Per Otnes
Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997
ISBN 82-00-22558-5
Per Otnes
Kursplan SOS 4500 Kultur masterkurs V-04
Rånes: Fellesskap - på godt og
vondt, h.oppg. v-04
| Other-Wise. Alterity, Materiality, Mediation Per Otnes Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997 ISBN 82-00-22558-5 |
|
This book deals with things and how they relate to their users, a
set of similar units called the Others. Their relations bring them to
the attention of another set of similar units, customarily called
Individua1s or Selves, here redefined and renarned Connectuals,
Dividuals, or Plecads.
The familiar theory of praxis - doings, work, business - is not quite
all there is to being wise to the Others, or Other-Wise, which is
rather a theory of chresis (from Gk. chao, chresthail), to use, treat,
consult, encounter. A text, then, itself a thing, dealing with things,
for your use, about uses. A science mode d'emploi, as it were.
Departing from the cogitor or "I'm being thought", we deal l with
things such as cars, roads, maps, and landscapes. Before ending with
"the real thing", we comment liberally on the language, "art", and
wisdom of uses, i.e. of chreseology as a fresh approach to the science
of sociology,
The text may be said to belong, in its ciitical way. within the
constructivist tradition. It did not seem fair to oppose Individualism,
Methodological or Ontological, before being able to sketch an
alternative. In the same spirit, the text outlines a transcending of
the mind-matter divide.