material cognition

March 29, 2006

1–2 minutes

In Forbes, Don Norman asserts the importance of "Tools That Make Us Smarter." He writes,

The power of the unaided mind is greatly exaggerated. It is "things"
that make us smart, the cognitive artifacts that allow human beings to
overcome the limitations of human memory and conscious reasoning.

And
of all the artifacts that have aided cognition, the most important is
the development of writing, or more properly, of notational systems:
number systems, writing, calendars, notational systems for mathematics,
engineering, music and dance.

Don’t expect to find much disagreement here. This assertion is key to my book: consciousness emerges with symbolic behavior, with speech and gesture (obviously formal writing systems come later). To understand cognition, the composition of thought, let alone the composition of text/media, one must think of the mind-in-context, cognition distributed through symbolic-informational networks.

To a degree it’s a notion accepted in our discipline, at least in some quarters. Cyborg theory is generally known. From Haraway to Hayles and beyond the notion of thought as shaped by technology is well recognized. Perhaps this goes further, or at least further than most folks tend to take it: here consciousness is technological.

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However, even given this acceptance, which in itself is not widespread, the implications for writing and the teaching of writing that lie within this view of consciousness remain largely unexamined. Anyway, reading Norman’s brief piece brought me back to this core issue of mine. In teaching writing, we teach the means by which civilization and modern consciousness unfolds; as such writing lies outside civilization and thought, as Blanchot and others show us.

What results from approaching writing in this way? What do students gain from engaging in such an investigation? Does it lead to the more "practical" abilities that we tend to make our priority?

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6 responses to “material cognition”

c-m

March 30, 2006 at 2:58 pm

Assuming that isn’t a rhetorical question, well, for one, we learn that the “civilized’ or administrative world ain’t all that more evolved than that which was possessed of a “primitive” mind/consciousness, particularly in the sense that even as the sophistication of the technology has increased exponentially, we’re still using it for age-old murderous urges and war games. And we’re still using writing to track and secure ownership of people/identities and property. Might it be possible to substitute “ethical” for “practical” in that last sentence?
Anyway, that thought is off the top, but more to the issue, I once recall having a conversation with someone [yes, deliberately vague here] who aptly compared certain “quarters” to the “History of Consciousness” program at Santa Cruz, and a characterization that I thought was right on the target. And if that is the case, as I think it is, composition — as I have long understood it — really doesn’t belong to literature or literary studies.
“In teaching writing, we teach the means by which civilization and modern consciousness unfolds; as such writing lies outside civilization and thought, as Blanchot and others show us.”
Foucault’s term was genealogy.

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DocMara

April 3, 2006 at 10:09 am

Actually, Nietzsche’s term was geneaology (from his book On the Genealogy of Morals).

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c-m

April 4, 2006 at 10:09 pm

Actually, I already knew that, as anyone who had read and had written several papers on “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” and cited from “Language, Counter Memory, Practice” would. Of course, at least I will grant that you wouldn’t know that.
With his work on penal, educational and mental institutions, however, Foucault lent a practical turn to Neitzche’s concept and showed directly how the untamable, Dionysian, seemingly primitive outside is perpetually coopted through institutional practices, including those of writing — that is, how life, labor and language were bent to the service or the ends of the State/”population” and if they refused to bend, they were diagnosed deviant and pathologized. Nietzche hadn’t quite taken genealogy that far, I would argue, so as to demonstrate how institutions’ very existences depended upon the continual cooption and pathologization of the “other.” Writing may lie outside of civilization but institutions do whatever they can to harness, domesticate and exploit scribal energies. And I would suggest, to follow-up on Alex’s speculative questions, engaging in such thinking is most usually regarded as counter-efficient and not very “practical” — if one wants to keep the stuffing inside the bears and the world functioning “normally.”
“On contrary, it will cultivate the details and accidents that accompany every beginning; it be scrupulously attentive to their petty malice; it will await their emergence, once unmasked, as the face of the other. .. The genelogist needs history to dispel the chimeras of the origin, somewhat in the manner of the pious philosopher who needs a doctor to exorcise the shadow of his soul.”
“‘Effective’ history differs from traditional history in being without constants. Nothing in man — not even his body — is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or for understanding other men.”

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DocMara

April 6, 2006 at 1:48 pm

But where did Nietzsche get it? If we are dispelling the “chimeras of the origin,” then the Nietzsche function has to be challenged as well. It may be elephants all the way down…or did you know that too?
I’m kidding. I really a(m).

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c-m

April 9, 2006 at 11:11 am

No, it’s tortoises all the way down.
And the economy turns on chimeras.

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c-m

April 9, 2006 at 11:59 am

Before you assume that I have never heard of “elephants all the way down” … read James Clifford.
The last post had a wink to it. As does thick description.

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Alex Reid, professor of digital rhetoric, Media & Artificial Intelligence