Idealism, though his thought remains broadly Marxist in its epistemological approach. Perhaps his two most influential ideas are the concepts of the public sphere and communicative action; the latter arriving partly as a reaction to new post-structural or so-called "post-modern" challenges to the discourse of modernity. Habermas engaged in regular correspondence with Richard Rorty and a strong sense of philosophical pragmatism may be felt in his theory; thought which frequently traverses the boundaries between sociology and philosophy.

http://criticaltheory-download-ebooks.blogspot.com/p/what-is-critical-theory.html

Paradigms - Systems Science Wholes and the Post structural

2011-09-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

“A system is a family of meaningful relationship among the members acting as a whole.” This is our working definition of General systems.

Russell Ackoff identified three main kinds of systems: technological systems, social systems, and biological systems. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, recognized as the founder of General System Theory, said that human beings are biological organisms, but we live in world of symbols, and then suggested that it is the symbolic dimension of our lives that is at the root of most of our problems. He argued that wars are symbolic conflicts, not necessarily biological conflicts. While economics clearly plays an important role in contemporary conflicts, it would be an interesting project to try to tease apart the symbolic and biological dimensions of our economic sphere, particularly as the neo-Darwinian framework is often evoked to justify the increasing disparity in the human condition.

able 1: Schools of Thought/Practice in the Systems Field

Problem Solving	Modeling	Synthesis/Integration	New Paradigm
Systems Engineering Systems Analysis	System Dynamics Systems Ecology Dynamical Systems Chaos/Complexity	Cybernetics General System(s) Theory	Deep Ecology Change in Consciousness

the final category of new paradigm thinking recognizes the significant influence of systems thinking in the emergence of deep ecology and related fields, which draw on system concepts to highlight the importance of relationship and interdependence, and the need for a change in consciousness, particularly in terms of our sense of identity in relation to the larger world of which we are a part, if we're going to move to a more sustainable culture.

In August 2004, the new Provost at Sonoma State University, where I teach, sent out on our campus listserv an article by Vartan Gregorian entitled, "Colleges Must Reconstruct the Unity of Knowledge." Gregorian wrote about the fragmentation of knowledge and the problems of increasing specialization, and then suggested that in order to find meaning and to understand their role in society, students need to develop skills in synthesis and systemic thinking. He went on to say that while we have enormous amounts of information and computer systems to help us integrate it, that information alone can't help us come up with a coherent moral framework or tell us what questions are really worth asking.

What intrigued me was the vehemence of the response to this article. There was enormous resistance from several faculty members to this notion of the unity of knowledge. One person wrote about the "facility with which generalization and synthesis lead to fallacy." Another person wrote that, "knowledge is historically contingent, socially constructed, and deeply contested."...

In response, the Provost wrote, "I see in this call for unity a turn back from a post-modernist fragmentation of meaning, a reaffirmation of the possibility of progress in knowledge and, finally, of progress in the human experience." To which, another faculty member responded: "Calls for a unity of knowledge, or 'consilience,' can indeed directly conflict with what is broadly called postmodernism. However, rather than regarding postmodernism primarily as fragmentation, we might also see it more positively as a democratization of discourses and an opening to perspectives heretofore marginalized by monopolistic [and as another writer added, interest dependent] claims to 'the Truth.' I cannot believe that in our globalized multicultural world we can ever go back to any unitary absolutism (unless we surrender to some variety of fundamentalism)."

There is clearly some confusion about what is meant by idea of the unity of knowledge. What ISSS offers is a place where we can bring in multiple perspectives and share our ideas with one another. There is clearly reason for concern about the potential tendency, in pursuit of the "unity of knowledge," toward a kind of disciplinary and/or theoretical imperialism. I heard this at Santa Fe Institute, toward the end of the summer school, from a faculty panel, who said that you can't do complex systems studies unless you know differential equations and linear algebra. Similarly, E.O. Wilson, in his book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, proposed an integration of the natural and social sciences using evolutionary theory as the overarching framework. What ISSS offers, in contrast, is an opportunity for bringing multiple voices together without trying to fit them into one single framework - the kind of democratization of discourses mentioned above. I believe this is a tremendously valuable contribution toward addressing the critical issues of our times, as we will never be able to solve the problems we face, if we are unable to talk to each other across the divides that have traditionally kept us from understanding - and working together with - one another.

Debora Hammond, Ph.D.

Incoming President's Address | ISSS 49th Annual Conference | Cancun, Mexico, July 2005

Hammond, Debora, 2003. The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the Social Implications of General Systems Theory (Boulder: University Press of Colorado)

How Big is our Umbrella? by Ken Wilber

"... researchers tend to choose one or two of those approaches very early in their careers, usually under the influence of a significant mentor, organization, or academic department. And, human nature being what it is, it is then extremely difficult for them to embrace, or sometimes even acknowledge, the existence of the other approaches. Evidence that supports their position is avidly accumulated; evidence that does not is ignored, devalued, or explained away.But what if, instead, we make the following assumption: The human mind is incapable of producing 100 percent error. In other words, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time"

Hall: Hegemony & the Emergent

2011-09-14T08:46:00.001-07:00

Hegemony is a tricky concept and provokes muddled thinking. No victories are permanent or final. Hegemony has constantly to be worked on, maintained, renewed, revised. Excluded social forces, whose consent has not been won, whose interests have not been taken into account, form the basis of counter-movements, resistance, alternative strategies and visions … and the struggle over a hegemonic system starts anew. They constitute what Raymond Williams called "the emergent" – and the reason why history is never closed but maintains an open horizon towards the future.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/12/march-of-the-neoliberals

A political perspective on emergence by Stuart Hall, could be related to Foucaults Exclusion and Dominant/Marginalised Discourse. Closure/Openness is mentioned, >research Raymond Williams use of term...

