I’m making my way through
Alexis Shotwell’s really well-written Knowing Otherwise, and I must say
I generally agree with the project: in addition to being extremely well-written
(it easily passes my “Can I read it on an airplane?” test), I think it’s
generally correct in its discussion of race, gender, and non-propositional or
“implicit” knowledges. I agree that race and gender exist, ontologically, and
work, politically-materially, as forms of “implicit knowledge”—i.e., as bodily,
affective, skill-based discourses that are either not propositional or
not-yet-propositional.
But, we do have some
fundamental differences and disagreements. Some of our differences result from
our different backgrounds or approaches. I want to work through some of those
differences and disagreements because it helps clarify what I think is valuable
about Shotwell’s project, and what is distinctive and relevant about my own project.
Some of our differences result from the backgrounds from which we approach
these issues: Shotwell is primarily and above all a philosopher (she regards as
“implicit” what is, I argue below, really what is implicit to philosophy)
whereas I (am increasingly coming to realize that I) am just as much a
musicologist as I am a philosopher. I think there are kinds of knowledges that are implicit to
philosophy but explicit in other epistemes. (E.g., experienced
musicians will explicitly know things—like whether or not a note is in
tune, how precisely to use vibratio right here, etc.—that are both skill-based
and contingently and/or ontologically non-propositional.)The other difference
lies in our theoretico-philosophical commitments, especially regarding aesthetics
and politics. Shotwell’s chapter on aesthetics draws significantly on Marx and
Marcuse—who are the objects of direct critique by my own preferred theorists,
Rancière (who critiques Althusserian-style Marxism) and Foucault (who directly
rejects Marcusean notions of power/resistance/liberation). Like these radical
liberal political theorists, who think liberalism hasn’t made due on its
promises, Shotwell argues for an expanded, revised humanism. I, on the other
hand, reject liberal humanism, its ideals of authenticity, the overcoming of
alienation, etc., and argue instead for an anti-humanist critique of
liberalism. So, while we’re in a lot of agreement about race, gender, and their
relations to non-propositional embodied knowledges, we approach this issue in
very different ways and from seriously different starting points. This
difference in trajectory means that we generally agree, but don’t completely
agree: we approach each other very closely on some points, but this approach
meets the above asymtotes (the “explicit” character of artistic practice, the
liberal humanism issue), so that our projects, while in the same general
galaxy, are in different solar systems, so to speak. So, below, I will tease
out some of our points of convergence and divergency; in doing so, I will argue
that it’s important to think about art (not just “the aesthetic”).
I guess I should also
clarify that the “project” I’m referring to is my manuscript-in-progress, “Sound
and Sensiblity: Theorizing Beyond the Visual”.
1. Implict to philosophy
I want to take issue with
Shotwell’s use of the term “implicit”. I want to emphasize that I take her intention
to be as follows: In examining “implicit” knowledges, Shotwell is trying to
complicate too-easy implicit/explicit binaries, and argue that conventionally
propositional knowledge is deeply intertwined with conventionally
non-propositional knowledge.[i] I agree with
that argument. However, I think that the way she frames her discussion
of her intended project gets her into trouble. She argues that “we understand
things that cannot be or are not spoken, and we may suspect that this form of
understanding is important…which I call ‘implicit undrestanding’” (ix). Here,
as throughout her text, Shotwell identifies her intended object of analysis as
“implicit understanding.” She defines “implicit” in terms of speakability or
visibility: “things that cannot be or are not spoken” are implicit. Though I take her as wanting to question
the speakable/unspeakable binary, Shotwell uses this distinction to define what
counts as “implicit,” and what counts as “explicit.”[ii]
“Speakable knowledge,” she argues, “should not define our knowing” (38), because
there exist “implicit,” non-propositionalized or non-propositionalizable ways
of knowing. Shotwell consistently frames implicit knowledge in terms of
speech and visibility. Here’s a list of some of the ways she does this:
·
“We are
influenced by common sense in all sorts of wordless ways” (33) “What
might be important that there be some component of people’s understanding that is
not in words?” (32)
·
“Gramsci’s
notion of common sense is appealing in part because it gives a framework for
thinking through how what is spoken hooks into what is not expressed in
words but is still known. It opens a way for thinking about how the unspeakable can be mobilized for
political ends” (32)
·
“interrogating
our unspoken conception of the world is to bring some of that conception
to the foreground. Looking at common sense…” (34)
·
“that which we could not say, or necessarily think,
before the poem. Lorde says this is ‘poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are—until the
poem—nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt’. Poetry
changes our presuppositions and background understanding…and both illuminates and forms that which was unseen“
(26). Note here the commutability between visibility (light) and speakability.
·
“They may be
primarily based in unquestioned assumptions, and therefore it may require
active work to bring a prejudice into view.
