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Representational
Practice
an argument directed to breaking
an unrecognised social
prohibition
Welcome
to a site that is decidedly unusual in its scientific purpose. Within a
scientific context what is usual is to announce some surprising discovery that
extends people perceptual range. That is not my purpose. Instead I seek to
change attitudes towards goings-on that are already wholly within people'
perceptual range. That purpose requires, therefore, establishing two markedly
different senses for the term 'invisible'. In one sense things are invisible
because they exist beyond people's established perceptual range. Whereas, in
contrast, things are also invisible because their existence is taken-
for-granted.
Changing the
balance between the taken-for-granted and the granted
Based on that distinction it can be argued
that it is far more socially acceptable to extend people's perceptual range than
it is to open up the domain of the taken-for-granted. And that is so because
the working of any human collective, at any particular time, is based upon
maintaining an established balance between the personally taken-for-granted and
the publicly granted. It is, however, just that balance I seek to change for
the myriad of things serving a representational purpose or function - things
such as words, numbers, pictures, maps, models, puppets, and so on, and so
forth.
At the moment the human practices involved
in making and using such representation things resides in the main within the
domain of the taken-for-granted. Whereas I argue there is a pressing need for
that practice to be moved into the domain of the publicly granted.
Contrived
ignorance
Which, at first sight, might seem
reasonable enough. But look a little deeper and it becomes clear that it
carries consequences of a revolutionary kind. And that is so because the
plausibility of a whole pantechnicon of knowledge, from traditional theology to
contemporary psychology, is powered by a contrived ignorance for humanly based
representational practices. An ignorance that established social pressures
maintain within the domain of the taken-for-granted.
Psychiatric
deception
That contrived ignorance's working out in practice is perhaps
most readily illustrated This by the so called 'mental disease' of schizophrenia
and the deception practiced in that regard by psychiatrists. That deceptive
practice turns upon obscuring the distinction between identification and
explanation; or, to be more technical, diagnosis and aetiology. If attention is
paid to what psychiatrist do in their day to day practice then it is clear that
their identification of a person to be labelled schizophrenic, that is their
diagnosis "of" schizophrenia, is based upon what that person says and does.
Which means that the diagnosis of schizophrenia lacks any of the physiological
based aids that now inform a whole range of disease that uncontentiously involve
some bodily pathology. Thus, the person labelled schizophrenic exhibits
peculiarities in his, or her, representational practices. Although precisely
what those peculiarities are the psychiatrists, for the most part, fails to make
clear. The peculiarity that tends to be most commonly noted is that of hearing
voices. But that, it can be argued, is not a pathological symptom in itself.
Aetiological yarns that
misrepresent
The psychiatrist, from his representationally based
diagnosis, then proceeds to claim that the aetiology of his patient's condition
is some abnormality of body, brain, or gene. Albeit the precise character of
such bodily pathology decades, if not centuries, of research have failed to
isolate and to identify. But that repeated investigatory failure has its social
consequence. For psychiatrist are able to spin an aetiological yarn that serves
to divert attention from what the person identified as schizophrenic is actually
suffering from, namely: some difficulty of access to his or her collective's
representational practices and products. Thus, psychiatrists are, in
short, in the business of misrepresentation.
Taken-for-grantedness
The argument
Representational Revolution
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Notes
References
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Representational Practice has been created by John Linsie
who can be E-mailed at:
LinsieJohn@aol.com.
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