Complexity Theory <> Social Theory Smith and Jenks (2005)

2011-09-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

THIS ARTICLEseeks to contribute to the growing body of complex-

ity theory within the social sciences. It is structured around four

themes. The first corresponds roughly with the distinction between

chaos and complexity. Some authors (e.g. Gray, 2002, 2003) might

emphasize the chaotic, uncontrollable or unexpected outcomes of complex

social processes; others (e.g. Cohen and Stewart, 1995; Schnitman and

Schnitman, 2002) emphasize the emergence of complex, ‘homeodynamic’

structures.

The second theme is more critical. We argue that much contemporary

sociology makes tacit use of the remnants of a humanistic concept of the

human subject and its agency. This is not the case for complexity theory,

which emerges from cognitive theory more embedded in biology. Cohen and

Stewart (1995) are important here, so are Maturana and Varela (1980), from

whom the concept of autopoiesis, so central to Luhmann’s sociology, is

derived.

The third theme juxtaposes both a degree of chance, or chaos, and a

degree of order, or the propensity of complex structures to organize them-

selves. This is not a new idea. It lies at the root of evolution, systems theory,

of autopoiesis, in Maturana and Varela’s sense (relating to organisms), in

Luhmann’s sense (relating to social systems) and Prigogine’s work on thermo-

dynamics. We argue that it needs further development in sociology.

Though self-organisation obviously signifies autonomy a self-organising

system ... must work to construct and reconstruct its autonomy and this

requires energy. ... [T]he system must draw energy from the outside; to be

autonomous ... it must be [also] dependent. (Morin, 2002: 4, citing Von

Foerster, 1984)

■

Theory, Culture & Society2005 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),

Vol. 22(5): 141–163

DOI: 10.1177/0263276405057048

at University of Lincoln on October 19, 2010tcs.sagepub.comDownloaded from

This is clearly allied with Prigogine’s notion of ‘dissipative structures’. Its

paradox can be resolved by an ‘ecological’ perspective: a self-organizing

system in an environment of self-organizing systems is reciprocal in terms of

cause and effect. Put simply, it has to be viable; and at other times it may

not be viable. Morin (2002) offers auto-eco-organization, a significant

development with which we concur. We stress that ‘reciprocal’ causality does

not imply that the temporal order of causes and effects can be ‘loosened’.

The fourth theme argues that knowledge, representation, information,

cognitions of any kind, are material consequences of this same ecology.

Cognition is not therefore ‘determined’. This does not imply a return to any

kind of base/superstructure model, whether representational, corresponden-

tial or ‘economic’. Rather, it is to say that cognition is self-organizing or

auto-referential; and that this occurs within a material and informational

ecology. As Morin puts it:

[Just] as auto-organisation is in fact auto-eco-organisation, self or auto refer-

ence is really auto-exo-reference, which is to say that to refer to oneself one

must refer to the outside world. (2002: 49)

Unlike ‘representationalism’ – the idea that the world ‘provides’ information

‘to be processed’ – we argue, that auto-organization and informational

imperatives are mutually attracted. Both are evolved, system or organism-

specific phenomena.

142 Theory, Culture & Society 22(5)

08_smith_057048 (jk-t) 20/9/05 8:59 am Page 142

Jameson: Utopia and Postmodern Art. Cognitive maps

2011-09-13T07:23:00.000-07:00

UTOPIA AND POSTMODERN ARTHow could all this be done? Nobody knows yet. It seems totally "unrealistic." That is no argument against the utopian possibility, however. Capitalist culture has taught us to define "realistic" as the opposite of "imagined." But imagination is an essential part of reality. So imagination can be very "realistic," as long as we act on it. Every real change has to be imagined first; imagining is the first step in figuring out a new reality. Most of us cannot even take that first step today. However a few artists have made some initial attempts. Some postmodern works of art suggest that the way to radical change is to subvert the system from within. The idea is to show society its true face by exaggerating it, by turning everything into simulacra as quickly as possible. This includes making all the institutions of society nothing but simulacra.
For example, an artist might mount an exhibit in an art museum showing t-shirts he made with pictures on them, just like the t-shirts the museum sells in its gift shop. In both cases the pictures would be simulacra. The museum's shirts would bear its logo, or a famous painting turned into a simulacrum. But the artist's shirts would have pictures of the museum itself, or the gift shop, or his own exhibit. This would turn the institution and art itself into a simulacrum. (If he is very political, he might have pictures of the museum's trustees, who are also directors of local corporations that pollute the air, make weapons, have no minority executives, etc.) Some postmodernists believe that the more simulacra we create in this way, the quicker we will show society that it is built on simulacra. Society will see how empty its whole life is. This will drive society to a point where it will simply collapse into its hollow core. Then something new will emerge: a utopian society that releases the virtues of postmodernism because it is free of the totalitarian structure of late capitalism.
However this is a risky route. Who can say whether a totally empty society will necessarily turn into a utopian one? Moreover it gives no basis for a great collective utopian project. How can we come together to plan the kind of life we want together if all things remain radically separated? Jameson has no answer to this question. Again, the problem is that we don't know how to think about it clearly yet. The necessary first step is to understand where we are now. Perhaps the most useful political act we can do now is just to analyze the totality in all its complexity and understanding why it is so hard to change it. This means we must have shared images to describe our relationships to the system of postmodern late capitalism. These images must be like maps, showing us how to locate ourselves in the overall scheme of things. We need "cognitive maps" to symbolize our place in the system.
Now that culture has suffused all of life, there is no difference between the culture and life. So it should be possible to use culture to map our experience of life. Cognitive maps could be images drawn from postmodern culture and transcoded in new ways. They cannot literally represent the totality of the system, since that totality is beyond our capacity to represent. But they can give us a symbolic language to relate the various parts and levels of the totality to each other by transcoding them. Most importantly, the maps would link together three crucial codes: the media and its imagery, the mode of production of late capitalism, and the individual's experience as a member of a particular economic class within late capitalism. This would enable us to express our relationships within, and attitudes toward, the totality. It would also show us how little power and control most of us have over the circumstances of our lives. It would show how few people actually own the means of production and therefore make the basic decisions that shape our society; it would show how many people have only the illusion of ownership and free choice. Once we understand the truth about what we have and don’t have today, we can talk together about what it is that we really want for tomorrow.

