methodology and miscellany

Several years ago, as I was considering PhD work, I spoke with some of my professors. They told me it would be difficult. They said it would be hard to get in. They warned that funding could be hard to come by. They claimed I might not be able to find suitable employment when I was finished. No problem. I’m used to taking long shots. Interestingly, they did not tell me that the purpose of PhD work was to train me to become a researcher. Now that might have deterred me.

Fast forward to last semester. I’m in Bill H-D’s class and I’m supposed to discuss the methodological framework I’m using to approach an assignment. What? I have an English lit undergraduate degree and a master’s in writing with a concentration in rhetoric. I have no idea what the heck he was asking me to do. After many discussions with my bff Melanie, and a trip or two to the Writing Center, I kinda figured it out. Kinda.

This semester, I’m taking 877 with John Monberg, and thankfully, some things are starting to click. Like this part of Dewey’s chapter one:

“But the difference between facts which are what they are independent of human desire and endeavor and facts which are to some extent what they are because of human interest and purpose, and which alter with alteration in the latter, cannot be got rid of by any methodology. The more sincerely we appeal to facts, the greater is the importance of the distinction between facts which are conditioned by human activity. In the degree which we ignore this difference, social science becomes pseudo-science” (p 7).

Nice. So Dewey encourages us to acknowledge that the ideas and concepts we bring to the table affect how we see things. “Fact” may not, indeed be fact. It might be constructed. Interesting...and ridiculously verschränkung. And speaking of verschränkung, this whole idea seems like quantum entanglement to me…

A few other comments:

I wonder what those in disability studies would make of this quote. If we’re lucky, an up and coming name in disability studies will comment on this, as I’ve invited her to follow this blog: “For ideas belong to human beings who have bodies, and there is no separation between the structures and processes of the part of the body that entertains the ideas and the part that performs acts” (p 8).

I still don’t quite get how “the taking of causal agency instead of consequences as the heart of the problem” is “a root of shared error” ( p19-20). Can someone break that down for me? It comes up again and again… (“By thinking still in terms of causal forces, the conclusion has been drawn from this fact that the state, the public, is a fiction, a mask for private desires for power and position” p 21.) I’m not quite sure what the causal forces are…

I LOVE this quote: “The planets in a constellation would form a community if they were aware of the connections of the activities of each with those of the others and could use this knowledge to direct behavior” (25). I recently had a conversation with a friend who is an amateur astronomer about the nebulous in the Orion constellation, and now I like to think of that nebulus as a community within the Orion community. This makes me wonder about the definition of community. Dewey seems to suggest that a group of people who are “aware of the connections of the activities of each with those of the others and [can] use tat knowledge to direct behavior” is (or could be?) a community. Interesting…but that would mean that there is no real decision to become community…that proximity and awareness are the requirements. That seems too simple…