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Jacob Rasmussen
Contextualizing context
1. Outlines and impossibility
In January this year the Swedish author of children's books Astrid Lindgren died of old age. In the following days a lot of newspapers had articles about her and her work, alongside with illustrations from her books. One of these illustrations, Emil with his head inside a soup-tureen, started a train of thoughts and associations for me, beginning with the inversion of one of the simplest and most common illustrations of the figure-ground relation in gestalt theory; the faces and the vase.
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It seemed to me that Emil with the head inside the tureen in a funny way inverted the image of the faces surrounding the vase, although there is no doubt about what is outline for Emil in this case. The reason why I decided to follow this far-fetched idea about inverting this image of the central idea in gestalt theory to the end, is that an inversion of gestalt theory in itself should be impossible because the central aspect here is an ongoing inversion or a continuously shifting between what is figure and what is ground. But if it is impossible, then why follow it to an end?
If we for a moment keep in mind that Emil is aware of what is the outline of the inverted image he has created and at the same time take a closer look at the following quotation from Bruce Andrews;
"Instead, to make as visible as possible the limits & norms & operations of the machinery. To show the possibilities of sense & meaning being constructed; to foreground the limits of the possible - & our possible lives; to create impossibility" (Andrews in Hartley 1992: 1)
Then it suddenly becomes clearer what Emil is doing, he is putting the limits of the possible in the foreground by suddenly seeing the outlines of tureen from the inside, he is in other words, creating an image of the illustration of the figure-ground relationship that is challenging the limits of the possible. That is exactly what Andrews wants us to do, to challenge the limits and thereby making things change, for him it is a question of power-relations where language builds the frame or context for social action, and that is the context he is challenging through his poetry (Hartley 1992: left column 5-6). The dialogue between Bateson and his daughter circles around the very same subject, agreeing on that the people who makes the laws only does so to make the other people predictable (Bateson 1972: 31). This unpredictability implies that you can not see the outlines of the conversations you are taking part in cause otherwise you would be like a machine (Bateson 1972: 32). It is the unpredictability that Andrews and Hartley is acting upon, they are challenging the forms through which meaning is constructed, by breaking up, turning around and inverting language as we usually perceive it. As Hartley simply puts it; "we do not challenge limits if we do not recognise them" (Hartley 1992: left column 4). They are focusing on another level of abstraction than Bateson though, since they are challenging the system, the machinery or the laws and the people who makes them, as Bateson's daughter would have called it. They want to challenge hegemonic structures and create new forms of dialogue; "… a textual dialogue which writes itself across the borders without the usual borderguards of citation" (Hartley 1992: right column 4-5). Hartley attempts to have this textual dialogue running next to the text on Andrews and his problem with context, so that there is a dialogue between Hartley and bits of text going on in the right column and at the same time this dialogue is commenting or interfering with the original text on Andrews so that Andrews can be put into several different context which might have the same elements but will intermingle in different ways. This means that the intertextual dialogue is shaping the context for Hartley's work on Andrews, but it is, like the poetry of Andrews, still not impossible to understand since it is written and perceived within the given limits of language, though it is attempting to challenge these very limits.
If we for a moment returns to Bateson and his statement about the impossibility of seeing the outlines of a conversation while being in the middle of it, we can sum up that outlines is shaped by the unpredictability of the dialogue or conversation and that this unpredictability challenge the limits of what is inside and what is outside of the outlines and thereby suggests alternative constructions of the outline. A bit like Emil that sees the inside of the tureen and then while bowing accidently cracks it to peace's as he bangs his head unto the table, the tureen is glued together but its outline has been challenged.
2. Dialogue
If it is true that the dialogue shapes the context or the outline of our possible lives, then how shall we react when confronted with dialogues with the dead, as is the case in Piers Vitebsky's study of the Sora in India. They deal with dead and mourning through dialogues with their dead relatives, these dialogues are mediated by a shaman, but no one knows how the dialogue will turn out, and therefor they can go on and on (Vitebsky 1993: 102-103). This means that the Sora practically can be in the middle of a continuous dialogue with the dead most of their life, meaning that the dead are shaping part of the context within which the Sora lives. This is, according to Vitebsky, contrasted by the Freudian psychoanalysis and the materialistic forms of psychiatry, where there is hardly any dialogue with the dead or no dialogue at all (Ibid.: 111-112). This means that there is sharp break each time a person dies, because that means the end of the dialogue. There is therefor an ongoing breaking and shifting of smaller contexts within a wider context that might itself even be broken up every now and then. This is opposed to the Sora's where the dialogues are going on and on. We have to keep in mind though that all this context-shaping is only seen in the retrospect, meaning when the dialogue is over or partly not taking place, and it is then the outline of the conversation we see in the retrospect that can be challenged through language, as is the claimed purpose for Andrews and Hartley.
What we have here is two different ways of leading a dialogue with our dead, or in other words, two different kind of knowledge. As argued, it is the unpredictability of the dialogue that challenges the limits of the outlines, but the more these same outlines has been challenged the wider they've become, and therefor you can say that some kinds of unpredictability has become normalised. These two kind of knowledge are, as they are presented by Vitebsky, expressed through dialogues, but since the bearers of the different knowledge's does not engage in dialogue with each other, and the Sora knowledge is termed ignorance because it doesn't fit its context anymore (Vitebsky 1992: 107). This is only possible because; "…there is nothing inherent in language projects that gives them immunity from a partiality that reproduces the controlling idea of dominant culture…" (Hunt in Hartley 1992: right column 18). Or as Vitebsky puts it, ignorance like knowledge is purposefully directed, meaning that it is a question of who has the power to turn the others knowledge into ignorance. Which fits Hartley and Andrews ideas of contesting contexts, except that they claim that by keeping up the marginal knowledge and challenge to "the dominating machinery", the dominating context will adapt to or normalise more and more of the marginal discourse.
Although it might seem to come out of the blue, all this talk about dialogue, language and knowledge has lead us somewhere, and no matter how unpredictable it might seem it has lead us back to Emil. In the articles about Astrid Lindgren following her death, a lot of prominent people were asked to put their feelings in to words, many of these sounded pretty much the same; "it is a great loss, but she will live on through her books, my children will learn as much from them as I did, her messages will continue to be relevant for children". In a way, although just a phrase, we are dealing with a dialogue here, or maybe a monologue from the dead, but what has otherwise been termed impossible or ignorant is in this case making perfect sense.
3. Literature
Bateson, Gregory. 1972 (1953) "Metalogue: why do things have outlines?" in Steps to an ecology of mind Pp. 27-32, New York: Ballantine
Hartley, George. 1992. "Context needs a contest: Poetic economy and Bruce Andrews's give em enough rope" http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/hartley/pubs/andrews.html
Vitebsky, Piers. 1993. "Is death the same everywhere? Contexts of knowing and doubting" in Mark Hobart (ed.) An anthropological critique of development. The growth of ignorance, Pp. 100-114, London: Routledge