“To kill a god or an ideal, go for the joints”

Lewis Hyde Trickster Makes This World, p. 253

Hyde is writing about how Trickster stories go about prising open the hegemonical skeleton in order to include themselves or to include new ways of doing and experiencing things in the world.

Hyde explores the notion of skeletal joints, arthron, relating to artus – the articulation of technical skill. But one also thinks of the ‘hard shell’ of existing orders; their carapace if you will – writing this now I think there might be some interesting notions to explore in terms of the difference between these two metaphors and what they have to tell us about the possibilities of growth and change. For one thing, skeletons do grow, but they keep their general shape. Creatures with carapaces cannot grow except through shedding the old shell. This makes me think about competing ideas of scientific progress. For trickster to incite revolutionary change seems more like acquiring a new and better shell, (perhaps a differently-shaped one, too, more hermit crab than clam-like) than disarticulation.  We have to be careful about pursuing the metaphor here, though, because the work of Trickster is not simply disarticulation, but the implantation of whole new structures in the spaces in between, and  my alternate metaphor of shell-breaking/revolution can also be seen as simply a recapitulation of the same-shaped structure on a bigger scale, so neither option is simple. That is not to say that they can’t give us pause to look at the pros and cons of different ways of looking at social constructions.

Returning to Hyde, Trickster’s habit of ‘going for the joints’ can be seen as strongly intersititial – there is a significant component of the introduction of new form. But we could also read this off as belonging to critical activity; going for the joint between theory and practice/observation, introducing the empirical flaw into the nicely-engineered structure. When we think and work critically, we have to have the wherewithal and the confidence to infiltrate our observations into the status quo.

So consider the library experience, and in particular the experience of artists’ books. They have been fitted-in, but perhaps they don’t seem to fit, exactly. This makes us think; where and how can they fit? What structure (what skeleton) would provide the necessary and sufficient articulation to describe their activity, their scope?  This urge, this activity is strongly felt, but (as I’ve argued in my PhD), doomed to eternal pursuit. There is no artist's book. They are always already hybrids of practices, they exist to form such alliances, they exist to find points of articulation to exploit. My research followed this into the effects produced formally, joining together differnt forms and modes of material production, but especially in terms of artistic affect; how it was to be a book-artist and use this means of being more-than-one-thing. In the present context the Trickster analogies seem clear.

What does it mean for us, then, in the library, to encounter this difficulty; and does it begin and end with artists’ books? That uncertainty of whether they are really that exceptional is kind of the whole point. They end up sowing a seed of deconstructive doubt about the structures used to describe everything in the library. I propose that this is to be welcomed as a point of critical reflection, as an incitement to critical awareness.

Hyde notes the ‘harmonia’ of the fixed joints- that which is well made, sound, closely worked-together:

“From such fixed joints come all that is well fitted, well knit, well set; in both classic tongues [i.e. Greek and Latin] the language of jointing connotes stability and order. The Greek harmonia comes from harmos, and as with the modern word, it overwhelmingly implies firm and pleasing design”

p.257

When Hermes carves up offerings so as to include a piece for himself and in so doing stake his claim to inclusion in the Pantheon, he is jointing the sacrifice, creating a new pattern that includes himself. He has introduced a new aspect to the pattern; one that disturbs the existing harmony (but one that eventually works out soundly).

“The ritual holds the articulated animal up against the articulated social and spiritual worlds nd means to demonstrate by their congruence that these various levels of existence participate in a single grand and stable harmony. A stable harmony, that is, unless some trickster akters the way the portions are handed out […] changing the way in which nature, community and spirit are joined to one another.”

P.257

Hyde also notes in a footnote that  not all “those equipped with mental knives will always agree on how to carve the world”, citing Aristotle’s criticism of Platonic form as irrelevant; as not conforming to the reality he (Aristotle) carves up dialectically.

We can see that the dialectical method works for producing an articulate vision of reality; it is how we recognise category, and that is what underlies most of our efforts at cataloguing. But we also feel uneasy about its boundaries a lot of the time, as I’ve discussed above. When Hyde talks using the skeletal metaphor, or I entertain the notion of a carapace metaphor instead, I think that this comes closer to the experience of understanding dialectical forms. We model them metaphorically to understand them. The ‘well-knit  ‘is not a nicely-configured taxonomy; it is a ship, a construction, a mental model. And such harmony as we find in it is the harmony of metaphor : it is the same harmony that Aristotle sees in the well-carved dialectic, but it is more in keeping with our real feelings for things, I think. I certainly think in models rather than in logical pathways: this is, I suppose, a more poetic sensibility. When we find a suitable metaphor to help us understand, and we ‘see’ the congruence lock into place, there is no better word for it than ‘harmony’. Sometimes a really great metaphor will ring this congruence very hard indeed; some great art is informed by the feeling (I want to say awe) that the discovery of metaphor produces.

