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The world: textbook or work of fiction?

  
 
Cat Chant
08:10 / 15.03.04
Following up a potentially interesting discussion on Occam's razor and the conspiracy mindset between mostly Jack Fear's Righteous Wrath and Zen Memetic, starting here.

Reminded me of a quote by Gayatri Spivak I've always been very enamoured of, in response to someone suggesting that the study of literature was the province of 'irresponsible dreamers':

Everyone reads life and the world like a book. Even the so-called 'illiterate'. But especially the 'leaders' of our society, the most 'responsible' nondreamers: the politicians, the businessmen, the ones who make plans. Without the reading of the world as a book, there is no prediction, no planning, no taxes, no laws, no welfare, no war. Yet these leaders read the world in terms of rationality and averages, as if it were a textbook. The world actually writes itself with the many-leveled, unfixable intricacy and openness of a work of literature. If, through our study of literature, we can ourselves learn and teach others to read the world in the 'proper' risky way, and to act upon that lesson, perhaps we literary people would not forever be such helpless victims.

If there's anything that cultural theory (from Althusserian ideology critique and Barthesian 'mythology', which insist that ideology is at work whenever we think something is obvious or goes without saying, to deconstruction) has taught me, it's that the 'obvious' reading of a situation is often a deeply ideological and politically motivated one. On the other hand, cultural theory and conspiracy theory are less securely distinguished than one might like to believe (witness the way my supervisor winces and begs me to use someone respectable instead, whenever I tell him I'm using Valis in the final chapter of my PhD).

When and how is conspiracy theory - or seeing the world as written like literature - useful? When and how is Occam's razor - or seeing the world as written like a textbook - useful? What sorts of situations force us to choose between the two, and what other strategies of reading might we develop to deal with the complexities of this post-Marxist, post-Freudian, post-modern world?

A parable: the internal structure of the clitoris is not taught as part of the British anatomy curriculum for surgeons, so that some of the people who end up performing hysterectomies are not aware that there is a six-inch organ made of erectile and sexually crucial tissue in that area, and can't understand it when some hysterectomized women complain of lack of sexual response. Occam's scalpel sometimes mutilates some pretty important stuff.

Another parable: Nabokov's novel Pale Fire. Conspiracy theory sometimes means you fail to respond to real and deep grief on a human level, and miss the point, more or less tragically.

Hmm. This thread is probably too broad. Maybe we should stick to the example already raised in the religion thread, of trying to understand the level on which the Global War on Terrorism is operating? Or other specific examples would be welcome.
 
 
Lurid Archive
10:27 / 15.03.04
From the religion thread,

That's the conspiracy mindset in a nutshell, I think. It's a fundamentally lazy approach, it seems to me--or maybe it's meant to protect the believer: rather than wade through the tortuous and ignoble history of simple human nature--and that human nature is a condition in which you yourself share--you can ascribe all of the world's evil to some "outside" force: The Man, or The Government, or The Greys. Or The Jews. And so, in a subtle way, you let yourself off the hook.- Jack Fear

Jack puts that better than I could. Motivations and systematic forces are often not obvious, since there can be vested interests in obscuring them. That said, the conclusions one can draw after putting in the necessary tedious work tend to be, well, simple. I should qualify that. I don't have some overarching theory of why conclusions should be simple, and I'm using simple in a rather extended sense, but it matches my own experience. I think that one might argue that the very implausibility of conspiracies means that structural forces need to be uncomplicated, in a certain sense.

But perhaps I just don't buy this textbook versus literature dichotomy of politics or the world. For start, there is a whiff of the self aggrandising, when a literary academic tells you to understand the world in terms of literature. It may be a metaphor that works for you, in which case I see no harm in it, but I don't personally find it particularly helpful to promote "reading" to encompass all analysis. And second, in my textbook fashion, I don't see politicians shy away from spinning stories and providing appropriate context in order to support their policies. This isn't seeing the world as a textbook except in the sense we are seeing "textbook" as negative and "risky" literature as positive.

As for the clitoris parable...I think there is a strong case to be made that science, as every other human activity, suffers from ideological bias. When I say "strong", of course I mean "obvious". ho ho.

So at what level should TWAT be understood? On many levels, since there are many competing interests. I'm not sure I entirely understand the question, but I'd turn back to what Jack Fear said. You understanding by wading through as much information as you can, reading as much opinion as you can and filter it through your own understanding of human nature.
 
 
illmatic
10:40 / 15.03.04
Whenever someone mentions the phrase “conspiracy theory” to me, I think of the work of Robin Ramsey of Lobster magazine. (I seem to have reached a plateau in my Barb-career in that I’m essentially repeating myself, not just here but in other threads, that’s twice I’ve mentioned Ramsey in as many weeks). He differentiates between two different modes of thinking about conspiracies - the mega “conspiracy theory” which ties to together huge swathes of history into narratives where everything is the fault of one evil group x, where x = the Jews/Masons/Illumanti. He contrasts this to what we might call “parapolitcs” or “conspiracy research”. I don’t know how to define this easily but basically it’s the aiming for a realistic assessment of the activities of covert political or economic groups, with the concomitant research and documentation (something usually lacking in the former approach). This is not as secretive or conspiratorial as it might sound, either, as “conspiracies” are, in a sense, a fundamental condition of real world politics, in that every contested area will feature competing economic/social/political groups with differing agendas.

