Current Stance Updated Sept 2011

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

Performative: Anthropoetics 6, no. 2 (Fall 2000 / Winter 2001) Performatism, or the End of Postmodernism Raoul Eshelman

"Performance in itself is, of course, not a phenomenon new or unknown. In Austin's speech-act theory it refers to a language act that does what it promises ("I now pronounce you man and wife"). In the sense of an artistic event in the modernist avant-garde, a performance foregrounds or "makes strange" the border between life and art; in the happenings and performance art of postmodernism it integrates the human body or subject into an artistic context.

The new notion of performativity serves neither to foreground nor contextualize the subject, but rather to preserve it: the subject is presented (or presents itself) as a holistic, irreducible unit that makes a binding impression on a reader or observer. This holistic incarnation of the subject can, however, only succeed when the subject does not offer a semantically differentiated surface that can be absorbed and dispersed in the surrounding context. For this reason the new subject always appears to the observer as reduced and "solid," as single- or simple-minded and in a certain sense identical with the things it stands for. This closed, simple whole acquires a potency that can almost only be defined in theological terms. For with it is created a refuge in which all those things are brought together that postmodernism and poststructuralism thought definitively dissolved: the telos, the author, belief, love, dogma and much,
much more."

(This suggests  simple fixed characters : objectivism + easy to identify with? + subject to stereotyping?)
= object orientation -reduction a return to modernism?

Knapp and Michaels, in their groundbreaking article "Against Theory" (Mitchell 1985, orig. 1982), call for the unity or "fundamental inseparability" (1985, 12) of the three basic conditions of interpretation: authorial intention, text, and reader. 

****

the hermeneutical critic plays up authorial intention,

 the deconstructivist the sign,

 the relativist the reader, *** (Position Choice of!!!)

 and so on; compare the discussion in Mitchell 1985, 13-24).

Our thesis has been that no one can reach a position outside practice, that theorists should stop trying, and that the theoretical enterprise should therefore come to an end" (1985, 30). Knapp and Michales

(Value of Theory!!)

(C.f subject acts in holistic performances ( Set roles and Consequences and hence values (Like game characters!!)