http://spot.colorado.edu/~chernus/NewspaperColumns/LongerEssays/JamesonPostmodernism.htm

Could be done with an open source computer game (see 'relief') based on discourse analysis/subject positions

2011-09-12T12:04:00.001-07:00

One potential danger of constructivism is that it can stop us listening, stop us being open to positive emergence, we may create a vision of a threatening 'other' and respond to the vision instead of the actual being. In the Video below Brian Massumi discusses this in relation to Bush and Iraq

Reproduction, Constructivism and Emergence

2011-09-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

If we attempt to replace the structural modernist forces of reproduction with post structural constructivist language games we can, if we abandon any ideal of communicative discourse (Habermas) (perhaps assuming it is nothing but modernist bias) be left with closed "tactical" sets of autopoetic battling constructions (both in terms of combinations of Austin's 'speech acts' and iteration? / and data structures) , and battling pre-emptive symbolic representations, built around a meta narrative of $$$ which is profitable for certain private interests, and expert groups, but not necessarily of value to collective humanity (tragedy of the commons). Naturally emergent factors (Massumi) (stemming from our nature as living systems (Bertanffly/Macy) (c.f open 'texts') which could help us get beyond these symbolic oppositions can be seen from a constructivist perspective as threatening the required and profitable continual reconstruction of the discursive (c.f material)forms. They can be framed (Goffman), for example as naive and simplistic, dangerous, or irrelevant. Access to these emergent factors could be of great value from the point of view of collective humanities future (Massumi/Manning). Hence there is a need to explore if such framing is taking place and how access paths can be opened and protected from such hegemonic forces.

From the point of view of discourse, identity/awareness flows can be guided into stereotyped often oppositional subject positions/roles with their associated characteristics, the constructivist, concerned with reproduction of their assigned construction, can construct the emergent as a threat, projecting before listening (also vice versa)How do we enable and maintain space that feels safe enough for actual awareness/listening and for flow rather than pre-emption? (Re Qualitative Research)

Social Theory and Complexity Theory

2011-09-09T01:53:00.001-07:00

Bookchin, M.( 2005)The Ecology of Freedom. Oakland: AK Press, 2005.

Cilliers P:(1998)

Castellani and Hafferty (2009) Sociology and Complexity Science: A New Area of Inquiry

Eve et al (1997). Chaos, Complexity and Sociology: Myths, Models, and Theories. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Jenks & Smith (2006): Ecology Cognitive processes and the reemergence of structures in post-humanist social Theory, Routledge

Macy J Living Systems Theory

Brown M. Patterns Flows and Interrelationships

Swimme B. (Re Self-Organisation and the Membrane)

Deleuze, Systems Theory and Emergence A Journal of Modern Critical Theory 29, 2 July 2006 19-39

Urry, John 2005. “The Complexity Turn.” Theory, Culture and Society, 22(5): 1-14.

Emergence : a property of Whole Systems (General Systems Theory) Bertalanffy, L.

Sociology and Complexity Science Network/Journal
Urry J. 2005 Ed Complexity Theory, Culture and Society Oct 2005

Meta-Langage: Barthes

2011-09-07T02:04:00.000-07:00

The definition

It can be seen that in myth there are two semiological systems, one of which is staggered in relation to the other: a linguistic system, the language (or the modes of representation, which are assimilated to it), which I shall call the language-object, because it is the language which myth gets a hold of in order to build its own system; and myth itself, which I shall call a metalanguage, because it is a second language in which one speaks about the first.
Barthes Elements of Semiology (1967),

The signified in the relationship Barthes imposes is defined as “the mental representation of a thing. . .a concept” (42-3). It incorporates such elements as practices, techniques, and ideologies. It is this component of the triadic relationship which triggers Barthes’ discussion of metalanguages (languages about languages—that is, a discourse employed to make sense of another discourse.)

http://cltrlstdies.blogspot.com/2007/09/barthes-intro-signifier-and-signified.html

The problem

Barthes uses the discussion of denotation and connotation to branch off and further explore metalanguages, those discourses employed to speak about and analyze discourses. In this model, a language (in the linguistic sense) is a first-order language, and the ensuing metalanguage is a second-order language. The role of the semiologist, then, is to decipher the first-order language through the lens of the second, but in doing so there is a danger: just as connotation served as an extension of denotation in the system above, so too can each subsequent metalanguage serve as a segue into another and another, a self-sustaining and destructive cycle. As each language rises, another takes its place, “a diachrony of metalanguages, and each science, including of course semiology, would contain the seeds of its own death, in the shape of the language destined to speak it" (93).

Deconstruction is in danger of becoming a Meta-language?

(Chain of signification)

Discourse analysis: a Meta Language?

Lee B (1997)
Talking heads: language, metalanguage, and the semiotics of subjectivity

Autonomous Spaces : Deleuze

2011-09-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the task is to reclaim autonomous space actually within the frame/subject position of and default entropy / 'other' imposed by the system (forces of textual production/reproduction ) and its stereotyping and exclusion of the 'other'... perhaps this could be called an "inter-position"?