But metaphor is tricky. You have to watch metaphor. It’ll lead you astray and you will conflate one term with another, reading off the model as if it were the reality. This is bad news for the dialectical purity of our understanding. But though it is sometimes misleading, it is often inspiring too. Sometimes a wander into the woods can turn up new pathways. Deviation from the dialectical structure – inspired by metaphor –  can be instructive, or at any rate it can power our curiosity. Conforming to structure is all very well if the structure really includes everything, correctly. But there are in reality very few fields of human understanding where this is remotely feasible. In a library, some objects in it will lead us on, lead us astray. Artists’ books are tricksters, and they can help us towards an opening, a gap, a wider view.

A major concern for libraries, and in particular for university libraries that are trying to play a part in engendering good research capabilities in students (and in so doing justify their own existence as well as improving the lot of the organization as a whole) – is information literacy.

Quite a bit of work in information literacy at the moment involves team working – in this respect it works hand in hand with contemporary pedagogical practice. People are brought into dialogue with one another to create team projects, and it’s thought that this allows people to use different skill sets that are more or less germane to their own learning styles, and, in the dialogue process, it encourages a reflective practice.

I have my own views about whether this fits in all that well with the typically time-poor lot of today’s student who probably needs to spend a little more time by his or herself absorbing the basics, but I do think that the whole collaborative working ethic has some good effects; in particular in the area of codiscovery. It can be frustrating to try to find ways to pool effort, though but that’s another story.

One of the ways in which structures can be coordinated to pool effort, though, is through games. Games typically have clearly set out rules or achievements, and we can work well together on games because these are easy to see and easy to share the effort towards. It’s one of the things that McGonnigal writes about in her book Reality is Broken which argues for making more aspects of real life work and achievement function a bit more like games. Games have a nice ramp of difficulty, they give constant feedback on one’s achievements, and they are often specifically designed to make working together not only possible, but fun. It’s not something I have personally had that much experience of; I don’t really have the time to devote to something like World of Warcraft or its ilk that would give me a proper sense of what it is like. But I get the idea.

McGonigal points out that the sorts of feedback and camaraderie that a project like Wikipedia depends upon approach these game-traits, and that to be a good player often means being a good collaborator. But she has this to say about collaboration, and I think it bears relating to what I’ve been writing about lately in terms of Trickster and especially the work of trickster in deconstructing categories and expectations:

“Extraordinary collaborators are adept and comfortable working within complex, chaotic systems. They don't mind messiness or uncertainty. They immerse themselves in the flow of the work and keep a high-level perspective rather than getting lost in the weeds. They have the information stamina to filter large amounts of noise and remain focused on signals that are meaningful to their work. And they practice possibility scanning: always remaining open and alert to unplanned opportunities and surprising insights – especially at bigger scales. They are willing to bypass or throw out old goals if a more achievable or a more epic goal presents itself. And they are constantly zooming out to construct a much bigger picture: finding ways to extend collaborative efforts to new communities, over longer time cycles and towards more epic goals.”

(McGonnigal)

This seems to me to be a description of a person who is on their toes, ready for what the unexpected can provide. I’m not sure what it is about this that makes them an extraordinary collaborator, per se, but it certainly would seem to mark them out as someone with a high degree of critical skill – someone who is on the lookout for the seeds of insight – someone a bit like Picasso when he says “I do not seek, I find”.

Also worth picking up on, I think, in what McGonnigal notes, is this capability in terms of creativity when the going gets rough: thriving on chaos, doing one’s own filter work (or indeed, one’s own dirt work, bringing the unexpected and the alarming into play). In the wilds are where we often find inspiration.

Eli Pariser picks it up in a different way in The Filter Bubble – for him the absence of “chaos, messiness and uncertainty” engendered by the smooth, personalized edges of a powerfully personalized information filter, degrade our ability to see for ourselves when there is a diamond in the rough. One of the things McGonnigal’s exceptional collaborator is doing is that they are doing their own filtering: they are aware of what they exclude and what they include, and they are constantly scanning for stuff they didn’t think to include before. This doesn’t necessarily happen in the filter bubble: it’s automatic, and we cannot be aware of what’s outside it. What it does is invisible to us.

For Pariser, this blocks out the challenge that makes searching and learning worthwhile (something that is, McGonigall’s model, a crucial aspect of games design.) Sometimes the challenge itself lies in the chaotic nature of the information; and decoding or otherwise working with this can be a valuable prompt for curiosity, attention and learning.

Pariser notes:

“the filter bubble […] can block what researcher Travis Proulx calls “meaning threats” the confusing, unsettling occurrences that fuel our desire to understand and acquire new ideas.”

Proulx is quoted by Pariser:

“”The key to our study is that our participants were surprised by the series of unexpected events, and they had no way to make sense of them” Proulx wrote. “Hence they strived to make sense of something else.”

For similar reasons, a filtered environment could have consequences for curiosity. According to psychologist Gorge Lowenstein, curiosity is aroused when we’re presented with an “information gap.” It’s a sensation of deprivation […] but to feel curiosity, we have to be conscious that something’s being hidden. Because the filter bubble hides things invisibly, we’re not as compelled to learn about what we don’t know.”

This is not a good game: nor is it a good learning experience, because it is too easy, and it trains us to ignore the rough edges, rather than to pay attention to them.

