Venue: Online Event via Zoom
Among many other uses, the text has always been one of the major media for communicating desires and interests and in judging whether moral acts are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. This, however, requires an interpretation of the text by those who are responsible for the vulnerable and the unrepresented. Discourse ethics, as a meta-text, has provided the means by which one could come to judge whether particularistic desires and interests are morally ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. This mode of communication has always been carried out through the physicality of unilinear writing. This presentation will look into the shortcomings of such mode of unilinearity and its effect on discourse ethics in particular. This will in turn bring to question judgements that are interpreted and recorded as acceptable or unacceptable by society at large. I will make the case that unilinear mode of writing may not be effective enough for an exhaustive expressability in terms of freedom of speech.
Hypertext writing, or what is here called the Multiplicity of Discursive Paths, is introduced as an alternative to this long-standing tradition of unilinearity. This Multiplicity of Discursive Paths is intended to give the vulnerable and the unrepresented, a better emancipatory expressability – uncastigated by the chronology of a rigid method of expression – so much needed in a posttruth culture. It will be argued that such mode of expression will give discourse ethics, as a process of determining ‘right’ from ‘wrong’ moral actions, a better exhaustive expressability. This will result in contributing to a profounder way of perceiving justice and a broader way of understanding the individual. It shall be argued that pedagogical practices in hypertext writing may be beneficial for those institutions where the issuance of social justice (in terms of discursive expressability) is so important and necessary.
Another justification for the application of a Multiplicity of Discursive Paths is that such a form of discourse gives both the writer and the reader the opportunity to envisage different perspectives, including the fragmentation of perspectives. The writer and the reader are given a better chance to understand fragmentation and to empathize with the perspectives of various cultures, thereby coming to appreciate cultural difference. It is a discursive infrastructure that provides a space for non-normative discourse. Speakers should not, in any form or way, be silenced by any means of force whatsoever. If this were to be the case, it would not be a sound communication but, rather, a strategic action which is also marked by forceful cohesiveness or force itself.
A Multiplicity of Discursive Paths, as a concept, lacks the violent suppression of unilinear discourse and gives the possibility of expressing ‘meaningfulness’ without forcing the reader to bow to some form of centrality in discursive meaning. The word ‘meaningfulness’ is here used to explain the fact that events or actions may contain a multiplicity of equally valid reasons for which an action occurred or why an event happened to be this way. ‘Meaningfulness’, in such cases as discourse ethics, suggests that there is no centrality of meaning as a secured objective structure but there are, instead, equally relevant perspectives.
Kindly register through the . Interested participants will receive their Zoom link by an email.
For more information, please contact Ms Lucienne Gellel at the Faculty for Social Wellbeing by sending an email.
