The End of Knowing

In E.M. Forster's A Room With a View, Mr Emmerson recounts his friend's metaphor for life: "'Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.'"

I was reminded of this dialogue when thinking about the concept of performativity—that knowledge is better linked to what it can do rather than object truth. Fred Newman and Lois Holzman are in agreement with Jane Gilbert's understanding of the changing nature of knowledge in their book The End of Knowing: And the Rediscovery of Development in the Performance of Conversation . From the Synopsis:

For centuries, knowledge has been thought to be the key to human progress of all kinds and has dominated Western culture. But what if knowing has now become an impediment to further human development? This text is concerned with the practical consideration of how to reconstruct our world when modernist ideas have been refuted and many social problems appear insoluble. The authors suggest that we should give up knowing in favour of "performed activity". They show how to reject the knowing paradigm in practice and present the many positive implications this has for social and educational policy.

Over the past two decades, a postmodern critique of the modern conception of knowing and its institutionalized practice has emerged. To many, this is a dangerous threat to the tradition of liberal education, strengthened by recent prestigious voices from the physical and natural sciences. The book challenges even the postmodernists themselves, rejecting the reform of knowing for a totally new performatory form of life. They support their argument with a new reading of Lev Vygotsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Perhaps knowledge, not just life, can be likened to a public performance on the violin?