Graphesis - Response #2

Dr. Drucker's early comments on the visualisation and subsequent interpretation of temporality strike me as primarily rooted in a phenomenological account of the relevant ontology and humanism- particularly as such tenets pertain to and come into conflict with the more empirical interpretations of time found in the natural sciences that she begins the discussion with.

She characterises the divide in terms of "interpretative knowledge", stemming from a kind of cultural or subjectivist relativism. The empirical account she presents (James Allen's and George Ferguson's discrete chart of intervals) is termed deficient in mapping out "recollection and regret ... retrospection and interpretation" and more generally lacking in encapsulating notions of temporality as historically, culturally, and relationally lensed- i.e., as the ontological ground for humanistic care and subjectivity.

The final upshot of this, to my mind, principally concerns the final question with which she ends her discussion on temporality: "How to find the right graphical language to communicate this language..while being flexible enough to inscribe the inflections which characterise subjective experience?"

But if indeed these conceptions are as intersubjective, elusive to structure, and hermeneutically based as this passage implies, isn't it reasonable to ask whether or not attempting to formalise a structured language to even account for such conceptions is possible in the first place? And if so, would such pursuits even be desirable, considering the reduction a formal visualisation might impose on the meaning therein? This ultimately feels like a reformulation of the general schema mapped out in chapter 1, with a similar lack of resolution.