Thursday, October 04, 2007
Linda Lai second response to YY
YY and all,
Before taking up the many worthy questions that YY raised, let me first make the following THREE points:
(1) After writing and consuming history and working through many philosophical and narrative issues, my expectation for reading/writing history has become rather simple. As a reader, I want to know and learn something about the past (after working through the discursive position, rhetorical strategies and performative tactics)... As a writer, I devote myself to demonstrating the power of details to make clear a position that is defensible, can be substantiable, but only tentatively conclusive. I am, after all, and after Foucault, FOR "positive knowledge production" -- NOT positivism as in scientific realism or pure empiricism.
(2) In relation to (1), Foucault has often been misused due to a lack of full view of his works. People tend to isolate one of two of his thesis, such as discourse and power domination, and see much less of his other key point. In my use of Foucault, the following are his credentials for discursive practices (itself embodying challenge of power structure via the concrete act of revisionist historiography): problematization, genealogy (productive suspicion of "beginnings" after N), and archaeology. The lattest is the least understood. In Foucault's own historical works, "archaeology" takes up most space (pages), without which problematization and genealogy would be reduced to just another act of ideological criticism. (How often we only hear people repeating Foucault's conclusions about sexuality, body, etc. without realizing what materials and details he assmebled and how he assembled is the key.
(3) The term I would use to describe Foucault's rigor in archaeology is "ethno-methodologies," a term brought to the domain of Cultural Studies after many years of debates, especially as a result of a/ the engagement with Foucault, and b/ the rising concern for role of historiography (and here Megan Morris wrote one of the first essays on the topic). This switch is important because it facilitates the making of local knowledge. Ethno-methodologies are possible as a result of the bringing together of theoretical works and methodologies from sociology, literary studies and anthropology, especially the last one. Archaeology, genealogy grounded in "ethno-methodologies" are, to begin with,
interdisciplinary.
(4) Interdisciplinarity is not everything to me, but it is the imperative for the conception of a methodological paradigm, and I can see we can go backward. What is inter-disciplinarity is debatable, and it should be so. My approach...I prefer a more analytical method: to diagnose a situation, a problem, an object (such as a painting, or a movie), and see what different issues it embodies so as to see what disciplinary wisdom (plural) should be mobilized. I prefer to break down and further break down an issue and vocabulary from individual disciplines to the lowest possible level so as to seek possible dialogues... I am not for interdisciplinary purely as a language game although in other areas, the language game is all that there is. Lastly, inter-disciplinarity is an important axiom for breaking down a purely introverted art history paradigm that ends up only reinforcing the supremity of art. When I use the term "spatial approach" in response to interdisciplinarity, I did not mean it the way Leungpo used it... But that should be another conversation. I simply haven't got the time to make that point clear.
(5) History for the present. This certainly describes Foucault, but that only a good qualifier, not everything. Certainly, "history for the present" is the general position of New Historicism, not only Foucault's, and this position should be scrutinized for what exactly it means.
Back to YY's questions (although the above is also part of my answer):
*WHAT DO WE WANT FROM HISTORY?
I don't think there's one answer. I have pointed out what I want: to receive new details about the past with which I can learn something and yet start thinking how these details form a kind of persuasion and whether it opens up more questions for me. And if I fail to answer the latter, at least I learn something that was not already obvious or significant for me.
*WOULD ANTHROPLOGY TAKE OVER HISTORY?
This question is a bit mis-construed. Of course, a simple answer is "no" -- for when anthropology was brought in, it was not the entire system of anthropological thinking, nor its entire history, but a methodology that has itself evolved in many forms over the past century, and a particular mode of practice that many cultural studies scholars felt would open up new modes of knowledge production dominated many years by sociological and literary mode so thinking. The method in anthropology is "ethnography," but "ethno-methodologies" are more open and embracing. The core, I pointed out, remains the same: a materialist approach that is dialectical, the belief that a/ the past
can be understood and accessed, and history can be written, via what is empircal, and b/ the space for negotiation, to make sense of history is acknowledged.
*HISTORY NECESSARY? WOULD IT BE SMALLER THINGS LIKE MEMORY? Someone out there who cares for the writing up of our local history, or local art history, should just do it. Momentarily more essential...?
I have one last point to make last Saturday which I didn't have the time, it's on inventive historiography -- given the variety of narrative modes already explored, and given narrativity the final construction and performative function of history. I also have in mind what Frank said in section one, history writing as artistic practice... But this really would be a few more separate
discussion.
Best,
Linda
(Jaspar, I still have one more response to write to YY's revised version. Don't think can make it until weekend. Please also check spelling mistakes and typos for me, if found. I'm also waiting to respond to Kith with a few references.)
