Thursday, February 12, 2009
Argumentative Writing Handouts and Guidelines
Over the years teaching argumentative writing classes for undergraduates at Berkeley and elsewhere I have accumulated a number of general guidelines, workshopping templates, peer-editing worksheets and so on, some of which I have presented in teaching seminars, or which have circulated informally in bits and pieces, some online, others as smudged samizdat. Occasionally (and weirdly often lately) I get requests for copies of this material from former students who have gone on to teach themselves or who think they might apply in different contexts (organizational mediation and facilitation, that sort of thing), or from colleagues who remember some presentation I delivered who knows when, or what have you. So, anyway, I am publishing some of the material I get requests for here, just so that they are readily available for anybody who asks me for them. Another, slightly longer piece is forthcoming, but I want to edit it a bit first, and since I'm off to teach it will have to wait, come to think of it. But, anyway, the last few posts have been different enough from the usual in tone and substance that I thought I should explain why I put them here. Perhaps some will interest you despite the change of pace, but come what may, I'll be back to the usual technodevelopmental social struggle, corporate-militarist critique, and centaur softcore you have come to expect soon enough.
THESIS WORKSHOP
Every argumentative paper you write for our course must have a thesis. A thesis is a claim. It is a statement of the thing your paper is trying to show your own readers about a text you have read. Very often, the claim will be simple enough to express in a single sentence, and it will usually appear early on in the paper to give your readers a clear sense of the project of your paper. A good thesis is a claim that is strong. For our purposes, the best way to define a strong claim is to say it is a claim for which you can imagine an intelligent opposition. It is a claim that you actually feel you need to argue for, rather than a very obvious sort of claim or a report of your own reactions to a text (which you don't have to argue for at all). Remember, when you are producing a reading about a complex literary text like a novel, a poem, or a film the object of your argument will be to illuminate the text, to draw attention to some aspect of the work you think that the text is accomplishing.
Once you have determined the detail or problem or element in a text that you want to draw your reader's attention to and argue about, your opposition will likely consist of those who would focus elsewhere because they don't grasp the importance of your focus, or who would draw different conclusions than you do from your own focus.
The thesis names your paper's task, its project, its object, its focus. As you write your papers, it is a very good idea to ask yourself these questions, from time to time: Does this quotation, does this argument, does this paragraph directly support my thesis in some way? If it doesn't you should probably delete it, because this probably means you have gotten off track. If you are drawn repeatedly away from what you have chosen as your thesis, ask yourself whether or not this signals that you really want to argue for some different thesis.
THESIS WORKSHOP EXERCISE ONE:
Brainstorm. Take a sheet of paper and in roughly ten minutes write down a dozen or so claims you can make about your chosen text. Don't worry about whether these claims are "deep" or whether they are "interesting," just write down claims that you think are true about the text.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Either in individual consultation with your instructor or in small peer groups: Once the time is up, read over your claims. Eliminate claims that are not really about the text at all. For example, eliminate claims that say the text is "good," or "correct," or "effective" -- since these are really claims about the way you react to the text rather than claims about the text itself. Eliminate claims that say the text is "wrong," or "incorrect," or "ineffective" since, again, these are really claims about you, or they are claims that will lead you to discuss some more general topic (like politics, or history, or philosophy) rather than remaining focused on the text itself.
How many claims are left? Do any of these claims seem especially interesting to you? Can you imagine how you might argue for some of them in a conversation with somebody who disagreed with you about them? Do some of the claims really say the same thing in different ways? Do they suggest some other claims that might express your actual interests more closely?
THESIS WORKSHOP EXERCISE TWO:
You should now have a couple candidates or so for your thesis remaining. Now, for each of these possible thesis claims come up with the strongest or most obvious opposition to each thesis. For example, what would the opposite claim be to the one you are making?
Either in individual consultation with your instructor or in small peer groups: Read over these oppositions. Of course, you are likely to disagree with these claims since they are opposed to the ones you want to make yourself -- but can you imagine anyone actually making these oppositional claims about the text you have read?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
If the opposition you have come up with seems vague or unintelligent or highly implausible this probably indicates that you need to sharpen up your own initial thesis. Is there a version of your thesis that is more focused and specific that retains the spirit of your claim but which provokes a more interesting opposition?
