Paul Kockelman | Yale University (original) (raw)
Recent by Paul Kockelman
The Comparative Complex, 2022
A history of the comparative construction in Q'eqchi' (Maya).
Last Words, 2024
A critical exegesis of large language models, like ChatGPT, and recent advances in artificial int... more A critical exegesis of large language models, like ChatGPT, and recent advances in artificial intelligence. Included here are the Table of Contents, Introduction, and Chapter 6 from a new book published by Prickly Paradigm Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/L/bo238320279.html
Cambridge University Press, 2022
A natural history of intensity in exceedingly tense times. With particular attention to affect, t... more A natural history of intensity in exceedingly tense times. With particular attention to affect, temporality, worlding, and the anthropocene.
Current Anthropology, 2024
The first part of this article lays out what ontologies are and how they should be studied -- in ... more The first part of this article lays out what ontologies are and how they should be studied -- in ways that precede, supersede, and otherwise route around not just the "ontological turn" but also its critics. The second part of this article offers an anthropological critique of Quine's influential account of ontological commitment and a Quinean critique of certain anthropological commitments as to the existence and nature of possible worlds. As will be seen, we rework Quine's metaontological dictum, "to be is to be the value of a variable," into a more modest and ethnographically manageable form: to be is to become a value.
Oxford University Press, 2022
Conclusion of The Anthropology of Intensity.
Cambridge University Press, 2022
What counts as too close for comfort? How can an entire room suddenly feel restless at the immine... more What counts as too close for comfort? How can an entire room suddenly
feel restless at the imminence of a yet unknown occurrence? And who
decides whether or not we are already in an age of unliveable extremes? The
anthropology of intensity studies how humans encounter and communicate the continuous and gradable features of social and environmental
phenomena in everyday interactions. Focusing on the last twenty years of
life in a Mayan village in the cloud forests of Guatemala, this book provides
a natural history of intensity in exceedingly tense times, through a careful
analysis of ethnographic and linguistic evidence. It uses intensity as a way
to reframe Anthropology in the age of the Anthropocene, and rethinks
classic work in the formal linguistic tradition from a culture-specific and
context-sensitive stance. It is essential reading for not only anthropologists
and linguists, but also ecologically oriented readers, critical theorists, and
environmental scientists.
Notes on the relation between Marx's theory of capitalism and Shannon's theory of communication; ... more Notes on the relation between Marx's theory of capitalism and Shannon's theory of communication; and hence on the connection between labor and noise, fidelity and profit, entropy and parasites.
Prickly Paradigm Press, 2020
This slim volume showcases, reworks, and extends some of the core resources anthropologists, and ... more This slim volume showcases, reworks, and extends some of the core resources anthropologists, and like-minded scholars, have developed over the past 200 years or so for thinking about value. Rather than theorize value head on, I offer a careful (but punchy and non-ponderous) interpretation of a Mayan text (about an offering to a god that lamentably goes awry), its telling, and the conditions of possibility for its original publication.
International Journal of American Linguistics, 2020
This article is about four aspectual adverbs in Q’eqchi’ (Maya), which may be loosely glossed as ... more This article is about four aspectual adverbs in Q’eqchi’ (Maya), which may be loosely glossed as ak ‘already’, maaji’ ‘not yet’, toj ‘still’, and ink’a’ chik ‘no longer’. The author shows the presupposition and assertion structure of these forms in unmarked usage (as sentential operators acting on imperfective predicates) and argues that they constitute a dual group in the tradition of Loebner (1989), who worked on similar operators in German. The author shows the wide range of other functions such forms serve in more marked usage and the ways they may co-occur in the same clause (and thereby “double”). The article offers a semantics that accounts for the multiple functions of all such constructions, highlighting the ways these forms are similar to and different from their German and Spanish counterparts.
Signs and Society, 2020
On the tense and traumatic coupling between the interpretive grounds of humans and the algorithmi... more On the tense and traumatic coupling between the interpretive grounds of humans and the algorithmic models of machines.
Cultural Anthropology, 2019
The meaning of already, no longer, not yet, and still. * The nature of too much and not enough. *... more The meaning of already, no longer, not yet, and still. * The nature of too much and not enough. * Thresholds in the Anthropocene. * Topology in linguistic anthropology. * Chronotopes in political ecology. * Intensity.
On global warming, anthropology and the Anthropocene.
