Principles of Liberty: Defense (Presentation Text)
First of all, many thanks for being here and for the appreciation of my work. The aim of this presentation is to clarify the main points of this explorative study on liberty as a priori principle in social constituency: titled Principles of Liberty.
1) Principles of Liberty: A Design-based Research on Liberty as A Priori Constitutive Principle of the Social in the Swiss Nation Story Tabea Hirzel Doctoral student SMC University, Zug, Switzerland Faculty of Diplomacy
The collection method of the samples was a cohort sampling, which followed different sampling strategies according to the different levels of abstraction throught the research phases. As such the sample collection was never closed but an ongoing, organic process which was part of the negotiation.
11) SELECTION: SAMPLING Cohort sampling collection (Spindle) different sampling strategies • Sample validation authority code • Sample selection individual, later negotiated
First, historical characters, which could later serve as characters in the story, had to be selected and evaluated. Their purposeful selection was a well known Propaganda device in historiography. As such the scientific method itself excluded fictional characters, as for example Willhelm Tell. Further, the liberal movement in Switzerland had strategically eliminated the formerly well known femal personalities, and hesitated to include workers, immigrants and foreign voices - the object of exclusion was culturally bound, but such exclusions were compulsive. What was even more relevant, at this point, was the problematics of history as a science, which relied on necessarily incomplete data. The intrinsic Propaganda effect, i.e. the «gap», could neither be avoided - by abstaining from narrative approaches - nor eluded - by limiting a historical narration on the known facts. The reason for this was, that any data required a translation process, in which they were transposed from their original context into the current context of the researcher or narrator and its audience.
12) SELECTION: TRANSLATION
A large part of historical investigation could be automatized, this included foremost data collection through crawlers, transcription through OCR-programmes and scanning of names, data and words for an automatic in vivo coding. Yet, what was of major concern for this research was - once data consistency was assured, and purposeful distortion was excluded - there remained still a significant divergence among the possible interpretations of such original texts. This phenomenon was the well known reason for hermeneutics. It was not the purpose, here, to discusse the credibility of a specific interpretation, but rather to make the interpretative process traceable and anchor it theoretically, in order to enhance the scientific validation of the manipulative process. In other words, through linking a hermeneutic process with the bare data and to position it within the narrative or rhetorical structure, it was assumed to become easier detected and compared. For the theoretical grounding, Goffmans frame analysis, especially impression management in combination with the Franklian categories of the «tragic problem», was proposed. In the example on the slide, I wondered why Weiss emphasized his participation as member of the Cantonal Council, even though he was also War Council, by this time, and leader of the young city guard. I considered, that he might have desired to give authority to his speach and a justification of his participation in the conflict, while de-emphasizing the aggresive character of his role as military leader. Certainly, another player, any of you, might interpret this in a different way.
13) SELECTION: INTERPRETATION
Once we find more or less agreement on the best, the most credible, interpretation of the data, they had to be contextualized into a new story, the one written by us. This was done by translating the self-expression from the autobiographical texts into a third person perspective, as character scenes, and to combine it with another's autobiographical text into the so-called encounter scenes, the actual scenes of our story. On this slide, an example was given combining Weiss' experience at the climax of the 1839 Putsch in Zürich with that one of Hirzel from the opposing party, a classical approach in historiography known from many battle reports. It should be observed, here, that the choice of the «climax» itself, the moments of significant encounters, was already a manipulative act.
14) SELECTION: INTEGRATION
Finally, the aim of any Storytelling was the creation of logical and aesthetic unity, out of incomplete information, forming character scenes. In contrast, the aim of empirics was to associate data with material signs (artifacts or texts in the largest sense), independent of their meaning or completeness. As such, historiography as a discipline leaped not only the gap between science and creative writing, but, foremost, between the material, factual and the always fictional, ideal of theory. Up to a certain degree, this approach, intrinsic to all scientific representation, became problematic in history due to its characteristics as time-transcendent message which had the power to create a «vision of the future», through the interpretation, or re-interpretation of the givens of the past. As learnt from Makinde, there lied an intrinsic political force in history writing.