If the opposition you have written suddenly seems more compelling than the thesis itself this probably indicates that the stakes of your project, or possibly your whole take on the text itself, is different than you initially thought it was. Perhaps what you thought of as opposition to your thesis actually provides you with a stronger thesis and a new direction for your own paper.
Once you have determined the detail or problem or element in a text that you want to draw your reader's attention to and argue about, your opposition will likely consist of those who would focus elsewhere because they don't grasp the importance of your focus, or who would draw different conclusions than you do from your own focus.
The thesis names your paper's task, its project, its object, its focus. As you write your papers, it is a very good idea to ask yourself these questions, from time to time: Does this quotation, does this argument, does this paragraph directly support my thesis in some way? If it doesn't you should probably delete it, because this probably means you have gotten off track. If you are drawn repeatedly away from what you have chosen as your thesis, ask yourself whether or not this signals that you really want to argue for some different thesis.
THESIS WORKSHOP EXERCISE ONE:
Brainstorm. Take a sheet of paper and in roughly ten minutes write down a dozen or so claims you can make about your chosen text. Don't worry about whether these claims are "deep" or whether they are "interesting," just write down claims that you think are true about the text.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Either in individual consultation with your instructor or in small peer groups: Once the time is up, read over your claims. Eliminate claims that are not really about the text at all. For example, eliminate claims that say the text is "good," or "correct," or "effective" -- since these are really claims about the way you react to the text rather than claims about the text itself. Eliminate claims that say the text is "wrong," or "incorrect," or "ineffective" since, again, these are really claims about you, or they are claims that will lead you to discuss some more general topic (like politics, or history, or philosophy) rather than remaining focused on the text itself.
How many claims are left? Do any of these claims seem especially interesting to you? Can you imagine how you might argue for some of them in a conversation with somebody who disagreed with you about them? Do some of the claims really say the same thing in different ways? Do they suggest some other claims that might express your actual interests more closely?
THESIS WORKSHOP EXERCISE TWO:
You should now have a couple candidates or so for your thesis remaining. Now, for each of these possible thesis claims come up with the strongest or most obvious opposition to each thesis. For example, what would the opposite claim be to the one you are making?
Either in individual consultation with your instructor or in small peer groups: Read over these oppositions. Of course, you are likely to disagree with these claims since they are opposed to the ones you want to make yourself -- but can you imagine anyone actually making these oppositional claims about the text you have read?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
If the opposition you have come up with seems vague or unintelligent or highly implausible this probably indicates that you need to sharpen up your own initial thesis. Is there a version of your thesis that is more focused and specific that retains the spirit of your claim but which provokes a more interesting opposition?
If the opposition you have written suddenly seems more compelling than the thesis itself this probably indicates that the stakes of your project, or possibly your whole take on the text itself, is different than you initially thought it was. Perhaps what you thought of as opposition to your thesis actually provides you with a stronger thesis and a new direction for your own paper.
Peer Editing Worksheet
A peer edit is not an itemized list of broad impressions, problems, or compliments, but should represent a sustained and sympathetic argumentative engagement with the text you are reading.
Editors, you should provide comments in the form of a short essay that clearly answers all or most of the following questions:
1. What is your own name?
2. What is the name of the papers author?
3. What is the title of the paper?
4. Did the paper satisfy the expectations raised in its title? **
5. In your own words, state what you think to be the thesis of the paper in one or two sentences.**
6. Was this thesis expressed clearly in the paper itself?
7. Is this a strong thesis?
8. Why or why not?
9. Can you imagine an intelligent opposition to this thesis?
10. What might this be?
11. Does the author remain true to this thesis through the paper? **
12. Were there important terms that needed stronger or clearer definitions? **
13. If yes, what were they?
14. Did the author use quotations from the text effectively to justify and illustrate their interpretations?
15. Did the author anticipate relevant objections to their various claims? **
16. Name an objection that either should have been addressed or which warranted a deeper exploration than the paper presently provides.
