In jest, I offer my dissertation in two quotes. The other pages are just filler.
Levinas on difference as the foundation of the subject:
Reason makes human society possible; but a society whose members would be only reasons would vanish as a society. What could a being entirely rational speak of with another entirely rational being? Reason has no plural; how could numerous reasons be distinguished? (Totality and Infinity 119)
Dave Weinberger on how the digital “fractures” knowledge:
In conversation we think out loud together, trying to understand. The noise this makes is very different from the scratch of a philosopher’s ink on paper. Paper drives thought into our heads. The Web releases thoughts before they’re ready so we can work on them together. And in those conversations we hear multiple understandings of the world, for conversation thrives on difference. Traditionally, difference has been a sign that knowledge hasn’t been reached: There can be only one knowledge because the world is one way and not any other. But there will always be multiple conversations and thus multiple understandings. We’re never going to stop talking with one another, silenced by the single, unified, true, inescapable, and final knowledge of all that is.
I love Weinberger. He continues to point out that we’d be hard pressed to identify when the stable, unifying knowledge ever existed. But I do build off of his quote to warn that, when we work on the web, we aren’t necessarily “working” toward a singular understanding. The work we do is different–we’re working on the rhetorical bridge that keeps the conversation together, maintaining kairos, and shaping you in response to me (in response to you and in response to me, obligated to you, obligated to me).
