Notes from the academy

[rivkat]

So, in the latest go-round on racism, reader response, and the like, I have very little useful to say. The one thing that I haven’t seen much discussion on--though I haven’t waded into many comment threads, so I might just have missed it--is about the false opposition between rational/academic/literary analysis and emotional/political response, specifically about what it means to have emotions. Anyone who tells you that they aren’t responding emotionally to anything they have spent the time to analyze has made a mistake. Emotion/reason is a common dualism (and therefore it’s never surprising to find it mapped onto power hierarchies). But no rational judgment can be made without emotion. This isn’t exaggeration: without emotion to tell us what to value, weighing factors with perfect accuracy is useless. A person engaging in what she calls “analysis” as opposed to “reaction” may be responding with emotion so well accommodated by prevailing structures that it looks to her like computer logic. But emotion is behind any analysis. For an overview of the relevant neuro/psychological research, the first half of this paper by David Arkush covers a lot of ground. (It’s law-oriented, but it’s also the most recent thing I read on the subject so it’s an easy cite.)

James Boyle, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind: You can download a copy for free. This book is the latest in a round of popularizing the challenges of intellectual property protection in a networked world; Boyle is one of our most prominent low-protectionists. He's not quite the writer that Larry Lessig is, but he's pretty good, and the book serves as a fun, solid introduction to our current situation. Elegant explanation of synthetic biology and its patent discontents. Those already familiar with the basics probably won't learn much, but should consider checking out Boyle's Shamans, Software, and Spleens, a more theoretically oriented work that I like a lot but is sadly as yet not fully available online.

Comments

[xenacryst.livejournal.com]

Very true, that false opposition, and also very hard to actually acknowledge; I'm glad you mentioned it. I'll be reading that paper, too (though not tonight, as I'm going to bed) (also, you have an extra http in the link for it).

And I might just download a copy of Boyle's, too. So many interesting things to read...

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Fixed the html; thanks.

[vass]

Emotion/reason is a common dualism (and therefore it’s never surprising to find it mapped onto power hierarchies). But no rational judgment can be made without emotion.

Well said.

[copracat]

Thank you for the links.

[flourish.livejournal.com]

Emotion/reason is a common dualism (and therefore it’s never surprising to find it mapped onto power hierarchies). But no rational judgment can be made without emotion.

Well said. In cultural studies (especially studying pop culture) there's currently a lot of people trying to explicitly use both emotion and reason, a la feminist critiques of culture in the 80s - those feminist critiques being what I always associate this problem with (because afaik they were the first ones to take the question on).

[rmthunter.livejournal.com]

Odd example of synchronicity: I was just thinking about the way that we in the West tend to compartmentalize (this was about art and ritual, which we tend to separate, although most cultures don't), sometimes in spite of obvious linkages. And then your post.

From my own standpoint -- well, I'm a reviewer. I have to take into account my emotional, subjective reactions in tandem with any objective criteria I'm using or nothing I write makes any sense (not to me, anyway). You're right, though, if I can come in from the other side: it's recognizing the emotional reaction for what it is that's all too often missing -- the difference between "liking" something and "appreciating" it. I think the emotional reaction is so completely assumed that it's not even recognized. (Ah -- you did touch on that.)

And it seems to me that analysis is a way of distancing yourself from your emotional responses, which I'm sure has some relevance here: I do that regularly, coming up with summations that run on the order of "it has these flaws but I love it anyway, so purely for ratings purposes. . . ." (Add in that I tend very much toward text-based commentary, which is a series of trade-offs, so there's an emotional-response weighting that takes place there.)

I'm not sure that "value" as a measure has any meaning in a purely rational analysis, so you're right on that score, although my concept of it is slightly different.

I'd also like to point out that there's a marked tendency to use someone's emotional response to dismiss whatever rational take they may have on a question. I've seen that happen way too much, so maybe sometimes you do need to separate them, in discourse, at least, even if it's not really possible in process.

Interesting questions you pose.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I definitely use analysis to distance myself! But that's a privilege I have, and it's still emotional, just deceptively so. And whether one's emotional response is dismissed can depend on power: there's been a lot of concern in this discussion over white folks' emotional reaction to feeling like they've been called racists. You're absolutely right that dismissing someone as emotional is a common tactic, but the identity of the someone makes a difference in the deployment of that tactic.

[rmthunter.livejournal.com]

I wish I could dispute you on the relative power issue, but thinking of a few recent examples, I suspect you're absolutely correct, except that I might modify that to say that the deployment doesn't depend on the identity of those being discredited -- it's going to be attempted, regardless of who's involved -- but the effectiveness does.

[siobhan-w.livejournal.com]

The whole emotion/reason, or subjective/objective as it's more commonly referred to in the sciences, is a false dichotomy that is still very popular in analysis. We are the ones who do any sort of analysis and we aren't robots so our own experiences and emotions will influence what we do and what we know. There really is no way to get away from it. The key, I think, is to be aware of how your emotions and experiences are coloring your analysis.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I agree, but I'd go even further: it's not simply that emotions color analysis, because that suggests that we can make a spectrum--this person's analysis is only a little influenced by emotion, that person's is a lot--and that puts us right back in the reason/emotion dichotomy. Rather, analysis grinds to a halt without emotion: what features would you pick to analyze without any judgments about value? So, yeah, awareness is a lot more helpful than denial.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

It's kind of like the myth of the rational free market, isn't it? The market is only "free" because the entitlements, and the way they interact, have been determined beforehand.

[cryptoxin.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, and I liked how you expressed this. samdonne recently commented in a different context on the growing body of neurobiology research on the role of emotion in model reasoning; I found a fairly readable review here (http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/84/1/69).

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

The debate threads have been very complex, but there were a number of us challenging the false binary of analysis/emotion along with valorization of "academic analysis" (without acknowledging its roots in racism, colonialism, sexism, etc.) That was what hit me hardest, so I link to the threads containing those in one of my posts on it).

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thanks. The "academic" overlay has been really hard for me because I really wish academics would behave respectfully and in a manner deserving respect, and we tend to get judged on our worst representatives.