Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 15:44:26 -0500
Subject: Re: Chapter 7
From: "Kevin Brooks"

Hi everybody.

I'm trying to figure out how to get into the relativism debate without using my $64 phrase "epistemological antifoundationalist, ethical foundationalist." Whoops, just did. It is a short-hand way for me to talk about my relation to relativism, but let me try a more visual explanation.

Wittgenstein, who gets mentioned on 153 and 154, said that people are like river systems. The water of a river keeps flowing and changing, we are always "different" in a variety of superficial ways from day to day, but the river bank is much more stable. The banks of the river do not change radically. Of course they do change a little bit--get worn down or built up--and can on occasion get radically reconfigured (I live right by the Dike and frequently walk by the little plaque that describes the flood of 1956 and the subsequent redirecting of the Red River).

I think Mary is saying something like this:

>Other issues are less demanding: does it really matter in the scope >of eternity or in our daily lives if Moby Dick is the best American >novel? In 500 years, who will care if we chose the literature or >composition track for our MA? Acknowledging various interpretations >of Shakespeare will not affect my health or impact my soul, but >choosing a particular lifestyle, church denomination, or belief >system to pattern my life after may.

>Thus, in important, eternal matters, I am not a relativist. I believe >that some issues demand acceptance or rejection. I feel we either >jump off of the fence willingly, or we will be pushed off eventually. >I hope my conservativism is not offensive-- I don't mean to step on >any relativist toes. I simply do not have peace if I do not believe >in right and wrong. Just as I believe that a painter only paints one >masterpiece and others can only imitate it, so do I believe that >only one explanation exists for human existence on this planet.

For her, and maybe you too, Lynne, the river metaphor might not be quite right if you think your banks will never be eroded or re-configured, but I do think Wittgenstein's metaphor is really useful for helping us understand how people might both be fairly open to change and considering new ideas (epistemological antifoundationalist) but able to take a stand on fairly firm ground (ethical foundationalist). As someone quite comfortable with being a relativist (and surprisingly firm in my convictions), I do not exactly have faith in my beliefs, though. I think I have emotional/rational *reasons* for why I believe what I believe, but I wouldn't call it faith. I do not think it would be as easy as Douglas suggests for me to *be otherwise*. It is on this point that I think most people misrepresent relativism and postmodernism. They seem to forget about Foucault, forget about something as simple and powerful as the socialization people go through, forget about the powerful forces that have shaped us and continue to constrain us. I can't be anything I want to be, and everything about my personal history makes it impossible for me to be anything but an atheist. Now, something like a great flood in my future might be able to radically reconfigure my banks, my belief system, but without that, I simply couldn't start to have Faith.

Being without foundational Faith doesn't make me less firm in my beliefs, partly because I find others beliefs so horrifying that I need to resist them, and partly because I do have a contingent "faith" that some of my most cherished beliefs will make for a better world (in a fairly local sense). If, for example, I could be convinced that capitalism is the best economic system for the most people, I would be happy to relinquish my quite firm belief that it is NOT the best economic system for the majority of people. Because it is such a powerful system, however, I do what I can to improve the labor conditions within that system (see below).

I have a second metaphor for trying to explain relativism and belief that I could try out, but I'll see how this one floats.

What does being a relativist have to do with writing? with this project we are working on?

I think we can agree that the hows and the whys of writing a MVE have yet to be figured out, and I think we agree that we won't really have an "answer" by the end of the course. In other words, it would be premature, perhaps, to take a stand on these "things," this genre. A typical academic paper, however, *demands* a thesis (or so we tell our students ;)), so we are going to try out some hypertext which loosens the demands of "typical academic paper". We are going to try to represent our thought processes and our ongoing indecision or uncertainty. We could try and do that in print, but we would probably have to do something along the lines of what Y&S have done, and it might be harder to get such a product published in a print journal. I think hypertext publishers, like the people at Kairos, will be more interested in our multi-voiced, relativistic web document.

However, as Lynne said in class a few weeks ago, if you have an argument, if you are ready to take a stand, why not just go ahead and write a good old fashioned thesis-driven argument. I agree. The work I try to do on writing instruction and institutional histories will, if it is successful, change the way that NDSU and possibly other institutions administer and staff writing courses. I want to change people's minds, people's ways of thinking about things, because I believe that TAs with 2-2 loads and lecturers with 4-4 loads is ethically wrong for teachers and students. I have no plans for trying to write up that research as hypertext.

I feel myself wanting to go in many directions now, so I think I better just slip back to Mary's question about Douglas contradicting herself. The first claim about hypertext, that it would "enable its writers and readers to do things with words, with argument, with representations, far beyond anything possible in the confines of print" is not her claim. She says that was the "initial buzz." She does seem to be sympathetic with Kolb: "hypertext is both continuous and discontinuous." That seems to foreshadow her own position: hypertext might be radically relativistic (discontinuous with print traditions of objectivity), but it could also end up being the same old thing. When she says that print, in fact, has been and could be both, I think she is just trying to say that any technology--print or hypertext--is always flexible and shaped by users (she wants to avoid a description of hypertext that would fall into the tradition of "technological determinism"). Historically, however, print conventions have favored linearity and singularity. Many people like to talk about the manuscript era (600 AD - 1400s AD) as a proto-hypertextual era (illuminated manuscripts, commentary in the margins) that was superceded by the invention of print, the rise of science, and the privileging of linearity. Paper (or paper-like substances) as technology went from supporting a kind of hypertextual writing to supporting linear writing. But even as print and paper supported linearity, they never excluded the possibility of more hypertextual kinds of writing.

OK, Dayna, you are probably already seeing some of those dynamics (gendered and hierarchical) you said you were interested in seeing in this project. Male teacher who barely talks in class goes on and on about relativism, labor conditions, and the technology of print while female students wonder what they have gotten themselves into. What are you going to do with me?

Kevin

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