15) SELECTION: STORYTELLING
In a first place, the characters had to be developed and arranged in relation to each other. The meaning of a story changed significantly, not only according to the character selection, but also due to their roles and relationships.
17) ENCODING: ROLES & RELATIONSHIPS
As such, I proposed Katharina Morel as the Protagonist. You can see her, here, as Main Character in the framework of the 4 Throughlines described by Dramatica.
18) ENCODING: RESEARCH CHOICES
In turn, the Swiss historian Thomas Maissen's favorite character, as Main Character and Protagonist, was probabely Alfred Escher. At least, this could be derived from several of his historiographic writings and his contribution to the most recent filmic version of Swiss history Die Schweizer.
19) ENCODING: ALTERNATIVE CHOICES
In the following, I will give a brief overview to re-mind the main points of this research and, then, directly present the application of the Alternate Reality Game, as narrative re-enactment, starting from the Givens, through the Selection choices, over the Story encoding and the Story weaving towards the final Storytelling process.
2) - 1. Overview - 2. Givens - 3. Selection choices - 4. Story encoding & weaving - 5. Storytelling
Further, the different phases in the character development were thematically encoded.
20) ENCODING: RESEARCH THEMES
Even if you would choose the same characters as I, you might probabely want to challenge some of my thematic allocation. This would further have consequences on the dynamic structure of the story. From a scientific perspective, the assignation of themes to historical characters was probabely the most subjective step in the whole process, which became traceable and comparable through the Spindle.
21) ENCODING: ALTERNATIVE ENCODING
In order to test a Nation story against the universal of Scheitzer's ethics, the attitude of «tragic optimism» had to be present in Dramatica. This was found in its Story Dynamics. On the one side, it was reflected in the encoding of the story as «actual dilemma»; combining a succesful outcome with the demand of a personal transformation, or change, for the Main Character, and its evaluation as «good». If this narrative orientation, defined as ethical, was also reflected in a socity's daily life could, now, be tested by a larger comparative research.
22) ENCODING: DYNAMIC STORY POINTS
What became directly visible through this structural approach to stories was the interdependence between the situation and the individual action in a Goffmanian sense, on which could be played deliberatly.
23) ENCODING: GOFFMANIAN FRAME
In a last step, Story scenes had to be sequenced into a Storyline. Rather than subjetive, this was a culturally dependent process, mainly depending on the culture's time-perception.
25) TELLING: RESEARCH STORYLINES
A classical chronological sequening was not less Propaganda than any other, due to the fact that temporal coincidences and sequences could give an impression of causal relationships were they did not necessarily apply.
26) TELLING: CHRONOLOGICAL STORYLINES
Remember, at the center of the theoretical approach lied the ontological turn. Applied to Hoppe's argumentation ethics this had far reaching consequences. A) Whereas, for Hoppe, discursiveness was merely a tool for the validation of epistemological knowledge and rules. In here, the person was defined and actualized ontologically by the discursive relation to other persons. B) Due to this ontological turn, the isolated individual could not longer be uphold, for the person was not only a time and space transcendent phenomenon, but also a subject transcendent entity, and as such co-emergent with the phenomenon of society. The assumed constitutional universal was that the person and society emerged from liberty as pure potentiality or acting - liberty being the a priori, not a value. C) This concluded in probabely the most relevant implication for political science. As already learnt from Christie, conflicts were not simply a problem that needed to be solved, but a source for the further perpetuation, or development of the person's becoming.
27) TELLING: TO BE OR TO BECOME
By negotiating our common story - without the need to agree on all practical terms - it was possible to enter into a manifold peacefull but agonistic author-audience relationships, in which our own being could be affirmed and actualized, without the threat to anihilate the Other. Two examples for such a process of resilience were the recent project of Ali Abu Awwad & Hanan Schlesinger at Palestinian Institute of Non-Violence, on the one side, and Benjamin Girod's efforts to promote the Swiss Reconciliation with Amish and Mennonites, (in collaboration with Parson Geri Keller,) on the other side.
