To Sit is a Verb: Incoherence and Contemporary Conceptual Writing

<p>This thesis reconceives the productive possibilities of incoherence in four works of contemporary conceptual writing. Despite a pervasive ‘recognition’ of incoherence in literary criticism, we find little formal theorisation of its structure. Against existing evaluative and mystifying impressions of incoherence in literary analysis, I propose a revised concept of incoherence. This is equivalent to the existence of a contradiction (A and not-A) in a work that problematises the work’s identity. I test this concept in four recent works of conceptual writing: Expeditions of a Chimæra by Oana Avasilichioaei and Erín Moure (with interruptions by Elisa Sampedrín); An Arranged Affair by Sally Alatalo; The Happy End / All Welcome by Mónica de la Torre; and Hu Fang’s Garden of Mirrored Flowers, translated by Melissa Lim. Each of these works extends the illogical permissibility of early conceptual thought, re-shaped by contemporary concerns. As a result, these works explore alternative representational possibilities inaccessible to the coherent arrangement. The work of these texts is self-reflexive—in respect to their own identity within a context. Consequently, we observe the ways in which incoherent texts map misalignments and contradictions in the literary system itself; drawing attention to associative constellations misconceived as causal and the uncertain divide of representation and real.</p>

To Sit is a Verb: Incoherence and Contemporary Conceptual Writing

<p>This thesis reconceives the productive possibilities of incoherence in four works of contemporary conceptual writing. Despite a pervasive ‘recognition’ of incoherence in literary criticism, we find little formal theorisation of its structure. Against existing evaluative and mystifying impressions of incoherence in literary analysis, I propose a revised concept of incoherence. This is equivalent to the existence of a contradiction (A and not-A) in a work that problematises the work’s identity. I test this concept in four recent works of conceptual writing: Expeditions of a Chimæra by Oana Avasilichioaei and Erín Moure (with interruptions by Elisa Sampedrín); An Arranged Affair by Sally Alatalo; The Happy End / All Welcome by Mónica de la Torre; and Hu Fang’s Garden of Mirrored Flowers, translated by Melissa Lim. Each of these works extends the illogical permissibility of early conceptual thought, re-shaped by contemporary concerns. As a result, these works explore alternative representational possibilities inaccessible to the coherent arrangement. The work of these texts is self-reflexive—in respect to their own identity within a context. Consequently, we observe the ways in which incoherent texts map misalignments and contradictions in the literary system itself; drawing attention to associative constellations misconceived as causal and the uncertain divide of representation and real.</p>

Materiality and Human Cognition

In this paper, we examine the role of materiality in human cognition. We address issues such as the ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause change in brain functions, and the spans of time required for brain functions to reorganize when interacting with material forms. We then contrast thinking through materiality with thinking about it. We discuss these in terms of their evolutionary significance and history as attested by stone tools and writing, material forms whose interaction endowed our lineage with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains.

On Tools Making Minds: an Archaeological Perspective on Human Cognitive Evolution

Using a model of cognition as extended and enactive, we examine the role of materiality in making minds as exemplified by lithics and writing, forms associated with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains. We address ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause such change, and the spans of time required for neurofunctional reorganization. We also offer three hypotheses for investigating co-influence and change in cognition and material culture.

Thought and Language

This chapter explores how language helps human beings to group, distinguish, and differentiate between things in the world around them. In other words, what is the basis of conceptual thought, and how does this relate to language capacity as a whole? On the one hand, behaviourists have argued that human beings start life as a ‘blank slate’, and our language capacity is something that we learn by exposure to the language of others. On the other, Noam Chomsky proposed that humans are born with an innate capacity for language, as shown by the ease with which children rapidly learn a wide vocabulary, but also by their remarkable capacity for linking words together in complex grammatical structures. The chapter then looks at developments in the search for a biological basis for human language. Studies suggest that language in humans involves a complex interplay between a number of different genes, FOXP2 being a key one, which affect the connections between neurons in specific parts of the brain. However, it still remains unclear whether FOXP2 gene affects neurons involved in language processing per se or those that control muscles involved in speech.

The Medicine Wheel Revisited: Reflections on Indigenization in Counseling and Education

Indigenization involves relating traditional cultures to modern methods, concepts, and science to facilitate their use by those populations. Despite attempts to indigenize both the practice of counseling and the content of educational curricula, mental health and educational deficits in Amerindian communities have remained. This article suggests indigenization in the North American context is often based on a reified view of culture that discounts naturalistic and scientific approaches, and that this dynamic inhibits progressive cultural change at institutional and community levels. A secular approach to indigenization is proposed that relates modern conceptual thought to traditional cultures in a way that is consistent with traditional constructs. The medicine wheel, traditional to North American Great Plains cultures, is applied to counseling to illustrate how concepts found in aboriginal cultures could inform modern practice with wider applications to curriculum development. Related tensions involving interpretations of aboriginal spiritualities and modernity are discussed.

Either/Or: Subjectivity, Objectivity and Value

This chapter argues that the apprehension of value is necessarily subjective, i.e. tied directly to experience rather than to processes of conceptual abstraction. Because of this, a proper appreciation of value depends on relating to the world through a distinctively contemplative stance that is different from the stance of conceptual thought. This contemplative attitude of attentive subjectivity is one that we bring to bear in the appreciation of literature, music, and art. It is because of the primacy of subjectivity in the apprehension of value that personally transformative choices cannot be approached through the rubric of rational decision theory.

History, Metaphors, Fables

This book collects the central writings by Hans Blumenberg and covers topics such as on the philosophy of language, metaphor theory, non-conceptuality, aesthetics, politics, and literary studies. The book demonstrates Blumenberg's intellectual breadth and gives an overview of his thematic and stylistic range over four decades. Blumenberg's early philosophy of technology becomes tangible, as does his critique of linguistic perfectibility and conceptual thought, his theory of history as successive concepts of reality, his anthropology, or his studies of literature. The book allows readers to discover a master thinker whose role in the German intellectual post-war scene can hardly be overestimated.