17. Did the author’s address of possible objections contribute to the strength of the case the paper is making, or distract from that case as you understood it?
18. Comment on the papers line of argument (its overall clarity, the smoothness of its transitions and substantiations, the order in which it developed its points, etc.). **
19. Comment on the papers prose (style, grammar, sentence construction, punctuation, etc.).
20. What qualities did you like best about the paper? **
21. What is the single most important aspect of the paper that the author should work on before handing it in?
Things to consider as you read the comments of your editors:
1. What were the problems or concerns that most preoccupied you about your paper before beginning this peer editing process?
2. Were those concerns addressed by your editors? [If not, demand that they are.]
3. For each editor, which comments were most helpful to you?
4. Which comments would be more helpful if they were clarified or amplified somewhat? [Ask for clarifications or examples or suggestions on these issues.]
You should note that these are the questions which guide my own readings of your papers, and that my marginal comments and concluding discussion will tend to register my preoccupation with these same questions.
**These are questions you should make a habit of asking of any text at all that you are reading critically.
Editors, you should provide comments in the form of a short essay that clearly answers all or most of the following questions:
1. What is your own name?
2. What is the name of the papers author?
3. What is the title of the paper?
4. Did the paper satisfy the expectations raised in its title? **
5. In your own words, state what you think to be the thesis of the paper in one or two sentences.**
6. Was this thesis expressed clearly in the paper itself?
7. Is this a strong thesis?
8. Why or why not?
9. Can you imagine an intelligent opposition to this thesis?
10. What might this be?
11. Does the author remain true to this thesis through the paper? **
12. Were there important terms that needed stronger or clearer definitions? **
13. If yes, what were they?
14. Did the author use quotations from the text effectively to justify and illustrate their interpretations?
15. Did the author anticipate relevant objections to their various claims? **
16. Name an objection that either should have been addressed or which warranted a deeper exploration than the paper presently provides.
17. Did the author’s address of possible objections contribute to the strength of the case the paper is making, or distract from that case as you understood it?
18. Comment on the papers line of argument (its overall clarity, the smoothness of its transitions and substantiations, the order in which it developed its points, etc.). **
19. Comment on the papers prose (style, grammar, sentence construction, punctuation, etc.).
20. What qualities did you like best about the paper? **
21. What is the single most important aspect of the paper that the author should work on before handing it in?
Things to consider as you read the comments of your editors:
1. What were the problems or concerns that most preoccupied you about your paper before beginning this peer editing process?
2. Were those concerns addressed by your editors? [If not, demand that they are.]
3. For each editor, which comments were most helpful to you?
4. Which comments would be more helpful if they were clarified or amplified somewhat? [Ask for clarifications or examples or suggestions on these issues.]
You should note that these are the questions which guide my own readings of your papers, and that my marginal comments and concluding discussion will tend to register my preoccupation with these same questions.
**These are questions you should make a habit of asking of any text at all that you are reading critically.
Writing a Precis
One of the key requirements for our course involves the writing of a précis. Think of this précis as a basic paraphrase of the argumentative content of a text (or of a key chapter or section of a longer or especially complex text).
Here is a broad and informal guide for a précis, but it also provides a pretty good guide for the sorts of questions you should always ask of a text as you are reading it critically, and again after you have finished reading it. Don't treat this as an ironclad template, but as a rough approach to producing a précis -- a truly fine and useful précis need not necessarily satisfy all of these interventions.
A précis should provide answers to fairly basic questions such as:
1. What, in your own words, is the basic gist of the argument?
2. To what audience is it pitched primarily? (Do you see yourself as part of that intended audience, and how does your answer impact your reading of the argument?) Does it anticipate and respond to possible objections?
3. What do you think are the argument's stakes in general? To what end is the argument made? How has this end shaped the argument in your view?
5. What are the reasons and evidence offered up in the argument to support what you take to be its primary end? What crucial or questionable warrants (unstated assumptions the argument takes to be shared by its audience, often general attitudes of a political, moral, social, cultural nature) does the argument seem to depend on? Are any of these reasons, evidences, or warrants questionable in your view? Do they support one another or introduce tensions under closer scrutiny? Do these implicit assumptions clash with explicit claims made elsewhere in the text?