Tobias Rees's After Ethnos calls for a reformulation that: (1) ignores a large amount of what is ... more Tobias Rees's After Ethnos calls for a reformulation that: (1) ignores a large amount of what is already done; (2) represents a significant reduction in the current scope/richness in the field; (3) doesn't make a strong case why such a reduction-cum-reformulation is worth it; and (4) doesn't seem particularly knowledgeable about the empirical fields that have long treated its main topic: thought (qua semiosis/cognition) modulo social relations. In this commentary, I summarize, and then critique, each of its key claims.
International Journal of American Linguistics, 2019
This essay analyzes the history and usage of degree modifiers and comparative constructions in Q'... more This essay analyzes the history and usage of degree modifiers and comparative constructions in Q'eqchi' (Maya). It focuses on the role of mas (< Sp. más) and the function of the modern comparative construction (long thought to be a calque of its Spanish equivalent). In contrast to previous analyses, it shows that Q'eqchi' mas does not function as a comparative (unlike Spanish más), but rather as a degree modifier, indefinite quantity, and differential operator (like Spanish muy and mucho). It shows that the comparative construction doesn't require mas, but only the positive form of a gradable predicate, along with the adposition chiru (before, in the face of) to mark the standard. It shows that mas came into Q'eqchi' during the late 1800s and seems to have functioned this way from the beginning. And it offers reasons for this shift in meaning, and its frequent misanalysis by linguists.
Books by Paul Kockelman
On incommensurate ontologies and portable values in Guatemala's cloud forests.
A theory of other minds, intentionality, and affect. (Among the Maya, inter alia.)
A Theory of Media and Mediation.
A Theory of Ontology, Interaction, and Infrastructure.
Life by Paul Kockelman
This 2005 essay argues that the pervasive twentieth century understanding of meaning — a sign sta... more This 2005 essay argues that the pervasive twentieth century understanding of meaning — a sign stands for an object — is incorrect. In its place, it offers the following definition, which is framed not in terms of a single relation (of standing for), but in terms of a relation (of correspondence) between two relations (of standing for): a sign stands for its object on the one hand, and its interpretant on the other, in such a way as to make the interpretant stand in relation to the object corresponding to its own relation to the object. Using this definition, it reanalyzes key concepts and foundational arguments from linguistics so far as they relate to anthropology and psychology.
The Comparative Complex, 2022
A history of the comparative construction in Q'eqchi' (Maya).
Last Words, 2024
A critical exegesis of large language models, like ChatGPT, and recent advances in artificial int... more A critical exegesis of large language models, like ChatGPT, and recent advances in artificial intelligence. Included here are the Table of Contents, Introduction, and Chapter 6 from a new book published by Prickly Paradigm Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/L/bo238320279.html
Cambridge University Press, 2022
A natural history of intensity in exceedingly tense times. With particular attention to affect, t... more A natural history of intensity in exceedingly tense times. With particular attention to affect, temporality, worlding, and the anthropocene.
Current Anthropology, 2024
The first part of this article lays out what ontologies are and how they should be studied -- in ... more The first part of this article lays out what ontologies are and how they should be studied -- in ways that precede, supersede, and otherwise route around not just the "ontological turn" but also its critics. The second part of this article offers an anthropological critique of Quine's influential account of ontological commitment and a Quinean critique of certain anthropological commitments as to the existence and nature of possible worlds. As will be seen, we rework Quine's metaontological dictum, "to be is to be the value of a variable," into a more modest and ethnographically manageable form: to be is to become a value.
Oxford University Press, 2022
Conclusion of The Anthropology of Intensity.
Cambridge University Press, 2022
What counts as too close for comfort? How can an entire room suddenly feel restless at the immine... more What counts as too close for comfort? How can an entire room suddenly
feel restless at the imminence of a yet unknown occurrence? And who
decides whether or not we are already in an age of unliveable extremes? The
anthropology of intensity studies how humans encounter and communicate the continuous and gradable features of social and environmental
phenomena in everyday interactions. Focusing on the last twenty years of
life in a Mayan village in the cloud forests of Guatemala, this book provides
a natural history of intensity in exceedingly tense times, through a careful
analysis of ethnographic and linguistic evidence. It uses intensity as a way
to reframe Anthropology in the age of the Anthropocene, and rethinks
classic work in the formal linguistic tradition from a culture-specific and
context-sensitive stance. It is essential reading for not only anthropologists
and linguists, but also ecologically oriented readers, critical theorists, and
environmental scientists.
