Thomas's Taylor

... If Thomas signs on --and if we decide to continue w/ this forum-- I thought it might be interesting for T to comment on his JAC essay on Taylor.

What strikes me, after the last few mess.ages that endeavor to look at differences between Derrida, Deleuze, and Taylor, is how Thomas's work takes Taylor towards the sense of SOUND.

As I mentioned, I see much more of the sonic brick dimension playing out in Deleuze's work, and the more I look at Taylor's efforts, I see how much his interest moves towards the visual arts. (-Altarity- begins w/ a reading of Derrida's -Glas- and the juxtaposition of Hegel and Rembrandt, and it concludes with a consideration of the doodling of Kierkagaard ...)

Taylor does take up w/ Madonna in -Nots-, but Thomas's essay pushes the Brian E. angle, and in some ways begins using "Taylor" to consider dimensions of "Taylor" in new ways.

Mark C. Taylor to the sonic bricks of CECIL TAYLOR, perhaps.

(...oh, and Cecil is close Cilliers, if I might continue to weave names ... :)

My Reading List

So I'm already behind, but things are starting to slow down so I should catch up soon.

Complexity and Network Summer Reading

Week One: June 6-10
(Re)-Introduction to Complexity Theory

Mark C. Taylor’s The Moment of Complexity
Rickert and Blakesley’s “Interview with Mark C. Taylor” in JAC 24.4 (2004): 805-820.

Week Two: June 13-17Complexity’s Significance

M. Mitchell Waldrop’s Complexity

Week Three: June 20-24Complex Systems & Networks

J. Stephen Lansing’s “Complex Adaptive Systems” Annual Rev. of Anthropology 32 (2003): 183-204

Steven Shaviro’s Connected: Or, What It Means to Live in the Network Society

Week Four: June 27- July 1Complexity, Rhetoric, & Composition

Thomas Rickert/David Blakesley, eds. JAC 24.4 Special Issue on Complexity (selections)
Bonnie Kyburz’s “Meaning Finds a Way: Chaos Theory and Composition” College English 66.5 (2004): 503-23
N. Katherine Hayles’ “Making the Cut: The Interplay of Narrative and System, or What Systems Theory Can’t See” Cultural Critique 30 (Spring 1995): 71-100

Holiday Break

Week Five: July 11-15Complexity & Postmodernism

Paul Cilliers’ Complexity and Postmodernism

Weeks Six and Seven: July 18-29Information, Ecology and Composition:

Bernardo Huberman’s The Laws of the Web: Patterns in the Ecology of Information
Margaret Syverson’s The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of Composition
*2 essays that I come into contact with through my reading

Week Eight: August 1-5Complexity, Cognition, Language

Antonio Damasio’s The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

Week Nine: AugustWrapping It Up?

Ulmer’s Internet Invention (here’s where I am hoping to make crossroads)

Taylor & Derrida

All,

Just trying to get through some back-reading here. The first time I read this book, I thought Taylor's take on deconstruction was a bit too hard:

[Derrida's] critique is, in the final analysis, ineffective; deconstruction changes nothing. While exposing systems and structures as incomplete and perhaps repressive, deconstruction inevitably leaves them in place. This is not merely because deconstruction involves theoretical analyses instead of practical action but also because of the specific conclusions reached by the theoretical critique. Instead of showing how totalizing structures can actually be changed, deconstruction demonstrates that the tendency to totalize can never be overcome and, thus, that repressive structures are inescapable. For Derrida and his followers, all we can do is to join in the Sisyphean struggle to undo what cannot be undone. (emphasis original 65)

Is this the case? Can we assume that deconstruction leaves structures in place if the place around them has been "illuminated"? Hmm... that might not make sense... is a metaphysical/ideological structure unchanged by my awareness of it? Wouldn't my becoming aware of its presence change its being and operation--does a system change when a part becomes aware of the whole?

Ultimately I do not feel ready to answer these questions. They remind me of the questions that arise in cultural studies, specifically those raised by Sloterdijk (spelling?): the cynicism that comes with false consciousness. Or Kristen's saying: "paralysis through analysis."

Finally I wonder if Taylor's take on Derrida doesn't in some way reflect the vibe that Geof was groovin' on:

In Taylor's terms, I think that process-topics still lend themselves to a sense of "embranchements" (175).

The sense of embranchement seems to me to be a building towards higher levels of complexity, rather than finding what is complex already in a given note.

[Geof, I wonder, isn't a single note itself a complex system of sound? How do you distinguish levels of complexity from depth?] Is Taylor still relying on a kind of structuralist notion of truth that prevents him from recognizing the significance of Derrida's perspective?

Taylor: Intro & Chapter 1

A Lacanian Cord

The first 50 pages were an intruiging read, I especially appreciated the way in which Taylor stresses the development of the modernist "grid" in terms of desire for order. This is manifest on his opening page, when he explains that

for many people, confusion and uncertainty create a desire for simplicity that leads to a futile longing to return to basic values and foundational beliefs. In today's world, however, simplicity has become an idle dream that no longer can be realized. (3)

I disagree with him that we have come to a point of no return--if the extreme polarity of recent presidential elections shows us anything, then it shows us that some people are willing to ignore a great deal to hold onto a modernist ideal that promises simplicity, order, and control. As his discussion of Le Corbusier demonstrates, the alure of the grid is almost intoxicating in its offer of precise regulation. This is where I hear echoes of Lacan & Zizek, since their writings explore the appeal of symbolic order and the extents to which the concsious mind will go to sustain the fantasy.

Taylor succintly presents the postmodern criticisms of the grid mentality and its emphasis on objective reason:

All too often rationalization and colonization seem to be inseperable. When the ideal of universality is put into practice uncritically, it can lead to a uniformity that excludes or represses everything and everyone deemed different. (30-31)

As someone used to perusing pomo texts, the "uncritically" in there startled me a bit. I actually didn't catch it until I started writing this post... complexity research does stem from the hard sciences and is still built upon the foundational belief that research and analysis can discern certifiable truths, although those "truths" are very different then the kind kin to Newtonian or even Einsteinian physics (at least, this is what I'm getting out of my reading of Mitchell Waldrop's Complexity).

So far I am really enjoying Taylor's book. As slow and boring as Waldrop's book can be at times, it prepared me for Taylor's book by giving me perspective from the Other (science) side. The most immediate application for this material in composition would be with "the process" debate. Process oriented models of composition rely too heavily on the kind of linear causality grounding Newtonian science. Complexity models demonstrate recursiveness that makes such idealistic notions of progression (first we invent, then we draft, then we revise) naive.

That's all the notes that's fit to print.