6. What, if any, kind of argumentative work is being done by metaphors and other figurative language in the piece? Do the metaphors collaborate to paint a consistent picture, or do they clash with one another? What impact does this have on their argumentative force?
7. Are there key terms in the piece that seem to have idiosyncratic definitions, or whose usages seem to change over the course of the argument?
As you see, a piece that interrogates a text from these angles of view will yield something between a general book report and a close reading, but one that focuses on the argumentative force of a text. For the purposes of our class, such a précis succeeds if it manages
(1) to convey the basic flavor of the argument of the text and
(2) provides a good point of departure for a rich public discussion of the text.
Here is a broad and informal guide for a précis, but it also provides a pretty good guide for the sorts of questions you should always ask of a text as you are reading it critically, and again after you have finished reading it. Don't treat this as an ironclad template, but as a rough approach to producing a précis -- a truly fine and useful précis need not necessarily satisfy all of these interventions.
A précis should provide answers to fairly basic questions such as:
1. What, in your own words, is the basic gist of the argument?
2. To what audience is it pitched primarily? (Do you see yourself as part of that intended audience, and how does your answer impact your reading of the argument?) Does it anticipate and respond to possible objections?
3. What do you think are the argument's stakes in general? To what end is the argument made? How has this end shaped the argument in your view?
a. To call assumptions into question?4. Does it have an explicit thesis? If not, could you provide one in your own words for it?
b. To change convictions?
c. To alter conduct?
d. To find acceptable compromises between contending positions?
5. What are the reasons and evidence offered up in the argument to support what you take to be its primary end? What crucial or questionable warrants (unstated assumptions the argument takes to be shared by its audience, often general attitudes of a political, moral, social, cultural nature) does the argument seem to depend on? Are any of these reasons, evidences, or warrants questionable in your view? Do they support one another or introduce tensions under closer scrutiny? Do these implicit assumptions clash with explicit claims made elsewhere in the text?
6. What, if any, kind of argumentative work is being done by metaphors and other figurative language in the piece? Do the metaphors collaborate to paint a consistent picture, or do they clash with one another? What impact does this have on their argumentative force?
7. Are there key terms in the piece that seem to have idiosyncratic definitions, or whose usages seem to change over the course of the argument?
As you see, a piece that interrogates a text from these angles of view will yield something between a general book report and a close reading, but one that focuses on the argumentative force of a text. For the purposes of our class, such a précis succeeds if it manages
(1) to convey the basic flavor of the argument of the text and
(2) provides a good point of departure for a rich public discussion of the text.
Four Habits of Argumentative Writing
In this course you will be producing argumentative writing based on close textual readings. We will spend a good deal of time talking together about what it means to write persuasively and read closely, what sorts of things can usefully be considered texts in the first place, and under what circumstances, and so on, but as a first approximation of what I mean I am offering you four general habits of attention and writing practice, guidelines I will want you to apply to your writing this term. If you can incorporate these four writing practices into your future work you will have mastered the task of producing a competent argumentative paper for just about any discipline in the humanities that would ask you for one. Incidentally, I will also say that taking these habits truly to heart goes a long way in my view toward inculcating the critical temper indispensable for good citizenship in functioning democracies in a world of diverse and contentious stakeholders with urgent shared problems.
