Unthinking Reason

Our discussion towards the end of class fed into some interesting aspects of the piece we read by da Silva. 

As Erin pointed out, the mandate of our universities is probably best described as systematic transmission—an approach that is clearly more systemic than particular. In class, this got me thinking about what this transmission would mean if it wasn't coupled with such a ubiquitous and pervasive reliance on an underlying universal reason and morality. Although profs often encourage ‘critique’ of this ideology, the critiques never seem to stray far from the confines of their subjects. If we stepped outside of this reason and morality, and transmission occurred without reliance on our rational, individual selves to interpret and reconstitute, maybe we could compose new and unique constellations of thought based on what is transmitted, rather than simply regurgitating the cartographies of others’ modes of reasoning. Then maybe transmission wouldn't be so bad. 

It felt very important to be introduced to the alignment of Whiteness and Neurotypicality to these forms of normative thinking.

It was nice to see this half-formed thought I was mulling over taken up throughout the da Silva piece. Her critique of Hegel and his concept of self-actualization as the simple playing-out of universal reason was interesting, particularly because I found it hard to differentiate at times between her problematizing of this logic and her own seemingly Hegelian dialectic-like structuring. I felt a strong interaction between Marx and Hegel on the one hand—notably what she identifies as the exclusion of Blackness from self-actualization in their respective ethos’— and da Silva’s own call for the emancipation of Blackness from Thought and Truth. But she seemed, in doing so, to accept an almost Hegelian notion of Thought and Truth.

As she progressed into a discussion of the ‘Plenum’ and what she refers to as ‘refraction’ and the ‘play of expressions,’ I was surprised to see the piece converge towards a more familiar plane that I am used to interacting with through thinkers like Deleuze, rather than Hegel (my connection was made through Tarde, by way of Leibniz). Although the way she gets there couldn't be more different, the destination seems somewhat similar. Especially when reading the phrase ‘as what exists becomes always and only a rendering of possibilities, which remain exposed in the horizon of becoming,’ which sounds like it could be written on the wall somewhere in the SenseLab. I didn't expect to end up there when I started reading, and i’m interested to hear more about how Hegel and Marx brought us to Process.