April 13, 2005
Blink
Malcolm Gladwell probably considers himself a "journalist" or just "writer", but I'm more inclined to view him as something of a prosumer philosopher. Even more then his first hit, The Tipping Point his new work, Blink is a book about a concept. And if one is to believe Gilles Deleuze (as I seem to be inclined to do perhaps a bit too frequently) then the creation of concepts is exactly what a philosopher does. And while Gladwell gives no indication he has even heard of Deleuze, the core concept of Blink is a subject dear to the late philosopher's heart, the space in the human mind where rational thought fails to enter, where discourse collapses into a univocality, where instinct and thinking are one and the same.
Gladwell interestingly puts forth what is essentially an argument for nonrationalism using hard rationalist techniques. A repeated theme of the book is the "thin slice". The thin slice is essentially a period of time where decisions are made so quickly that they can not be rationally thought through. The core concept of the book is that these thin slices or blinks are extremely powerful, capable of producing decisions that sometimes brilliant and at other times devastatingly wrong. Like Deleuze places these nonrationalist decisions at the core of human experience. But by relying extensively on the slice, the rationalist/analytical operation of breaking apart a problem into component parts in order to understand it, Gladwell ends up with a somewhat more limited concept then Deleuze. Gladwell is only really able to reach this very interesting space by breaking apart actions rationally until they no longer can be broken apart. Hence the focus on the "blink" the split second decision. What he misses is that these blinks can be extraordinarily long, lasting perhaps entire lifetimes.
The conclusion of Blink is about the use of screens in auditioning of orchestra members. Before the widespread use of these screens, which hide the players from the people making hiring decisions, there where very few women in professional orchestras. Once the screens became widespread an interesting thing happened, the number of women hired increase radically. Gladwell's argument is that the screen's allowed the decision makers to "blink" properly, making choices based on the music alone, not how the players looked. But what he misses is that the inbred discrimination at work, biases against women or minority musicians are also blinks, but blinks that happen to last years or decades.
Within those thin slices, Blink is an excellent book, a well written and entertaining exploration of a concept. If it approaches the success of The Tipping Point Gladwell will be in the position of America's most popular philosopher, most popular producer of concepts, without ever acknowledging and most likely personally accepting that he's even engaged in philosophy at all. But as large swathes of academia continues to ensnare themselves in a variety of traps of their own devising, hard rationalism, marxist dialectics, poststructuralism and the like, it is the popular producers of concepts that are filling the role of philosophers in our society. Like the high end consumer electronics I've named them after these prosumer philosophers are giving the public high quality intellectual products unburdened by the weight of professionalism (although this is not true when it comes to the art of writing). There is of course a lot to be lost in this transition, the intellectual rigor of the prosumer is non-existant compared to academia, but its also a profoundly liberating experience as the playing field of culture and concept shifts into new grounds. More soon, hopefully.
Posted by William Blaze at April 13, 2005 04:10 PM | TrackBackDoes Gladwell advocate the blink?
Cause Deleuze will argue strongly in most cases that nonrational thought--i.e., which he derives from Bergson's work on intuition--requires the intervention of memory, that is, of the virtual, that is, duration/temporality, and that this takes time, time for thought to occur
If Gladwell is basically saying (or you are reading him to say) that rational thought = deliberation and nonrational thought = instaneity, this does not bode well, for it results, as you say, in the weird privileging of habit, that is of automatic response, most likely not that of "nonrational" thought but of impulse.
Thought requires time: it can still be deliberative, lengthy, and involved yet nonrational. This is what I see Deleuze getting at, especially vis-a-vis his deployment of Bergson.
best, t
Posted by: tV on April 15, 2005 12:16 AMGladwell doesn't advocate the blink, although there is a bias. He's got examples where it's brilliant and examples where it is a disaster. What he advocates is learning the blink, preparing for it, training it. Which meshes well with your interpretation of Deleuze/Bergson above. But then again there is still a bias towards the quick which is exactly what I was critiquing. But Gladwell never makes a slow = rational statement, the thin slice is just a methond he uses not an aspect of any theory he proposes.
Posted by: Abe on April 15, 2005 02:52 PMOh, I think Gladwell very much advocates the blink, or, at least, has an extremely strong bias toward it. Even though he sites examples, such as with the orchestra audition or, perhaps even more damning, with treatment of car shoppers based on sex and race, that demonstrate the untrustworthiness of thin slicing.
Gladwell tells some interesting stories, yes, but there's no coherent theory or philosophy on which to hang your hat. BLINK, in my eyes, is a failure.
Posted by: peterme on April 18, 2005 09:01 AMI don't Peter, yes Gladwell's does have an affection for the blink, but he goes to pretty great lengths to counterbalance it. And there really is a philosophy there which is essentially that we are capable and in fact constantly making massive decisions in these "blinks". Sometimes the results are brilliant other times awful, but we can train ourselves to shift the balance toward the better.
Posted by: Abe on April 18, 2005 02:45 PMyour post was a very nice read, since i agree with so much of it. not the book, since i haven't read it yet. but i like your deleuzean angle.
to extend the matter further, i would like to point out that ancient vedic time-keeping involved the blink, where a 'paramanu' is the normal interval of blinking in humans, or approximately 4 seconds.
and the muslim notion of of time does not involve a continuum, but instants of great importance.
it's quite an interesting subject.
and you're right about that philosophers thing too.
Posted by: Fadereu on May 6, 2005 11:02 AMdear author,
your post was a very nice read, since i agree with so much of it. not the book, since i haven't read it yet. but i like your deleuzean angle.
to extend the matter further, i would like to point out that ancient vedic time-keeping involved the blink, where a 'paramanu' is the normal interval of blinking in humans, or approximately 4 seconds.
and the muslim notion of of time does not involve a continuum, but instants of great importance.
it's quite an interesting subject.
and you're right about that philosophers thing too.
Posted by: Fadereu on May 6, 2005 11:03 AMHey Abe, of note at Massumi's talk this past weekend at Sinues of the Present [ radicalempiricism.org ] he talked about the "attentional blink" .. he sees this as one modulation of the perceptive apparatus (alongside, for example, Bergson's concept of perception as cinematographic, as Deleuze discusses in Cinema 1 and _2_). Thought you'd dig that. - tV
Posted by: tV on May 9, 2005 05:26 PMBlinks end before we notice they began. Then we live with the results. Not the blinks, but their consequences, can last lifetimes.
Posted by: Janus Daniels on May 21, 2005 10:28 PMVery interesting blog!
Posted by: Donny on September 16, 2005 04:01 AM