A First Habit
An argumentative paper will have a thesis. A thesis is a claim. It is a statement of the thing your paper is trying to show. Very often, the claim will be straightforward enough to express in a single sentence or so, and it will usually appear early on in the paper to give your readers a clear sense of the project of the paper. A thesis is a claim that is strong. A strong claim is a claim for which you can imagine an intelligent opposition. It is a claim that you feel a need to argue for. Close readings and research papers may seem very different as writing projects, but a thesis is the key to both. Remember, when you are producing a reading about a complex literary text like a novel, a poem, or a film the object of your argument will be to illuminate the text, to draw attention to some aspect of the wider work the text is accomplishing. Once you have determined the dimension or element in a text that you want to argue about, your opposition might consist of those who would focus elsewhere or who would draw different conclusions from your own focus. When you are writing a research paper, remember that you are not simply exploring a topic, you are seeking an answer to a question. That question (sometimes in the form of an hypothesis that would answer the question) directs your research, though sometimes the research process itself can change your question. Your answer to your research question is your research paper's thesis, the claim you support with the evidence you gathered in your research and present in the body of the paper itself. Your thesis is your paper's spine, your paper's task. As you write your papers, it is a good idea to ask yourself the question, from time to time, Does this quotation, does this argument, does this paragraph support my thesis in some way? If it doesn’t, delete it. If you are drawn repeatedly away from what you have chosen as your thesis, ask yourself whether or not this signals that you really want to argue for some different thesis.
A Second Habit
You should define your central terms, especially the ones you may be using in an idiosyncratic way. Your definitions can be casual ones, they don’t have to sound like dictionary definitions. But it is crucial that once you have defined a term you will stick to the meaning you have assigned it yourself. Never simply assume that your readers know what you mean or what you are talking about. Never hesitate to explain yourself for fear of belaboring the obvious. Clarity never appears unintelligent.
A Third Habit
You should support your claims about the text with actual quotations from the text itself. In this course you will always be analyzing texts (broadly defined) and whatever text you are working on should probably be a major presence on nearly every page of your papers. A page without quotations is often a page that has lost track of its point, or one that is stuck in abstract generalizations. This doesn't mean that your paper should consist of mostly huge block quotes. On the contrary, a block quote is usually a quote that needs to be broken up and read more closely and carefully. If you see fit to include a lengthy quotation filled with provocative details, I will expect you to contextualize and discuss all of those details. If you are unprepared to do this, or fear that doing so will introduce digressions from your argument, this signals that you should be more selective about the quotations to which you are calling attention.
A Fourth Habit
You should anticipate objections to your thesis. In some ways this is the most difficult habit to master. Remember that even the most solid case for a viewpoint is vulnerable to dismissal by the suggestion of an apparently powerful counterexample. That is why you should anticipate problems, criticisms, counterexamples, and deal with them before they arise, and deal with them on your own terms. If you cannot imagine a sensible and relevant objection to your line of argument it means either that you are not looking hard enough or that your claim is not strong enough.
A First Habit
An argumentative paper will have a thesis. A thesis is a claim. It is a statement of the thing your paper is trying to show. Very often, the claim will be straightforward enough to express in a single sentence or so, and it will usually appear early on in the paper to give your readers a clear sense of the project of the paper. A thesis is a claim that is strong. A strong claim is a claim for which you can imagine an intelligent opposition. It is a claim that you feel a need to argue for. Close readings and research papers may seem very different as writing projects, but a thesis is the key to both. Remember, when you are producing a reading about a complex literary text like a novel, a poem, or a film the object of your argument will be to illuminate the text, to draw attention to some aspect of the wider work the text is accomplishing. Once you have determined the dimension or element in a text that you want to argue about, your opposition might consist of those who would focus elsewhere or who would draw different conclusions from your own focus. When you are writing a research paper, remember that you are not simply exploring a topic, you are seeking an answer to a question. That question (sometimes in the form of an hypothesis that would answer the question) directs your research, though sometimes the research process itself can change your question. Your answer to your research question is your research paper's thesis, the claim you support with the evidence you gathered in your research and present in the body of the paper itself. Your thesis is your paper's spine, your paper's task. As you write your papers, it is a good idea to ask yourself the question, from time to time, Does this quotation, does this argument, does this paragraph support my thesis in some way? If it doesn’t, delete it. If you are drawn repeatedly away from what you have chosen as your thesis, ask yourself whether or not this signals that you really want to argue for some different thesis.
A Second Habit
You should define your central terms, especially the ones you may be using in an idiosyncratic way. Your definitions can be casual ones, they don’t have to sound like dictionary definitions. But it is crucial that once you have defined a term you will stick to the meaning you have assigned it yourself. Never simply assume that your readers know what you mean or what you are talking about. Never hesitate to explain yourself for fear of belaboring the obvious. Clarity never appears unintelligent.