Notes on the relation between Marx's theory of capitalism and Shannon's theory of communication; ... more Notes on the relation between Marx's theory of capitalism and Shannon's theory of communication; and hence on the connection between labor and noise, fidelity and profit, entropy and parasites.
Prickly Paradigm Press, 2020
This slim volume showcases, reworks, and extends some of the core resources anthropologists, and ... more This slim volume showcases, reworks, and extends some of the core resources anthropologists, and like-minded scholars, have developed over the past 200 years or so for thinking about value. Rather than theorize value head on, I offer a careful (but punchy and non-ponderous) interpretation of a Mayan text (about an offering to a god that lamentably goes awry), its telling, and the conditions of possibility for its original publication.
International Journal of American Linguistics, 2020
This article is about four aspectual adverbs in Q’eqchi’ (Maya), which may be loosely glossed as ... more This article is about four aspectual adverbs in Q’eqchi’ (Maya), which may be loosely glossed as ak ‘already’, maaji’ ‘not yet’, toj ‘still’, and ink’a’ chik ‘no longer’. The author shows the presupposition and assertion structure of these forms in unmarked usage (as sentential operators acting on imperfective predicates) and argues that they constitute a dual group in the tradition of Loebner (1989), who worked on similar operators in German. The author shows the wide range of other functions such forms serve in more marked usage and the ways they may co-occur in the same clause (and thereby “double”). The article offers a semantics that accounts for the multiple functions of all such constructions, highlighting the ways these forms are similar to and different from their German and Spanish counterparts.
Signs and Society, 2020
On the tense and traumatic coupling between the interpretive grounds of humans and the algorithmi... more On the tense and traumatic coupling between the interpretive grounds of humans and the algorithmic models of machines.
Cultural Anthropology, 2019
The meaning of already, no longer, not yet, and still. * The nature of too much and not enough. *... more The meaning of already, no longer, not yet, and still. * The nature of too much and not enough. * Thresholds in the Anthropocene. * Topology in linguistic anthropology. * Chronotopes in political ecology. * Intensity.
On global warming, anthropology and the Anthropocene.
Tobias Rees's After Ethnos calls for a reformulation that: (1) ignores a large amount of what is ... more Tobias Rees's After Ethnos calls for a reformulation that: (1) ignores a large amount of what is already done; (2) represents a significant reduction in the current scope/richness in the field; (3) doesn't make a strong case why such a reduction-cum-reformulation is worth it; and (4) doesn't seem particularly knowledgeable about the empirical fields that have long treated its main topic: thought (qua semiosis/cognition) modulo social relations. In this commentary, I summarize, and then critique, each of its key claims.
International Journal of American Linguistics, 2019
This essay analyzes the history and usage of degree modifiers and comparative constructions in Q'... more This essay analyzes the history and usage of degree modifiers and comparative constructions in Q'eqchi' (Maya). It focuses on the role of mas (< Sp. más) and the function of the modern comparative construction (long thought to be a calque of its Spanish equivalent). In contrast to previous analyses, it shows that Q'eqchi' mas does not function as a comparative (unlike Spanish más), but rather as a degree modifier, indefinite quantity, and differential operator (like Spanish muy and mucho). It shows that the comparative construction doesn't require mas, but only the positive form of a gradable predicate, along with the adposition chiru (before, in the face of) to mark the standard. It shows that mas came into Q'eqchi' during the late 1800s and seems to have functioned this way from the beginning. And it offers reasons for this shift in meaning, and its frequent misanalysis by linguists.
On incommensurate ontologies and portable values in Guatemala's cloud forests.
A theory of other minds, intentionality, and affect. (Among the Maya, inter alia.)
A Theory of Media and Mediation.
A Theory of Ontology, Interaction, and Infrastructure.
This 2005 essay argues that the pervasive twentieth century understanding of meaning — a sign sta... more This 2005 essay argues that the pervasive twentieth century understanding of meaning — a sign stands for an object — is incorrect. In its place, it offers the following definition, which is framed not in terms of a single relation (of standing for), but in terms of a relation (of correspondence) between two relations (of standing for): a sign stands for its object on the one hand, and its interpretant on the other, in such a way as to make the interpretant stand in relation to the object corresponding to its own relation to the object. Using this definition, it reanalyzes key concepts and foundational arguments from linguistics so far as they relate to anthropology and psychology.
