Monday, November 23, 2020
prospective reading as conceptual inquiry
Considering thoughtful comment at a news article as dialogue with the text,
then an organization of comment segments into a thematic sequence of topics may instance a practice of theorizing from life (albeit journalistic narratives).
That’s a more improvisational version of engagement sentence-by-sentence
with others’ academic narratives, which can become tedious, but exemplifies discursive creativity, which performs detailed reading as formulation of conceptual stances and interpretive frames. I did that for many years via listserv forums. (Frankly, the potentials of discursive engagement and deconstructive work available through close reading make Frankfurt brand critique seem antique.)
I’ll eventually go back through my current improvisation to pull out the trans-situational themes and convene those into a relatively abstract narrative—
a discursive convention—which easily suggests longstanding conceptual prospecting by others, along with material that I didn’t use for today’s weave, which confined itself to existing comment elsewhere; or was oriented by that.
This posting will probably be expanded. When that happens, I’ll note it on
the home page. Meanwhile, a practical sense of conceptual prospecting expresses interest in discursive moment (i.e, potential general importance).