Heuretics

This blog is for those interested in heuretics (the logic of invention) as a pedagogy and research methodology.  Heuretics applies theory to the creation of new forms, practices, methods, in the way that Hermeneutics applies theory to the interpretation of extant works (OED paraphrase).  The immediate context is an experiment in a graduate seminar to invent a "concept" as defined by Deleuze and Guattari in What is Philosophy?  Through this specific invention the operations of heuretics as a method are also articulated.  We want to understand not only how to invent a "concept," but how to perform heuretics in general (how to adapt it to other  programs and experiments).

Poetics are generated by means of the CATTt.  This generator first appeared as a pattern in the readings of a seminar on the history of theory (Plato to the present).   Each of the discourses on method were constructed using a Contrast, Analogy, existing Theory, a Target context, and a tale (tail) in which to communicate and demonstrate the new practice.  Plato's dialogue method, for example (Phaedrus is the first discourse on method in the Western tradition), is the prototype:  Contrast with sophism, and more generally with Homer's epics. Analogy with medical diagnosis (seeking a "diagnosis" of moral ills); Theory is Socrates, representing a Pythagorean background; Target is the institution of School; tale is the dialogue form itself, a conversational interface within which one is introduced to dialectic.  The CATTt may be used to analyse existing works.  Any hermeneutics may be translated into a heuretics, meaning that its analytical points may be redescribed as instructions for production.

Each of the texts in this seminar are selected to fill one of CATTt slots. The reading strategy is to extract from each text a set of instructions for how to perform the demands of the relevant slot.  Each slot is responsible for 20% of the poetics, and the final formula is an emergent effect of the intertext created by setting the selected readings into conversation.  The formulation requires some art, some craft, since the intertext does not produce an algorithm, but a formal pattern.  The resulting poetics is valid (not true):  the validity is authenticated by the formal coherence among the readings.  What resembles, assembles (Jakobson). The proof is in the pudding!