Monday, August 10, 2020 - 2:44am
- Do you have more trouble articulating your frame (social theoretical questions) or object?
- Do you tend to project-hop or to stick to a project, and what explains this?
- I tend to stick to a project. Even though I am naturally interested in multiple objects or themes, I usually find a lot of pleasure in following and learning a lot about one of them and be able to connect it to other ideas, experiences or learnings.
- Do you tend to be more interested in internal dynamics, or external determinations? In the terms laid out by Keller, do you tend to focus so intently on the object of your concern that context falls away (i.e. are you obsessive compulsive, rather than paranoid)? Is your desire to name, specify and control your object? Is your desire is for figure, its ground your annoyance? Or are you paranoid, context being your focus and obsession? All is signal. Only begrudgingly will you admit that something is noise, outside the scope of your project? Figure is hard to come by. Its ground has captured your attention.
- I tend to be interested mostly in the external determinations, although I’d say there is always a co-existence of both approaches. In terms of Keller, I’d say I’m more of a paranoid. I have had an experience trying to name, specify and control an object —particularly a concept¾ and failing miserably. And it has been a wonderful experience as I learned much more when I accepted its ambiguity and its nature as part of it and part of myself. So, all those times when I couldn’t control it, it was acting in a way it was needed to act. I believe I have learned to co-exist and accompany more than to domesticate and control. I rather learn about how we relate to the object and how the object affects and adapt to us. Thus, I might fall into that idea that ‘all is signal’.
- What do you do with unusual or counter examples? Are you drawn to “the deviant,” or rather repulsed by it?
- Everytime I find something unusual or a counter-example I am drawn to it. I kind of have the feeling that there’s an unexplored way there, that there is something more that I can learn.
- Do you tend to over-impose logics on the world, or to resist the construction of coherent narratives?
- Lately I have had the feeling that most of the logics, strong concepts and theories do not ultimately help me understand the world in a better way —they have proved to be useful, but I believe that they are even more useful when one is able to go further, to put them to test.
- Do you tend to over-generalize, or to hold back from overarching argument?
- I tend to hold back from overarching arguments.
- Do you like to read interpretations different than your own, or do you tend to feel scooped or intimidated by them?
- I kind of feel intimidated, but I like to read them. The more I reach to other ways of thinking, the more I get to understand how I think and why.
- Do you tend to change an argument as you flesh it out, or do you tend to make the argument work, no matter what?
- I change arguments constantly, every time I realize that I am wrong, or that other approach is better. That being said, changing big or main arguments in a project is a hard process. It is not always easy to digest. But I find that it is always a great decision to go with the flow and let the object guide you.
- Do you tend to think in terms of “this is kind of like” (metaphorically)? Do you hold to examples that “say it all,” leveraging metonymic thinking?
- Do you like gaming understanding in this way? Does it frustrate you that your answers often don’t fit easily on either side of the binaries set up by the questions? (Jakobson suggests that over attachment to a simple binary scheme is a “continuity disorder.”)
- I do feel uncomfortable when facing closed binaries. I feel that the different nuances are not being taken into account.