In order to see a prejudice, it must
cease to stand as a basic assumption” (16)
·
“sites where
implicit understanding’s effects and calls are particularly visible, starting from them in order to
talk about the political and
epistemic salience of implicit understanding” (xxii)
From what I can tell,
Shotwell gets this language of speech and visibility from her sources—mainly
Gramsci and Lorde. I think her sources work against her here, because Shotwell
is actually describing something more complex than what Gramsci and Lorde are.
Their rhetoric of speakability and visibility suggests a too-simple
implicit/explicit matrix, and Shotwell is actually trying to complicate this
matrix. But, to do so, I think Shotwell needs to adopt different terms,
different metaphors—those beyond the
visible and the verbal. It would be
more helpful and more productive to theorize from actually non-propositional
forms of understanding. Shotwell’s reliance on metaphors of sight and
speech force her to refer her theorization of extra-propositional understanding
always back to the propositional. Though she argues that “it is possible to
think about the implicit as a productive category—not simply a negation of
propositionality” (25), she never defines it positively—it is always
either “non-propositional” (with reference to propositional) or implicit (with
reference to explicit) knowledge. (She does use the language of “skill,”
“common sense,” and “sensuous knowledge,” but these, though positive, are still
quite abstract terms.)
I don’t think the
language/metaphorics of “speaking” and “seeing” provide that much assistance in
examining and theorizing non-propositional knowledge, because words and vision
are the two main frameworks for propositions we have.[iii]
The language of speech and sight does not help us flesh out a positive account
of implicit knowledges, or better, knowledges that are implicit to propositional
epistemes. There are plenty of knowleges that are neither verbal nor visible,
but are still quite explicit. In fact, I actually think Shotwell tends to frame
aesthetic/sensuous knowledge as non-rational and wholly non-cognitive, which
is, I think, wrong. She argues that
The form of understanding bodied forth through
aesthetic experience is epistemic—we know the world otherwise through this
sensuous knowledge, and that knowing is beyond,
beneath, and other than rational, cognitive, propositional knowledge (49;
emphasis mine).
Though it might be primarily
accessible as a skill, or in other non-verbal forms, the knowledge involved in
making and interpreting, say, Mozart’s Magic Flute or Britney Spears’ Toxic,
both pieces are actually quite logical and rational (e.g., the “grammar” of
tonal harmony). Claiming that “the ‘work ‘of cultural production and
consumption is thus mostly affective, presuppositional, and bodily” (42),
Shotwell oversimplifies the epistemic work in making and interpreting
art. Cultural production/consumption
is one of the places where the line between affective/propositional,
presuppositional/intentional, bodily/cognitive is most obviously blurred. So
while “the aesthetic” may be a sensuous form of knowing that is largely
extra-propositional, the actual making and interpreting of art more
clearly demonstrates the intermixture of propositional and extra-propositional
modes of knowledge, and more effectively complicates implicit/explicit
distinctions.
My point is this: “sensuous
knowledge” is not some mysterious, non-rational, touchy-feely, squishy-bodily
thing. Some people work very, very hard and think lots and lots about “sensuous
knowledge.” It is my experience that artists are deeply, explicitly aware
of their sensuous knowledges, even if
they do not manifest this awareness in words or images. A dancer is
explicitly aware of his or her body, its positions, movements, etc., but this
awareness likely does not take the form of words or images—in fact, “conscious”
verbal or visual awareness often breaks one’s fluency, one’s expertise, in this
non-viz/verbal awareness. Similarly, fluency in the diatonic Western scale is
not an implicit knowledge. It’s pretty explicit, especially to
practicing musicians. It may be implicit to non-experts (e.g., your average
music-consuming public) in the same way that grammar and syntax are “implicit”
in much everyday language use—I use the rules and structures without reflecting
on them. But this just means that these modes of musical or verbal organization
are practically implicit to those using them, but are not in any way “hidden”
or “invisible”—they’re easily discernible to those who take the time to examine
them. There are kinds of knowleges that are both explicit and non-propositional;
they are just not explicit to philosophy.
So, in sum, I think
Shotwell’s use of the metaphors of speech and sight don’t
adequately capture her intentions in theorizing forms of knowing that blur
traditional implicit/explicit or propositional/extra-propositional dichotomies.
Metaphors taken from these more obviously sensuous forms of
knowing—music, dance, performance—are better suited to this task because unlike
speech and sight, which are generally experienced as “propositional” ways of
thinking/expressing, music, dance, and performance more often and more
obviously blur the implicit/explicit distinction Shotwell’s work, when at
its best, attemps to critique (what she calls “heterodox” knowledge).
