Not naive at all! What I meant by formal language was the attempts, perhaps, to define a feeling rather than using narrative, which seems to be a good way of writing emotion. But sometimes words seem unreal or inadequate to the person trying to talk about their past life and, different from words, sometimes a photograph from the past may make something seem more real and convey different emotions from the story. Although sometimes not. But I agree totally and really should have said in my last e-mail that I think everyday stories people tell probably express the most of whatever it is we are trying to express -- feeling-thoughts. I thought performance social science was about telling stories, ordinary mundane stories, in different ways.
Ruth
Dr. Ruth Bridgens
[log in to unmask] 01225891216
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Bamberg
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: On Ambiguity and Language
Can I ask a question that may sound very (and I'm sure IS) very naïve: What is wrong with 'language'? I have the impression that most of us view language as formal and following rules - and thus in the way of (as in 'blocking') "expression" --- particularly in the way of or antagonistic to the expression of some deeper or more authentic sense of self.
Michael
Department of Psychology
Clark University
http://www.clarku.edu/~mbamberg
-----Original Message-----
From: Performative Social Science [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of pb.rb
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 7:34 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On Ambiguity
I do agree that we are talking about things that are difficult to put into words and formal sentences, maybe impossible, so we try and use other forms of expression. And I agree that everything is one, everything is part of the world... but I think we can more or less stop with our own planet and not use physical theories that we have not really studied (at least I haven't). As you say no one discipline can explain the world and humans in the world, but I don't think physics is even trying! (Of course, I may have really missed something not studying more physics) I know we are all stuck with gravity, and we would probably like a little less so we could fly, but I think, when we try to explain why we want to laugh or cry, we don't need to bring gravity or electrons or black holes into it. And we might get further from explaining what we want to other people if we do.
Ruth
Dr. Ruth Bridgens
[log in to unmask] 01225891216
----- Original Message -----
From: Halina Pytlasinska
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 11:40 AM
Subject: Re: On Ambiguity
Being the unknown
I love your writing Rakesh, it seems to capture the magic of life in a real and simple way. Traditional scientific methodology can't capture this aspect. Thank you Juan I shall look up Logiques du Mondes.
To respond to Tom: From this perspective formless silence is the foundation of what you are and yes it has no preference or predictability. To acknowledge the unknown is to become it. From this point there may be an expanded greater view of what I am than the traditional narrow view of being a separate entity in a world outside 'me'. You say this is unscientific, perhaps it is as there is no known or documented method being used here and yet scientists are coming to a similar perspective through analysis. I feel it is a perspective valid of expression and recognition. There seems to be a growing bridge between intuited sensing and scientific research. The building blocks of reality have holographic qualities that mean we are not separate from the world around us. There is no subject or object. The researcher is also the researched. It is well documented that intuitive insight is the break through of methodological enquiry, often in dreams. If something is not observable with the eye do we have to throw it into the category of religion? This seems unscientific and giving up because it is too difficult. Yet artists and theologians and scientists have open dialogues about the nature of life and seek to find a meeting place. No one is suggesting trashing science but rather pushing back the boundaries. Scientific approach must be appropriate to the field of study. We can quantify or use qualitative enquiry. Our method may be narrative, but the essence of life is beyond story so we need to push out the boundaries again.
'Every cell in our entire body enfolds the entire cosmos' To respond to Ruth, here the word everything is not vague but simply means absolutely everything is interconnected, is one. Again this is from the point of view of singularity and not duality. It is not strictly ballroom and there is no single academic discipline that can contain such an enquiry. Ruth writes that she cannot connect emotions with physics and yet they are somehow connected. May be the old familiar boxes of categorising do not help us here.
It feels Performative Arts can help us evolve into the uncertainty and not-knowing. There is a far greater intelligence than the intellect. Reason and logic are only surface enquiries. If we cannot easily translate the unknown we tend to avoid it or deny it. My project seems to shift beyond the boundaries of knowledge- sits silently unknown until there is communication like this.
It is so difficult to find the words for any of this, almost impossible and yet something energetically happens in the communication, sometimes there is resonance, sometimes not and a lot of anger usually arises in some apparent individuals, may be a poem would have been better or silence.
Best wishes,
Halina
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From: Performative Social Science [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom Wengraf
Sent: 10 April 2007 16:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On Ambiguity
I find myself both moved and perplexed by some of the 'movements' in the exchange over ambiguity. It seems to start by a notion of ambiguity of the 'perceived object' that oscillates between two clear ways of being experienced (either a vase or a pair of faces) and currently seems to be a point of 'darke Mysterie' with formless silence in which no particular way (or even two particular\ ways being oscillated between) of experiencing the universe (let alone an image on paper) is more predictable or more desirable than any other:
Every little piece of knowing emerges to fall back again into the great unknown. I like Jamie Sands comment that 'Great Mystery doesn't need to be solved'. Life is free fall, the infinite pack of cards thrown up into the air. There is no knowing where they will land (Halina Pytlasinska).
From my point of view, the attempt at better knowing (or less ignorance) that is embodied in the scientific project and the project of science has come round to being trashed in the name of what feels like an artistic ecstasy (quite legitimate as such) performing as if it were a social science being performed.
A mode of work, it seems to me, can only claim to be a (social or whatever) science if it attempts to improve understanding and generate better knowing. This may certainly involve the non-hasty pursuit of uncertainty (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), sustained scepticism about 'claims to certain knowledge' (W.R. Bion and John Keats), but it does not mutate into the celebration of mystery as a good in itself. It certainly may attempt to render the familiar strange (anthropologists working on their own society) but it does so in conjunction with rendering the strange familiar or at least capable of being made sense of. As a tactic, confounding commonsense understandings by rendering the all-too-familiar as 'mysterious' is perfectly legitimate and a powerful tool for advancing (eventual) understanding; to make the goal of one's activity the celebration of mystery does not seem to be part of an activity hoping to pass as 'science': it may be crucial to art and religion, but that's another (however possibly more valuable) story.
Best wishes for the struggle against mystification and a tolerance of mystery
Tom
24a PrincesAvenue
Muswell Hill
London N10 3 LR
UK
020-8883-9297
For a free copy of the current 'Short Guide to BNIM (biographical narrative interpretive method) research interviewing', please send me details of your institutional affiliation and for what research or teaching purpose you might wish to use BNIM. I'll mail you a copy right back.
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From: Performative Social Science [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John J. Guiney Yallop
Sent: 10 April 2007 13:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On Ambiguity
Halina writes "we are a universe of strings playing the manifest world into being" and that we are "also multi-verses to each other."
Beautiful.
(Sometimes the performative calls forth one-word responses -- sometimes silence.)
John
John J. Guiney Yallop
PhD Candidate in Educational Studies
Faculty of Education
The University of Western Ontario
Website: http://publish.edu.uwo.ca/john.guiney%20yallop/
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