2011-09-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

Classification/Categorisation

Listening re the Creative Constitutive - Dynamic Balance

Emergence & Constructivism as Response to Modernism

Random 'experiments' > ? (method/topic) - Experimental Texts (Denzin)

The Other (Derrida) - beyond stereotype caracature as joke/danger
c.f Constructivism & Emergence

Ideology-Hegemony

Interpellation - Subject Positions

Subject Relations

Constituative <> Reflective

Free Identification <> ReProduction

Deleuze - Systems Theory and Emergence

2011-09-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

Deleuze, Systems Theory and Emergence
http://protevi.com/john/Emergence.pdf

A Journal of Modern Critical Theory 29, 2 July 2006 19-39

Deleuze Guattari: Systems & Self-organisation

2011-09-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

Deleuze and Guattari take up the insights of dynamical systems theory, which explores the various thresholds at which material systems self-organize (that is, reduce their degrees of freedom, as in our previous example of convection currents). Deleuze and Guattari then extend the notion of self-organizing material systems—those with no need of transcendent organizing agents such as gods, leaders, capital, or subjects—to the social, linguistic, political-economic, and psychological realms. The resultant “rhizome” or de-centered network that is A Thousand Plateaus provides hints for experimentation with the more and more de-regulated flows of energy and matter, ideas and actions—and the attendant attempts at binding them—that make up the contemporary world.

Massumi 1992 and DeLanda 2003 attempt to show that Deleuze's epistemology and ontology can be brought together with the results of contemporary dynamical systems theory (popularly known as “chaos” and “complexity” theory). Bell 2006 follows up on this work. Protevi 2001 looks at the accompanying notions of hylomorphism and self-organization in the history of philosophy; Bonta and Protevi 2004 treat Deleuze and dynamic systems theory with regard to its potentials for geographical work. For other issues on Deleuze and science, see the essays in Marks 2006. Finally, Ansell Pearson 1999 brought attention to Deleuze and biology; see also Toscano 2006 in this regard.

Deleuze, Systems Theory and Emergence
http://protevi.com/john/Emergence.pdf

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Savin-Baden, Howel Major : New Approaches to qualitative Research

2011-09-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

There is nothing new about researchers thinking about their own bias on the basis of biography, or more broadly, insider/outsider status. With the growth of the interpretivist frameworks across the social sciences and cultural anthropology (notably from the postwar symbolic interactionsists associated woth the chicargo school), there was a strong acknowledgement that all researchers into human activities bought their own baggage to the research table. The first wave of interpretivsm is often called post positivism since the problem set was that of minimising subjectivity, of setting aside ones own baggage(bracketing in phenomenologgical perspectives) rather than forgoing the idea of objectivity.

Rolfe(2006: 307) has argued that early interpretivists shared with positivism the notion that there is a truth 'out there' to be got at.

For instance he writes that that faith in the move to ask an independent researcher to check his findings rests on the notions that 'catagories' or 'essences' are somehow already lodged in the datas, waiting for the objective researcher.
p9
...
Researchers should not strive to be wholly detached from their research.

To evoke an authoritative voice , the author must speak in the third person, and be physically, psychologically, and ideologically absent from the text. That lends the text an aura of omnisience. The all-knowling intepretive voice speaks from a sistant, privaliged vantage point in a detached measured tone. Foley 1998 110

p10
In qualitative research the worlds of interaction, practise and activity have been privaliged over the corporeal world, as researchers attemt to investigate the complex interrelationships of human life and contibute to human understanmding of these phenomena.

Subject positions : Expertise

2011-08-31T07:32:00.000-07:00

http://lancaster.academia.edu/RTutton/Papers/274955/Shifting_Subject_Positions_Experts_and_Lay_People_In_Public_Dialogue

Experimentation in qualitative research?

2011-08-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

One issue that has concerned me in relation to Qualitative research is the rejection of the term 'experiment' of course it can be seen to have a history of being used by the dominant discourse of 'Positivist Science'. Milgram comes to mind for example, and the military industrial complex. It has been associated with the 'controlling gaze' (Foucault) The great turning of qualitative theory is in enhancing our sensitivity, our capacity to listen, perhaps most importantly to those we define as the 'other' within and without... However when we are engaged in discourse and come to choose a question to ask are we not in choosing the question experimenting in some way?

Subject Positions

2011-08-20T02:16:00.000-07:00

Subject positions/roles can be interpellated by 'texts'/systems of knowledge.

Althusser

Gramsci

Lacal And Mouffe

Foucault

Davies and Harre

the creation and maintenance of oppositional subject positions by a 'text' can be a divisive means of control
(news international comes to mind)

Research Questions Updated

2011-08-13T03:12:00.001-07:00

Working Questions

M+? Althusser

How does capitalist ideology and interpellation (Althusser) restrict access to / frame randomness/random journeying

How can spaces for the discussion/practise of Randomness/Random journeying be protected/reclaimed?
- limited dimension

-structural focus

P M- Habermas

How does Instrumental rationality/strategic discourse and interpellation(?)colonise / the space for discussion of Randomness/Random Journeying, how could communicative discourse enable

How can spaces for the discussion/practise of Randomness/Random journeying be protected/reclaimed from the colonisation of instrumental rationality/strategic discourse?

- Some argue Habermas is a Modernist
- critical focus can be seen as negatively constructive

discourse analysis - Fairclough

Post Structural

What is the positive/negative academic discourse around randomness/random journeying
Public discourse
Subject positions, Exclusion/Binary oppositions

A concern with construction in the context of a flat plane of free space, this is based linguistic constructivism.

More dimensions are acknowledged,

+ more balanced?
+ linguistic related to
- susceptible to binary coding (complex-simple) and capital

- limited to linguistic? + this is methodological so correct

frame analysis

discourse analysis

Post Marxist - Massumi -

Emergence <> constructivism, immanence of quality re exclusive constructed quality?

