Archive for the ‘Heidegger’ Category
Towards a Rhizomatic Method for Knowledge Management
The paper highlights the importance of ontological assumptions to the management of knowledge and the development of knowledge management systems. It juxtaposes the ontology of “being” based on the work of Heidegger , and the ontology of “becoming” based on Deleuze and Guattari’ s discussion of rhizomatic activity. The relevance of these ideas to knowledge management, information systems, and organisational activities in general is illustrated and a tentative framework based on rhizomatics is developed and discussed.
Imaging Place: Storymapping – Exploring the Naturalists’ Sense of Place
The central objective of the Tranquille project is to explore the lived experience of place. We share with many others an interest in meaning, but a notion of meaning that is not restricted to narrowly linguistic or cognitive senses. In this regard, it would be accurate to say that we want to explore the interface of meaning and experience, and to show how meaning is grounded in human physicality and emotionality. The philosophical inspiration for the research is the phenomenological tradition, though we rely more on Merleau-Ponty than Heidegger. It is widely recognized that Merleau-Ponty owed an “enormous debt” to Heidegger. They shared a common interest in the links between self and world and both sought “to reverse the ontological priorities of Cartesian rationalism”. But in contrast to Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty explored in considerable detail the crucial role of human embodiment and its relation to “being in the world.” Merleau-Ponty’s view of the importance of embodiment is expressed in the quotation cited above, where he speaks of knowing the world through the body, and there is a sense in which our analysis starts from this idea of embodied knowledge. We see it as a key element of place-making and of the processes through which places become remarkable to those who inhabit them.
Imaging Place: Storymapping – Exploring the Naturalists’ Sense of Place
Our bodily experience of movement is not a particular case of knowledge; it provides us with a way of access to the world and the object , with a ‘praktognosia’, which has to be recognized as original and perhaps as primary – Merleau-Ponty
But in contrast to Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty explored in considerable detail the crucial role of human embodiment and its relation to “being in the world.” Merleau-Ponty’s view of the importance of embodiment is expressed in the quotation cited above, where he speaks of knowing the world through the body, and there is a sense in which our analysis starts from this idea of embodied knowledge. We see it as a key element of place-making and of the processes through which places become remarkable to those who inhabit them.
However, we should stress that the influence of Merleau-Ponty is not limited to a general theoretical perspective. His ideas also point toward storymapping, the basic methodological tool of our inquiry. Consider the following passage: “The lived is certainly lived by me, nor am I ignorant of the feelings I repress, and in this sense there is no unconscious. But I can experience more things than I can represent to myself, and my being is not reducible to what expressly appears to me concerning myself“.
