HOPE A OLSONSCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MILWAUKEE

 

Hegel’s Epistemograph, Classification, and Spivak’s

Postcolonial Reason

Concepts

Teleology – linear progression toward a goalEpistemograph, “a graduated diagram of the

coming-into-being of knowledge, …” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial

Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (1999, p.41)

Classification as a structure of human knowledge Apparent in everyday life in:

Academic disciplines DDC, UDC, or LCC

Why Hegel?

Hegel “a world-historical metonym” Spivak (1999, p.47)

Indirect, but clear, influence on Dewey Hegelian faculty at Amherst College William Torrey Harris

St Louis Hegelian, leader in US Hegelian movement St Louis Public School Library Classification applied

Hegel Wiegand (1998)

Main Classes - Epistemographs

Bacon Reason Imagination Memory← Philosophy Poetry HistoryHegel Idea Notion Essence Being←Harris Science (Philosophy) Art (Poetry) HistoryDewey 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900

Phil & Psych

Rel SocSci

Lang Nat sci & math

Tech Arts Lit & Rhet

Geog & Hist

Progression toward a goal of higher knowledge

Bacon Hegel

Memory/History Self-experienced

knowledgeImagination/Poetry

Imagination processes memory into poetry

Reason/Philosophy Reason analyzes &

classifies memory to produce philosophy

Being (Sein) “what is there before us” “simple immediacy”

Essence (Wesen) From reflection on Being Mediated knowing

Notion/Idea (Begriff) Notion synthesizes Being

and Essence Idea is unattainable truth

Baconian Links to Hegel’s Epistemograph

Hegel’s Dialectic as Progression

Being +(thesis)

Knowledge of what is primary & true based onobservation

Essence Becoming(antithesis )

Mediation of the immediate through self reflection“negative simplicity”

Notion/Idea(synthesis)

“Sublation” of Being & Essence

Sublate =To preserve,

maintainTo put an end to

Foundation of Hegel’s Epistemograph

Hegel gives two definitions for “to sublate” which “means to preserve, maintain, and equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to.” (v.1, bk.1, s.185)

Being is preserved, but set aside as knowing progresses to Essence and Essence is preserved, but set aside as knowing progresses to Notion

“Each thing arises in the course of divine self-knowledge and is a step in the revelation of God.” William Torrey Harris on Hegel (1895, p.145)

Hegel’s Teleology

“The progress of culture generally, and of the sciences in particular, gradually brings to light higher relations of thought, or at any rate, raises these relations to greater generality, and thereby attracts to them more attentive consideration.”

Hegel’s Science of LogicLogic leads Thought to the Absolute Truth

Time as Law

Progression implies a time factorDevelopmental model

Progression over time through a series of predefined stages to reach some advanced state of knowledge

“Time graphed as Law manipulates history seen as timing [actual lived sequence of events] in the interest of cultural political explanations, both in Hegel and the high Hindu contexts.” (Spivak 1999, p. 43)

Postcolonial critical approach

“Postcolonial criticism bears witness to the unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation involved in the contest for political and social authority within the modern world order. Postcolonial perspectives ... intervene in those ideological discourses of modernity that attempt to give a hegemonic ‘normality’ to the uneven development and the differential, often disadvantaged, histories of nations, races, communities, peoples.” – Homi K. Bhabha

Spivak on timing, Time, and history

“timing” is “[o]ne common way of grasping life and ground-level history as events happening to and around many lives …”

“timing” fleshes out the events making time a “sequential process.”

“Time” starts with the structure while “timing” starts with the events.

“Time graphed as Law” reshapes the events of history to fit into a predetermined structure – an epistemograph.” Spivak (1999, p.44)

Hegel and the Srimadbhagavadgitā

Hegel found the Gitā “extremely monotonous, and on the whole empty and wearisome.” His Lectures on the Aesthetic in Spivak 1999, p.44

Hegel is measuring with a culturally specific standard

The Gitā does not fit Hegel’s epistemograph Historical Does not follow a progression

Spivak Deconstructs Hegel and the Gitā

“… the often unexamined opposition between colonizer and colonized …” Spivak 1999, p. 46

Both Hegel and the writer of the Gitā “dramatize most successfully [her] thesis that Time graphed as Law manipulates history seen as timing in the interest of cultural political explanations …” but each in his own way Spivak 1999, p.43

Difference between Hegel and the writer of the Gitā is constructed; similarities are ignored

Hegel as Epistemic Bully

Hegel’s Science of Logic is made up of dialectics nested in dialectical strings that force a certain conclusion Like Plato’s dialectical triumph over the Sophist in

Theatetus“… because Hegel places all of history and

reality upon a diagram, everything fits.” Spivak, 1999, p. 39

Hegel is operating within a western philosophical discourse

What Does This Mean to Us?

“The mainstream has never run clean, perhaps never can. Part of mainstream education involves learning to ignore this absolutely, with a sanctioned ignorance.” Spivak, 1999, p. 2

If we do, we will never be able to understand more than the mainstream with the result being ignorance and injustice

Legacy of Hegel’s Epistemograph

Continuation under DDC and UDC in particular Other classifications in the same mode Facets a potential tool if we subvert consistent citation

order such as UDC allows So far we have not subverted main classes

Globalization spreads the western discourse Standards for sharing risk homogenization From Hegel to Harris to Dewey to the world

Efforts to ameliorate DDC and UDC are laudable, but cannot address the fundamental mainstream nature of the schemes

Perpetual expansion of OCLC & ubiquity of WorldCat make dissemination saturating and instant – watch the ticker http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/newgrow.htm

Within Western culture:Hegel’s Gender Views

Women associated with Being Particularity Immediacy Naturalness Substantiality

Men associated with Essence, Notion Mediacy Universality Freedom Subjectivity

Seyla Benhabib (1996, p.29)

A Quick Example:

The Blackwell guide to feminist philosophy (2007) LC classified in 305.4201 social groups. role and status of women and the women’s movement. philosophy

Feminist philosophy is in the social sciences – the Notion Not quite philosophy

Philosophy is in the ultimate category – the Idea

How to deconstruct our classificatory practice

Harris started by reversing the teleological sequence

Harris and Dewey place 500 Science and 600 Technology contiguously Pragmatic in linking the two across the Being/Essence

boundary or Enacting the unity of Being/Essence into Becoming

Hegel & Bacon had a rationale for the main classes 000 General works is certainly not the Absolute Truth

of the Idea Is it now just a convention that we can ignore?

Should classification reinforce the mainstream?

Classifications are founded on a particular concept of knowledge

May not fit a global context any better than Hegel’s epistemograph fit Indian art

Vital to understand our epistemic underpinnings if we will understand our current standards and practices

HOPE A OLSON

HOLSON@UWM.EDU

Thank you