Thursday, January 22, 2009

This One Goes Here, That One Goes There!

A circular arrangement:

Garret is: classification.
Miller is: classification.
Plato is: classification.
Hackos and Redish is: classification.
Kinneavy is: classification
This blog is: classification.

This, then that, then this, then that, then he goes here, then she goes there, etc.

Kinneavy: "Classification, on the other hand, is not concerned with the unique thing, but with things as members of groups" (7).

And later: "In each case I consider the attributes which the object possesses in common with other members of a given group" (8).

Or, in the words of Bravo: "Are you in or are you out?"  I was usually out.  No one picked me in gym class.  I was only good at soccer.  Dodge ball left me covered in large red welts.

Garret: "The skeleton is designed to optimize the arrangement of these elements for maximum effect and efficiency" (22).  Classification in action.  Arrangement mobilized.  Cut In and Cut Out to maximize profit margins.  "Now we can map that whole confusing array of terms"—because things must find their place, meanings must be locked down, the gates must be closed—"By breaking each plane down into its component elements [divide, divide, divide], we'll be able to take a closer look at how all the pieces fit together [unify, unify, unify] (31).  

That's how things make sense.  That's how people are paid and accounted for: "It's not necessary to have a member of your team who is a specialist in each of these areas; instead, you only have to ensure that someone is responsible for thinking about each of these issues" (35).  It's the language of efficiency. 

In Miller there is practical and there is non-practical.  There is in-the-classroom and there is in-the-workforce. There is descriptive and there is prescriptive.  There is good and there is non-good.  "My discussion so far has relied on a set of related oppositions that pervade the discourse of higher eduction" (21).  Miller tells us we're full of oppositions.  He lists them. 

inquiry versus action
gentleman-scholar versus technician-dupe
contemplation versus application
general versus general
etc. versus etc.

Oppositions, binaries, contrasts—they are the tools of classification.  And they "pervade our discourse." We are a departing constantly over our divisions.

This all, of course, goes back to Plato.  The master divider.  The great kicker-outer.  He demands that speech must be defined.  Rhetoric split from dialectic.  Knack from knowledge.  Soon after discussing Tisias, the professional sophist, Socrates concludes "unless a man take account of the characters of his hearers and is able to divide things by clases and to comprehend particulars under a general idea, he will never attain the highest human perfection in the art of speech."  If you are not dividing, if you are not classifying, if you are not working dialectically, you are wiping up the garbage.  You're a mess.  You're a mass of indistinct red welts.

Hakos and Redish turn the scalpel to movement.  Work will be split from Jobs.  Tasks from Goals.  Processes from Sequences.  Environment from Culture.  Noise from Hazards.  "We can take tasks at any level and decompose them—divide them up into pieces—to see the tasks at greater and greater levels of detail" (73).  Everything will be made distinct so that everything can be fixed.  Improved. Profitized.  Inefficiency will be removed.  

Whether you are novice, advanced beginner, competent performer, or expert, if your process is idiosyncratic, it will be analyzed and, eventually, reconfigured.  Maybe not this time round.  But the next software release will fold you into the efficient whole.

Miller ultimately discards the classifications, or perhaps tries to out-classify the old classifications by proposing a merger of some of the old oppositions: Aristotle's techne, joining description and prescription, theory and practice (22).  Finally, a third option to "this" or "that," "here" or "there."

I don't mean to upset Kinneavy.  Part of me wants to classify Plato as Narrative, Miller as Evaluation, and leave Classification to the others.  But that box won't do.  Modes tend to spin.  I agree that we approach subjects usually through a single side, a single door, a single fixed point—as when a writer decides to write a story, a review, a biographical sketch, etc.  But as Frank D'Angelo argues, we often fall under the sway of non-logical modes as much as logical modes.  We may enter through one side of Kinneavy's box, but we swirl around, up, down, out the other side. 

There is a power in inefficiency.  There is something fun in failing to divide.  There is revelation in de-classification.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Anthony,

    In Dr. H's words: no taxonomy is innocent. I agree in the sense that it attempts to apply discrete measurement, mathematical reasoning, concrete description...to the continuium of thinking. One may eventually think that an attempt to provide any taxonomy is an exercise in futility; ergo, why bother?

    One point Kinneavy insightfully raises is that all questions benefit from multiple perspectives. It's debatable whether full understanding is truly possible...however, I tend to think we get closer to it through dialog. A rhetoric of assent, we can say.

    I think, ultimately, that's the main benefit of a taxonomy like Kinneavy's. Inevitably it will break down; but, in the interim, it can prove useful to us. Like Burke (I think, but please correct me if I'm wrong) once said, a choice of what to say includes choice of what not to say (or something to that effect!). In providing a Taxonomy, Kinneavy offers us guidance on how to see what is (and is not) said in all works.

    Just a few thoughts...

    Glen

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  2. Glen,

    Yes! You raise a great point: Saying what "is" means saying what "is not." And ultimately, I agree that classification & taxonomy are useful tools. We can't really know things until we divide them up. The difficult part comes in maintaining respect for them as autonomous parts. Classification goes further and wants to ascribe them to groups, a unity of some kind. There's a disservice there, I think. Autonomy is lost. So how do we do one and avoid the other? Hopefully awareness is a step, because I'm not sure how else to answer the question.

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