Blog 17, First Response (Ming)

My stomach bug has perhaps worsened my already-mediocre reading comprehension, but I perhaps also misunderstand the assignment, because these two papers are perhaps the clearest of any we've read in stating evidence and methodologies. They both, either in an abstract or slow-moving intro, tell us what they see as evidence:

Foster's Abstract: “The paper builds an argument about empathy, kinesthesia, choreography, and power as they were constituted in early eighteenth century France. It examines the conditions under which one body could claim to know what another body was feeling, using two sets of documents -- philosophical examinations of perception and kinesthesia by Condillac and notations of dances published by Feuillet. Reading these documents intertextually, I postulate a kind of corporeal episteme that grounds how the body is constructed. And I endeavor to situate this body within the colonial and expansionist politics of its historical moment.”

Foster's use of evidence, from Condillac's scenario of the origin of language taking place between children to her effectively problematizing-of-that-scenario analysis of dance notation (the scenario, as a hypothetical one, is in a sort of platonic imagined space (83); the “pure space” in which the notated steps occur is problematic specifically because the conceptualization of it “ground[s] the colonial project” (88)), functions in service of one of her points: that statements become easily universalized when they're about the bodies of others, and that the colonial project especially benefited from such easy resultant appropriation of a sense of the “plight” of those others: if this “sympathy” could be excused as a virtue, then the things done to “alleviate” that plight could be also. Foster thereby complicates empathy as perhaps a more overtly colonizing force than stuplimity, transport, trance, or the other affective dances we've discussed thus far. When you're purportedly using empathy to do it, it's easier to abuse power and dress it up as virtue (and “virtue” itself is another theme in our readings I'd be interested to discuss more).

Reason and Reynolds' use of evidence to support their argument that “we need to think of kinesthetic responses in the plural rather than the singular” is something more of a stretch (50). Reason and Reynolds are also fairly explicit, and long-windedly so, in setting up their rhetorical stance and excusing their use of evidence. I say “excusing” because they spend the first four pages of their article articulating in a nearly epistolary way all the conversations and disciplines they're not trying to be part of with this article and all the things they're not trying to do. Their project is located within a larger cross-disciplinary project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the United Kingdom called “Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy”, which combines audience research (which Reason and Reynolds do do) and neuroscience (which they don't). They rely heavily on a close analysis of the transcripts of interviews with somewhat dubiously selected spectators and vaguely-touched-upon information management systems (what, pray tell, are the “personal networks” from which some of the more seasoned bharanatyam viewers were selected—and what on earth is the “coding structure that linked phrases and responses according to the theme and area of interest”?) of ballet and bharatanatyam as evidence of the plurality of affective responses to dance (50-51). I didn't know that anyone was confused that there exists such a plurality nowadays (we're not talking, as Foster is, about 18th-century France), so between that and my stomachache it's perhaps a personal peeve that Reynolds and Reason choose to use--twice--the word “huge”, for example, and not just because it upsets the tone they seem to intend to strike with their jockeying for discursive position in both the realms of research literature and humanities papers, but because the surrounding statement of the first use of "huge" is this one:

“All qualitative audience research raises huge methodological questions, which cannot be developed fully here.”

Well, you don't say.  Good for you, guys. I don't know that your “use” of “evidence” to back up an “argument” that seems more like a truism develops anything fully. You could at least be honest and say you just don't want to develop that discussion here, not that it can't "be developed" (note the use of the passive), but “all” of any kind of research raising “huge” any kind of questions strikes me as enough of a generality that its presence on the third page of your article has me raising an eyebrow. And talking in the second person. How did that happen?  Anyway, you do no favors for empathy.  It's too generalized and one-size-fits-all by the end of your article to be of clear use.