Histories and Discourses

Schmidt Siegfried J.

Description

Siegfried J. Schmidt is closely associated in Germany with the cross-disciplinary research programme of Radical Constructivism. In Histories & Discourses he carries out a change of perspective from media and communication studies to studies of culture and the philosophy of language.His 'rewriting' of constructivism shows that classical constructivism shares some fundamental assumptions with realism, and he creates a new vocabulary which allows us to understand how we construct truth, identity, ethics, etc., without using any point of reference which lies beyond our culture (our 'history and discourses').

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy
• Cultural studies

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 30 mars 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781845405106
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
Histories & Discourses
Rewriting Constructivism
Siegfried J. Schmidt
Translated from the German by
Wolfram Karl Köck & Alison Rosemary Köck

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Publisher Information
Original publication:
Siegfried J. Schmidt, Geschichten & Diskurse .
Abschied vom Konstruktivismus .
Mit einem Vorwort von Mike Sandbothe.
Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag GmbH. 2003.
Published in the UK by
Imprint Academic
PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2016 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.a ndrewsuk.com
Copyright © Siegfried J. Schmidt, 2007, 2016
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.



Introduction
by Mike Sandbothe
The name of Siegfried J. Schmidt is closely associated in Germany with the cross-disciplinary research programme of Radical Constructivism (Schmidt 1987, 1991 et al.). The author has, in the meantime, distanced himself from the epithet of the Radical in a number of publications. Thus, in his widely read book, Kognitive Autonomie und soziale Orientierung (1994), moderate forms of culturalist discourse groundwork replace the naturalist foundation attempts previously designated as radical. But what is happening in Histories & Discourses (H&D)? Is the renowned cofounder, enthusiastic defender and successful promoter of constructivist thinking with his new book really (as stated in the preface) ‘parting company with constructivism’ and thus giving up his own research programme? Or does the rhetoric of the preface much rather indicate an internal movement of transformation, which aims to preserve key questions central to constructivist discourse and subject them to fresh scrutiny?
As an established paradigm of epistemological research, constructivism investigates the internal constitution of human epistemic capacities. This is traditionally a genuine philosophical enterprise. Philosophy, in contradistinction to other scientific fields, occupies itself with the thinking of thinking. Its object, for this reason, has a structure that is different from that of the objects of ‘normal’ fields of enquiry. The modern philosopher is not primarily concerned with researching a particular domain of objects (in economics, law, life, nature, culture etc.), but with the manner in which we distinguish objects as objects and epistemic spheres as epistemic spheres from each other, and thus constitute them as such, in the first place. The epistemological research programme of constructivism is part of this tradition of thought.
The strongest competitor of constructivist epistemologies is so-called realism. Constructivism is, therefore, frequently referred to as anti-realism. The realist’s position is that the central accomplishment of human knowing consists in representing an independently existing reality as appropriately as possible. In contrast, the anti-realist, or constructivist, insists that we cannot possibly gain any neutral access to a reality that pre-exists our knowing - because we would have to know it already in order to be able to speak about it! - and that it is, therefore, more plausible to understand reality not as a presupposition but as a product of human knowing.
Constructivism in its radical form believed it could prove the correctness of its professed anti-realist epistemology by recourse to scientific research results from biology, neurophysiology and cognitive psychology (Schmidt 1982a/b). From this perspective, the brain is seen as an autonomous constructor of realities, whose operations constantly refer to its very own operations, because it can perceive all external stimuli only as irritations and is forced to process them in its own unique neuronal language. The untenability of naturalist strategies of argument lies in the fact that the recourse to the allegedly objective evidential value of neurobiological research results ignores that any consistent application of constructivist theory must reveal these results to be constructions as well and, consequently, to possess no value as evidence to convince the realists (Janich 1992).