To bring this full circle, we have to imagine what an information literacy programme (which frequently invokes the language and techniques of gaming) would do if it wanted to harness the power of these information gaps, of these challenges to sense. It would have to include some difficulty; and if it is really serious about preparing its graduates for working with libraries, it has to include the deconstruction of the library system itself: no system is foolproof or complete. It is up to us as its users to seek the gaps in it. Or, as Lewis Hyde has it, Trickster works in the aporia, in the gaps. One justification for collections such as artists’ books in libraries is that they provide just the sort of diificult, protean material that catalogues and other systems of understanding find difficult to deal with. They can be a good place to help students understand the edges of what it is possible to describe. [Beyond this they have much of value in themselves, but merely to come to grips with the difficulty of their definition can be instructive and help raise critical awareness of the research process and its tools.]

(Continuing extracts and notes from Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes this World )

Hyde, around page 241, takes up our inability to see that which is not represented in our taxonomies or sciences. It’s a perennial problem of observation; that we see the phenomena that we expect to see. The results we get are very often informed heavily by the patterns of recognition we are apt to use.

This can be bad news for experimental research of course: the phenomena an experiment produces may not be those we expect to see, and we may miss them entirely if we are too confident in the inductive presuppositions that are often a good and valuable ally in our understanding.

It can be bad news for creativity too, moreover, or for the basic research we do to situate ourselves vis a vis a topic or an object of study. Depending too solidly on any system of understanding can make the functioning of creative insight in all its theatres of operation, a more difficult task. One of the points Eli Pariser makes in The Filter Bubble  is that personalized forms of searching impose a knowledge structure (or rather, filter) that imposes a certain ordering sense on the information-world we see through it. This is all very useful, and helps us build strong, if artificial, means of inference. But he makes the points that we are alone in this bubble, and that it is, to all intents and purposes, invisible. How do we circumvent it? How do we counteract its effects and inoculate ourselves with the raw experience once in a while? (Can we turn it off? Is that what is needed?). Similarly, libraries order information in highly particular ways. But they are highly visible and they are not personalized. Furthermore, they often surprise or irritate us; I propose that such irritation is valuable, sensitizing us to the inadequacy of all systems of order, and reminding us that finding out is hard work, or it is if we are doing it well. This goes somewhat against some of the central library tenets of making the user’s search easy. Yes, help the user, but help them to work critically with information too. There are enough machines to make it easy. How can we help them when it gets hard – hard to find the truth that is at stake for a particular situation, when every source of information has its own agenda? How can we build critical literacy?

Hyde takes this up as part of the work Trickster does, especially in his in-between forms when he does not conform to the types or definitions that his audience uses to see the world (in fact, Hyde uses the history of Frederick Douglass, a man who had once been a slave, and whose personal history saw him write and rewrite his own story over the course of his lifetime, and find himself defined or mislabeled in ways he at various times found hard to accept or had to work through). Hyde notes how any audience has its judgments, or stereotypes that cannot easily comprehend or ‘see’ mixed, hybrid or new identity; “any such mixed identity is absurd, unthinkable, and unreal.”

All such judgments are in some way predicated upon a subjective notion of what the person or phenomenon under review actually is. As an audience, or as researchers, we do well not to repeat the error of the naturalists Melville describes in The Confidence-Man, His Masquerade (a passage noted by Hyde at p221 of Trickster makes this world):

"Experience is the only guide here; but as no one man can be coextensive with what is, it may be unwise in every case to rest upon it. When the duck-billed beaver of Australia [the platypus] was first brought stuffed to England, the naturalists, appealing to their classifications, maintained that there was in reality no such creature; the bill in the specimen must needs be, in some way, artificially stuck on."

Herman Melville The Confidence-Man, His Masquerade p.94

Longmans, London, 1857

Our typologies must grow to embrace the natural history of the platypus, so to speak. But the shock of the new is not simply that it greets us with the unexpected; it serves also to disrupt our settled ideas of the organisation of things. When we are open to new knowledge, we are also in a state of critical receptivity, and this is a state which also holds its structures of definition under review. To admit the platypus, we have to be able to suspend dogmatic responses to what is possible or right. The value of 'wild cards' like the platypus is that they elicit a radical response that either exposes our dogma for what it is, or begins in us the process of constructing a more inclusive critical apparatus.

If wisdom is the knowledge gained from experience, (phronesis, as Ricoeur has it) then we can gain wisdom from experiences like these, in never again holding our truths to be unassailable.

In a library environment, we might come across similar discoveries that jolt our sense of the possible; or at any rate challenge our sense of what constitutes the proper boundary of definition. I would propose that such experiences are valuable precisely because they can help instill in us a receptivity and flexibility of mind that stands ready to respond to such jolts. When we find, to our surprise, that our experience "is not coextensive with what is", the surprise helps us to formulate a self-reflective critical literacy. Contrariwise, if we are never challenged by the unexpected, if our sole experiences of searching, finding and researching are limited to verifying what we feel we already know, it would seem likely that we run the risk of etiolating our sense of wonder. Without the light of serendipity, we run ever more deeply into the channels of what we expect to find.