Author's prefatory note for readers

This essay is drawn from my 2006 Presidential Address to the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy.¹ That address was a multi-media presentation that consisted of three simultaneous components: A spoken text or "lyrics," presented here; a musical soundtrack; and a video presentation. Although this text can stand on its own, I believe, the other two components are essential (if non-traditional) to the meanings of the address. The music and videos begin at the final sentence of the first section. The music consists of the following sixteen instrumentals: "Rumble" by Link Wray; "The Pan Piper" by Miles Davis; "Albatross" by Fleetwood Mac; "Flying" by the Beatles; "The Star Spangled Banner" Woodstock performance by Jimi Hendrix; "Black Mountain Side" by Led Zeppelin; "Interludings" by Rod Stewart; "The Last of the Arkansas Greyhounds" by Leo Kottke; "Nashville Blues" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band; "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1" by R.E.M.; "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo" by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones; "My Favorite Things" performed by Outkast; "Exercise #4" by Frank Zappa; "The Emperor of Wyoming" by Neil Young; "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill" by Neil Young; "Ruth is Sleeping" by Frank Zappa. The spoken text ends as this last piece of music ends with loud applause from its audience. During the spoken address and the music, 240 images—one every twelve seconds—were shown on a very large screen near the podium. The images are largely in chronological order, from the early 1950s to the present. Approximately two-thirds of these photographs show major historical events and developments, influential and famous persons, and scenes from everyday life in the United States and popular culture during these some fifty years.² The others, interspersed, are photographs of my own life, family, friends, and places, concluding with several images of persons present in the audience for the address. The combination of words, music, and photos is intended, in part, to unsettle, grate, and resist unification and universalization. It is intended, in another part, to embody or "perform" the spoken text's claims about philosophies, including this philosophy, as fashions. [End Page 147] While I realize that it is the fashion of most readers of this journal typically to focus on the meanings of words unconnected to meanings of sounds and images, I suggest that, at least in this case, these not be separated.]

I. Damn Irritating Introduction

What should we say or think about persons who attend presentations like this with the overriding hope that the speaker will make statements with which they already agree and so repeat back to them what they believed before the presentation or, at the very least, that the speaker will give them an opportunity in a discussion period to explain why the speaker should have agreed with them? And what should we think about a speaker who wants an audience to answer this question in the same way the speaker does?

A few years ago, at a presentation on the contemporary relevance of John Dewey's political philosophy, as I spoke I showed lots of photographs related to terrorism. During the discussion period, a philosophy professor in the audience shook his head and said the whole thing wasn't what he'd come to expect at philosophy conferences, said he couldn't concentrate at the same time on both my words and the projected images, said he just wanted the message without all the trendy packaging, and said as a result he found the whole experience just "plain damn irritating." A woman in the audience asked him if he had ever glanced back and forth at CNN while answering a phone call while reading e-mail at his desk while loosening his collar and listening to his kids playing in the next room and finding himself remembering his grandparents at the time he was...