An essay about life, thought and genesis.
A review, synthesis, and extension of various theories of agency (understood as flexible and acco... more A review, synthesis, and extension of various theories of agency (understood as flexible and accountable causality), with a focus on its distributed nature.
Six ways of thinking about the agents that (seem to) stand at the center of semiotic processes.
On bondage in Minecraft. On the interpretive grounds of archeology and astrophysics. And also a ... more On bondage in Minecraft.
On the interpretive grounds of archeology and astrophysics.
And also a critique of Deleuze-inspired accounts of virtuality (such as those produced by Massumi and DeLanda).
And much else besides.
What is the relation between wishes and witches, between Grice and Freud, between political repre... more What is the relation between wishes and witches, between Grice and Freud, between political repression and scientific rendering? What is the relation between ideational and affective phenomena (such as desire and jealousy) and material processes (such as particle scattering and diffusion barriers)? This article demonstrates the broad similarities underlying conversational implicature and dream interpretation, focusing on the use of communicative intentions and repressed wishes as grounds for motiving inferences. It describes a variety of other hermeneutics that evince a similar logic, albeit with different grounds— witch trials among the Azande, and taboo-reckoning among the Maya—and it details the intimate relation between such hermeneutics and the techniques scientists use to produce and interpret laboratory phenomenon, and thereby render the real. It foregrounds the affective nature of such processes: the pleasures and pains of laboring in productively constrained, and phenomena-creating, inferential spaces.
A Semiotics for the Anthropocene.
This article is about intensity and causality. Focusing on the multiple processes that mediate pe... more This article is about intensity and causality. Focusing on the multiple processes that mediate people's understandings of landslides in a Mayan village in highland Guatemala, it shows the ways causal and comparative grounds relate to physical forces and phenomenological experience, as much as to communicative practices and social conventions. More generally, though less explicitly, this article is about four topics that underlie the Anthropocene: "gradients" (the way qualities vary in their intensity over space and time, and the ways such variations relate to causal processes), "grading" (the ways agents assess and alter such intensities, and experience and intervene in causal processes), "degradation" (the ways highly valuable variations in qualitative intensities are lowered or lost), and "grace" (the way agents work to maintain gradients, care for those whose lives have been degraded, and value those agents who work and care in such ways).
Meaning-in-the-world. Heidegger + Peirce. Intimacy.
Stance may be understood as the semiotic means by which we indicate our orientation to states of ... more Stance may be understood as the semiotic means by which we indicate our orientation to states of affairs, usually framed in terms of evaluation (e.g., moral obligation and epistemic possibility) or intentionality (e.g., desire and memory, fear and doubt). Using data from Q'eqchi'-Maya and English, stance is operationalized in terms of complement-taking predicates and the grammatical category of status. Using frameworks from Goffman and Jakobson, it is argued that these lexical and grammatical domains disambiguate principals from animators (here called the commitment event and the speech event, respectively). It is argued that stances may be cross-linguistically grouped and ordered as a function of the degree to which the commitment event subsumes, or coincides with, the narrated event. And it is argued that " subjectivity in language " is not the issue; rather, research should focus on the intersection of a cross-linguistic account of commitment events and community-specific understandings of a speaker's contribution to event construal.
This paper explores the relation between replacement (or substitution) and ‘lived time’. To do th... more This paper explores the relation between replacement (or substitution) and ‘lived time’. To do this, I offer five different ways of framing temporality (as repetition, irreversibility, roots and fruits, reckoning, and worldview); and I show how replacement may be figured through each of these frames. Along the way, I show how entities caught up in replacement are different from other items of value, such as singularities and commodities; and I offer an entity–centered, as opposed to event–centered, framing of time.
