Some
opening remarks delivered at the session: AMaking meaning together,@ at the
International Workshop Conference: AIt=s a
Relational World,@ University of Warwick, 7th-9th March, 2001.
>SEEING
THE FACE= AND >HEARING THE VOICE= OF
THE CONFERENCE
John Shotter
AWe must do
away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.
[For] these are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by
looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us
recognize those workings: in spite of an urge to misunderstand them@ (1953,
no.109).
A(meaning
is a physiognomy)@ (1953, no.568).
If we take Wittgenstein=s remark quoted above
seriously, what becomes of our task, in trying to make meaning together at the
end of this conference? Of trying to capture the conference=s meaning?
What is it to >look into the workings of our language= in the way that Wittgenstein
means?
Rather than seeking a knowledge
of the structure of the conference as a passive object of thought, which we
must then >interpret= as to its meaning in practical action for us, our task is, I suggest,
to try to make the conference=s >being=, as an
active, >living agent= in our lives, >visibly present= to us, so to speak. If we can do that, then, just as we can keep
returning to a major character in a novel who >lives on= within us
long after we have finished reading the book, and who like a good friend
responds to our bewilderments and disquiets with offers of guidance and
orientation, so we might be able to find the >living being= of the
conference helpful to us in the same way. We will be able to >hear= what its >voice= calls on
us to do, to >see= the expressions on its >face= to which
we might feel responsive B the expressions of order and command, of invitation and encouragement,
of reassurance and support, etc.; as well as of pained disapproval or
celebratory affirmation, of bewilderment or disorientation, etc. B informing
us of both our current relations to our circumstances (our situation) as well
as of the value of our responses to them (the anticipated meaning of our
actions). We pursue all this with the overall aim of us ultimately coming to
know our >way around= inside its >workings=, to apply them to current problems before us in our consulting
activities.
Until very recently, two major
themes in Western philosophy have dominated our attempts to understand
ourselves and our surroundings, to understand the supposed >problem=
situations we confront:
S
that
to understand something is to have a view of it, a >correct= view in
the sense that others can find no ways in which to criticize it;
S
where
such a view is to be arrived at by argument and debate, with the aim of
eliminating any errors that there may be within it.
However, as children, we could
not possibly have developed our first, ordinary, everyday way of understanding
each other and the world around us B as the little Danes, Russians,
Americans, Germans, English, Chinese, Indians, etc. here today B in that
way, i.e., by making claims and using continuous argument and debate to
establish which might be effectively implemented. Imagine shared activities with
children involving, say, talk of sofas, settees, couches, day beds, Ottomans,
divans, chaise longues, love seats, Chesterfields, etc. We do not hear them
continually arguing with their parents to demand unambiguous talk in this
sphere: ALook Dad, which is it, a sofa or settee, you are just not being clear!@ Somehow,
in the middle of all this nuance and ambiguity, subtlety and trivial detail,
children mostly learn to navigate an unconfused path through their daily
dealings with their parents, to sit in certain designated places, to find a toy
behind the indicated piece of furniture, and so on.
It is not through criticism and
debate that our first understandings emerge; they develop in quite some other
way. We only develop as arguers and debaters, as theorists B as people
able to formulate >views= of the nature of the world (and the others) around us, and to argue for
them (and against others), in ways that the others around us can understand and
respond to B later in life, often after a special training in an academic
institution of some kind, whether in just a grade school or later in a college
of higher education.
If we are interested in real
social change, a change at the very heart of our being, a change B to put it
simply for the moment, not just in the >content= but in
the >style= of our minds, then as debaters and arguers, we arrive on the scene too
late, and then look in the wrong direction, with the wrong attitude:
S
too
late, because we take the >basic elements= in terms of which we must work and conduct our arguments to be already
fixed, already determined for us by a past group of academically approved
scholars,
S
and
in the wrong direction, because we look back toward supposed already existing
actualities, rather than forward toward possibilities,
S
with
the wrong attitude, because we seek a static picture, a theoretical
representation, of a phenomenon, rather than a living sense of it as an active
agency in our lives.
This is not to dismiss the importance of scholarly
work in the academies. For clearly, in arising out of and playing back into the
whole flow of our own human activities, all the attempts to represent it as
exhibiting crucial this or crucially that order or organization,
has exerted a tremendous influence both on what the structure of that flow is
today, and on the openings still to be found within it for its further
structuring. Such work has helped us >notice= features
of our surroundings that we might not otherwise have noticed. But it is to deny
work of that kind, a >foundational= role. It leaves us in our being, fundamentally unchanged.
