Wilcox+Habits+Neuroses+Talents

=Habits, Neuroses, Talents= James Wilcox, Spring 2013

• Do you have more trouble articulating your frame (social theoretical questions) or object?

//I feel like I have more trouble articulating my object than my frame, though I’m not always sure if this is the case.//

• Do you tend to project-hop or to stick to a project, and what explains this?

//I tend to stick to a discrete domain but unwittingly hop around to slightly different projects within those boundaries. I vainly want my project to “say it all” to touch on all of the shifting elements I find interesting about the domain.//

• Do you tend to be more interested in internal dynamics, or external determinations? In the terms laid out by Keller, do you tend to focus so intently on the object of your concern that context falls away (i.e. are you obsessive compulsive, rather than paranoid)? Is your desire is to name, specify and control your object? Is your desire is for figure, its ground your annoyance? Or are you paranoid, context being your focus and obsession? All is signal. Only begrudgingly will you admit that something is noise, outside the scope of your project? Figure is hard to come by. Its ground has captured your attention.

//The latter, in general. I am usually able to identify a phenomenon, but within that field figure and ground, signal and noise continue to shift until I make painful choices. I tend to be somewhat obsessed by “defamiliarization” and “making strange,” and I feel that this commitment/obsession is related to challenges of figure/ground shifting.//

• What do you do with unusual or counter examples? Are you drawn to “the deviant,” or rather repulsed by it?

//Counter examples or “extreme cases” interest me. They can be frustrating if I’ve been excited about the “fit” of a case to a theory or conceptual framework, but usually they’re more fascinating to probe to me than frustrating. In terms of “the deviant,” I’m not necessarily drawn to it or repulsed by it.//

• Do you tend to over-impose logics on the world, or to resist the construction of coherent narratives?

//I tend to want to be able to construct coherent narratives, but resist their construction in spite of myself.//

• Do you tend to over-generalize, or to hold back from overarching argument?

//I feel as though I actually do a little of both. I want to construct a powerful account through empirical specificity and “thick description” **but** at times my ethico-political commitments lead me to want to jump up a few levels of scale and make more sweeping statements.//

• Do you like to read interpretations different than your own, or do you tend to feel scooped or intimidated by them?

//I usually find them interesting, however I can imagine a scenario in which I do feel intimidated by a different interpretation of a phenomenon or topic to which I was very attached and in which I was very invested.//

• Do you tend to change an argument as you flesh it out, or do you tend to make the argument work, no matter what?

//I tend to change the contours of an argument as part of the writing process. At times, I get “on a roll” and become frustrated when I run into as-yet-to-be-processed friction from my material. However, I end up changing my argument to incorporate this.//

• Do you tend to think in terms of “this is kind of like” (metaphorically)? Do you hold to examples that “say it all,” leveraging metonymic thinking?

//I feel that I tend toward contingency and flexibility in framing my observations, leaning toward metaphoric thinking.//

• Do you like gaming understanding in this way? Does it frustrate you that your answers often don’t fit easily on either side of the binaries set up by the questions? (Jakobson suggests that over attachment to a simple binary scheme is a “continuity disorder.”)

//Rather than finding it frustrating that my answers don’t “fit,” I find it difficult to pose causal questions, usually wanting to “characterize,” rather than explain. I feel that questions that allow for these types of answers let me play with understandings in a way I’m more comfortable with than I am with “explaining.” I do want to get outside my comfort zone a bit in this area.//