A few prefatory words from an insignificant wrangler...
I did not want to write the same linear argument that is out there: another paper derailing Locke, Hume and those empirical fathers of Enlightenment for their utter logocentricism. This has been done, again and again and again. Actually, I can sympathize with their desire for universality, appreciate their optimism, and can only try to imagine how great a stride they made--breaking from the scholastic tradition and the totalizing certitude it provided; is it any wonder that empiricism was grounded in a metaphysical structure ensuring security and foundation? Something had to be absolute.
Of course, I'm writing about progress without meaning to right progress. Oh, I'm just lying all over the place. I'm choosing my historicity carefully: a quick narrative, spanning 3000 years or so, climaxing with our return to a rhetorical world--a world that can admittedly operate on possiblity and probability rather than assurance and truth.
So, trying to be hyper-conscious of the apparent differences between Locke's world and my own, I'm striving to make the medium the message. Why Dr. Phil? Because I consider him the early 21st century pere version of Dr. Freud (the interpretive diagnosis pre-determines the cure). So sets the stage? Why John Locke? Because his work grounds the transparent conceptions of language requisite for the modern Enlightenment project. Put badly: if we are searching philosophically for universal truth, then our language has to be universal. Why Kenneth Burke? Because I consider Burke to be the most sympathetic of the postPhilosophical crowd. Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault, and the rest of the usual french suspects are too involved with de/con/struction to bother with sympathy. Burke's willing to work it out whereas the rest are quite busy demonstrating that it just can't work. (Santos, too. I am not fit to speak explicitly in this conversation. Too much Rage Against the Machine).
While I might not grant myself permission to speak explicitly, I cannot utterly deny that I speak, (therefore I could be). As new media theory is increasingly revealing, every act of selection is a scream. My loudest voice: Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Drawing off his experiences in hip-hop and trip-hop dj culture, Spooky eloquently reminds us that every act of selection is in fact an act of creation--that to spin the mix is to produce. The violent process of re-contextualization, the burning beam of highlighting, the tactical surgery of texts are indeterminately drenched in our motivations. These are, of course, the kind of comments that might make a man go mad--especially in the early 18th century. So far beyond denying universally transparent or coherent language, we now deny universally the transparency of intention or coherence of a subject. No wonder Mr. Locke needs a little therapy, I think we all do.
I've avoided another obvious question: why make them all look like Saddam Hussein in South Park? Because I think South Park is damn funny. That's why. It has nothing to do with South Park being subversive, nothing at all.