How does individual choose / access potential movements of value (emancipation) (expressive flows) (Collective Earth based emergence) in the context of the capitalist dynamic (flows) of perceived affordance, and market forces/digital systems moulding roles/subject positions?

My position shifts back to one that acknowledges humanist aims / and emancipation but not in the negative binary sense some post structuralists assume... rather grounded in an earth centered source of multidimensional emergent flow.

(this needs rewriting and reducing , I may be mixing method and question in places, is Massumi related to subject)

(I recognise the need for some positive useful dynamic balance between post-structural linguistic and the focus on emancipation of critical theory )

IT Research Online Discussion

2011-08-04T10:33:00.001-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/aug/03/academic-research-digital-online-technology

Commons Journal

2011-08-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.thecommonsjournal.org/index.php/ijc/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope

Extending Rationality

2011-07-31T05:33:00.000-07:00

Frankfurt School
Marcuse
Enlightenment attempts to free us from superstition via science
Instrumental Rationality marks off one area as rational (Science) the other as irrational
Leads to binary stereotyped symbolic caricature and fear of the excluded

Instrumental rationality leads to a complex beurocracy and technologies disconnected from mission
Institutions become self serving, expert langauge groups etc.

Individual rational actions are not always socially positive, ecology and market crash

Game theory

Do we attempt to deal with complexity or become a cynic sceptic and act for individual gain.

Habermas (communicative action/discourse) and Derrida(Deconstruction) argue for extending rationality. Foucault thinks its just a power game...

Modernism-Post-Modernism McHale B

2011-07-29T02:27:00.000-07:00

"This is the distinction that I developed. Modernist fiction was preoccupied with what we know and how we know it; with the accessibility and reliability of knowledge; it explored epistemological questions. Postmodernist fiction, by contrast, explored ontological questions - questions of being rather than knowing. It asked questions like those the Fluxus artist Higgins once posed: "Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of my selves is to do it?" Obviously, the distinction was not absolute: modernist fiction also asked ontological questions alongside its epistemological questions, and postmodernist fiction continued to ask epistemological questions alongside its ontological ones. The difference was one of priority, or of dominance: in modernist fiction, epistemological questions take priority over ontological ones; in postmodernist fiction, it's the other way around. So the change-over from modernism to postmodernism isn't a matter of something absolutely new entering the picture, but of a reshuffling of the deck, a shift of dominant: what was present but "backgrounded" in modernism becomes "foregrounded" in postmodernism, and vice-versa, what was "foregrounded" in modernism becomes "backgrounded" in postmodernism."

This less than absolute distinction between the modernist and post modern, possibly enables there to be some relation between critical meta narrative and localised space, I guess this points in the direction of Fairclough

To be read as a post marxist critique of the postmodern (ref other critique from 1st essay)
not a performative machiavellian ploy ...

Institutions are built on distinctions
Anyone who utilises disctinctions makes inclusions and exclusions
The expert role acts as a filter, excluding to select a few, they get exclusive rights(via capital)
In the context of post structural theory of Barthes they are artificially(constituatively) denying any form of ubiquitous quality. Actively creating negative quality by recreation and selection of 'texts' of common source. As the expert is defining self as better than the common source. Hence incrementally the expert language groups detatch themselves from the common source, creating closed discourse communities excluding those (not in the know ) using double coding etc. These language groups defend themselves with flat plane post modernist theory (Hicks), attacking any critical theory approach to the institution by choosing to give priority to a critique of the local 'texts', recreating them negatively, compared with their critique their own institutional structural (capital/wage) effects.
This matches the instrumental rationality (neoliberal approach) where the system slowly colonises the original purpose of the institution pushing it further to the right replacing its original mission with a set of increasingly obscure techniques and language games. The technologies themselves may also recreate the texts / recode them in a way that biases perception?

One 'solution' is to abandon critique completely (but capital remains acting as a critique/filter)(Derrida) moving toi discussion of individual affect/agency
Perhaps if the critique enables mutliple perspecrtives to build a rich picture of how the system in question (a language game etc) imposes subject positions and consequent trajectories conflicts/resolutions we have something of value...(post structralist research?)

Foucault - Episteme > "Discourse"

2011-07-21T14:33:00.001-07:00

. Episteme (216)-

A grouping of statements that suggests a consistent pattern in how they function as constituents of a system of knowledge. An episteme may be a cultural code, characteristic system, structure, network, or ground of thought that governs the language, perception, values, and practices of an age.

2. Discursive formation (217)-

Foucault replaced the term "episteme" with this when he wrote The Archeology of Knowledge. Because he was not a structuralist, Foucault decided to abandon "episteme", and use a term that fit within his philosophy. This has the same meaning of "episteme".

Concerned initially with "Scientific Validity" c.f Truth Falsehood
Boundary between Qualitative and Quantitative

Foucault's style of writing has been described as "reckless, irritating and frequently unfathomable...and obscure."

2. Foucault uses deceptively ordinary words in ways that are highly specialized.

3. Foucault fails to take into account relevant bits of evidence to support the existence of a particular episteme or discursive formation.

4. Foucault ignores evidence that contradicts his thesis by overlooking the pre-nineteenth century writings of Aristotle, Locke and Vico.