A Third Habit
You should support your claims about the text with actual quotations from the text itself. In this course you will always be analyzing texts (broadly defined) and whatever text you are working on should probably be a major presence on nearly every page of your papers. A page without quotations is often a page that has lost track of its point, or one that is stuck in abstract generalizations. This doesn't mean that your paper should consist of mostly huge block quotes. On the contrary, a block quote is usually a quote that needs to be broken up and read more closely and carefully. If you see fit to include a lengthy quotation filled with provocative details, I will expect you to contextualize and discuss all of those details. If you are unprepared to do this, or fear that doing so will introduce digressions from your argument, this signals that you should be more selective about the quotations to which you are calling attention.
A Fourth Habit
You should anticipate objections to your thesis. In some ways this is the most difficult habit to master. Remember that even the most solid case for a viewpoint is vulnerable to dismissal by the suggestion of an apparently powerful counterexample. That is why you should anticipate problems, criticisms, counterexamples, and deal with them before they arise, and deal with them on your own terms. If you cannot imagine a sensible and relevant objection to your line of argument it means either that you are not looking hard enough or that your claim is not strong enough.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Robot Cultists Getting Too N.I.C.E. By Half
I get this question nearly every day: Why, oh, why, do you take all this superlative silliness seriously?
It's easy to discount Superlativity once you've slogged through the critique.
But try to recapture the state of mind with which you skitted over the ideological framing of "tech news" before you gave Superlativity any serious thought. Try to recapture the disinterest with which you passed over platitudes in popular, professional, and academic media that treat some scarcely worked through genetic technique as justifying the question "do you want to live forever?" Or that straightforwardly claims that economies or societies or personalities somehow "evolve." Or that declares the "experts" worry that "people" are unprepared to make good decisions in the face of "accelerating change." Or confidently proposes that "good design" (alone?) can achieve what are in fact palpably political accomplishments like sustainability, social justice, democratic participation, security, liberty, progress. Or that oh so politely indicates that some human lifeways, however wanted they may be by those who incarnate them for the present can nevertheless be declared "suboptimal" in the face of "enhancement" that is "sure" to "engineer" them out of existence for the more "optimal" morphologies and lifeways of the bland blank catalogue-models and workaholics we presumably pine to be in our best most clearheaded moments.
Superlativity as it is celebrated by the Robot Cultists is indeed an unsubstantiated, sociopathic, inelegant, infantile mess of theses and themes, but it is at one and the same time an iceberg tip, a symptom of a deeper more prevailing tendency to a reductionism conjoined to elitism and loathing of life that plays out in mainstream neoliberal and neoconservative corporate-militarist global "development" discourse, a constellation of attitudes crystallizing in something like a futurological programme and suffusing the self-image of whole academic disciplines and professional populations, among them some that attract torrents of cash and uncritical enthusiasm.
It's easy to expose the facile formulations of the futurological congress, to snicker at the oafish ever-marginal Robot Cult. But there are strong structural affinities between the ruling rationales of corporate-militarist incumbency and the superlative mindset. One might surely have felt the same disdain a lingering intelligent look at the Robot Cultists inevitably inspires, and with equal justice, in the early days when another klatch of badly off-putting off-kilter boys with toys who fancied themselves the smartest things in any room unleashed Neoconservatism on the world to the cost of us all.
What could be more perfect than an article in the Financial Times informing us that
I leave it as an exercise for the reader (for now) to simply pluck out the unsubstantiated superlative platitudes contained in this breathlessly evangelizing account (did you notice that even the notional registration of skepticism in the article essentially functions as a demand for more funds for our "serious" singularitarians?), to observe the way in which these relentlessly reductive and at once hyperbolically expansive techno-utopian chants co-mingle and reinforce one another. Truly diligent readers may enjoy connecting the dots between these ideas and their proponents to the most ardent expressions of market fundamentalist ideology as well. As for the reference to the "N.I.C.E." in the title of my post, consider it an ambivalent recommendation of a dusty somewhat silly but still prescient book.
