Turning and Spinning . . .

One of the many things that have sucked me in lately is the notion of a turn. Not as in making a left or right turn, or a U-turn (though, by mapping politics onto the notion one could relate it to those). Rather, the notion of a turn as a trope become a terministic screen. Recall that our word trope comes from the Greek τρόπος, which can mean 'turn' and, which, in literature and rhetorical studies refers to 'turns of a phrase,' that is, figurative language, metaphor, and so on. For those familiar with the work of Kenneth Burke, the idea of a terministic screen will be a commonplace; for those not, think of a terministic screen as the conceptual lens through which you look out on the world. It includes all of your personal assumptions and biases, your expectations, your notions of what constitutes reality and whether or not it can be known with any certainty. To steal a word or two from Pierre Bourdieu, it is your habitus, the doxa with which you are ortho- (or hetero-, if feeling contrary). Interestingly, one can have many different terministic screens, depending on what one is doing . . .

So, now to the business of turns and my engagement with them.

It is fashionable in theory (that is, IN the world of THEORY, not 'theoretically) to talk about particular ways of thinking (and writing and talking) about the world and theory as a turn, as in Richard Rorty's 1967 book, The Linguistic Turn. Well, there have been a variety of turns that have cropped up over time and I finally decided someone (me) needed to start a list, if only to have them all in one place. Ideally, though, I would like to expand the list to include origins and adherents and intents.

And here is what I have collected so far, in no particular order other than when they presented themselves to me:

• Linguistic Turn [Rorty]
• Descriptive Turn [an article title in a list of references for an article in PMLA]
• Hermeneutic/Interpretive Turn 
• Pragmatic Turn [someone writing about Rorty]
• Narrative Turn
• Relational Turn [Gunzenhauser (2006) article in Qualitative Inquiry; see also Anne Edwards, HD30.29 .E39 2010]
• Emotive Turn
• Socio-Cultural Turn [Schneider article from ENGL 572, Theory and Pedagogy of Technical Communication]
• Global Turn [RSQ 43.3 article]
• Public Turn [book by F. Farmer, reviewed in RR 33.1]
• Reflective Turn
• Postmodern Turn [Hassan? also an edited volume by Seidman]
• Scientific Turn [from a book title]
• Native Turn
• Performative Turn
• Spatial Turn [Bourdieu-inspired?]
• Cultural Turn [F. Jameson 'reader']
• Speculative Turn [book title]
• Aesthetic Turn [book title regarding Nietzsche]
• Metaphoric/Metonymic Turn ("Turn! Turn! Turn!" or "Turn, turn, turn again . . ."?) [See the work of Thomas Claviez for the latter turn term]
• Ethical Turn
• Affective Turn
• Subjective Turn [from my ENGL 601, Qualitative Methods, class; Clifford & Marcus?]
• Conjunctive Turn [from an interview in OLR of my friend Henrik Skov Nielsen]

From the operative word (italicized) in each phrase, one can see quite clearly how these turns are each and all ways of engaging with, looking at, and/or responding to the world as we encounter it. Each is, in one way or more, a metaphor (turn, trope) through which we read the world. Each is a terministic screen, however thin, however temporary, that affects (and effects) our understanding. 

Or, that is how I am seeing them today . . .