Subjective Rationality
Something I've developed an interest in as of late is how a person's subjective/personal experiences can become a part of the knowledge making process (by knowledge making I mean what type of info/facts/experience are considered as credible/valuable). Modernism stresses the importance of rational, verifiable thought, and this came at the expense of not recognizing certain aspects of a person's character such as his or her emotions, his or her affective responses towards things, etc. that makes that person who he or she is. I see this modernist impulse as a shortcoming as it does not acknowledge the full context of a person's experiences and thus potentially limits the knowledge making process. In The Symbolic of Motives, I see Burke getting at or opening the door a bit for subjective/personal experience in his discussion of entelechy and mimesis. He writes that "though man, in his perfection, would be essentially rational, according to the Aristotelian scheme, there will also be characteristic ways of departing from this rationality" (10). Looking at examples of how (wo)man departs from his/her rationality, which I take to mean s/he relies on his/her subjective/personal knowledge, offers scholar an interesting point of analysis for expanding knowledge production. For example, Burke writes that "one is exhorted to be a kind all by oneself, in accordance with idealistic emphases that transform the realistic concern with role or act into a cult of 'pure' personality" (10). So, in trying to achieve the ideal or move towards an "entelechical" or ultimate end, it would be interesting to see how or whether (wo)man conforms his/her actions to his/her own subjective beliefs or conforms them to a universal, which I see as equating to a rational/objective belief because everyone else is doing that. The cult of personality is to be like everyone else; it would be irrational to be different. I'm not sure this is coming across clearly, but I'm driving at the notion of mass commodification in society. Sure, there are many examples of resistant movements on things such as YouTube, blogs, or websites, but even these resistant movements seem to conform to a form or an ideal form (resistance as commodified?). I'm not even sure how to ask my question here, but does Burke's discussion of imitation and entelechy open new grounds for seeing how the subjective/personal/irrational and the objective/rational play off of one another and determine what type of info/facts/experience are considered credible in knowledge making?
Mark, you make very
Mark, you make very interesting observations in your entry, which brought to my mind the influence of Marxism on Burke, especially through the idea of commodification. Could it be that resistance to commodification creates a different type of commodification? I was thinking about the models in Spain who proposed a different view, opposed to that of the emaciated girls. This different view becomes commodified. The subjective creates groups that "propose" an image/object that could be commodified. Do you think that this could be a characteristic of the post-industrial era in which we live?
Mark, I see what you're
Mark,
I see what you're saying about the entelechy of individualism. I think, actually, that this is a major, if not the major, appeal of American capitalism. We could say all kinds of things about where this appeal came from (from the religiously "strange" first settlers, from the idealization of the West's rugged individual, and/or, ironically, from the counterculture movement of the 60's). What seems important, however, in these postmodern days is not where it came from but where its going.
Another products to add to the list: Apple's I-everything and 7-UP. Commercials for the I-everything feature a single person rocking out, getting things done or managing their lives. But the I-line of products, is, in reality, is far from "customizable" or "creative" of self. In fact, there is a single "right" way of interacting with the software, with serious restrictions of how things can be done. Also, the I-everything line does not produce anything from the individual, but rather makes it easier to consume (with apple the only acceptable content provider).