One of the themes that runs through this blog concerns how we understand different kinds of knowledge (objective, subjective, tacit, explicit, carnal, occult, etc.) One of the differences that comes up is the way that different kinds of knowing tend to be talked about using different metaphors, and that there is a consistency in these metaphors. For example, objective knowledge is usually spoken of as it it was something that was visible to the eyes, whereas subjective knowledge might more appropriately be talked about as a matter of ‘taste’. This suggests that different kinds of knowledge are mapped onto differences in sensory mode; sight is objective whereas taste is subjective. If this whole project was looked at in this way, then this blog can perhaps be seen as neither visual not gustatory but haptic; the workings of conceptual hands, manipulating the unstable matter of thought. To continue this metaphor, some artifacts have emerged as evidential outcomes of this manual labour. Some of the ideas generated within the blog, and in some cases being returned to many times, like a tongue returning to a broken tooth, have eventually found object form as published papers in journals or presentations at conferences; others have been expressed as artworks. I have also written a reflective document giving something of an analytical account of this process. These can be accessed via the link on the sidebar.

These various examples of knowledge ‘objects’; the visible, explicit, possessible artifacts lie beyond the reach of the tongue and the arm. To shift the metaphor slightly, I am tempted to say that the blog is also the space that leads to those objects, although this might suggest that the blog is simply the means to an end; the necessary but ultimately disposable space that one must move through in order to arrive at the desired goal. This would be unfortunate. I would prefer to think that the focus is not on the object but on the space between, or on the handicraft itself, and the implied vector lurking in the word ‘leads’, and indeed in the word ‘outcome’, can be overlooked. The view from above shows the entirety of the landscape. The handwaving never resolves into a word, the sentence ends with an ellipsis …