The problem I have been working on for several days now is: what are the work strategies that are appropriate to diagnosing the contemporary problem of the figure of human dignity, in terms of inquiry as well as narrative?
The setting for thinking about this problem is twofold. First is the ongoing question of the relation of history of the present and anthropology of the contemporary. Second is the need to diagnose key events of the recent past in the formation of the figure of human dignity so as to establish an analytic baseline for thinking about the near future.
Taken together, the two can be formulated as a question: Given that the problem of human dignity is contemporary, and therefore is (1) formed of old as well as new elements, but (2) is not only the effect of a prior set of linear historical causes, what are the genealogical and narrative strategies for characterizing the old elements in their previous formations? What genealogical truths need to be brought to articulation in order to produce an adequate diagnosis of the contemporary? Or, to use PR’s recent formulation: what is it that needs to be known about the recent past in order to link it to the near future?
There are two events I need to study in connection with the stabilization of the figure of human dignity: the constitution of the U.N. and the constitution on “the church and the modern world” of the Second Vatican Council. There are a multitude of things I could study in connection to these events, and a multitude of ways to study them. I need to be able to give a clear answer to the question: what things should be picked out, in what way should they be picked out, and how should they be brought into relation?
My response to all of this has been to run through a number of exercises, consisting of posing and answering the following series of questions:
- What is it that I need to know about the recent past (i.e. the U.N. constitution and Vatican II) in order to sufficiently diagnose the contemporary problem of human dignity?
- What are the questions I need to have answered in examining these events?
- What are the topics of significance to be used in sorting and consolidating materials?
- How can these topics of significance be converted into narrative principles such that the events can be characterized as assemblages, and such that the metric of topological ordering is significance rather than historical chronicle?
- What are the work habits appropriate to the characterization of assemblages, particularly in the case where the goal is not to master the genealogical materials, but to pick out and display only what is needed for work on the contemporary problem?
