#incommensurable

adjective | in·com·men·su·ra·ble \ˌin-kə-ˈmen(t)s-rə-bəl, -ˈmen(t)sh-\

refers to things that are unlike and incompatible, sharing no common ground (as in "incommensurable theories")

La conscience de l’aliéné

“Henri Michaux” L’aliéné est perdu, il est allé hors de lui-même, et là, il s’est perdu. D’où son nom, l’aliéné, le ‘devenu autre à lui-même’, ‘autre aux autres’. C’est du moins le diagnostic des spécialistes de la psychiatrie. Ce diagnostic, cet arrêt, semble si évident qu’il est repris par le poète même, qui en généralise la portée à d’autres genres d’aliénation. « L’aliéné à lui-même par…

Another great excerpt from Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction:

This ‘cumulative’ conception of science is popular among laymen and scientists alike, but Kuhn argued that it is both historically inaccurate and philosophically naïve. For example, he noted that Einstein’s theory of relativity is in some respects more similar to Aristotelian than Newtonian theory – so the history of mechanics is not simply a linear progression from wrong to right. Moreover, Kuhn questioned whether the concept of objective truth actually makes sense at all. The idea that there is a fixed set of facts about the world, independent of any particular paradigm, was of dubious coherence, he believed. Kuhn suggested a radical alternative: the facts about the world are paradigm-relative, and thus change when paradigms change. If this suggestion is right, then it makes no sense to ask whether a given theory corresponds to the facts ‘as they really are’, nor therefore to ask whether it is objectively true. Truth itself becomes relative to a paradigm. 

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Kuhn had two main philosophical arguments for these claims. Firstly, he argued that competing paradigms are typically ‘incommensurable’ with one another. To understand this idea, we must remember that for Kuhn a scientist’s paradigm determines her entire world-view – she views everything through the paradigm’s lens. So when an existing paradigm is replaced by a new one in a scientific revolution, scientists have to abandon the whole conceptual framework which they use to make sense of the world. Indeed, Kuhn even claims, obviously somewhat metaphorically, that before and after a paradigm shift scientists ‘live in different worlds’. Incommensurability is the idea that two paradigms may be so different as to render impossible any straightforward comparison of them with each other – there is no common language into which both can be translated. As a result, the proponents of different paradigms ‘fail to make complete contact with each other’s viewpoints’, Kuhn claimed.

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Kuhn’s second philosophical argument was based on an idea known as the ‘theory-ladenness’ of data. To grasp this idea, suppose you are a scientist trying to choose between two conflicting theories. The obvious thing to do is to look for a piece of data that will decide between the two – which is just what traditional philosophy of science recommended. But this will only be possible if there exist data that are suitably independent of the theories, in the sense that a scientist would accept the data whichever of the two theories she believed. As we have seen, the logical positivists believed in the existence of such theory-neutral data, which could provide an objective court of appeal between competing theories. But Kuhn argued that the ideal of theory-neutrality is an illusion – data are invariably contaminated by theoretical assumptions. It is impossible to isolate a set of ‘pure’ data which all scientists would accept irrespective of their theoretical persuasion. 

[literally ... notes ... thinking through a concept]

"The practice of history involves translation because it concerns the re-expression of that which is past in the language of the present.  In other words a re-expression that could not just be described as touching on a translation for it is in fact a translation" (60).

&

"[A]ny universal theory or definition of truth will have to be compatible with the interrelationship between holding true and universal self" (73).

"incommensurability" is a concept that has been used to describe American slavery. a critique of pleasure, enjoyment and consent as impossibilities for enslaved people also smuggles in with it a notion of slavery's incommensurability. but i wonder: does the notion of "incommensurability" depend upon some particular foundational claim: a universal man, a universal self, a universal history? if incommensurability is about the inability to translate because there is "no common basis, standard or measure for comparison" and is likewise about the incalculable, about a disproportionality, then how is it possible to use enslavement narrative of the ones who experienced something incalculable to bespeak, write and theorize about that particular experience?  incommensurability seems to "hold true" which "holds open, holds back, holds fast" its own unutterable, inaudible gap that it also creates.  

that is, this -- #selfcriticalclarity -- incommensurability is mentioned as the truth of enslavement.  and thus, Hartman says that Harriet Jacobs could not possibly consent to her situation with the lawyer; that she could not love; that even her consent was an act of compulsion, and this is because of the truth of enslavement, the truth of the experience. it is a particular kind of "holding forth" that is also a "holding true" of enslavement. i want to think about a necessity for universal subjectivity that makes this claim of truth possible.  incommensurability implies that there exists an irreducible a purity of enslavement experience that can be so defined as such, some originary rupture -- middle passage -- that makes a particular kind of ongoing inescapable subjectivity for those who were enslaved and their heirs. 

but what of translation?  well: the philosophical tradition Andrew Benjamin engages by way of critique is to stage the ways in which translation as a concept assumes [which is to say, takes up and into itself] that there is a literal essence that is the meaning of the word and this literality is itself is previous to the figurative, the metaphorizing of language.  in order to get to the essence (of Emeril?  lol), one must do what Aristotle suggests as the stripping of the color, melody, rhythm and metre of the word. but of course, this is rather impossible. we can both argue that the "literal" that necessitates a logic of stripping comes after the figurative and thus; we can argue likewise that the essence of the word is anoriginal, is a plurality and capacity for sociality.

so back to incommensurability. incommensurability, in the way i understand it, puts forth the idea that translation is impossible and that this impossibility is its truth, its essence [but, to be clear, not the experiences of that which is impossible to translate, just the translation]. so we would then write from a knowledge of the essence and truth of enslavement's telling as totalizing and resistant to translation. but one wonders: did those who were enslaved experience experience as incommensurable or is this particular truth a stripping away of the figurative that is itself a figuration and metaphorization?  

that is, we have come no closer to the truth of the experience of enslavement by making a claim for its incommensurability; rather, it seems that we have made it a universal theory of enslavement as incommensurable, and this theory of necessity needs an understanding and posture that is itself the interarticulation of an essentialism [i.e., a particular experience is itself incommensurable; though the argumentation and theorizing is often anti-essentialist] and a universal subjectivity [i.e., those who experienced this experience experienced it as incommensurability; and that anyone who experience particular experience will do so as such].

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