Only an expert can see there’s a problem
And see the problem is half the problem
And only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem
Laurie Anderson – “Only an Expert“
Having recently read James Williams’ most recent blog post, another excellent post as usual (this one is on Deleuze’s Timed Logic), I was inspired to resurrect my own blog from neglect. This post also reminded me of Laurie Anderson. Although I was a big fan of her early work (U.S.A. Live and Big Science), I hadn’t followed her recently, and hadn’t heard her song, “Only an Expert,” until James mentioned it in his post. It is particularly relevant given the problems in the world, but more importantly given the problem of how to deal with problems, of how to identify, address, or work with problems. Laurie Anderson notes the challenge of needing experts to identify problems but also using experts as a cover to ignore problems right before us – “The person who’s part of the 60% of the U.S. population / 1.3 weeks away, 1.3 paychecks away from a shelter / In other words a person with a problem.” This is an issue I take up in two books I recently finished, and these books are also why I have not posted in a couple years or more. I’ve been putting all of my writing energies into these books. They are both on the nature of problems, drawing from Deleuze, Plato, and the existential tradition, among many other people. The first, An Inquiry into Analytic-Continental Metaphysics, develops a metaphysics of problems to tackle some central problems in metaphysics–the problem of the new, the problem of the one and many, the problem of relations, and the problem of the new. I draw indiscriminately from both analytic and continental philosophers as I develop the arguments in support of the notion of problematic Ideas. The second book, Towards a Critical Existentialism, applies the metaphysics of problems to issues in social and political thought, showing how existentialism is relevant to thinking through the nature of problems.
In the posts I’ll be working on here I’ll lay out some of the arguments from my two books by plugging them in to what I’m reading at the moment. I may also just throw out new thoughts and problems that may or may not get legs. These will be rough drafts of ideas, incipient problems, or my digressions and impressions as Eric Schliesser might say, that I note along my intellectual path. Next up will be a post on a book I’m reading recommended by John Protevi – Habeus Viscus, by Alexander Weheliye. Weheliye adopts Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblages and explores what he calls racializing assemblages. Along the way there are some important criticisms of Agamben and Foucault, and their argument also has resonance with the manner in which I understand the nature of problems. I’ll spend the next few posts thinking about race and problems.
3 Comments
dmf · August 25, 2021 at 7:29 pm
sounds good, imagine you’ve seen this but if not:
https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/view/3202
“This article explicates a valuable but undernoticed point of contact between John Dewey and Michel Foucault. Both agreed that thinking arose in the context of problems such that the work of thought for both proceeds by way of working through and working over problems. Both affirmed that thinking arose in problematic situations; that it was about clarifying those situations, and that ultimately it was directed towards achieving a degree of resolution of what was problematic in the situation. Both agreed that thinking—or inquiry—was not fundamentally about the representations of a situation; either those produced by a contemporary thinker or as an exercise directed at historical materials. Both agreed that a history of ideas as autonomous entities, distorted not only the process of thinking as a practice, but also the reasons for which it had been engaged in, often with a certain seriousness and urgency, the first place: that is to say, such approaches covered over the stakes. Both agreed that the stakes involved something experiential and entailed a form of logic (or in Foucault’s later vocabulary a mode of ‘veridiction’), in which the thinker could not help but be involved.”
Jeffrey Bell · August 25, 2021 at 8:12 pm
Thanks for this Dirk. Nice to see your comment. I had not actually come across that article, though familiar with some of Rabinow’s other writings on Foucault. I probably didn’t come across this piece since I’ve not focussed on Foucault or Dewey in my most recent work. I will definitely read it now, so thank you.
dmf · August 25, 2021 at 10:28 pm
my pleasure Jeffrey, if you do get a chance to check it out I’d be interested in yer take on it, this also might fit in with your reading on philosophical anthropology & assemblages:
https://thecontemporary.sites.stanford.edu/paul-rabinow-contemporary-inquiry-ecologies-assemblages
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