Before taking up the many worthy questions that YY raised, let me first make the following THREE points:
(1) After writing and consuming history and working through many philosophical and narrative issues, my expectation for reading/writing history has become rather simple. As a reader, I want to know and learn something about the past (after working through the discursive position, rhetorical strategies and performative tactics)... As a writer, I devote myself to demonstrating the power of details to make clear a position that is defensible, can be substantiable, but only tentatively conclusive. I am, after all, and after Foucault, FOR "positive knowledge production" -- NOT positivism as in scientific realism or pure empiricism.
(2) In relation to (1), Foucault has often been misused due to a lack of full view of his works. People tend to isolate one of two of his thesis, such as discourse and power domination, and see much less of his other key point. In my use of Foucault, the following are his credentials for discursive practices (itself embodying challenge of power structure via the concrete act of revisionist historiography): problematization, genealogy (productive suspicion of "beginnings" after N), and archaeology. The lattest is the least understood. In Foucault's own historical works, "archaeology" takes up most space (pages), without which problematization and genealogy would be reduced to just another act of ideological criticism. (How often we only hear people repeating Foucault's conclusions about sexuality, body, etc. without realizing what materials and details he assmebled and how he assembled is the key.
(3) The term I would use to describe Foucault's rigor in archaeology is "ethno-methodologies," a term brought to the domain of Cultural Studies after many years of debates, especially as a result of a/ the engagement with Foucault, and b/ the rising concern for role of historiography (and here Megan Morris wrote one of the first essays on the topic). This switch is important because it facilitates the making of local knowledge. Ethno-methodologies are possible as a result of the bringing together of theoretical works and methodologies from sociology, literary studies and anthropology, especially the last one. Archaeology, genealogy grounded in "ethno-methodologies" are, to begin with,
interdisciplinary.
(4) Interdisciplinarity is not everything to me, but it is the imperative for the conception of a methodological paradigm, and I can see we can go backward. What is inter-disciplinarity is debatable, and it should be so. My approach...I prefer a more analytical method: to diagnose a situation, a problem, an object (such as a painting, or a movie), and see what different issues it embodies so as to see what disciplinary wisdom (plural) should be mobilized. I prefer to break down and further break down an issue and vocabulary from individual disciplines to the lowest possible level so as to seek possible dialogues... I am not for interdisciplinary purely as a language game although in other areas, the language game is all that there is. Lastly, inter-disciplinarity is an important axiom for breaking down a purely introverted art history paradigm that ends up only reinforcing the supremity of art. When I use the term "spatial approach" in response to interdisciplinarity, I did not mean it the way Leungpo used it... But that should be another conversation. I simply haven't got the time to make that point clear.
(5) History for the present. This certainly describes Foucault, but that only a good qualifier, not everything. Certainly, "history for the present" is the general position of New Historicism, not only Foucault's, and this position should be scrutinized for what exactly it means.
Back to YY's questions (although the above is also part of my answer):
*WHAT DO WE WANT FROM HISTORY?
I don't think there's one answer. I have pointed out what I want: to receive new details about the past with which I can learn something and yet start thinking how these details form a kind of persuasion and whether it opens up more questions for me. And if I fail to answer the latter, at least I learn something that was not already obvious or significant for me.
*WOULD ANTHROPLOGY TAKE OVER HISTORY?
This question is a bit mis-construed. Of course, a simple answer is "no" -- for when anthropology was brought in, it was not the entire system of anthropological thinking, nor its entire history, but a methodology that has itself evolved in many forms over the past century, and a particular mode of practice that many cultural studies scholars felt would open up new modes of knowledge production dominated many years by sociological and literary mode so thinking. The method in anthropology is "ethnography," but "ethno-methodologies" are more open and embracing. The core, I pointed out, remains the same: a materialist approach that is dialectical, the belief that a/ the past
can be understood and accessed, and history can be written, via what is empircal, and b/ the space for negotiation, to make sense of history is acknowledged.
*HISTORY NECESSARY? WOULD IT BE SMALLER THINGS LIKE MEMORY? Someone out there who cares for the writing up of our local history, or local art history, should just do it. Momentarily more essential...?
I have one last point to make last Saturday which I didn't have the time, it's on inventive historiography -- given the variety of narrative modes already explored, and given narrativity the final construction and performative function of history. I also have in mind what Frank said in section one, history writing as artistic practice... But this really would be a few more separate
discussion.
Best,
Linda
(Jaspar, I still have one more response to write to YY's revised version. Don't think can make it until weekend. Please also check spelling mistakes and typos for me, if found. I'm also waiting to respond to Kith with a few references.)
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