Wednesday, February 7, 2018
genesis ongoing
The Project, up to 2017, light-heartedly named “sundry gardening,” is usefully (for me) regarded as as precursor, process, and as event of appropriation. Yet, The Project is not equivalent with Cycle 3 of It.
Cycle 4 has no online prospectus. But I’ll return to this point at the end here.
precursor
Altogether. a singularity of thinking (an entirety of Project-ive engage-ment) is troped in particular instances (specific texts), as if given-conceptuality (particular discursive presentation) is hologramic of
The Project’s entire aspectuality.
Philogeny: a project, 2004-2017, fondly named “sundry gardening” (hereafter: “s.g.”).
The available project, as just itself, is too diverse to easily explain. Though it’s coherent conceptually (“deep structure,” so called), that’s not likely evident to anyone who hasn’t studied the entire site. But I’m not presuming that anyone will strain to find a conceptual cohering. I’m presenting excursions that might be worthwhile separately. I hope that “you” explore. I hope it’s useful for you.
I want to move on to doing new things, not pretending that “s.g.” is unified to anyone, apart from presentation as single set of Areas in which all the hundreds of pages and postings are organized and sequenced, looking altogether like a book, as if it all does belong together as much as only I know it does.
The work I’m presenting is not the work I’ve been whining about developing, the last year or so. The latter goes on; the latter has gone on so well that I’m settled about the character of the 17 Areas of The Project that are rendered as the Areas of “s.g.” What’s being presented there is derivative: occasional excursions which have been available online since each was done (2004—2017), but not aggregated, grouped, and sequenced into a singular thing until now.
process
Life enacts itself, while we (someone) may appreciate that retrospectively as process.
None of the “s.g.” writings were initially done relative to any given topical area under which pages/postings are now grouped. But the character of the project—17 Areas, many topical groups within each Area—has long-term intent for focusing future work.
The 2004-2017 era of The Project “is,” retrospectively, an allegory of philological individuation, leading to—among many tendencies—a sense of philosophy as derivative, educational partner of philology, since “philosophy” no longer seeks to be fundamentally conceptual science (presumably, after so much professional critique of metaphysicalism).
Early on (2004—), there was individuation of several blogs and development of cohering.net Webwork before gedavis.com was begun (circa 2012). I employed g.com for deliberate “downscaling” of interests already growing through c.net. This wasn’t a pretentiousness of c.net; rather, demonstrative of an innerworldly/outerworldly difference in sense of address: prospective Work that was later expressed freely (c.net) vs. free conceptuality expressed discursively (g.com), i.e., with deliberate intent to be accessible (or, if inaccessible, to be usefully demonstrative of Work process).
Lack of originality in online work is sometimes deliberate because I’m expressing senses of shared ground that—I would argue—are congruent with my eccentric views in other discussions that may seem idiosyncratic (but are not!).
I would argue that the entirety of “s.g.” is conceptually unifiable in a way that is useful, appealing (I hope), and comprehensively progressive (with all due respect for traditions). And I’m satisfied with how I regard what matters.
But I’m eager to learn from others whom I may be misunderstanding
(or to whom I seem useless).
Otherwise, I sail on.
Anyway and altogether, “s.g.” displays a well-ordered merger of two Web sites’ improvisations over 13 years; and as such, it is finished. It is what it is.
Its topical organization of Areas will be continued in later work, but not as changing the listings in “s.g.” Instead, later work will link to the earlier work in “s.g.” when that’s apt; or later work will rethink earlier work, while letting that earlier work stay as it is.
Sequences of listings in “s.g.” aren’t generally chronological. Earlier improvisations that led to better formulation later (to my mind) are often listed after the later associated work that’s involved with shared topical/focal emergence. But sometimes, genealogical listing feels more useful; so, listings are more-or-less chronological.
So, on the one hand, later work may be the better realization of earlier prospecting; the later work is listed earlier. On the other hand, later work may be part of a continuum of development; later work is listed later, to be read in light of earlier work.
On repetition of listings: items especially important to me for eventual elaboration.
The frequency of listing some texts in the table of contents of “s.g.” has less to do with the content than the value of the text title as future theme.
An example is “Instilling capability is critical for the health of nations” and “Investing in human futures”: mere letters to NYTimes columnist David Brooks, but listed several times.
Frequency of “What makes one argument better than another?” is precursory for longstanding interest in educational theory.
There is more repetition within “progressive practice” than other Areas because pages/postings there really relate to several basic issues across several topics in that Area, such that later development of the reiterated page/posting will possibly enrich each of the relevant topic areas in which the text title was listed.
There’s less repeition in “discursive moments”; and little or none in earlier Areas.
Generally speaking, application of conceptual understanding leads to multiplications of relevance, whereas enrichment of the conceptual background so applied would tend to deepen itself (in more-singular inquiries) rather than lead to pluralization of its contextuality, just as any analysis of a topic tends to complicate one’s understanding of the topic rather than hybridizing variations.
event of appropriation
Authorship, showing through presentation, presumes the not-yet-presenting authoriality that is shaping the authorship. I know that seems obscure. “S.g.” is an authorshipal organization of authorial betrothal (The Project, offline, circa 2004 onward) which derives displays (articles, postings). A simplistic, but useful, formulation is: An individuation (the life) is different than a cohering author-ity across presentations.
“Sundry gardening” doesn’t represent The Project; rather, it expresses an emergent event of appropriating The Project into episodic presentations that have been organized relative to versions of the Areas of The Project.
Meanwhile (within offline work), reading enframes what’s to come for undisclosed authoriality, partially enstanced for others later by employment in displays, living a continuum between discursive difficulty (e.g., the seminar) and fun.
The Project: Cycle 4
The next cycle of The Project will show in terms of the topics that derive from Its offline version—the “Work”—but more deliberate than the many freestanding combines, 2004—2017, that I constellated into “sundry gardening.” I’ll explicate this obtuse point and discuss Cycle 4 soon.
Thanks for your interest.
