Subjective Solutions
Posted on December 15, 2011 | posted by:
Bruce Nussbaum’s guest lecture brought up some great ideas and some interesting questions about framing and communicating. All semester everyone has been working on projects, papers, and presentations, after all that is a key part in evaluation in academia; but evaluations do not always reflect work but moreover communication. In the end academia, and the larger frame, evaluates communication. If communication is incoherent it doesn’t mater how strong the idea and work is, it will inevitably get forgotten or lost in translation.
Sometimes they key to communicating an idea is simply framing it correctly. Somewhere near the end of lecture our guest and professor Jamer Hunt, began a debate about framing, and although fascinating in its own right, the insight to be derived from it was a divide about objective and subjective framing and narration. I remember thinking to myself that they aren’t actually making to distinct points but arguing about nuances that can be beneficial to both points of view.
In thinking about problems, solutions, interventions, and the like it is important to remember the spaces of both objectivity and subjectivity. What I have found to be true, with this semester, about a lot of our discussions and projects is simply that problems need to be objectively thought out within the framework of a system, but solutions need to be locally framed to a specific narrative. When trying to identify a problem it is necessary to distance oneself from the factors that influence us most and look at the whole system and assess the real value of its parts. Without creating the distance of objectivity it is impossible to see everything that is at play. Once the problem is identified with all its moving parts it is important to create its framework; and fill that frame with a narrative or subjectivity.
In order to create a solution, and communicate that solution, its language must be of the problem. In other words singling out the problem is only the first step of understanding it. Interfering in the system doesn’t just mean altering the effect, but also understanding its affect. In order to really understand the affect of a problem it is important to understand it back in its subjective context. The process of finding a solution is a matter of individuality, but again it is in its final communication that determines its success. In order to communicate a solution it is important to understand the language of the problem. By doing so it becomes easier to frame the solution, or communicate it in a way that addresses its subjectivity and people it will directly influence.
While the objective eye helps identify the problem its solution is only as good as its communication. The debate was about framing an idea, which is subjective, to have the desired effect upon an audience. Framing and reframing is how people communicate ideas, whether in paper or project or presentation, or in the real world it is important to remember systems but moreover not to forget that they are factors of relationships.