What characterizes
Wittgenstein, and the whole group of philosophers to whom I see him as related B Vico,
Vygotsky, Voloshinov, Bakhtin, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger B is that
they all return us to what we might call Athe primordial.@ Vico
(1968), for instance, talks of Athe conceit of scholars,@ and
suggests that for the purposes of his inquiries into the origins of our civil
institutions, Awe must reckon as if there were no books in the world" (para. 330).
Wittgenstein (1980) puts it simply as a matter of: AWhen you
are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home
there@ (CV, 1980, p.65). AIt is only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you
can solve their problems@ (CV, 1980, p.75).
This means, I take it, that we
must approach the subject matter of our inquiries in a pre-scholarly,
pre-intellectual way, accepting that we do not already possess the basic categories
in terms of which to make sense of things. In other words, we must attempt to
work out from within our ordinary, everyday, spontaneous talk entwined
activities, and try to be responsive to whatever they are responsive to. To
talk of action and reflection, of perception and memory, of attention and
intention, of seeing and speaking, etc., as all already distinct and separate
mental functions, as all connected with each other in a certain, already known
of way, and as all already well-known to us as the basic instruments in terms
of which we must conduct our intellectual inquiries, is to foreordain or
predetermine their results. We need to re-discover, from within our ordinary,
daily, spontaneous activities, in which we talk of >seeing= and >speaking=, some of
the rich, living, responsively related activities, from out of which such
functions B as we now perceive and talk of them as being B have
emerged.
We must, says Wittgenstein
(1953), Alet the use of words teach you their meaning@ (p.220),
and in so doing, we can perhaps also form the new instruments (methods) we need
to understand our interrogation of ourselves, our linguistically entwined
activities.
In our task of becoming aware
of the >being of the conference= in our actions now, of its >voice=, its >face=, its >physiognomy=, we must
begin, then, like a child begins, reliant on our living, spontaneous
responsiveness to the multiplicity of events occurring around us B and work
outward from within that unceasing involvement. And just like our two eyes
combine to give us, not an averaged 2-D view (which would be blurred, of
course), but a more clear view in depth (in 3-D) B for after
all, although each eye is differently positioned, as they both move over the
field before them, they each see the same connections and relations with
slight variations B so we can dialogically combine into Aa plurality of independent
unmerged voices and consciousnesses... combine but are not merged in the unity
of the event@ (Bakhtin, 1986, p.6), i.e., they combine to give us a
dialogically-structured, living truth in depth. It is this that we seeking in
our attempts to render the >being= of the
conference as >living agent= in our lives >visibly present= to us, to >hear= what its >voice= calls on us to do, to >see= the responsive
expressions on its >face=, the ways in which >it= can live
us as much as we have lived it.
Hence, the two kinds of
questions I asked:
S
1)
First: AWill you please relate to us an event that occurred in the conference
that you feel is so memorable you will carry it away with you and draw on it
for some time to come, an event which >struck= you.@ (Please
express the event in terms of its concrete details, the voices, their actual
words, the unfolding drama of the event, why it mattered to you...) Six, seven,
eight, or so such relatings from different places, events, times...
S
2)
Then: AWhat responses, resonances, here, now, do others have to the expressions
you have heard? What connections do you make, do you have similar examples to
relate, are there gaps or absences unexpressed?@
It is in a dialogue of this kind, in which everything
said is responsively related, both to mattering events in the conference, and
to people=s utterances in the forum, that there is a chance B perhaps
only a chance* B of the >face= of the conference beginning to show itself. (*There is a >negative= side, so
to speak, of Wittgenstein=s work, to do with all the compulsions, urges, taken-for-granted desires
and needs, into which we have been trained in our academic and professional
lives, which makes it difficult for us to move back from all our academic and
professional training, thus to draw on our spontaneous responsiveness to the
present moment, and not to impose on our reflections intellectually developed
frameworks.)
References:
Bakhtin, M.M.
(1984) Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Edited and trans. by Caryl
Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Vico, G. (1968) The
New Science of Giambattista Vico. Ed. and trans. by T.G. Bergin and M.H.
Fisch. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Wittgenstein, L.
(1980) Culture and Value, introduction by G. Von Wright, and translated
by P. Winch. Oxford: Blackwell (CV).