5. Foucault's works has been criticized as being inconsistent.

B. Laudations

1. In his later writings, Foucault took on a more direct, down-to- earth style.

2. Foucault has been acclaimed for his writing's breadth and originality.

3. In his body of work, Foucault contributed greatly to rhetorical theory with his study of the speech act, discursive formation. and power.

http://bradley.bradley.edu/~ell/foucfft.htm

Perhaps an affect of peoples readings being constituative but there seem wildly differing views on Foucaults effects

Best and Fairclough argue his structuralism dominates to a massive extent concluding he is offering hardly anything in the way of practical agency in the context of such a deep critique

Others argue his claim that power works through individuals is not a structural consequence of enforced segmented subject positions but a type of freedom...(Refs - re technologies of the self) I am not sure this is what he meant... to think it is could be argued to be to fall into the trap of blaming the excluded for being excluded by a structure that is built on exclusion (on what theoretical foundation in post structural sense?) and benefits privilege, legitimising the reproduction of the institution. Magnifying the lack of "validity" of the other in the mind of the included.. who project enough invalidity and identity onto the infinite potential (Barthes) of the "text" excluded to validate their position as modernist judges

This is empasised by the focus on language systems as constructive...

Perhaps perfect autopoetic closed sustainable language games supporting life are possible, maybe they abound, but they can in effect become incrementally artificial limbs denying the existence of the body (organs without bodies), closed discourse groups severing their life support replacing it with an artificial metric and exclusive language

Manufacturing Consent

2011-07-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

Manufacturing consent

Chomsky Herman

Society of the Spectacle

2011-07-08T05:21:00.001-07:00

Translation

Guy Debord - Rewriting of Marxism replacing the commodity with the image.

Debord was an alcoholic who committed suicide in 1994.

He still belived in a real self and truth are accessible c.f Baudrillard
(perhaps this is source of his melancholy and escapism)

Encouraged 'Derive' as a response to the separation engendered by society of the spectacle
He redesigned it from that of the surrealists/Baudlaire as a political act

Beck : Risk Society

2011-07-08T02:48:00.000-07:00

Living in a world risk society means living with ineradicable non-knowing (World Risk Society)

Beck U

Related to Giddesn - Reflexivity - Modernity

Massumi of Creative Writing

2011-07-03T03:01:00.000-07:00

The writing tries not only to accept the risk of sprouting deviant, but to invite it. Take joy in your digressions. Because that is wherethe unexpected arises. That is the experimental aspect. If you know where you will end up when you begin, nothing has happened in the meantime. You have to be willing to surprise yourself writing things you didn’t think you thought. Letting examples burgeon requires using inattention as a writing tool. You have to let yourself get so caught up in the flow of your writing that it ceases at moments to be recognizable to you as your own. This means you have to be prepared for failure. For with inattention comes risk: of silliness, or even outbreaks of stupidity. But perhaps in order to write experimentally, you have to be willing to “affirm” even your own stupidity. Embracing one’s own stupidity is not the prevailing academic posture (at least not in the way I mean it here).

The result is not so much the negation of system as a setting of systems into motion. The desired result is a systematic openness: an open system. For the writing to continue to belong in the humanities, it must take into account and put into use already established concepts drawn for one or another humanities discipline, or better, from many all at once (philosophy, psychology, semiotics, communications, literary theory, political economy, anthropology, cultural studies ...). The important thing, once again, is that these found concepts not simply be applied. This can be done by extracting them from their usual connections to other concepts in their home system, and confronting them with the example or a detail from it. The activity of the example will transmit to the concept, more or less violently. The concept will start to deviate under the force. Let it. Then reconnect it to other concepts, drawn from other systems, until a whole new system of connection starts to form. Then ... take another example. See what happens. Follow the new growth. You end up with many buds. Incipient systems. Leave them that way. You have made a system-like composition prolonging the active power of the example. You have left your readers with a very special gift: a headache. By which I mean a problem: what in the world to do with it all. That’s their problem. That’s where their experimentation begins. Then the openness of the system will spread. If they have found what they have read compelling. Creative contagion.

Productivity and Critique : Massumi

2011-07-03T01:15:00.000-07:00

If you want to adopt a productivist approach, the techniques of critical thinking prized by the humanities are of limited value. To think productivism, you have to allow that even your own logical efforts feedback and add to reality, in some small, probably microscopic way. But still. Once you have allowed that, you have accepted that activities dedicated to thought and writing are inventive. Critical thinking disavows its own inventiveness as much as possible. Because it sees itself as uncovering something it claims was hidden or as debunking something it desires to subtract from the world, it clings to basically descriptive and justificatory modus operandi. However strenuously it might debunk concepts like “representation,” it carries on as if it mirrored something outside itself with which it had no complicity, no unmediated processual involvement, and thus could justifiably oppose. Prolonging the thought-path of movement, as suggested here, requires that techniques of negative critique be used sparingly. The balance hasto shift to affirmative methods: techniques which embrace their own inventiveness and are not afraid to own up to the fact that they add (if so meagerly) to reality. There is a certain hybris to the notion that a mere academic writer is actually inventing. But the hybris is more than tempered by the self-evident modesty of the returns. So why not hang up the academic hat of critical self-seriousness, set aside the intemperate arrogance of debunking – and enjoy? If you don’t enjoy concepts and writing, and feel that when you write you are adding something to the world, if only the enjoyment itself, and that by adding that ounce of positive experience to the world you are affirming it, celebrating its potential, tending its growth, in however small a way, however really abstractly – well, just hang it up. It is not that critique is wrong. As usual, it is not a question of right and wrong (nothing important ever is). It is a question of dosage. It is simply that when you are busy critiquing you are less busy augmenting. You are that much less fostering. There are times when debunking is necessary. But if applied in a blanket manner, adopted as a general operating principle, it is counterproductive. Foster or debunk. It’s a strategic question. Like all strategic questions, it is basically a question of timing and proportion. Nothing to do with morals or moralizing. Just pragmatic.

