Comments on: The tyranny of the practical mind… http://www.craigbellamy.net/2009/04/13/the-tyranny-of-the-practical-mind/ digital humanities: melbourne australia Tue, 14 Jun 2011 22:22:42 +0000 hourly 1 By: cbellamy http://www.craigbellamy.net/2009/04/13/the-tyranny-of-the-practical-mind/comment-page-1/#comment-517316 cbellamy Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:38:49 +0000 http://www.craigbellamy.net/?p=1343#comment-517316 'Glad to have escaped the trap, panting with relief, he again starts talking with animation, haranguing and crushing us with the concrete in any form..." RK ‘Glad to have escaped the trap, panting with relief, he again starts talking with animation, haranguing and crushing us with the concrete in any form…” RK

]]> By: Ariel http://www.craigbellamy.net/2009/04/13/the-tyranny-of-the-practical-mind/comment-page-1/#comment-517312 Ariel Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:43:18 +0000 http://www.craigbellamy.net/?p=1343#comment-517312 What?? What??

]]> By: cbellamy http://www.craigbellamy.net/2009/04/13/the-tyranny-of-the-practical-mind/comment-page-1/#comment-517308 cbellamy Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:48:12 +0000 http://www.craigbellamy.net/?p=1343#comment-517308 Excellent! I was hoping someone would look up and read this quote (especially considering I didn't leave a page number). Well done! And I have glad that the author has read it and completed it with their own extension and rendering. Still, the European empiricist will go to Africa to prove that there are Africans in Africa; over and over and over again. Africans already know they they live there; long before they were mapped, counted, observed, taxonimised, and schematisided within the great European mind museum. Excellent! I was hoping someone would look up and read this quote (especially considering I didn’t leave a page number). Well done! And I have glad that the author has read it and completed it with their own extension and rendering.

Still, the European empiricist will go to Africa to prove that there are Africans in Africa; over and over and over again. Africans already know they they live there; long before they were mapped, counted, observed, taxonimised, and schematisided within the great European mind museum.

]]> By: Ariel http://www.craigbellamy.net/2009/04/13/the-tyranny-of-the-practical-mind/comment-page-1/#comment-517306 Ariel Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:20:47 +0000 http://www.craigbellamy.net/?p=1343#comment-517306 “For these people the ambiguous has become an asylum, a hideout, salvation. Cedar–well, yes, that’s something ambiguous; so is asphalt, with its myriad separate pebbles. You can speak out about the ambiguous, express yourself as freely as you like, even more freely than about the concrete. The great thing about the ambiguous is that it has its own clearly demarcated armed frontiers with warning bells along them. When a mind immersed in the ambiguous begins to approach that border, the bells warn that just beyond lies the field of the concrete: treacherous general ideas, undesirable ideas, and synthesis. At the sound of this signal the cautious mind recoils and dives back into ambiguity. We can see the whole process in the face of our interlocutor. He might be going along, talking in the most lively of ways, quoting Hegel, unlikely metaphors, societies’ impenetrable mechanisms, or anything else that, lacking empirical import, can support just about anything. We can see how firmly he is anchored in the ambiguous, like a rider in the saddle of a black horse that sometimes is white. Then we ask: ‘That’s all well and good, but why are people, in some way, shall we say, evasive to the point of being plain stupid?’ At this point we can see how his face changes. The alarm bells have gone off: Attention! You are about to cross the border of the ambiguous! He looks desperately for a way out—which is, of course, to retreat back into the ambiguous: ‘evasiveness is part of the economy of narrativity’”. “For these people the ambiguous has become an asylum, a hideout, salvation. Cedar–well, yes, that’s something ambiguous; so is asphalt, with its myriad separate pebbles. You can speak out about the ambiguous, express yourself as freely as you like, even more freely than about the concrete. The great thing about the ambiguous is that it has its own clearly demarcated armed frontiers with warning bells along them. When a mind immersed in the ambiguous begins to approach that border, the bells warn that just beyond lies the field of the concrete: treacherous general ideas, undesirable ideas, and synthesis. At the sound of this signal the cautious mind recoils and dives back into ambiguity. We can see the whole process in the face of our interlocutor. He might be going along, talking in the most lively of ways, quoting Hegel, unlikely metaphors, societies’ impenetrable mechanisms, or anything else that, lacking empirical import, can support just about anything. We can see how firmly he is anchored in the ambiguous, like a rider in the saddle of a black horse that sometimes is white. Then we ask: ‘That’s all well and good, but why are people, in some way, shall we say, evasive to the point of being plain stupid?’ At this point we can see how his face changes. The alarm bells have gone off: Attention! You are about to cross the border of the ambiguous! He looks desperately for a way out—which is, of course, to retreat back into the ambiguous: ‘evasiveness is part of the economy of narrativity’”.

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