{"id":49,"date":"2005-09-18T14:36:39","date_gmt":"2005-09-18T18:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/18\/seeing-is-believing\/"},"modified":"2005-09-19T21:24:17","modified_gmt":"2005-09-20T01:24:17","slug":"seeing-is-believing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/18\/seeing-is-believing\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing is believing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Intuitionist<\/u> complicates the simple binary between ‘surface’ and ‘depth,’ taking the discussion in a different direction by focusing on postmodernism as a reaction against the Enlightenment project.  Instead of suggesting that modernism emphasizes depth and postmodernism emphasizes surface, the novel reverses the links by pointing out that empiricism is built through a methodology of surfaces, in the sense that surfaces are tactile, measurable, ‘real.’  Because they appear so obviously real, surfaces are comfortable, and in fact the whole system of objects rests upon them.  The trust that empiricism places in its own senses – that seeing is believing – opens up the danger of a reversal, a reflexive property in which believing leads to seeing, a scientific axiom used to support a received racist cultural axiology.  Late in the novel, Mrs. Rogers reveals Fulton’s purpose in writing Theoretical Elevators<\/u>, his joke that undermined empirical epistemological tenants: “these are his words—‘They were all slaves to what they could see.’ But there was a truth behind that they couldn’t see for the life of them” (239).  This takes an explicit racial direction when Lila Mae responds that “They looked at the skin of things” (239).  Intuitionism, in the novel, at first appears to be an attempt to recover the depth beyond the observable surface, but rather than burrowing into this depth, the novel postulates elevation and expansion as the direction of intuitionist possibility.  Elevation is the novel’s overriding metaphor, a metaphor for human potentiality and social transformation.  The snippet of Theoretical Elevators<\/u> beginning Part Two of The Intuitionist<\/u> looks beyond “the dull obviousness of biology” (221) in order to move beyond the surface – not into<\/strong> depth but above<\/strong> surface.  Fulton’s theoretical elevation posits a postmodern subjectivity in which race is abandoned as a meaningful distinction, a movement in which people “lose solidity in the verticality. At ninety [stories], everything is air and the difference between you and the medium of your passage is disintegrating” (222).  The medium, the surface, the body, the skin – they all disintegrate in the rise of potentiality.  Naturally, this “critique of essentialism,” as bell hooks calls it, is open to criticisms which lament the loss of authentic black experience as a touchstone for collective political action.  I don’t presume to have any answers, of course, but I imagine we’ll have a spirited debate on these antithetical positions in class on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Intuitionist complicates the simple binary between ‘surface’ and ‘depth,’ taking the discussion in a different direction by focusing on postmodernism as a reaction against the Enlightenment project.  Instead of suggesting that modernism emphasizes depth and postmodernism emphasizes surface, the novel reverses the links by pointing out that empiricism is built through a methodology of … Continue reading Seeing is believing?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}