Situatedness, or, Why We Keep Saying Where We're Coming From

"Let me tell you where I'm coming from." We hear the remark all the time, but do we understand what it means? And why do we say it so often? With a lighthearted tone, David Simpson plucks at some of the deeper chords of human experience. He is a keen analyzer of language use, and he casts a careful eye toward popular and academic efforts to situate ourselves. He concludes that "situatedness" is a tactic both modest (it acknowledges that our perspective is limited) and aggressive (it asserts that the other person's perspective is limited too).

At first blush, Situatedness explores an obscure topic, perhaps the province of postmodern skeptics. But the practical consequences of Simpson's book are profound. Why must we always say where we're coming from? Simpson's examination of our predilection for situating ourselves is remarkably broad. It includes, for example, a section on jurisprudence. He asks why the law pays so much attention to the situations we come from: Why does the law care "what is imposed, what is willed" by a person on trial? And he writes a section on literature: What does a novel allow us to understand about the experiences of other people? Simpson never really argues a point; he's more concerned with illuminating the phenomena of "situatedness," but it's an intriguing illumination. --Eric de Place