This chapter asks two questions: What are some of the secrets of networks? And what might constit... more This chapter asks two questions: What are some of the secrets of networks? And what might constitute their poetics--an aesthetic means of revealing their secrets? To answer the first question, it leverages the relation between codes and channels, delving into two topics that link them: degrees of freedom and secrets. By degrees of freedom, is meant the number of independent dimensions needed to specify the state of a system. Such a notion, along with related ideas like frames of relevance and scales of resolution, is shown to be essential not only to highly analog systems but also to digital ones, and to underlie physicists’ understanding of materiality as much as philosophical understandings of the uncanny. This chapter argues that even relatively commensurate systems, which have identical degrees of freedom, can have different secrets--understood as inherent symmetries that organize their sense-making capacities. In some sense, all this is a way of reinterpreting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that is, the idea that the language one speaks affects the way one thinks); and it is a way of generalizing such a hypothesis such that it can be usefully applied to media more generally (i.e., interfaces, applications, programming languages, channels, and so forth). To answer the second question, this chapter reviews different understandings of secrets, and shows how channels as well as codes can have inherent secrets (in addition to their ability to keep and reveal secrets in more stereotypic ways). By extending the notion of poetics, it shows how such systems can be made to reveal their secrets. Priming the reader for later chapters, it points to the fundamental relation between poetics as such, and phenomena which are often labeled as ‘virtual’. And the conclusion draws out the relation between Heidegger’s understanding of references, Agamben’s notion of homo sacer, and Google’s page rank algorithm.
This article undertakes the anthropology of an equation that constitutes the essence of an algori... more This article undertakes the anthropology of an equation that constitutes the essence of an algorithm that underlies a variety of computational technologies—most notably spam filters, but also data-mining tools, diagnostic tests, predictive parsers, risk assessment techniques, and Bayesian reasoning more generally. The article foregrounds the ways ontologies are both embodied in and transformed by such algorithms. And it shows the stakes such ontological transformations have for one particularly widespread and powerful metaphor and device—the sieve. In so doing, this inquiry shows some of the complex processes that must be considered if we are to understand some of the key relations linking semiosis and statistics. Reflexively, these processes perturb some core ontological assumptions in anthropology , science and technology studies, and critical theory.
The commodity is analyzed from a semiotic stance. Rather than systematically unfold a subject-obj... more The commodity is analyzed from a semiotic stance. Rather than systematically unfold a subject-object dichotomy (via Hegel's history as dialectic), it systematically deploys a sign-object-interpretant trichotomy (via Peirce's logic as semiotic). Rather than conflate economic value and linguistic meaning through the lens of Saussure's semiology, it uses Peirce's semiotic to provide a theory of meaning that is general enough to include commodities and utterances as distinct species. Rather than relegate utility and measure to the work of history (as per the opening pages of Marx's Capital), these are treated as essential aspects of political economy. And rather than focus on canonical 19th-century commodities (such as cotton, iron, and cloth), the analysis is designed to capture salient features of modern immaterial commodities (such as affect, speech acts, and social relations). The conclusion details the relation between neoliberalism, semiosis, governmentality, and commensuration.
This 2007 article theorizes the relation between speech acts and financial contracts, and between... more This 2007 article theorizes the relation between speech acts and financial contracts, and between economic circulation and ethical detachment. To do this, it puts Goffman and James in dialog with Marx and Polanyi. More broadly, it examines the relation between economic and ethical value by attending to practices that stand at the intersection of meaning (signification and interpretation) and modality (rights and responsibilities, credits and debts). And it uses such practices to reframe classic understandings of the relation between subjectivity, temporality, modernity, and accountability.
Anthropological Theory, 2010
A brief overview of classic senses of enclosure--beyond dispossession, deterritorialization, and ... more A brief overview of classic senses of enclosure--beyond dispossession, deterritorialization, and primitive accumulation--insofar as they intersect with modes of disclosure.
This essay analyses the grammatical category of inalienable possession by examining the interacti... more This essay analyses the grammatical category of inalienable possession by examining the interaction of morphosyntatic forms, semantic features, pragmatic functions, and discourse frequencies. Using data from Q’eqchi’-Maya, it is argued that
inalienable possession may be motivated relative to two dimensions: (1) whatever any person is strongly presumed to possess (identifiability); (2) whatever such personal possessions are referred to frequently (relevance). In regards to frequency, inalienable possessions are compared with possessed NPs, and possessed NPs are compared with all NPs, in regards to grammatical relation, information status, animacy rank, and semantic role. In regards to identifiability, it is argued that inalienable possessions are like deictics and prepositions in that they guide the addressee’s identification of a referent by encoding that referent’s relation to a ground; and inalienable possessions are different from deictics and prepositions in that the ground is a person and the referents are its parts or relations.
