The Cultural Commons and Small Talk: Part 1. by Yohei
by Yohei.
Negative Capability: Unread Cultural Commons and Small Talk
you can read the other things we’ve had to say about the cultural commons here, if you like.
To complicate Cultural Commons further, there is the concept of reverse vicariousness. Half of the ‘commoners’ haven’t done their homework:
“Nonreaders can positively register at social gatherings that they “know of” the book without actually having seen or read it first hand. We might call this phenomenon reverse vicariousness, because we normally think of immediate viewing or reading as vicarious experiences for face-to-face interaction. But, in this case, a viewer or reader uses face-to-face interaction to experience the viewer or reader role vicariously;”
Kathleen Carley and David Kaufer, “Communication at a Distance”
Cited in Clifford Siskin’s The Work of Writing
It’s increasingly difficult to ignore the pervasiveness of reverse vicariousness.
I heard an NPR interview with the author of The Art of Small Talk. The book needs no introduction, really: it’s exactly what it sounds like, a self-help book for exactly these kinds of social or office gatherings. For instance, how to avoid being “held hostage” in conversations when one could be productively [grimace] networking.
Half knowledge, negative capability: able small talkers capitalize on it, synecdochal logic ready for deployment, to rush in and fill in the void. One half of a rug may be obscured underneath a couch, but you must assume that you know what the hidden pattern is. Bill Clinton, a master chitchatter, I’ve read, has on hand a humorous and engaging anecdote on almost any topic. A good small talker, I gather, relishes in this reciprocal state of half knowledge — and the real artistry comes in brushing up against but never crossing the boundary into any substantive knowledge of the other or betraying your ignorance of or distate for a topic.
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