Becoming Response-Able: Inquiring into the Requirements of a Practice of Study

Abstract

ions, and hence concepts as well, are not a purely intellectual affair, corresponding with “abstract thought” as opposed to “concrete thought.” Whitehead indeed is not interested in “abstract thought” as such: for him, abstraction is a necessary ingredient in thinking, always situated. Moreover, not only thinking, but also perception requires abstraction because it makes recognition possible. An event, the most concrete fact, for instance, a bird singing his song in the early morning, can be named, but as soon as we talk about it, we use more abstract terms to refer to the actual singing. More precisely, it is due to our abstraction of the bird’s song that we can recognize the bird singing. As such, abstraction makes recognition possible, and vice versa. We recognize the bird’s song, although we barely have words to describe it. Abstractions make it possible to pay attention to events that otherwise might have remained barely noticed. Of the bird’s song, it is possible to say, “Did you hear it? There it is again!,” drawing attention to the song, even without recourse to any abstract name. In that sense, “recognition and abstraction essentially involve each other. Each of them exhibits an entity for knowledge which is less than the concrete fact, but is a real factor in that fact.”7 Abstractions, therefore, do not inhabit the realm of abstract thought, but are vital ingredients in the occurrence of the event, understood as an actual occasion. They are part and parcel of how we experience what happens, and they sensitize us to what we can be aware of in perception. Abstractions therefore seem to have a double efficacy. First, they allow us to render intelligible and communicate experiences. The abstraction of knowledge, for instance, seemed to render the studiers at first incapable of perceiving the knowledge of the orchard, only becoming sensitive to it by telling its story. Abstractions, however, not only “catch” (or “prehend”) events by naming them, they also—and this is their second efficacy—lure our feelings and affects, Becoming Response-Able 89 make a specific experience of an event possible, constituting in their own way a prehension. Having told the stories of knowledge was an experience that altered how the studiers could perceive events in which knowledge was generated or shared. Consequently, we cannot be against abstractions as if we would have a more authentic experience without them, for it is very much due to abstractions that we can experience what happens in this way, rather than in another. Therefore, it is vital to take care of them, of how they lure our experience. In The Collective Dictionary, the participants engaged in a process of taking care of the abstractions that are at play in their experience of the camp through storytelling.8 In doing so, I contend, the studiers aim to overcome what Whitehead has called “The Fallacy of the Perfect Dictionary.”9 This term indicates the belief that we already know and have coined all the fundamental ideas that can be applied to our experience, and that these ideas can be explicitly expressed in human language, in concepts. The Collective Dictionary, on the contrary, demonstrates the internal differences of various concepts. It makes clear how concepts collect a multiplicity of experiences that can henceforth affect us in a particular way rather than another, constituting a particular prehension. Moreover, the participants attempted to question these concepts from the point of view of experiences that were until then neglected by the concept, in order to transform its efficacy, to lure our feelings toward other aspects of knowledge, ownership, participation, responsibility, or one of the other concepts included in the dictionary. In order to omit “The Fallacy of the Perfect Dictionary” and inspired by what Ursula K. Le Guin calls “The Carrier Bag Theory,” The Collective Dictionary can be understood as a carrier bag of concepts for living together in the camp. Stories, according to Le Guin, are carrier bags that are used for collecting, carrying, and telling the stuff of living. Containing not only wild facts and messy descriptions, but also remote memories and high hopes, it is often said of stories that they blind us to the present. Instead of viewing storytelling as deceit and disguise, Le Guin suggests to understand the story as “an active encounter with the environment by means of posing options and alternatives, and an enlargement of present reality by connecting it to the unverifiable past and the unpredictable future.” Stories do not distract from “what is really happening,” but draw our attention to specific ingredients in the construction of lived reality, affording the possibility to take care of our abstractions.10 In that sense, stories are carrier bags for clashing points of view without pacifying conflicts, and hence, for diplomacy. Once more in the words of Le