Cesarean Epistemology

To Dialecticians,
American Literati
TransRomantics
Colleagues Across the Curriculum.
(Courses W/O Borders Series)

Cesarean Epistemology

Facts and Opinions

A young woman named Ruth while
observing chimpanzees in the Gombe
Stream Reserve in Tanzania slipped
above a waterfall and crushed her skull
on the rocks below. Jane Goodall said
she felt responsible.

If I hadn't hired her, she'd be alive today.

Cause & effect? Fact? Opinion?

There's a bullet in an envelope in
Connecticut without which being
discharged in late 19^th c. none of
you would be sitting silently in class
at 8 a.m.waiting for “Godot” and
information from beyond on American
Writing. This is fact.

The swine flu pandemic began with
some person infected, late one afternoon,
let's say, somewhere in Mexico when he
decided to leave work early and have some
ribs with his girlfriend, his boss not there
to nail him for skipping out. Or it started
with a 4 year old on a pig farm—allowed
to mix freely with the animals. Cause
and effect?

One day a girl put a neckerchief around her
dog's neck. It was sunny and chilly. She had
recently broken up with her boyfriend. The
dog looked wistful. Sad -eyed. This occurred
in Akron, Ohio, on October 4, 1964. Ever
since: dogs with bandannas. Had to start
somewhere. Sometime. Origins.

SCAPEGOATING: putting the burden of
explanation or meaning on a specific carrier.

Reasons Why
Because & Affect
Interpretation
Explanation
Blamation
History

All have in common the arbitrary, convenient
and conventional habit of establishing the origin
of anything: here's what HAP-ened and here's
why, selecting a bunch of relativities in a linear
fashion that accounts in terms of our
understandings.

Poe: explaining How I Wrote “The Raven”.

Scapegoating leaves out
sneezes and
accidents
interruptions,
'break-downs and
break ups
a scratch & itch,
a momentary
distraction while driving,
a whim, unanswered
phone calls, sudden
death in the family...

All Necessary but Insufficient Causes
without which the deal wouldn't have
gone down: Ruth killed, bullet fired,
short-ribsconsumed, dog decorated,
but who can tell all?

We REPRESENT: Sample.
Rip-off from the WHOLE.
How could IT be other wise?
A crime of discrimination
and nevertheless.

Apollo 13 made it back on a wing & a prayer:
make-shift improvisation sent up by Houston
from a grounded astronaut who negotiated
traffic (unimpeded thanks to this and that :
specifics which shall remain nameless and
unspecified even though essential) to send up
information needed to build air conditioning
from odds and ends.

Consider all the contingencies .

Or don't. Take the Cesarean View: short cuts into
a web of relations naturally selecting arbitrary lines
of explanation that suit conventions and so don't
seem arbitrary at all.

Like looking over a Sat. afternoon football game
Monday Morning, seeing patterns of win/loss
eclipsing the ouch, ooff, oops, damn, slam,
bam real-time performance not withstanding.

Linear (Cesarean Explanation)



Non-Linear (Full Labor Accounting)



Can you see the difference? Tell the difference?
Consider the relationship? What facts do we
need to consider Walt Whitman? Thoreau,
Emily Dickinson, Gregory Bateson...to
put us & them in play? What
opinions? What do
you think?

May we make some sense of our own?
Can we? Should we? Could we?

As always and for the sake of sustainable
argument: feel free to punch reply or better
Reply to All.

xxxooo, Sam