Kant was right, right? You can only perceive particulars through universal categories. I've been thinking a lot about particulars in my reading lately -- John Cheever and Mary Gaitskill seem to have limitless stores of amazing particulars to tell their stories with. Where do those come from? How can I better tap into my own reserves? But when I read those stories, somewhat paradoxically like you're saying, you feel the particular perspectives of the storyteller on the characters...which is definitely *not* particular but full of moral and character judgement. But I think this is maybe a bit of a trick -- by giving us all these particulars, dropping in a subtle guiding abstraction or two, and inviting us to participate in the perspective, we end up having better access to the universals.
One hell of a trick! And I think something like this happens with teaching also -- part of what's good about good teaching is sequences of particulars to prepare for abstractions/brief direct instruction of abstractions/a chance to apply the abstractions to new particulars.
Anyway, great post, and thanks for introducing me to these three works. (And the term 'witness'!)
thanks so much Michael! love these thoughts and really appreciate the reminder that Cheever and Gaitskill are treasure troves of haecceity :)
it’s been a while since I’ve read Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense, but I remember some really lucid parts in there about the ways that singularities, or streams of singularities, can be taken up in all these wildly divergent ways to create sense-entities (and later logical relations, etc.) — so it’s like the singularities have under-determination almost as a virtue. This makes me think that those “subtle guiding abstraction[s]” you mention exist and operate (ideally) at the level of “where you want the particulars to go,” so to speak — and that feels very resonant with the kind of thinking that goes into designing a math task! Excited to sit with this further and maybe try to wrench it into some written thinking about this problem — how to ask someone a question, or address them in a poem, while simultaneously a) you kinda know where you want them to go with it *and* b) they kinda need to do all the going themself, and feel okay (preferably even excited, compelled, aesthetically satisfied) doing it!
ALWAYS so fascinating to read ANYTHING you write & take a little credit for the nurturing that created your Brilliant Brain! 🤩🥰
Kant was right, right? You can only perceive particulars through universal categories. I've been thinking a lot about particulars in my reading lately -- John Cheever and Mary Gaitskill seem to have limitless stores of amazing particulars to tell their stories with. Where do those come from? How can I better tap into my own reserves? But when I read those stories, somewhat paradoxically like you're saying, you feel the particular perspectives of the storyteller on the characters...which is definitely *not* particular but full of moral and character judgement. But I think this is maybe a bit of a trick -- by giving us all these particulars, dropping in a subtle guiding abstraction or two, and inviting us to participate in the perspective, we end up having better access to the universals.
One hell of a trick! And I think something like this happens with teaching also -- part of what's good about good teaching is sequences of particulars to prepare for abstractions/brief direct instruction of abstractions/a chance to apply the abstractions to new particulars.
Anyway, great post, and thanks for introducing me to these three works. (And the term 'witness'!)
thanks so much Michael! love these thoughts and really appreciate the reminder that Cheever and Gaitskill are treasure troves of haecceity :)
it’s been a while since I’ve read Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense, but I remember some really lucid parts in there about the ways that singularities, or streams of singularities, can be taken up in all these wildly divergent ways to create sense-entities (and later logical relations, etc.) — so it’s like the singularities have under-determination almost as a virtue. This makes me think that those “subtle guiding abstraction[s]” you mention exist and operate (ideally) at the level of “where you want the particulars to go,” so to speak — and that feels very resonant with the kind of thinking that goes into designing a math task! Excited to sit with this further and maybe try to wrench it into some written thinking about this problem — how to ask someone a question, or address them in a poem, while simultaneously a) you kinda know where you want them to go with it *and* b) they kinda need to do all the going themself, and feel okay (preferably even excited, compelled, aesthetically satisfied) doing it!