One of the marks of theory in the last forty years is a conception of the subject such that the subject is determined and structured through history, structure, language, social context, or some other sort of field in which it is embedded or thrown. Thus in Althusser, for example, the subject is simply a puppet of ideology or an iteration of the total system in which it emerges. In early Lacan the subject falls under the signifier, such that the signifier functions like a prophecy in its unconscious, determining its destiny and the structure of desire. For Foucault and Butler, the subject is a discursive construction and product of power. The merit of these views is the manner in which they overcome abstraction by virtue of thinking entity in relation to its context or the world in which it emerges, rather than treating entity as a simple substance that is self-sufficient. Of course, these positions tend to suffer from another sort of abstraction, for they often treat social and cultural formations as the only determinative elements of context, ignoring the biological body, experience, and the natural world. In terms of the history of philosophy, we could see these paradigms of thought as reactions to the subject-centered systems of thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, where– in his earlier work, at least –there was little attentiveness to what Heidegger referred to as “the worldhood of the world”. To put the matter crudely, the pendulum swung in the other direction. Where prior to this there was a focus on the supremacy of the subject or agent, on its self-determining freedom, there followed a shift towards the supremacy of what Burke refers to as the “scene” in his pentad. Scene (whether in the form of language, economics, power, social structure, etc) becomes determinative of entity, where before it was the agent, the subject, that was seen as determinative. Not surprisingly, we today find the pendulum swinging yet again in the other direction. Exhausted by decades of theory dominated by the primacy of the scene such that all agency seems to merely reinforce structure and power without realizing it, we now find the pendulum swinging once again in the other direction, seeking to enact a return to the agent or agency in the rather poorly developed and abstract accounts of events and truth-procedures in Badiou and the Act in Zizek.
Not unpredictably, these rejoinders suffer from the same abstraction, albeit in inverted form, as the abstraction to be found in Frankfurt school Critical Theory, hermeneutic orientations of thought, and French (Post)Structuralism. Where the former places everything on the side of either history, power, language, social structure, etc., effectively causing the agent to disappear, the latter places everything on the side of the agent, the Act and the truth-procedure, leading any meaningful discussion of socio-historical context and concrete understanding of the situation to disappear. It is difficult, for instance, not to guffaw when Badiou announces that the French Revolution was an event (I fully agree), but then goes on to say that this event marked a complete break with history, as if centuries of subterranian work hadn’t been done during the Rennaissance and early Enlightenment period, slowly transforming the social space, introducing the requisite concepts for a radically egalitarian republic, undermining confidence in governance by the Christian Church and the metaphysics that accompanied that view, and so on. Both solutions are poor. What is needed is an account that is both sensitive to what Burke calls scene, has a rich place for the agent, and, above all is capable of thinking the dialectical relation between these two without falling into abstraction by privileging one pole or the other, turning agent into a mere puppet of scene or ignoring scene altogether in favor of the fantasy of a completely sovereign subject free of any determinations save those it posits for itself.
Perhaps what is most remarkable about both of these orientations of theory is that they are so obviously. One wonders whether some thinkers ever pull their noses out of their books to look at the world about them. Those theorists that assert the primacy of scene (e.g., Althusser, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Butler, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, perhaps Adorno, etc) seem to miss the obvious point that context, scene, language, power, history, the social, etc., never functions so efficaciously as to smoothly reproduce itself in its agents. As Adam Kotsko points out in a recent post without using these exact terms, subjectivization never quite works as intended. The agents produced in and through structure are never perfect fractal iterations of that context, but always surprise us. There is something novel about each agent that appears in the world that such theories, when taken to their extreme, should exclude a priori as being impossible on theoretical grounds. Yet there it is, subjects going against the total environment in which they were raised, subjects introducing new trajectories into their social system, subjects that share little resemblance to where they came from. On the other hand, those theoretical orientations that assert the supremacy of the sovereign agent seem to fare even worse. Such theories perpetually miss the commonalities we find among populations and in the agent itself, thereby missing the manner in which the agent emerges and is individuated within a scene that it integrates, selects from, and makes its own. Inevitably such theories of the agent (Kierkegaard, Sartre, Zizek, Badiou, certain moments of Lacan), where the agent is prime and supreme, end up trapped within magical thinking, as they’re almost always led to assert a creation ex nihilo. Well, there are no creations ex nihilo for good materialists, whatever Badiou might like to say as he desperately strives to convince his readers that he maintains tied to the Marxist tradition.
What is needed is something entirely different. If we are not to fall into abstraction, we need a theory that both shows how entity arises from a scene, a context, a field (whatever you wish to call it), but, in its process of development, becomes transcendent to that field. That is, we require a conception of the agent that isn’t detached from the field, that isn’t above it and undetermined by it, but also which isn’t strictly determined by the manner in which it prehends the world about it. Rather, there must be something creative and novel in how the world about the agent is prehended, that progressively (not all at once), allows the agent to stand forth from the field and define its own vector of engagement and development… A vector that is no longer simply a fractal iteration of the organization of the field.
Larval Subjects . 
May 23, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Hey LS,
I’m an undergrad student who has read your blog for quite some time, and this move back towards agency in theory is something that has interested me. The thing is, though, that from what I’ve read of Badiou there doesn’t really seem to be a return to the agent. Badiou seems to actually emphasize the ‘scene’ to the point that breaking out of it requires this semi-mystical Event to occur that completely transforms everything, and only after this can the Subject emerge. So he appears to have taken it to both extremes – complete paralysis to complete freedom. This is a very early impression of his work for me, so if that is wrong, please do correct it.
