{"id":7106,"date":"2007-08-16T21:58:02","date_gmt":"2007-08-16T21:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/16\/speculative-ins\/"},"modified":"2007-08-16T21:58:02","modified_gmt":"2007-08-16T21:58:02","slug":"speculative-ins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/16\/speculative-ins\/","title":{"rendered":"Speculative Instruments"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 3<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>

I’ve taken lately to thinking about the thinspreaden feeling of dissertating
\nlike this: the writing moves in a forward direction, advancing ideas and
\ndiscussions, attempting claims, suggesting reasons for limiting the discussion
\nto these few pages. The reading, on the other hand, moves in a backward
\ndirection, filing through influences before influences before
\ninfluences–something like tracking the (non-)origin of the Missouri River.
\nWriting and reading in this way at once leads to the thinspreaden feeling–it is
\na stretch. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For example, I was, for a while (~15 pp.), writing about abstraction.
\nThe very concept of abstraction. From Cynthia Haynes to Berthoff.
\nBerthoff’s work with abstraction draws from I. A. Richards and Susanne Langer.
\nI trailed off, reading some of Langer’s work in Philosophy in a New Key<\/i>
\nand Philosophical Sketches<\/i>. I also have a copy of Feeling and
\nForm<\/i> on my night stand. I’ve read zero pages of it. Every time I
\nleaf it through, I feel this dreadful drain of energy until…lights out.
\nI can see the tiny threads of influence running from Langer to Berthoff, but I
\nstill can’t decide how much I need to write about them or how explicit those
\nfamiliarities should be in the chapter itself. Langer and Berthoff have in
\ncommon that they attempt to recover abstraction from the General Semantics
\nmovements and their strict verticalization of the Ladder of Abstraction.
\nThey tug abstraction over to the side of connotation, to the side of the
\n"rustle" of language, away from scientistic referentiality. Were they
\nsuccessful? I don’t know. <\/p>\n

But what they were attempting accords with what I am trying to emphasize,
\nfollowing Moretti, in the discussion of visual models as abstract. Why
\ncall them abstract? The data they present are concrete enough (he calls
\nthe "consequences" concrete)? I mean that the data are replicable; any
\nother researcher would come up with the same citation counts for articles
\npublished in CCC<\/i> over the past 20 years, no? Berthoff reworked
\nabstraction in her ’86 essay "Abstraction as a Speculative Instrument."
\n"Speculative Instruments" matches up with the title of I. A. Richards’ book from
\n1955. It’s a collection of "pieces [that] were composed at different times
\nand for very different occasions and audiences" (ix). One six-page "piece"
\nstands out: "The Resourcefulness of Words" which comes "[f]rom a Bergen Lecture
\ngiven at Yale in 1940." It goes at matters of comprehension and
\ninterpretation: language is ambiguous, meanings are multiple. There is a certain
\n"wandering" quality to the resourcefulness of words, Richards explains, trying
\nto finesse systematic misunderstandings in language and this wandering quality.
\nA few pages of this were reprinted in Enos and Brown’s Professing the New
\nRhetorics<\/i>. Richards also mentions that this short piece developed into
\nhis book, How To Read A Page<\/i>. That stretch I mentioned earlier, it is
\nsometimes a yawn<\/i> (or a yowl of exasperation).<\/p>\n

Another opportunity in this for digression (or call it redirection): Will I
\nconnect How To Read A Page<\/i> with distant reading and the abstract visual
\nmodels produced by these methods? Maybe. But not yet. I like
\nthe riff that goes for distant reading as How To Read An Epitome (of
\nComposition)<\/i>–something along the lines of layering metadata onto relatively
\nstable forms (i.e., models), shoring up disciplinary data-sets, and so on.<\/p>\n