Massumi : Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002)

Evolutionary Constructivism - Massumi

2011-07-03T01:14:00.000-07:00

The kinds of codings, griddings, and positionings with which cultural theory has been preoccupied are no exception to the dynamic unity of feedback and forward, or double becoming. Gender, race, orientation, are what Ian Hacking calls “interactive kinds”: logicalcategories that feed back into and transform the reality they describe (and are themselves modified by it in return).ix Ideas about “cultural” or “social construction” have dead-ended because they have insisted on bracketing the nature of the process.x If you elide nature, you miss the becoming of culture, its emergence (not to mention the history of matter). You miss the continuum of interlinkage, feedforward and feedback, by which movements capture and convert each other to many ends, old, new, and innumerable. The world is in a condition of constant qualitative growth. Some kind of constructivism is required to account for the processual continuity across categorical divides, and for the reality of that qualitative growth, or ontogenesis: the fact that with every move, with every change, there is something new to the world, an added reality. The world is self-augmenting. Reality “snowballs,” as William James was fond of saying. Perhaps “productivism” would be better than constructivism because it connotes emergence. “Inventionism” wouldn’t be going too far, for even if you take nature in the narrowest sense, it has to be admitted that it is inventive in its own right. There is a word for that: evolution. There is no reason not to use the same word for the prolongation of “natural” processes of change in the emergent domain of “culture.”. Is a constructivist evolutionism conceivable? An evolutionary constructivism (chapters 4, 9)?

Inflexions - Manning Massumi

2011-07-01T05:00:00.005-07:00

http://www.senselab.ca/inflexions/

Capitalism and "Freedom" Massumi

2011-06-23T04:31:00.000-07:00

The regularities start to loosen. This loosening of normalcy is part of capitalism’s dynamic. It’s not a simple liberation. It’s capitalism’s own form of power. It’s no longer disciplinary institutional power that defines everything, it’s capitalism’s power to produce variety - because markets get saturated. Produce variety and you produce a niche market. The oddest of affective tendencies are OK - as long as they pay. Capitalism starts intensifying or diversifying affect, but only in order to extract surplus-value. It hijacks affect in order to intensify profit potential. It literally valorises affect. The capitalist logic of surplus-value production starts to take over the relational field that is also the domain of political ecology, the ethical field of resistance to identity and predictable paths. It’s very troubling and confusing, because it seems to me that there’s been a certain kind of convergence between the dynamic of capitalist power and the dynamic of resistance.

n a way the real power starts after you’ve passed, in the feed, because you’ve left a trace. Something has registered. Those registrations can be gathered to piece together a profile of your movement, or they can be compared to other people’s inputs. They can be processed en masse and systematised, synthesised. Very convenient for surveillance or crime investigation, but even more valuable for marketing. In such a fluid economy, based so much on intangibles, the most valuable thing is information on people’s patterns and tastes. The checkpoint system allows information to be gathered at every step you take. You’re providing a continuous feed, which comes back to you in advertising pushing new products, new bundlings of potential. Think of how cookies work on the internet. Every time you click a link, you’re registering your tastes and patterns, which are then processed and thrown back at you in the form of flip-up ads that try to get you to go to particular links and hopefully buy something. It’s a feedback loop, and the object is to modulate your online movement. It’s no exaggeration to say that every time you click a link you’re doing somebody else’s market research for them. You’re contributing to their profit-making abilities. Your everyday movements and leisure activities have become a form of value-producing labour. You are generating surplus-value just by going about your daily life - your very ability to move is being capitalised on. Deleuze and Guattari call this kind of capitalising on movement ‘surplus-value of flow’, and what characterises the ‘society of control’ is that the economy and the way power functions come together around the generation of this surplus-value of flow. Life movements, capital and power become one continuous operation - check, register, feed-in, processing, feedback, purchase, profit, around and around.

It becomes one big, self-propelling feedback machine. It turns into a kind of automatism, and we register collectively as individuals through the way we feed that automatism, by our participation in it, just by virtue of being alive and moving. Socially, that’s what the individual is now: a checkpoint trigger and a co-producer of surplus-values of flow. Power is now distributed. It trickles down to the most local, most partial checkpoint. The profits that get generated from that don’t necessarily trickle down, but the power does. There is no distance anymore between us, our movements and the operations of power, or between the operations of power and the forces of capitalism. One big, continuous operation. Capital-power has become operationalised. Nothing so glorious as sovereign, just operational - a new modesty of power as it becomes ubiquitous.

At any rate, the hope that might come with the feeling of potentialisation and enablement we discussed is doubled by insecurity and fear. Increasingly power functions by manipulating that affective dimension rather than dictating proper or normal behaviour from on high. So power is no longer fundamentally normative, like it was in its disciplinary forms, it’s affective. The mass media have an extremely important role to play in that. The legitimisation of political power, of state power, no longer goes through the reason of state and the correct application of governmental judgment. It goes through affective channels. For example, an American president can deploy troops overseas because it makes a population feel good about their country or feel secure, not because the leader is able to present well-honed arguments that convince the population that it is a justified use of force. So there is no longer political justification within a moral framework provided by the sovereign state. And the mass media are not mediating anymore - they become direct mechanisms of control by their ability to modulate the affective dimension.
http://www.international-festival.org/node/111

"Affect", Emergence" and "Judgement" : Massumi

2011-06-23T02:49:00.000-07:00

In my own work I use the concept of ‘affect’ as a way of talking about that margin of manoeuvrability, the ‘where we might be able to go and what we might be able to do’ in every present situation. I guess ‘affect’ is the word I use for ‘hope’. One of the reasons it’s such an important concept for me is because it explains why focusing on the next experimental step rather than the big utopian picture isn’t really settling for less. It’s not exactly going for more, either. It’s more like being right where you are - more intensely.

Affect is now much more important for understanding power, even state power narrowly defined, than concepts like ideology. Direct affect modulation takes the place of old-style ideology.