It's easy to discount Superlativity once you've slogged through the critique.
But try to recapture the state of mind with which you skitted over the ideological framing of "tech news" before you gave Superlativity any serious thought. Try to recapture the disinterest with which you passed over platitudes in popular, professional, and academic media that treat some scarcely worked through genetic technique as justifying the question "do you want to live forever?" Or that straightforwardly claims that economies or societies or personalities somehow "evolve." Or that declares the "experts" worry that "people" are unprepared to make good decisions in the face of "accelerating change." Or confidently proposes that "good design" (alone?) can achieve what are in fact palpably political accomplishments like sustainability, social justice, democratic participation, security, liberty, progress. Or that oh so politely indicates that some human lifeways, however wanted they may be by those who incarnate them for the present can nevertheless be declared "suboptimal" in the face of "enhancement" that is "sure" to "engineer" them out of existence for the more "optimal" morphologies and lifeways of the bland blank catalogue-models and workaholics we presumably pine to be in our best most clearheaded moments.
Superlativity as it is celebrated by the Robot Cultists is indeed an unsubstantiated, sociopathic, inelegant, infantile mess of theses and themes, but it is at one and the same time an iceberg tip, a symptom of a deeper more prevailing tendency to a reductionism conjoined to elitism and loathing of life that plays out in mainstream neoliberal and neoconservative corporate-militarist global "development" discourse, a constellation of attitudes crystallizing in something like a futurological programme and suffusing the self-image of whole academic disciplines and professional populations, among them some that attract torrents of cash and uncritical enthusiasm.
It's easy to expose the facile formulations of the futurological congress, to snicker at the oafish ever-marginal Robot Cult. But there are strong structural affinities between the ruling rationales of corporate-militarist incumbency and the superlative mindset. One might surely have felt the same disdain a lingering intelligent look at the Robot Cultists inevitably inspires, and with equal justice, in the early days when another klatch of badly off-putting off-kilter boys with toys who fancied themselves the smartest things in any room unleashed Neoconservatism on the world to the cost of us all.
What could be more perfect than an article in the Financial Times informing us that
Google and Nasa are throwing their weight behind a new school for futurists in Silicon Valley to prepare scientists for an era when machines become cleverer than people.
The new institution, known as "Singularity University", is to be headed by Ray Kurzweil, whose predictions about the exponential pace of technological change have made him a controversial figure in technology circles.
Google and Nasa's backing demonstrates the growing mainstream acceptance of Mr Kurzweil's views, which include a claim that before the middle of this century artificial intelligence will outstrip human beings, ushering in a new era of civilisation.
To be housed at Nasa's Ames Research Center, a stone's-throw from the Googleplex, the Singularity University will offer courses on biotechnology, nano-technology and artificial intelligence.
The so-called "singularity" is a theorised period of rapid technological progress in the near future. Mr Kurzweil, an American inventor, popularised the term in his 2005 book "The Singularity is Near".
Proponents say that during the singularity, machines will be able to improve themselves using artificial intelligence and that smarter-than-human computers will solve problems including energy scarcity, climate change and hunger.
Yet many critics call the singularity dangerous. Some worry that a malicious artificial intelligence might annihilate the human race.
Mr Kurzweil said the university was launching now because many technologies were approaching a moment of radical advancement. "We're getting to the steep part of the curve," said Mr Kurzweil. "It's not just electronics and computers. It's any technology where we can measure the information content, like genetics."
The school is backed by Larry Page, Google co-founder, and Peter Diamandis, chief executive of X-Prize, an organisation which provides grants to support technological change.
"We are anchoring the university in what is in the lab today, with an understanding of what's in the realm of possibility in the future," said Mr Diamandis, who will be vice-chancellor. "The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea."