What else can I say about Richards’ Speculative Instruments<\/i>?
\nWhat a shame that the title–a title I like–was used up on this grab bag of
\n"pieces." With this in mind, Berthoff’s "Abstraction as a Speculative
\nInstrument" comes back into the spotlight. For the chunk of this diss on
\nthe concept of abstraction, Berthoff’s piece will have to do the leg work.
\nBut it shouldn’t have to do all of the heavy lifting. Sure, there’s
\nLanger, but that’s not the direction I want to go in. Berthoff’s
\nrecuperation of abstraction–a recuperation Haynes says failed<\/i> and must
\nbe broached once again–sticks with abstraction as forming. Berthoff
\nentangles concept formation and writing as knowing: "[Abstraction] can show us
\nhow to think of forming concepts as a matter of composing" (236).
\nContinuing, she goes at issues of writing across the curriculum (the relevance
\nof language to all disciplines) and also to "abstraction as a speculative
\ninstrument [that] can help us re-think the nature of the relationship of ‘the
\ncontingent and the particular’ to ‘the general orders" (237). I can’t
\ndecide whether this last part has more to do with compositionists being "great
\nminds" or whether it is an allusion to scalability constrained by the General
\nSemanticist’s Ladder analogy (referentiality, from particular to obtuse).
\nBerthoff’s is a discussion of abstraction I find to be slotted with a space for
\nwhat, of late, is more commonly discussed in terms of networks, traces, and
\nformative, inventive association–abstraction as forming (with or without
\nreference to "speculative instruments" and the "wandering resourcefulness" of
\nwords) gives way not to a Ladder of Abstraction, which Berthoff firmly and
\npersuasively argues against, but to networks, impermanent paths of activation,
\ninstigating clicks of fascination and intensity, and various other evocative,
\nuncanny encounters. It’s on this point that the pre-digital foundation of
\nBerthoff’s work on abstraction seems most conspicuous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 3<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>I’ve taken lately to thinking about the thinspreaden feeling of dissertating like this: the writing moves in a forward direction, advancing ideas and discussions, attempting claims, suggesting reasons for limiting the discussion to these few pages. The reading, on the other hand, moves in a backward direction, filing through influences before influences before influences–something like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[167],"tags":[622,639,321,808,1836,1759,144,141,561,257,193,1837],"class_list":["post-7106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading_notes","tag-abstract","tag-abstraction","tag-berthoff","tag-distant-reading","tag-haynes","tag-langer","tag-methods","tag-models","tag-moretti","tag-networks","tag-richards","tag-speculative-instruments"],"yoast_head":"\nSpeculative Instruments - Earth Wide Moth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/16\/speculative-ins\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Speculative Instruments - Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: 3 minsI’ve taken lately to thinking about the thinspreaden feeling of dissertating like this: the writing moves in a forward direction, advancing ideas and discussions, attempting claims, suggesting reasons for limiting the discussion to these few pages. 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How To Read A Page. Boston: Beacon Press, 1942. HTRAP demonstrates Richards' variation on close reading. His approach is intent on addressing and resolving (to the extent possible) misunderstanding. Building on the ideas briefly put forward in Speculative Instruments and in Principles of Literary Criticism, Richards says he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Methods"","block_context":{"text":"Methods","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/method\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7098,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/13\/haynes-writing\/","url_meta":{"origin":7106,"position":1},"title":"Haynes, "Writing Offshore: The Disappearing Coastline of Composition Theory"","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"June 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Haynes, Cynthia. \"Writing Offshore: The Disappearing Coastline of Composition Theory.\" JAC 23.4 (2003): 667-724. Haynes calls for composition-theory in motion, a willingness to drift all the while cognizant that \"so much defies reason\" (669). If composition's theoretical currents are akin to waters upon which we float, in much that same\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reading Notes"","block_context":{"text":"Reading Notes","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/reading_notes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7111,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/23\/richards-the-re\/","url_meta":{"origin":7106,"position":2},"title":"Richards, “The Resourcefulness of Words”","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"August 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Richards, I.A. \"The Resourcefulness of Words.\" Speculative Instruments. Chicago: U. of Chicago P, 1955. 72-78. \"Are we perhaps like mathematicians who had never thought of using the working of examples as a technique of instruction?\" (77). I.A. Richards ends \"The Resourcefulness of Words\" with this, posing a question of limitations,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reading Notes"","block_context":{"text":"Reading Notes","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/reading_notes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6787,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/12\/things-vi-ladde\/","url_meta":{"origin":7106,"position":3},"title":"Things VI: Ladder of Abstraction","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"July 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Today Ph. and I cobbled this together: It's a yard game. Goes by ladder golf, bolo toss, or, as it's named on some web sites, hillbilly horseshoes or Polish horseshoes. I like to think of it as the Ladder of Abstraction yard game. See, on top of buying the PVC\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Things"","block_context":{"text":"Things","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/things\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ladder of Abstraction","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1401\/792362269_0a7bf099ba_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6764,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/13\/how-far-can-we\/","url_meta":{"origin":7106,"position":4},"title":"How Far Can We Drift?","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"June 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been re-reading Cynthia Haynes' \"Writing Offshore: The Disappearing Coastline of Composition\" over the past two days. I'd read it this spring, even referred to it in my CCCC paper and in my dissertation prospectus. But this time I wanted to work at it more slowly, soak in it. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reading Notes"","block_context":{"text":"Reading Notes","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/reading_notes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7096,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/10\/berthoff-the-pr\/","url_meta":{"origin":7106,"position":5},"title":"Berthoff, "The Problem of Problem Solving"","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"June 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Berthoff, Ann E. \"The Problem of Problem Solving.\" CCC 22.3 (1971): 237-242. In reply to Janice Lauer's \"Heuristics and Composition,\" a brief essay and 200-item bibliography of research in psychology, Berthoff presents a polemical critique of \"problem-solving\" and of the singling out of psychological or political matters as relates to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reading Notes"","block_context":{"text":"Reading Notes","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/reading_notes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}