The Complexity and Deception of "Knowledge"

An Analysis of “A Crisis of Representation in the Human Sciences” by George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer

Marcus and Fischer bring to our attention the very epistemological issues that truly represent the mindset of postmodernism. It is that objective knowledge does not truly exist because various issues, such as contextuality, exist “that make problematic what were taken for granted as facts or certainties on which the validity of paradigms had rested” (444).  Here, they show how the internalization and production of information fabricates knowledge in a way that cannot be classified as objective. Thereby, the terms “facts” or “certainties” do not apply not necessarily for what the knowledge itself is but where such knowledge came from and how it was produced.

Such an argument is of large magnitude because it strikes at such a significant relationship between language and knowledge. The very presentation of knowledge through the use of language forms a problem that Marcus and Fischer term “a crisis of representation” (444). Even beyond the presentation of knowledge but the systems, institutions, and contexts that knowledge is placed in give knowledge non-neutral, non-objective attributes. Analysis of Marcus and Fischer’s work paints paradigms as incapable of producing objective knowledge because these paradigms themselves are produced and used with an agenda or purpose. When human purpose is attached to paradigms, they are placed in a system or environment of hierarchy, whereby one paradigms dominates over the other. A paradigm itself is a representation of how knowledge itself is shaped and a confining space for the interpretation of reality. Paradigms, therefore, as reflective of human purpose and specific interpretation of reality, clash, representing how differing perspectives challenge each other.

Marcus and Fischer describe tragedy, comedy, and romance as the three types of emplotments used as a strategy to find a proper representation of the historical process. Here, they bring about how each emplotment type represents a specific means of documenting and sharing history. For example, a tragedy is characterized by “the heightening of the sense of conflicting social forces” which results in a “gain in consciousness and understanding through experiencing the power of social conflicts” (447). Such a specific framework takes events and essentially filters out and modifies the aspects of history that are not relevant to this purpose. It is therefore that work and the knowledge produced by a specific individual at a specific time is a mere single interpretation in an expanse of endless number of interpretations. Thereby, reaching for such “accurate” knowledge can only exist through the compilation and consideration of as much to the full account of individual interpretations as possible.