Previous Theory & Philosophy Summer School themes:

TAPSS 2011 ‘Representation’

Representation is a perennial and ubiquitous problem for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and is also at the centre of the most fraught issues in political and public debate. The concept has a long history of usage in Philosophy, reaching from the most fundamental epistemological question of how the mind ‘represents' the world to higher-level distinctions between ‘appearance' and ‘reality' and problems of social, legal and political representation. In Sociology, the debate around representation is influenced, for example, by Durkheim who identifies a recursive relationship between ‘collective representations and ‘individual representations'. He argues that society consists entirely of collective representations, constituting a reality that completely transcends the individual; but at the same time the collective representations of society is a reality that is only accessible through individual representations. Sociology, Durkheim says, should concern itself primarily with the problem of mediation between individual and collective representations.

The meanings of ‘representation' in Politics and Jurisprudence ranges from varieties of (purportedly) representative democracy, to representing issues and causes in the form of protest, lobbying and advocacy – ‘representation' in these usages meaning a ‘standing for', or 'in place of' some other thing or person with a right or authority to act on their account. This usage of representation makes claims to ‘legitimacy', ‘seriousness' and ‘truthfulness,' but it encompasses also intimations and connotations of acting, simulation, pretense and the performativity of politics and of the law. This ambiguity returns us again to the essential question of representation and mis-representation, of ‘truth' and ‘reality' in political and legal rhetoric and sophistry –‘spin' in the current jargon. This dense problematic of representation and rhetoric usually goes under the generic term of ‘ideology'. Further, representation is one of the core issues in aesthetic discourses. ‘Representation' here means an exhibition in some image or form, an expression by means of a figure or symbol, metaphor or rhythm, character and action. Professional criticism as well as audience appreciation means ‘reading', ‘listening', ‘viewing' representations and through these practices understanding, interpreting and critiquing representations. The question of ‘naturalism' in the Arts echoes the problem of ‘objectivity' in the Social Sciences & Humanities, raising the same problems of truth and falsity, reality and representation as ‘image' or ‘likeness' or ‘appearance.'

Figuring out how one relates to these questions has been the task of the critic from Plato to Thomas Aquinas through Walter Benjamin to Jacques Derrida, and underlies all readings of Art and pop culture, media analysis and studies of everyday life. Pursuing the declensions of the problem of representation into yet another domain we confront the vexed question of representing the Other, a challenge posed by James Clifford et al. in Anthropology, in postcolonial and subaltern studies by Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak et al.; and by feminist theorists, such as Luce Irigary and Judith Butler. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, what of that which cannot be represented: what is taboo; what we must pass over in silence; what is represented only by its lack, but is all the more real for that?

TAPSS 2010 ‘Evaluation, Judgement and Critique’

Postgraduate work in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences has, at its core, problems of evaluation, judgement and critique. Postgraduates are expected to ‘evaluate’ texts,  reports, or artefacts; to ‘critique’ positions, institutions, or argument; and to make a ‘judgment’ on practices, beliefs, or forms of life. ‘Evaluation’, ‘Judgement’ and ‘Critique’ clarify and illuminate principles and alternative courses of action, help to weigh the truth or falsity of a belief or idea, compel to act justly, and serve to justify actions. They allow one to think through dilemmas, ambiguities and ambivalences. Judgement, evaluation and critique are the essential core of intellectual work and doctoral research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. They enable us to realize the true, the beautiful and the good. But what does it mean to ‘judge’, to ‘evaluate’, or to ‘critique’? On what bases, on whose authority, and under which auspices do we do these things? Are ‘evaluation’, ‘judgement’ and ‘critique’ the same, or are they different and distinct from one another? In what way(s) are they similar and/or different?

At present, we live in contexts that are beset by deep problems, such as financial crises, extreme and growing social inequalities, planetary ecological endangerment, war and violent conflict, gross injustice and forms of domination, cultural superficiality, ugliness, trivialization and nihilism. But we also live in a world of historical achievements and with manifest capacities in scientific, artistic and democratic practices that need to be elaborated and extended. As they stand now, these practices offer some foundations for this elaboration, and are therefore able to offer some hope. With fundamental societal learning, they could offer prospects for a more just, responsible and ecologically benign world, one which would enable both autonomy and solidarity. But what is the stuff of such learning other than extended competences for evaluation, judgement and critique? These competences could offer greater social integration as an alternative to fragmentation, a higher level of mature individuation as an alternative to mere individualization. It would seem that now, more than ever, we need to be able to evaluate, critique and judge. However, do evaluation, judgement and critique not become systematically blocked or counter- productive in the present intellectual and social contexts of relativism, globalization, multiculturalism, postmodernism, and cosmopolitanism? Can we still envisage that such practices, applied both to states of affairs and reflexively to their present uses within and between agents, may contribute to appropriate kinds of contemporary enlightenment and emancipation?

TAPSS 2009 ‘Value’

‘Value’ is a common, indispensible term.  Yet the meaning of value, and the value of value are highly controversial.  What is valuable? What should be valuable? Social and empirical scientists are encouraged to be ‘value neutral’.  But what does this mean, and is its achievement possible?  If we can identify the nature and value of value, how should this value be pursued? All researchers import conceptions of value to their work, whether this is in their ‘work ethic’, in their understanding of what is of value in their field, or in their conceptions of social or other value that motivate their inquiries and analysis.  By introducing students to the foundational commitments of research methodologies and paradigms, students of TAPSS will better understand the conceptions of value that are in play in their own research.  TAPSS offers a course of study in the methods and theory of ‘value’ as relevant to all researchers of the human sciences (Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities).  Building on classical and contemporary thought in philosophy and sociology, the TAPSS is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing from theories, methods and perspectives across the entire spectrum of these theoretical disciplines.