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Recent or Next, New Theories – What are they?

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23:56 / 04.04.04

i work for professor allan snyder at the centre for the mind (www.centreforthemind.com) and he is developing some really fascinating theories on how we are creative, how the brain 'does' creativity. he speculates we can enhance creativity! his work also has profound influences in how we understand mental illnesses and has implications for theories of consciousness.

professor snyder solved the math that enabled fibre optics - how would we all be reading this without him?!

this is a new C21st theory.

astro : )

15:59 / 08.04.04

Now this was a really interesting thread!

Lacan: I read the biography by Roudinescou and had some people explaining his theories at the same time and thought it was incomprehensible and more like hes trying to impress people with his learning than having anything real to say. I was also shocked with his total lack of responsibility for his own patients and his egocentricity and fixation (in my view) with himself. Not fitting in a psychiatrist, I thought. Sometimes i think that much of French philosophy is just a jargon and smarter-than-thou attitude that is cultivated in certain elite schools in Paris, and that has been picked up and made into something bigger than it is by people who get impressed with that kind of thing. But on the other hand I've only read little and think most of the texts I've read were pretty good, so I don't really know. Lets just say I got bored with it. Foucault, however, stays with me always, but I think of him as a historian.

But to return to the thread my guess (and hope, incidentally) is that up and coming stuff will be more explicitly political, take a clearer stance on political issues. Also that it will be easier to read and understand and be written in a way so as to make it possible to understand for those who aren't super-bright and had access to the best schools. Not that there will be a return to the marxism of the 60's, but that more and more writers will try to reconnect philosophy (ie "theory") to economy, science-technology and ecology, and do so without a lot of unnecessary jargon.

Henningjohnathan

18:52 / 08.04.04

Strangely I feel that the theory (or is it proven) of Emergence (the interaction of simple functions creates much more complex and unexpected behavior) will have the greatest impact on all areas of thought and life in the 21st century.

Right now, this has been tested in software applications attempting to create artificial life and intelligence and it works to an almost magical extent.

In physics there is an interesting new theory that involves the idea that the speed of light is actually slowing down as the universe ages and that may overturn any remnant of relativistic thought.

00:32 / 09.04.04

Try checking out Bruno Latour's We Have Never Been Modern. He patches together a domain described as Science Studies. Latour's interested in tracing and investigating complex networks--hybrids--that cross rigid disciplinary boundaries and the interactions between science, technology, and discourse. You'll see influences of Foucault, D & G, and a critique of post-Modernism in general. According to Latour, the Modern critical stance depends upon the "work of purification" through which we attempt to sort and categorize everything into neatly defined camps--subject/object, human/nonhuman, culture/nature, power-politics/knowledge-science. But beneath the surface of this purifying drive hybrids proliferate--complex networks of connections between natures-cultures. In order to trace the complex interactions that compromise these hybrids we need a critical stance that doesn't attempt to break up and segment these networks into isolated pieces. Latour argues we need to abandon the Modern critical stance to begin to deal with the hybrids that threaten to overwhelm us.

On that note...

10:55 / 30.04.04

This thread is a great opportunity for to exchange potentially useful readings... but I hate, hate, hate the whole "this is the fashionable theorist" malarky. Fashion in theory tends to be a way out of doing your own research, or a case of who is a specialist in what at whatever school you're at. Berlin School is big at my uni 'cos we've got an expert in Benjamin there and she's still making him amazingly relevant, yet to get to that level of reading him you'd have to spend five years with Adorno, Benjamin et al.. We also have a big Deleuzian following but I don't think anyone would care that he's out of fashion. There's too much stuff out there to really to say who the next big hitters are and who's to say you can't read D&G with Lacan and come up with something useful despite the polemics.

Personally I'm still getting loads out of Barthes and Foucault and I'm reading them in conjunction with the eminently untrendy Social Constructionists, I think I'm producing good, interesting work - who cares if it's not fashionable.

On the theory gets you a job note... If you are a dedicated follower of theory fashion you will probably be producing similar ideas to everyone else when you finish your PhD and while it might make coffee shop highbrow banter easier(not that that's unimportant) when it comes to jobs it going to be pretty hard to distinguish yourself. Why do you Zizek is doing so well at the mo? Is it because Lacan was going through an extremely unfashionable period?

03:20 / 04.05.04

No, you're right, academia is a meritocracy and the best ideas shine through entirely independent of trends and fads.

You ask, 'who cares if it's not fashionable?' Answer: you, if you ever want to get a job out of it. You point out that 'fashion' is relative to particular institutions and departments, which is obvious. But come on! Does that make it a big free love ideas-in where whatever's authentically brilliant rises to the top?

05:38 / 04.05.04

astrojax69, how does Prof. Snyder's theory compare against conceptual blending?

On that note...

10:48 / 04.05.04

DPC - yeah of course I care about getting a job, I study this stuff 'cos I love it and want to carry on professionally. I just think that the whole fashion argument (generally online) leads to dull lets bash Barthes with Deleuze or Foucault with Lacan, which kind of misses the point. There's a reason why the names that are eminent get bandied about so much and that tends to be because they have something interesting to say, that doesn't mean that they can't still be incompatible and yet equally important in different areas.

I don't think its about "big free love ideas" I just think it is about approaching whatever you're reading critically and making your own mind up about it rather than chasing the next big thing or asserting one thinker over another at a partisan level.

18:04 / 04.05.04

Snyder's work was my introduction to transcranial magnetic stimulation, as discussed elsewhere on this very site....

Disco is My Class War

02:10 / 07.05.04

Speaking of Zizek and whether anyone's put Lacan and Delueze together, check out Zizek's new book on Deleuze. I can't remember what it's called but there's a bit on fist-fucking.

Anyhow, re fashionable theory, I reckon it's all about pitching very specifically to programs, departments, etc. Ie, when I was a Cultural Studies student, during the queer theory Foucault heyday, I was under the impression that Foucault's relevance would be apparent to almost everyone who actually read him properly. Now I'm aware that a) the hatred for Foucault is older than the hills, has to do with functionalism, sociology and various people hating Althusser before Foucault (an Althusser revival, that's what I want!) and b) a lot of the time, people are responding to bad Anglo-American readings of Foucault rather than Foucault himself. The department I'm in is full of old lefties: oddly, it's much more politically 'progressive' than my old, elite university; but they're still stuck in identity politics and the need for stable categories. So, there is no fashionable theory that can be said to be universal, it's all about specificity.

On the other hand, there is a definite revival of stuff reifying 'ontology'. Which needs to be stopped. But how to theorise difference regimes of being in the body that acknowledge how deeply felt things are without talking about ontolgy? Ack.

00:47 / 08.05.04

Were you recommending Zizek's book (Organs without Bodies), or just mentioning it? I thought it was pretty lame because a) Zizek just hasn't read his Deleuze that well and makes some obvious, basic mistakes in representing D's ideas, b) all the best bits are bitten from Badiou's much better critical book on D (The Clamour of Being) and c) the whole politics thing is an attack on 'anti-globalization movements' for being Deleuzean instead of Leninist. Uh, sure.

Also, I don't have it to hand but isn't the reference to fisting perjorative?

Disco is My Class War

07:00 / 09.05.04

No recommending it, mentioning it. Of course it's lam, Zizek is alawys lame, but at least funny

And yeah, the fisting ref is pejorative. I should read the Badiou, eh.

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