No doubt this post is long overdue, but I'd like to preface my reflection on Cooper's piece by saying that I think it has taken me so long to post because synthesizing and connecting all of the articles we've been reading has been an especially challenging endeavor for me. Theory, more than any other type of reading, is the most difficult prose for me to process because of the intensive work that goes in to parsing out and appropriating all of the jargon. In short, I feel very hesitant to share my rough, raw, and extremely underdeveloped thought processes that these pieces evoke. Nonetheless, here it is.
The whole idea of complexity theory fascinates me. The fact that Cooper brings in neurology and neurophenomenology seems an especially appropriate move to make when discussing agency. Of course, due to our extremely limited knowledge of the human brain, it makes sense that we haven't been able to rightly make use of the role neurology plays in the various thought theories we study. Here are some questions I had right off the bat concerning neurology and complexity theory:
- When is it appropriate or possible to introduce students to complexity theory as a world view? I wonder this because it seems like students should be introduced to such a way of thinking at as early an age as possible because the world is so vast and composed of so many different systems and subsystems. It thus seems prudent (to me) to get them questioning these things early on; doing so, I think, would steer them away from or at least discourage the way too prevalent practice of taking concepts and power structures for granted. I myself wish I would've learned to question and research the world in this way sooner than grad school, but perhaps it biologically isn't possible to do based on the trajectory of typical neurological development?
- Along these lines, I wanted to mention that I thought of our Singer article in 151 at this point, as Cooper says on page 421, "...though the world changes in response to individual action, agents are very often not aware of their intentions, they do not directly cause changes, and the choices they make are not free from influence from their inheritance, past experiences, or their surround." This made me think of Assange and how people often make the mistake (Singer included) of revering individuals for the changes they instigate instead of studying the complex social interactions and events that prompted that individual's contribution in the first place. I also thought about Rivers and Weber's "mundane" and "monumental" documents and the symbiotic roles they play in ecological composition.
I could see a lot of connections to genre theory throughout the piece, though Cooper doesn't outright specify these connections. Her talks about fragmentation and the brevity of agency reminded me of the melange of genres that people (as students, professionals, citizens, etc.) must move and negotiate within in their everyday lives (423).
I was also particularly interested in the neurodynamic intentional arc on page 429. Cooper says, "The part of the loop involving intent, action, and the creation of the meaning of sensory input is largely nonconscious, as is the resultant formation of memories and dispositions. Through these processes, the agent is provided with meaning for free." While I'm not entirely sure I'm grasping this concept, I'm going to try to explain why I think I have by relating it to a movie I saw this weekend:
- This weekend I saw Cabin in the Woods at the Athena Grand. I was excited to see the film because a few people whose tastes in movies generally parallel mine said it was an excellent subversion of the typical horror film. To some extent, it was. I won't spoil it for anyone, but I will say that it's a recognizably self-aware film. Its meta-level plot constructions and boundary-blurring blend of humor and seriousness appealed to my desire for the movie to be different, that is, unclear. However, I got lost somewhere in the middle of the movie and emerged from the theater with a concise (but terribly cursory and superficial) review: it was good, but it could've been better. This was a total geek moment for me because I had just read the Cooper article before viewing Cabin, so I forced myself to figure out why I was so vehement about it falling short.
This required me to ask myself a few questions: what types of films do I normally like? What kinds do I normally dislike? What does a film have to do for me to consider it well made? Poorly made? Why do I find these things so appealing or unappealing? I could seriously go on for days and pages about all of this, but in the interest of time I'll cut it down to this: I tend to like noires, westerns, dramas, melodramas, and foreign films. In terms of "global patterning," one of the things they all have in common are intense and intricately crafted moods that usually involve strategic shots, lighting, angles, makeup, costumes, and music. All of these elements combined tend to sway my "emotions" to this strange state of limbo where I feel intensely (anything from sadness, happiness, pity, sentimentality) but also am unsure of how I should be feeling. Based on my past experiences, I know that I like these kinds of movies because (I think) they're open to interpretation, and their meanings shift depending on time, place, and the individual. So I concluded that perhaps Cabin in the Woods fell short for me because it failed to implement the visual and aural experiences/moods that I value in films -- the experiences/moods that mean the most to me personally.
Sheesh, what I'm trying and failing to do is demonstrate this neurodynamic intentional arc. See the meme above.
I have more to say about responsible rhetorical agency, but I'll save it for class. I hope this was at least mildly helpful or interesting to someone out there!
I don't know about introducing kids to complexity theory, per se. Yes, to practicing it in education and life: to thinking about and speaking of things in terms of complex interrelationships, in a dynamic, holistic, ecological way. That said, I was intrigued that agency, as typically thought of as intention, usually is articulated later; it "follows the neural activity involved in planning and organizing an act"(430). But even so, the idea of causal agency is said to be needed as a fiction because most of us act within that assumption, hence our sense of individual responsibility. This is because we "experience ourselves as causal agents" (437). But in fact we are not.
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder if we are not better off ditching that notion of causal agency and replacing it with the more complex model, that understands "causation as a circular process in which an agent's action perturbs another agent who responds" (437).
I am also fascinated by the role of inefficiency in bringing to light and possibility other possibilities previously outside the intentional arc. That is, biz as usual has to be interrupted so that metacognition can occur and open up other possibilities.