Sunday, May 06, 2007

Historical ontology

In going through Foucault’s various books and articles that I’ve read this semester, I came across this very dense and apt phrase in Order of Things that seems to sum up the entire concept of historical ontology:

“History shows that everything that has been thought will be thought again by a thought that does not yet exist”
(p. 372)


I am grappling now with this concept as shown by this quote: that of historical ontology, which argues for the specific situatedness of modes of being and specific epistemes.

I’ve been reading Hacking’s book by that name, in which he is arguing for the situated understanding of being in a specific episteme. He argues through Foucault, without directly referencing Foucault much, a method I find quite interesting as an approach for the Foucault paper I’m working on, that presents a historical ontology of digitality. It needs to be a long-ish paper, so I should be able to nicely sink my teeth in it. I’ve still got some of that “white paper syndrome” going on, where I am a bit overwhelmed by the complexity of the argument I want to present. As I spend time playing solitaire on my computer or concocting new recipes, I feel the whole paper swirling around in my head.

The question then is, when will the thought that I need to capture on whiteness in Word coalesce into thoughts that can be coherently stated?