28) AUTHOR-AUDIENCE RESILIENCE
Following, through the intersubjective character of storytelling, and the re-definition of past conflicts which echo in our today's lives, most spectacular, we self become part of the story; adding to the historiographic narration a time transcendent dimension through which we can reach out and create a constructive and politically powerful «vision of the future». Did you find the hidden Propaganda as awareness in my text? Right! It's the idea that Switzerland could serve as a model for anything.
29) TELLING: RESEARCH PROPAGANDA - "the vision of the future"
The heart of this research was the idea that the ontology of the person relied on the Kantian transition gap, the logical gap between the empirical and the ideal, between body or matter and mind (as nous); in short between what is known (epistemology) and what becomes constituted in existence (ontology). It was assumed, that the method to leap this gap was a genuine creative act, the adherence of meaning to objects, including one's own body. Thus, in a certain sense the mind was a device oriented towards completeness, which as such did not exist in the real world. Incompleteness as a trigger for personal action could, then, also be used purposefully to motivate, direct and manipulate the actions of Others, by designing them intentionally. This was the key mechanism of politically constitutional power. The creation of a Nation story, served as model for such a constitutional process which could be systematicall re-enacted in order to explore this phenomenon.
3) OVERVIEW: NOETIC GAP Ontology of person based on Kantian transition gap (Plotinus) • Constitutional phenomenon is a creative act adhering meaning • Mind (nous) oriented towards completeness • Purposeful design of gaps = political constitutional power • Story creation as process for systematic re-enactment (model)
(As aesthetical resume of this almost mystical process, in which the mind becomes manifest in existence as body, I proposed Leonard Cohen's mantra «God is alive, magic is afoot». ) I hope, you enjoyed this and many thanks for listening. Please, feel free to make your questions.
30) THANK YOU! "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot" (Cohen, 2011; Saint-Marie, 1969)
Within the terminology of Phillips and Huntley's Theory of Story named Dramatica, the intentional design of gaps with the purpose to stimulate the direction of an Other's mind, the Audience, was defined as Propaganda. As already mentioned before, in order to function, Propaganda required the ideal of completeness. Dramatica defined this by the presence of four perspectives, the four Throughlines, and the diligent encoding of all these perspectives throughout a story. These 4 Throughlines were overlapping with the four possible cardinal points in the different theories of social constitution analyzed in here; the «I», «you», «we» and «they» perspectives in Alfred Schütz, Laín Entralgo and Frankl. Schweitzer, in his Reverence for Life, offered a method for analyzing different societies according to their degree of being ethical, in which these cardinal points were described as simultaneous affirmation of the «Self», the «Other», the «world» and the «ideal».
4) OVERVIEW: PROPAGANDA Propaganda the political mechanism in stories • Depends on the ideal of completeness • Dramatica's 4 Throughlines (Main Character, Impact Character, Relationship Throughline, Overal Story Throughline) • Four cardinal points (I, You, World, Ideal) • Schweitzer's method and theory Reverence for Life (Self, Other, World, Ideal)
According to Schweitzer, the challenge was to orient one's actions towards the Reverence of Life. This implied that all the for cardinal points should be affirmed in the largest degree possible. The practical challenge of this, in contrast to the more commonly known «golden mean» or «middle way», was that no trade off's could be made to justify actions. It was equally bad to sacrifice the Self for the Other, than to sacrifice the Other for oneself, nor was it acceptable to destroy the world for an ideal, or to give up one's ideals in order to embrace the world. Obviousely, this was a logically impossible position, a tetralemma, which could not be logically solved, yet was performed in the daily world of social life. Insisting in this orientation was called «tragic optimism».
5) OVERVIEW TRAGIC OPTIMISM
The research process comprised four phases: (1) the selection, (2) the preparation, (3) the coding and the (4) production of data. Each of the four research phases was approached in four ways, at four different levels of abstraction: (1) the conventional/empirical, (2) the conjunctural/critical, (3) the integrational/manipulative, and (4) the categorical/relational level. Even though, it was not necessary to follow strictly this order, it represents the overall flow of data throughout the performance. I will start with the givens and consecutively explain the steps in relation to the game's main mechanim; Dramatica's Propaganda.