Reacting to arguments of this kind, Schmidt attempted, in Kognitive Autonomie und soziale Orientierung (1994), to replace the naturalist rationales he had previously promoted himself with culturalist ones. The point of departure of his argument was the idea that human observers do not carry out their operations in an ‘unmarked space’ as had been implied by the constructivist logic of distinction from Spencer Brown to Niklas Luhmann. Schmidt, therefore, adopting Kenneth J. Gergen’s Social Constructionism, postulated that human observers ‘at all times’ operate in a space that is deeply ‘marked’ culturally and socio-structurally (Schmidt 1994, 47). The central objective of the 1994 book was to develop a constructivist version of the hermeneutical thesis of irreducibility and to render it plausible by recourse to empirical research results from the cultural and social sciences.
In H&D, at variance with Kognitive Autonomie und soziale Orientierung, Schmidt not only changes the scientific domain of reference chosen to support his foundational strategy, but this very strategy itself. The endeavour to render constructivist thinking plausible in an empirical way by combinatorially exploiting selected research results from various scientific disciplines is given up in favour of the decidedly philosophical form of argument of discursive self-grounding. Its aim is the explication of that which we always inevitably have to presuppose in all our thinking, speaking and acting, namely, sense.
Scholars investigating cultures and media do not normally care to examine the sense of ‘sense’. Instead, they consider sense as given and concern themselves with the ways in which it is communicated culturally through the media. Schmidt proceeds in just the same way in the two books devoted exclusively to problems of media and communication study, which he published after his move from literary studies at Siegen University to communication studies at the University of Münster (Schmidt 2000; Schmidt/Zurstiege 2000). In H&D, however, Schmidt is not writing as an expert in media and communication studies but as a philosopher of culture and language. And this for very good reasons. They have to do with Schmidt’s conception of media and communication study.
Schmidt’s underpinning of this conception in cultural studies was presented in Kalte Faszination (2000), and spelt out subsequently in terms of his specialist discipline, together with Guido Zurstiege, in Orientierung Kommunikationswissenschaft (2000). Of particular importance here is the ‘integrative media concept’ (Schmidt 2000, 93), developed under the heading ‘compact concept “medium”’ (2000, 94). Regarding this concept, the author writes in H&D: ‘As explained in various places, I conceive of language n ot as a m edium b ut as an inst rum e nt of communication. Media - beginning with writing - I understand as a compact concept systemically integrating four component-domains: communication instruments such as language and images; sets of technical implements (from pen and paper to internet technology); the social-systemic organisation of the exploitation of these implements (e.g. scriptoria, publishing or broadcasting houses); the media offers resulting from the combined action of these components.’
From this definition we can indirectly infer that instruments of communication differ from media by the fact that they can function without sets of technical implements, without social institutions, and without the media offerings produced and/or distributed with their help. At first sight, this appears convincing. Whenever we are speaking to each other face to face, we do not, in normal circumstances, need any technical speaking aids, nor do we have to rely on media institutions to make sure that our messages reach their addressees. This is precisely what distinguishes natural face-to-face communication from technically mediated distance-communication. At the same time, however, Schmidt insists that technically and socially implemented media systems cannot function without the sense products that we generate with the help of communication instruments such as language and images. Even though these may not themselves be media, they are nevertheless indispensable components of media for the simple reason that they supply the sense resources that are stored, processed and distributed by media.
Against this backdrop it becomes understandable why Schmidt, with H&D, carries out a change of perspective from media and communication studies to studies of culture and the philosophy of language. Answering the question of the conditions of the possibility of sense requires the focused thematisation of those communication instruments that, although presupposed by media and communication studies as components of the media concept, are still not being properly investigated as such. Accordingly, one may indeed state, in Schmidt’s preferred terminology, that the subject of philosophy of culture and language is the ‘blind spot’ which is constitutive of media and communication studies, and which therefore eludes them.
The very title of Schmidt’s book makes it plain that he is out to explore the sense-generating mechanism of human communication instruments from