Before moving on, there’s
one other difficulty I have with Shotwell’s framing of “implicit”: it’s not the
form or type of knowledge that makes it “implicit”, but power that makes
something implicit. So certain types of knowledge are “implicit’ not because of
their form (skill, ontological nonpropositionality, etc.) or location (body,
habitus), but because of their situation in respect to hegemonic
power-knowledge formations. It is power (norms, hegemony) that has made
non-visible, non-verbal knowledge apparently less explicit than the
visual and the speakable. So yeah, I’m playing a Foucault card here, but I’m
playing it because I think Foucault is right (on this point at least).
SHotwell’s text does not explicitly state that it is the form that makes
something either implicit or explicit, BUT, in identifying four different forms
or types of implicit knowledge, the text does encourage the view
that certain types of knowledge are inherently, by virture of their
structure/form/composition, implicit. Further, her constant referencing of
implicit knowledge as “corporeal,” and “embodied” suggests that knowledges
located in the body are implicit, while traditionally cognitive knowledges are
“explicit”. For example, in discussing Bourdieu’s notion of habitus,
Shotwell says that: “A key aspect of Bourdieu’s account of the habitus as
embodied is the notion that it is transmitted implicitly through a pedagogy
that encodes practices in the body, thus rendering the practices it teaches
significantly inaccessible” (13).
Here, it seems that knowledges are “significantly inaccessible” because
they are “bodily.” But this is not the case: all knowledge is bodily, and we
are alble to put some of this knowledge into conscious, verbal propositions
with great facility and precision. In fact, to artists, even these
extra-propositional bodily knowledges are quite easily accessible (for example,
I can listen to the pitch and timbre of my oboe-playing, and, based on what I
hear, make adjustments in my embouchure). These aesthetic/sensuous knowledges
are not inaccessible because they’re embodied; “implicit” knowledges are
inaccessible because hegemony makes them so. The dominance of visuality and
verbality in Western philosophy makes aural and kinesthetic knowledges more
difficulty to come by—only experts have the degree of fluency in sound and
sensibility that most averagely-abled people have with the visual and the
verbal.[iv]
I’m
going to be more brief in discussing the next two points, as these are issues
on which Shotwell and I simply disagree….and that’s OK. It just shows that our
projects are different. I will argue my own position in this manuscript I’m
working on, so you can look forward to reading the full case for my view there.
For now, I’m not going to argue the difference in position, just point it out.
2. Humanism
While I take Shotwell to be
critiquing traditional liberal humanism, I read her, especially in her use of
Marx and Marcuse, as offering a radical humanism. So, for example, while she
says she “will trouble these conceptions of harmony, full humanity, and full
freedom” (49) that are used in traditional philosophical aesthetics (e.g.,
Kant), she uses Marxian aesthetics to critique traditional aesthetics’ failure
to live up to/realize these ideals, not humanism itself as a project.[v]
For Shotwell, the problem with humanism is that it has excluded women,
non-whites, queers, and a host of others from “full humanity,” and has
harmfully used this idea of “full humanity” as the only index of moral value. Thus,
the point of her critique is to “expand the human relation [traditional
aesthetics] describes” (68). In this text, one of the main elements of
Shotwell’s expanded or revised humanism is the commitment to overcoming
alienation. A just world is one which “allows people to maintain a
non-alienated individuality” (68). What is valuable about the aesthetic, aka
“sensuous knowledge,” is that
its
objectivity is not alienated. Sensuous expression is connected to—perhaps a
prerequisite for—non-alienated species-being…Sensuous knowledge and activity
marks a reversal of the estrangement produced by capital and its kind of
objectification. In this sense, the realm of sensuous ness holds tremendous
potential for working against the alienation of oppressive social
relationships” (69).
I would argue that
capitalism is not oppressive because it is alienating; rather, it’s oppressive
b/c it treats specific groups with increased susceptibility to vulnerability
and violence. But that’s a point to be argued elsewhere. For now, I just want
to establish that SHotwell thinks alienation is a bad thing. Why is it bad? For
her, alienation is bad because it brings one out of relation with oneself and
with others.[vi]
The opposite of alienation is “integration” and “intimate relation” (66). Shotwell’s
revised humanism is “not centered on the ‘human’ simply conceived, but instead
as a point in a field of interaction in which each point implies the whole”
(68). So, she rejects exclusive definitions of ‘the human,’ but still adheres
to a fundamentally humanist logic that privileges wholeness, coherence,
intimacy and integration—“each point implies the whole.”
Instead
of humanism, I prefer models of power and selfhood/agency where alienation
isn’t a loss or deficit. Such models include Afrofuturism, queer anti-humanism,
posthuman feminism. Also, while Shotwell views sensuous knwoledges as sites of integration,
my Rancierian approach treats sensuousness/the sensible as the locus of dissensus,
“disagreement,” and disaggregation.