Despite its title, the school will not be an accredited university. Instead, it will be modelled on the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, the interdisciplinary, multi-cultural school that Mr Diamandis helped establish in 1987.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader (for now) to simply pluck out the unsubstantiated superlative platitudes contained in this breathlessly evangelizing account (did you notice that even the notional registration of skepticism in the article essentially functions as a demand for more funds for our "serious" singularitarians?), to observe the way in which these relentlessly reductive and at once hyperbolically expansive techno-utopian chants co-mingle and reinforce one another. Truly diligent readers may enjoy connecting the dots between these ideas and their proponents to the most ardent expressions of market fundamentalist ideology as well. As for the reference to the "N.I.C.E." in the title of my post, consider it an ambivalent recommendation of a dusty somewhat silly but still prescient book.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Why Do You Take All This Superlative Silliness Seriously?
The Eternal Return of The Question, upgraded and adapted from the Moot:
I can only speak for myself, but I take transhumanist formulations seriously because they seem to me to exert a disproportionate and deranging influence on technodevelopmental deliberation at the worst imaginable time.
As I have said, superlative formulations have force because they
I can go on, and have done, but I think you get the picture.
The point is, most of the reactionary formations that have menaced late-modernity (extractive-industrial-broadcast epoch) began as marginal subcultures of cocksure white boys certain they had the Keys to History in their hands. The silliness of superlativity is not enough to justify ignoring it or failing to understand it, especially once we see the context of techno-utopianism in which it so legibly locates itself.
I also believe that the Robot Cultists in their very extremity provide unusually distilled illustrations of the associations, dynamisms, guiding figures and so on that also play out in more mainstream neoliberal "globalism" and "development" discourse, and hence put us in a better position to understand the irrationality and authoritarianism of that discourse.
Anyway, as you know from the title of my blog, my hero is the political theorist Hannah Arendt (Amor Mundi, the love of the world, was her personal motto), who insisted that the philosopher's task is understanding, and where politics is concerned this means "thinking what we are doing."
I find that understanding the transhumanists and discerning the ways in which mainstream developmental discourse is illuminated by reference to their extremity helps "think what we are doing" in a moment of unprecedented planetary catastrophe (resource descent, climate change, WMD proliferation), planetary promise (proliferating p2p formations), planetary disruption (the shift into non-normalizing genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive therapies). It's as simple as that.
I can only speak for myself, but I take transhumanist formulations seriously because they seem to me to exert a disproportionate and deranging influence on technodevelopmental deliberation at the worst imaginable time.
As I have said, superlative formulations have force because they
[a] activate customary irrational passions that are already occasioned by disruptive technoscientific change (panic from mistaken impotence, greed for mistaken omnipotence), because they
[b] congenially oversimplify and dramatize technodevelopmental complexities (reframing them as transcension, apocalypse, revolution, enhancement, immortalization) for lazy, undercritical, or overwrought people and media formations, because they
[c] conduce to the benefit of incumbent interests that portray themselves as more knowledgeable about matters of "advanced" or "accelerating" developments to justify circumventions of democratic deliberation, or frame technodevelopment in terms of "existential risk" that divert deliberation down corporate-militarist avenues (geoengineering, megascale infrastructure, centralized co-ordinated response).
I can go on, and have done, but I think you get the picture.
The point is, most of the reactionary formations that have menaced late-modernity (extractive-industrial-broadcast epoch) began as marginal subcultures of cocksure white boys certain they had the Keys to History in their hands. The silliness of superlativity is not enough to justify ignoring it or failing to understand it, especially once we see the context of techno-utopianism in which it so legibly locates itself.
I also believe that the Robot Cultists in their very extremity provide unusually distilled illustrations of the associations, dynamisms, guiding figures and so on that also play out in more mainstream neoliberal "globalism" and "development" discourse, and hence put us in a better position to understand the irrationality and authoritarianism of that discourse.
Anyway, as you know from the title of my blog, my hero is the political theorist Hannah Arendt (Amor Mundi, the love of the world, was her personal motto), who insisted that the philosopher's task is understanding, and where politics is concerned this means "thinking what we are doing."
I find that understanding the transhumanists and discerning the ways in which mainstream developmental discourse is illuminated by reference to their extremity helps "think what we are doing" in a moment of unprecedented planetary catastrophe (resource descent, climate change, WMD proliferation), planetary promise (proliferating p2p formations), planetary disruption (the shift into non-normalizing genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive therapies). It's as simple as that.
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