This is to explain my tag #knots that appears in here, as sometimes my categories are a bit too idiosyncratic for sharing.
When I come across a concept that articulates something very specific or interesting, I tend to incorporate it and then assign it to all manner of things as I see it manifest in other places. In this way, theory becomes something I embody or enact even in my daily life. I suppose this is also a way of pattern matching.
For me, “knots” refers specifically to R.D. Laing’s Knots (1970), a book of poetic explorations of the complexities of human relationships and the ways in which we get stuck in relation to each other. Creating, as Laing calls them, impasses.
An example (1970, p.58):
If I don’t know I don’t know I think I know If I don’t know I know I think I don’t know
The word play here is obviously very appealing. Since reading this book, I have pointed at every experience of stuckness (either mine, or a fictional character’s) and declared knots. Hence, it has become its own category.
You can read Knots (1970) on the Internet Archive here.
Laing, R. D. 1970. Knots. Tavistock Publications Limited.
[[The Condition of Having No Category]]