3. Power/Liberation
Shotwell provides a
Marxist-Marcusean analysis of power and liberation. For example, she argues,
with Marcuse, that “the aesthetic…manifests a non-repressive order” (5). I’m
going to assume that Foucault’s critique of Marcuse—especially on this idea of
“repression”—is well-known. I adopt a Rancierian-Foucaultian understanding of
power and resistance. I follow
Foucault in rejecting Marcuse’s overly simplistic account of power as only or
primarily “repressive” (or alienating), and “liberation” as the main form of
resistance.[vii]
Marx and Marcuse are radical liberals, b/c they maintain liberalism’s ideals while arguing it has not
adequately yet achieved them; Foucault and Rancière are not liberals,
because they critique the fundamental assumptions about power, humanity,
indiv/society, the political function of reason/sensuousness, etc.
Sooo, I want to emphasize
that I find Shotwell’s project really interesting and valuable. We just have
some different fundamental commitments and approaches, so while we’re both
interested in the role of “the sensible” and “the aesthetic” in race, gender,
and sexuality (and, in my case, in art), our projects will in the end be
actually quite different. While Shotwell stays well within philosophy
(theorizing what is implicit to philosophy, theorizing through the visual and
the verbal) and well within humanism, I step outside philosophy (to musicology,
theorizing through sound) and well outside humanism.
[i] Shotwell clarifies that “my primary analytic attempts
to avoid a split between what we can and cannot say in a coherent sentence…I am
trying to shift the terms of a conversation about the difference between
propositional and nonpropositional knowledge in order to understand the ways
these categories are themselves inadequate” (xi).
[ii] One thing I need to consider more carefully: It’s not
the speaking, saying, or hearing of something that makes it explicit, but the
character of being expressible in language (which does not have to be spoken,
or take the form of something which could be said—ASL, Morse Code, C++,
BASIC—these are all non-spoken languages). So why frame it in “speech”?
[iii] There’s a deeper question here: why frame what is
propositionally knowable as what is visible or verbalizable? Is it because
sight and speech are the two primary forms of propositional knowledge that we
Westerners have developed? Even if speech isn’t fully reducible to
propositional knowledge (e.g., it has poetic/literary effects), and sight isn’t
exactly identitical to verbal-propositional knowledge, it could still be the
case that sight and speech are analogous enough to propositional knowledge that
they don’t really challenge or offer alternatives to it.
[iv] I also wonder if this focus on speech and sight is
the result of Shotwell’s perspective as a philosopher. It is
philosophers who primarily conceive of knowledge as propositional. It is
philosophers who frame propositional knowledge as what can be put into language
and spoken, just as it is philosophers who frame knowledge in terms of sight
and vision. I think artists and art educators might have a different
perspective on knowledge, and how to frame the implicit/explict distinction.
Before I was a philosophy major, I studied music education—I was learning how
to teach people ontologically nonpropositionalizable practical skills, like how
to sightsing, or how to play the oboe. There wasn’t this sense of “OH, this is
so odd and special b/c we can’t say it or put it into words”—these skills were,
for us, the most mundane things ever. They weren’t mysterious. They weren’t
difficult to “understand.”
[v] “Such a critique involves,” she argues, “a resistance
to human exceptionalism, a resistance to views of the world as solely a resource
for human industry, and a resistance to the easy nostalgia for pasts that
really weren’t so liberated” (69).
[vi] “Appropriation of sensuous objects, and of the self
as a sensuous object, is a human activity…an appropriation in the sense that
the world is actively brought into relation with the self, who is also
appropriated in the act of objectification—though in that case there is a kind
of self-relation…The appropriation involved in objectification supersedes the
logic of private property, where objectification is a process of alienation and
inhumanity of the self and its objects. In this case, appropriation is the
opposite of estrangement—it is an integrated, sensuous relation with the social
world that emancipates the senses from the logic of the ‘life of private
property, labour and capitalization.’ This kind of objective appropriation
situates us in intimate relation with the world and others in it” (66)
[vii] I also critique the connection between realism and
liberalism. Marcuse seeks to develop, in Shotwell’s account, a new realism.
“Marcuse’s attention to the work of demystification can be read as a kind of magical
realism, because of the alienating structures of capitalist production,
within the world as it conventionally appears the realist cannot imagine
another world. Turning into the world of the aesthetic dimension, a new
realism comes forth” (54. Marcuse is still liberal, because he still views
power as primarily repressive, and thinks we need to liberate ourselves from
that power by having a more accurate, more correct realism…not the
distortion of the performance principle. He thinks the performance principle
distorts reality; the aesthetic dimension corrects for this distortion by
liberating us from the performance principle. I, on the other hand, begin from
distortion, undoing, etc., and want to think of “the aesthetic” or “the
sensible” as departures from liberalism’s demand for realism.
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