Positive Definition

Term: Positive Definition
Method: Positive Definition

Positive definition is a kind of diaeresis by which objects are classified according to genus and species. Kenneth Burke explains positively defined terms thus: “They name par excellence the things of experience, the hic et nunc, and they are defined per genus et differentiam, as with the vocabulary of biological classification…. A positive term is most unambiguously itself when it names a visible and tangible thing which can be located in time and place.” But this is problematic as the visible and the tangible are culturally constructed. As Edmund Burke noted in his 1759 essay on vision, “when we define, we seem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds of our own notions.”

Positive definition also hides itself in cultural assumptions. As Michel Foucault discovered, “knowledge develops in accordance with a whole interplay of envelopes; the hidden element takes on the form and rhythm of the hidden content, which means that, like a veil, it is transparent.” A veil of course hides everything but the veil itself. In other words, the power to define is the power to make visible or transparent, while veiling power itself. We do not normally critique the authority of dictionaries, but these are nothing more than veils.

Raphaelle Peale played with the idea of the veil in his painting Venus Rising from the Sea – A Deception (1822). The work, a trompe l’oeil, employs what appears to be a real veil to hide the painting underneath it, a nude Venus. But the handkerchief only appears to hang by shiny pins from a string. In the end, only the veil itself is transparent. The veil illustrates the hidden element of knowledge. Dorothy cannot be permitted to see the man behind the curtain.