7) GIVENS: PERFORMATIVE INQUIRY To become a person to become a society • implicit or explicit (either story first or problem first) • The logic of Propaganda: a «gap»
In line with other approaches in collaborative self-guided learning, also known as community learning, the whole process started with a common problem. In this case, the focuse lied on a universal problem, the becoming of the person as co-generetive with the constitution of the community, or society, it belonged to. From this rather abstract problem, more concrete, real-life issues emaneted and were either implicitly or explicitly manifested. If they were implicit, i.e. rather unconsious, the process would start with the story first, probabely an already existing story. In the other case, the process started with the definition of the problem, which had largely been developed in the theoretical part of this study. The problem of social constituency was reduced to the need of a specific task, a creative act which could fulfill the impossible and leap the Kantian transition gap, also known as the noetic gap in Franklian psychology. This was the origin, or a priori, of the logical gap, through wich the effect of Propaganda was created, accroding Dramatica. It was signalled on the slides with a little yellow sun where it applied.
8) GIVENS: THE COMMON PROBLEM To become a person to become a society implicit or explicit (either story first or problem first) The logic of Propaganda: a «gap»
The sample society for this research, and its current problem, was defined by the 19th Century Swiss transition from the Medieval Cast System towards the Modern Democratic Nation State, as given through the current discourse in present Switzerland, its present controverse role as potential member of the European Community, and its positioning under the threats of the global financial and geopolitical crisis. This case was chosen only for examplification of the gaming process. In a real Alternate Reality gaming, amoung the persons present, here and now, we would probabely chose a different population for our story. Once the givens were clear, the next step was to negotiate our common Nation story, and the implicite effects of Propaganda in different the steps of selection, analysis and production.
9) GIVENS: SAMPLES 19th Century Switzerland: transition Cast System of the Ancient Regime Modern Democratic Nation State • Today's Switzerland within the European Community and Global Crisis • Players: doctoral student (me), jury (you)
Schweitzer based his Reverence for Life on a conventional, representative, comparative methodology. In this research, true to the performative character of the phenomenon of social constituency, a non-representational performative inquiry was suggested. For this purpose, Schweitzer's fourfold orientation was re-enacted in a kind of Alternate Reality Game (ARG). This methodology was strongly inspired by the traditional Storytelling as political re-enactment in the Yoruba society, firstly described in the academic context by Babalola Adeboye Ifatoogun, and further made known by the Nigerian contemporary philosopher Akin Moses Makinde. Similar performative approaches were also found in Brazil's syncretic culture and the Congado, or in the Ancient Australian Aboriginal tradition of the Alcherringa, also translated as the «Dreaming». I will concentrate, in the following, on the speficic - admittedly unconventional - application of the performative inquiry developed by this study.
GIVENS
The key tool for data collection and data selection was the interactive database, programmed in PHP/MySql for this research, named Spindle. It consisted mainly out of relational tables, through which data could be manipulated in a controlled way, and the process of manipulation and data maturity could be traced back to its original empirical source in every moment. This meant, that the creative process was objectively monitored throughout the whole game. The Spindle offered the possibility to compare each step with external standards, as for example international authority codes for names, bibliographic documents, places and semantic units. For a better orientation, in the following, the relevant tables were signaled on the slide at the upper right corner. The colours refer to the different phases of the process.
SELECTION CHOICES
Thus, for the consious manipulation of this political engagment, the software Dramatica Pro, designed by the authors of the Dramatica theory, Phillips & Huntley, was suggested. It was developed as a tool for a self-guided creative writing process and it was integrated into the Spindle in order to ground the creative process of story writing on the historical data sources.
STORY ENCODING & WEAVING Propaganda
The political potential of stories had already been mentioned, in here, and it was diligently applied since ancestral times. In some cases, it was even integrated into a modern Constitution, as in the example of the present dual Constitution of Ghana. Historiography as scientific discipline could be understood as such an intent of integration in Western Cultures. In this context, the relevant characteristics of stories was not so much the fact, that they are told, but that they are re-told.
STORYTELLING Propaganda