One could add that most conspiracy research seems to be characterised by long term, in depth study rather than the goldfish attention span of most of the mainstream media, and will often look at areas largely deemed taboo, ie the activities of the security services. One might say broadly add that the latter approach tends to add complexity to situations while the former simplifies. To unsubtly bludgeon some analogies out of Spivak’s lovely quote a bit (I never did master theory speak) the former essentially act as fairy stories, or fables, providing simple narratives which explain the world and provide convenient scapegoats, while the latter tends towards the complexities of the novel.

Personally, I find the meta conspiracy approach a bit exasperating. Instead of investigating the complexities of the war in Iraq by say, reading up on the Project for the New American Century and finding some evidence that Paul Wolfovitz wanted to invade Iraq many, many years ago… Nope, pick up the latest David Icke book and blame it all on the liizzzzards or some other unspecified load of bollocks. I wonder if this approach is so popular because of intellectual laziness as much as anything else?

Conspiracy theory sometimes means you fail to respond to real and deep grief on a human level, and miss the point, more or less tragically.

I say, yup, this completely happens if you’re functioning on that meta-conspiracy level. There seems to be a connection between here to using a real situation as basically fuel to a fantasy. I know lots of people – myself included at times- who enjoy conspiracy theory stuff because it’s basically wacky countercultural entertainment. “Look at this David Icke book! Its fucking mad!” Stands to reason if this is your primary reason for investigating a situation you’ll be lacking in an understanding of it’s human dimensions.

(Wrote offline before seeing Lurid's reply)
 
 
Cat Chant
10:41 / 15.03.04
there is a whiff of the self aggrandising, when a literary academic tells you to understand the world in terms of literature

Oh, it's totally self-aggrandising: that seems to me to be the declared purpose of the passage, though I'd say it's more about making a case for seeing literary studies as related to the analysis of the 'real' world and not drawing a simple (here in the sense of 'overly simple, ideological and simplistic') line between 'reality' and 'fiction' and assigning literary studies to the domain of unreality, conspiracy theory, and irrelevance. Like you say, politicians are story-spinners, and you need the skills of fiction-reading just as much as you need the skills of textbook-reading to understand them.
 
 
Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless
19:31 / 15.03.04
I think Spivak is being hopelessly scholastic in presuming that the literary text is a particularly useful paradigm for understanding real world cultural entities. I don't even think that natural language is necessarily the one way forward.
Insofar as linguistic/textual work is required and/or useful, I believe it lies within the remit of anthropology and philosophy/psychology, not criticism. I think the roots of a lot of our linguistic assumptions go deeper than the study of narrative can penetrate and that they will ultimately be traced to facts about the semantics/pragmatics of natural language, specifically to a more developed weak version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis coupled to a better understanding of language change and the epidemiology of representations. Narrative phenomena are interesting, but I believe they will ultimately turn out to be largely determined by this sort of lower level stuff.
The study of literature may be a useful adjunct to these investigations (particularly the anthropological side) but it is far from being the only tool. It's way too narrow.

When and how is conspiracy theory - or seeing the world as written like literature - useful? When and how is Occam's razor - or seeing the world as written like a textbook - useful?
Answer to both: If one is establishing or maintaining a dogma, secular or otherwise.
 
 
---
21:52 / 15.03.04
Instead of rotting the thread on religion even more i've brought what Jack Fear said into here instead of moving that thread off track again :

That's the conspiracy mindset in a nutshell, I think. It's a fundamentally lazy approach, it seems to me--or maybe it's meant to protect the believer: rather than wade through the tortuous and ignoble history of simple human nature--and that human nature is a condition in which you yourself share--you can ascribe all of the world's evil to some "outside" force: The Man, or The Government, or The Greys. Or The Jews. And so, in a subtle way, you let yourself off the hook.

I'd say that getting too deep into conspiracy theory to the point that you develop an obsession is when the laziness and letting yourself off the hook comes in, but the evidence that something is wrong is just too big for me to deny that there are conspiracies.

One thing that strikes me more than most things though is the Buddhist concept of Maya/Illusion and the fact that it's entirely caused by our own ignorance.

I actually think that we're both correct, i'd say that :

a) There are many different conspiracies all over the world, some connected, some independant of the rest.

b) They have all come about because of our own ignorance and complacency.


When and how is conspiracy theory - or seeing the world as written like literature - useful? When and how is Occam's razor - or seeing the world as written like a textbook - useful?

Being into the Kabbalah aswell i'd say that your questions are pertaining to the left and right hemispheres of the brain : literature/creative/right side, textbook/rational/left side.

As for when and how, i don't know how that could be answered in writing and would guess that the more balanced you are as a person, the better you are at knowing when to apply each perspective.
 
  
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