Autonomy is always connective, it’s not being apart, it’s being in, being in a situation of belonging that gives you certain degrees of freedom, or powers of becoming, powers of emergence. How many degrees of freedom there are, and where they can lead most directly, is certainly different depending on how you are socially classified - whether you are male or female, child or adult, rich or poor, employed or unemployed - but none of those conditions or definitions are boxes that completely undermine a person’s potential.

A critical perspective that tries to come to a definitive judgment on something is always in some way a failure, because it is happening at a remove from the process it’s judging. Something could have happened in the intervening time, or something barely perceptible might have been happening away from the centre of critical focus. These developments may become important later. The process of pinning down and separating out is also a weakness in judgment, because it doesn’t allow for these seeds of change, connections in the making that might not be activated or obvious at the moment. In a sense, judgmental reason is an extremely weak form of thought, precisely because it is so sure of itself. This is not to say that it shouldn’t be used. But I think it should be complemented by other practices of thought, it shouldn’t be relied on exclusively. It’s limiting if it’s the only or even the primary stance of the intellectual.

Simple Questions

2011-06-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

Why if all views are relative settle on a negative meta-narrative of conflicting group interests...?

As it is no longer a referential choice....

Why not a simple inclusive non-sectarian common source of being...?Unless there is an interest in conflict? (conflict is profitable for many in many ways)"

on the other hand, yes there may be many dimensions, from the post modern perspective, but lets acknowledge it and notice with what we have replaced... it.
as Derrida said

"What costs humanity very dearly is doubtless to believe that one can have done in history with a general essence of Man, on the pretext that it represents only a Hauptgespenst,arch-ghost, but also, what comes down to the same thing, to still believe, no doubt, in this capital ghost. " Derrida

Post-Structuralism and the Academic Project

2011-06-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

If we take a strong post-structuralist position, it seems to me the academic project is left adrift, at the mercy either capital(Derrida 1994) or a profitable segmented group based 'post-modern'pre-emptive warfare (Massumi 2007 Hicks 2006), for example any claims to be able to judge an argument fail as the reader is selection from an infinite number of interpretations the text offers (Barthes). And if we completely abandon meta narrative for exclusive closed autopoetic system of local discourse what of the inclusive commons whether physical, social, conceptual, spiritual ( does "communion" become reified onto various forms of consumption and their consumer groups eg alcohol))? what is left but the notoriously exclusive ghost of capital...? (Derrida 1994) with it's profitable sectarian disputes, and profitable control based replacements for an excluded common source of inherent, emergent harmony that exists before distinction destroys it.

I agree with those authors who see post-modernism as a dialectical step and that its critiques and insights must be synthesised with modernist thought in some way if the modernist project is to survive itself. (eg Jameson & Best)

Barthes Death of the Author

Derrida (1994) "What is Ideology" in Spectres of Marx
Hicks (2006) Postmodernism

Massumi (2007) Potential Politics

Power and Truth

2011-06-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

A half-century ago, when Science and Reason established the linkage between cigarettes and lung diseases, the tobacco industry hired actors, dressed them up as doctors, and paid them to look into television cameras and tell people that the linkage revealed in the Surgeon General's Report was not real at all. The show went on for decades, with more Americans killed each year by cigarettes than all of the U.S. soldiers killed in all of World War II.

This time, the scientific consensus is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scientific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged "unequivocal."

But wait! The good guys transgressed the rules of decorum, as evidenced in their private e-mails that were stolen and put on the Internet. The referee is all over it: Penalty! Go to your corner! And in their 3,000-page report, the scientists made some mistakes! Another penalty!

And if more of the audience is left confused about whether the climate crisis is real? Well, the show must go on. After all, it's entertainment. There are tickets to be sold, eyeballs to glue to the screen.

Part of the script for this show was leaked to The New York Times as early as 1991. In an internal document, a consortium of the largest global-warming polluters spelled out their principal strategy: "Reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact." Ever since, they have been sowing doubt even more effectively than the tobacco companies before them.

To sell their false narrative, the Polluters and Ideologues have found it essential to undermine the public's respect for Science and Reason by attacking the integrity of the climate scientists. That is why the scientists are regularly accused of falsifying evidence and exaggerating its implications in a greedy effort to win more research grants, or secretly pursuing a hidden political agenda to expand the power of government. Such slanderous insults are deeply ironic: extremist ideologues — many financed or employed by carbon polluters — accusing scientists of being greedy extremist ideologues.

After World War II, a philosopher studying the impact of organized propaganda on the quality of democratic debate wrote, "The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false."

Al Gore

AL Gore appears as a W.A.S.P..... and Thomas Paine? so setting a "tag-team" binary opposition between Science and Reason and "Polluters and Ideologues" leaves him open to being reconstructed as the Post-Modernists stereotyped villain .... this is great news for the 'Polluters and Ideologues' as they get many Feminists and various other Minorities on their 'side', and as the only way to make it through the day seem to be to hold onto a dream of some sort the rest join... as western civilisations 'real' dominant W.A.S.P.? ' the 'bus' (Gidden's Juggernaught) driven by the (republican congress) carrying the worlds children continues on its journey towards the cliff'. its multi billion pound public address system loudly denying the gravity of climate change in a family friendly way.... so though I agree with the empirical evidence about gravity and climate change more "affect" based (Massumi) argument is needed somehow, to give us hope of change as compared with simple denial) The more complex understanding and discussion of layered discourse though may bypass the majority? of a "democratic" population fed with stereotypes and dumbed down TV etc (which we cannot admit)... so Affect must be utilised by those aware of the threat somehow if there is to be hope in the present ground...whether or not it appears to be /is necessary to those 'floating in post-stuctural space'