Have a coffee or a glass of wine. Settle down. Relax. I’d like to write something that cannot be written so you can think something that cannot be thought.
THE TAO OF CULTURAL STUDIES
with apologies to Capra
A long time ago I recognised that the language and techniques used in cultural studies were reminiscent of what I had come across in Eastern philosophy. What I am particularly interested in is making a Taoist approach more explicit, and employing a Taoist epistemology (and even a Taoist ethnography) to explore the relationship between science, nature, culture and ourselves. Interestingly, Sinologist Angus Graham has suggested similarities between Taoist ideas and Derridean philosophy.
What follows are extracts from the Tao Te Ching (the central Taoist text) together with my comments on how they are relevant to cultural studies (and maybe academia more generally).
ONE
The Tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal name.
The nameless
is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named
is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless,
one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring,
one can see the manifestations.
These two
spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.
This is the opening `chapter’ to the Tao Te Ching. It highlights the essential ineffability of the Tao. Once you’ve named `it’ `it’ isn’t. As with culture, once you’ve put it into words it is no longer what it was or is. The Tao, nature, culture, reality are all ineffable.
The `ten thousand things’ is an expression to describe the whole of material reality and it is interesting that it is explicitly linked to the act of naming (a logocentric origin). The nameless, however, encompasses both Heaven and Earth. In this we see not only that there is more to the universe than material reality, but more importantly a way of knowing that is not based on a (linear) logocentric `naming’; an epistemology that goes beyond the rational not into the irrational but into the non-rational or a-rational. {In “Of Grammatology” Derrida calls for non-linear, pluri-dimensional ways of thinking and writing – a move to a “meta-rationality”}.
My concern is also not only for the non-rational but also for non-cerebral (and non-organic) ways of knowing {this takes more explaining – I don’t mean AI}.
By way of analogy. I often see the practice that we are engaged in (science, cultural studies, Taoism…..) as a process of trying to draw a circle (and the nothingness that it contains), but all we have are straight lines. Drawing circles with straight lines (be they `laws’ or language – or even ideas).
I was once discussing schizophrenia with a colleague and we talked about the numerous ways in which a schizophrenic is understood. What struck me was the number of straight lines there are for drawing the circle that is the schizophrenic – eg. documents about the patient; discourses that construct the `patient’ in the first place; interviews with the patient, relatives and doctors; observations and field notes; the patient’s own accounts be they written, oral, pictorial, behavioural……
Circles with straight lines, but if we look sideways and squint (ie if we don’t `look’) we can see it. Our lines have guided and suggested (eg the `circle’ is here not there; this big not that big), but they are not the circle (indeed the circle does not exist until we draw the lines). The ineffable is not put into words, but read between the lines.
ELEVEN
Thirty spokes share a wheel’s hub;
The centre hole makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
The space within makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
The openings make them useful.
Profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
THE SPACE BETWEEN. For me this is central. What is useful (important) is the space between things, not the things themselves. In academia this can be read in a number of different ways. It includes the space between disciplines or areas of practice (eg. the `two cultures’). It may also be read as the space between theory and practice, or researcher and object of study, subject and object. In focusing upon the space (the intangible, that which is not) it calls for a new relationship between the two (eg. between ethnographer and `ethnographee’), a relationship which I would describe as `engaged’. By inhabiting the space between subject and object it goes beyond demands for `objectivity’ (and thereby subverting the epistemological imperialism of objectivity).
It could also be descriptive (prescriptive?) of how we “circle” around our subject (the absent middle), never defining it but in our own practices marking out the space.
Again, `usefulness’ comes from what is not there, from the space, the circle not the straight lines which have drawn it.
TWENTY
Give up learning and put an end to your troubles.
……
FORTY EIGHT
In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.
Less and less is done
Until non-action is achieved.
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
The world is ruled by letting things take their course.
It cannot be ruled by interfering.
FIFTY SIX
Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.
……
So much for citation indices and assessments of publications, they now become measures of ignorance not research.
There is a common element in much Eastern philosophy about how learning prevents wisdom. The more you learn, the less you know. “In the pursuit of learning” we acquire and build. “Profit comes from what is there” (Eleven). “The named is the mother of ten thousand things” (One).
The Tao cannot be taught. The Tao cannot be learnt. The Tao is. The Tao is, but the Tao is not what is. It is grasping (or rather not `grasping’) the essential `isness’ of the world that is important for me.
We search, we teach, we learn, we name but we only see and name that which can be seen and named, that which can be built, that which gives `profit’. The Tao (the Tao of culture) remains the circle in straight lines.
Our methodologies show us what can be named, but the more they show us the more they blind us to that which cannot be named. Our techiques get in the way, like a dancer conscious of his/her body and not the music.
Science does not give us the truth. It only gives us the right answers. Answers depend on the questions we ask. As we change our questions change. Nature doesn’t ask questions. Nature just IS.
It’s not the straight lines it’s the isness of being (in science, cultural studies, life)
A Taoist ethnography would, in effect, not be an “ethnography” at all. It would acknowledge that the lines (the “-graphy”) are not the circle. It would not be a methodology or practice since any intentional action would not be non-action (“wu-wei”). Action that follows the Tao must be spontaneous non-action (ie guided by Tao and not intent). It would not have objects of study since to objectify is to be imprisoned by the “thousand things”. It would not be a study since studying creates objects.
Yet, through non-action it would express the culture in which it is carried, and express that culture as that culture is expressed.
Tai Chi is often seen as a physical expression of Taoist philosophy. I once asked someone what would be a physical expression of western philosophy? She said: “jogging”. The very way we move is infused by our philosophy (our culture). Tai Chi emphasises balance and non-action. We emphasise power, strength, efficiency. The banal – to be found in our philosophy/culture – infects the very way we walk across a room or breathe.
Think on. Live on. Breathe.
Literacy of the Present 