Re-Instating the Vague

Abstract

From medicine and military warfare to the practices of modern management, we have come to pursue the ideal of precision in order to generate the knowledge necessary to organise our social, cultural and economic lives. Underpinning this valorisation of the ideal of precision is a repulsion for its opposite – vagueness – which is habitually treated as a synonym for chaos, uncertainty and uselessness. Yet vagueness, understood here as a condition of radical uncertainty or open possibility, is inescapably imbricated in the triumphs of precision. This paper challenges this neglect by arguing that, once stripped of its pejorative connotations, vagueness can be understood as the silent but often salient partner in a marriage of opposites. Tracing the conceptual pairing of these contrasting terms, the paper goes on to suggest that instead of prising them apart we need to recognise their mutual reciprocity. By holding vagueness and precision in dynamic tension, it is suggested, we can develop a critical exploration of contemporary thinking in public policy formulation with its predilection for ‘joined-up thinking’ and a general ‘blurring of boundaries’.