tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post6756277033145056754..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Finishing the Universe Halfway: On Reading BaradCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-90771942018066494432013-08-04T09:52:20.098-04:002013-08-04T09:52:20.098-04:00Interesting work. The project reminds me of a boo...Interesting work. The project reminds me of a book of essays on literature and chaos theory edited by N. Katherine Hayles entitled Chaos and Order. Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04037381744745460277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-47161185388092598602013-08-02T03:04:47.397-04:002013-08-02T03:04:47.397-04:00Karl: thanks for sharing this, and I'd like to...Karl: thanks for sharing this, and I'd like to read the whole essay, of course, and look forward to doing this, but for now, I'd like to challenge you a bit on this section:<br /><br />" . . . even if we were to isolate indeterminate complementary variables within the phenomena constituting book and scholar, our epistemological interaction with the literal material of a book will not do much to it that would affect our experience of the whole complex constituting it as book. And even if we did join ourselves with an apparatus capable of being marked by the literal material of some particular book in a way we could account for objectively, it would likely not matter much for our interpretation of its text."<br /><br />A few things [just offered as food for thought]:<br /><br />*Why the assumption that things that happen on a so-called epistemological level don't also feature the same sort of entanglements and intra-action that happen on a quantum level, only now we're simply on a different level [question of scale, in other words], and: exactly what, more specifically, is this "epistemological interaction" [how would you describe its material contours, its architecture/spatiality, etc.]? I myself don't believe there is anything inherently stable about epistemology [even in terms of its so-called visibility], such that things that happen within its supposed realm are always volatile [that's physics,too, to a certain extent: radical contingency]. At least, I hope so.<br /><br />*what do you mean by "our experience of the whole complex constituting it as a book"? Obviously, any interaction between any two things affects those two things in material [and also, interpretive] ways -- again, questions of scale. Does this "whole complex" include language? Including the theoretical language we bring to our experience of reading a text, which then affects what we might see there, or not see there? Again, this is not a stable process, or one that happens in some sort of hermetically-sealed place [I know you know that, but ....]; this also raises the question of narrative, a genre within which I honestly believe almost anything can be glimpsed to be happening, as we are dealing with miniaturized worlds. Would not certain objects within narratives spring to more vibrant "life" [and "death"], as it were [possibly], under the gaze of a scholar thinking about Barad's [or anyone's] work on quantum mechanics? Is there any reason to limit, or put limits upon, any theoretical angle, which also raises the question: when you, or any of us, say that Barad's work [or quantum mechanics more generally] has *limited* usefulness in literary criticism, don't we also have to explain what we think literary criticism is FOR? In other words, limited usefulness vis-a-vis what objectives, more particularly? What if one of the objectives [for some of us] of literary scholarship is to enlarge/augment what it is possible to imagine is simply *going on* within any particular literary narrative, as way of, say, thickening one's sensual apparatuses?<br /><br />*following from what I just wrote above, how do we determine what is supposed to "matter" [all puns intended] in any interpretation of a literary text?Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-49119713862496545722013-08-01T18:26:04.387-04:002013-08-01T18:26:04.387-04:00I'm glad, Karl, that you had the confidence to...I'm glad, Karl, that you had the confidence to come out and say that, for all its wondrous beauty, something like quantum mechanics might not offer much to certain endeavors in the humanities.<br /><br />I've been struggling to come to terms with the similar disconnect between the new materialists and OOO, on the one hand, and being a theologian and student of medieval theology, on the other. I cannot (as yet) get past the fact that OOO's fundamental atheism may do more harm than good in treating of medieval religious culture, insofar as its theoretical lens would render the operative assumption of a divinity invisible.<br /><br />But I'm still working at it, specifically in the hope that perhaps, just perhaps, one could rescue Neoplatonism from its (not strictly necessary) dualism and render it, through the radical scandal of the Incarnation, into a vital materialism that also permits the existence of (omni?)potent God.<br /><br />(I'm pretty sure that we have to thoroughly jettison any Aristotelian insistence on the bright lines between categories, and especially between substance and accident.)Nathaniel M. Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01835009706332559978noreply@blogger.com