At the same time, I haven’t quite seen why to abandon the trajectory that goes through Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty and then (to me) Foucault and others. As much as all these thinkers have emphasized cultural and structural conditioning, they do not (except maybe Foucault in his archaeological phase) attempt to wipe out the subject. And aren’t both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty exploring the way experience and the natural body conditions subjectivity? All that Foucault abandons is the revolutionary subject, and this is what Zizek is reacting to…I’m not sure I want a return to the revolutionary subject. Badiou doesn’t seem to be reacting to this tradition as much as following another thread that comes out of Althusser and Lacan at his most structuralist, a tradition Foucault and other “counter-revolutionaries” were fighting.
May 23, 2007 at 11:00 pm
How does Butler fail to achieve what you’re looking for? (I’ll leave aside Zizek for the moment.)
May 23, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Steven, you write:
I think this is an excellent way of putting it. As a consequence, other processes of change are either ignored altogether or flatly denied, all in favor of the far more “sexy” truth-procedures. For Badiou the situation itself seems to be something barren of potentials.
I’m probably being unfair to Foucault, although I still feel ambivalent about his later work and feel that cultural conditions are too dominant in his work. This would hold for Heidegger as well. Merleau-Ponty is interesting in that he seemed to find a genuine place for something like nature in his own work. I confess that what I desire is a genuine metaphysics. It seems to me that the vast majority of work done by continental thinkers in the last 100 years fails in such an endeavor in that being is perpetually shackled to some other condition, whether it be history, language, the social etc. It is then asserted that everything else is filtered through these networks. Badiou and Deleuze are the only two thinkers in this tradition, in my view, who escape asserting the primacy of some sort of socio-historical cultural conditioning. As such, they’re the only two thinkers in Continental thought in the last 100 years to have escaped reducing philosophy to a branch of anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history and so on.
Certainly Merleau-Ponty explores this, but you’d have to spell it out for me with Heidegger. I haven’t found anything resembling a natural body in his work.
This sounds right. Although I wonder whether Zizek is being fair to Foucault here. While this is not a fair criticism on my part, I cannot help but feel that Zizek is a romantic rather than a serious political thinker. He’s more enamoured with a certain vision of a revolutionary subject than with actual subjects engaging in a variety of struggles throughout the world. In this regard, it seems to me like the work of Badiou and Zizek regarding this type of subjectivity are closer to a sort of edifying poetry that dramatizes a certain fiction of revolutionary subjectivity, than genuine hard-nosed theory examining concrete constellations and their potentials. Foucault, by contrast, showed an abiding interest in various subjects engaged in struggle and how they sought to transform various structures of power.
May 23, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Adam, it might be that I’m just not familiar enough with Butler’s most recent work. My familiarity with her work is restricted to The Psychic Life of Power, Excitable Speech, and Gender Trouble. Generally her “discursivism” has rubbed me the wrong way. Are there any works of hers in particular you see as addressing these sorts of questions?
May 23, 2007 at 11:41 pm
The only one I would add is Bodies that Matter, which is arguably her most philosophically impressive work — plus it might help to address the discursivism issue.
May 23, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Do you use HTML for formatting? Only one way to find out without a preview…
I’m probably being unfair to Foucault, although I still feel ambivalent about his later work and feel that cultural conditions are too dominant in his work. This would hold for Heidegger as well. Merleau-Ponty is interesting in that he seemed to find a genuine place for something like nature in his own work. I confess that what I desire is a genuine metaphysics. It seems to me that the vast majority of work done by continental thinkers in the last 100 years fails in such an endeavor in that being is perpetually shackled to some other condition, whether it be history, language, the social etc. It is then asserted that everything else is filtered through these networks. Badiou and Deleuze are the only two thinkers in this tradition, in my view, who escape asserting the primacy of some sort of socio-historical cultural conditioning. As such, they’re the only two thinkers in Continental thought in the last 100 years to have escaped reducing philosophy to a branch of anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history and so on.
What of Levinas and Derrida? They both seem to me to be attempting to think a new form of transcendental thought, although one for me that is too trapped in the religious tradition that leads from Kierkegaard…maybe I just answered my own question. I think the problem with Foucault, especially from your perspective, is that he left a lot philosophically unanswered, only hinting at solutions to problems within his work. Since I’m mostly interested in political theory and critical theory, I can deal with that sort of practical deferment of core philosophical questions. I can see how it is frustrating from a more purely philosophical stance.
Certainly Merleau-Ponty explores this, but you’d have to spell it out for me with Heidegger. I haven’t found anything resembling a natural body in his work.
I should have said respectively there, only MP is on about the body, from my knowledge. I’m a complete Heidegger novice, but my impression is that in B&T he is attempting an analysis of how we live through experience. After that, with his huge narrative of Western decline that only his singularly brilliant readings of Parmenides etc. can stop, he certainly abandons philosophy for a sort of cultural determinedness.
This sounds right. Although I wonder whether Zizek is being fair to Foucault here. While this is not a fair criticism on my part, I cannot help but feel that Zizek is a romantic rather than a serious political thinker. He’s more enamoured with a certain vision of a revolutionary subject than with actual subjects engaging in a variety of struggles throughout the world. In this regard, it seems to me like the work of Badiou and Zizek regarding this type of subjectivity are closer to a sort of edifying poetry that dramatizes a certain fiction of revolutionary subjectivity, than genuine hard-nosed theory examining concrete constellations and their potentials. Foucault, by contrast, showed an abiding interest in various subjects engaged in struggle and how they sought to transform various structures of power.
I just watched the documentary Zizek! in a class yesterday, and at one point Zizek said something along the lines of that he found writing about politics a miserable chore and if he didn’t feel he had to he’d only write about Schelling, Hegel, and the like. That seems to be the characteristics of much of his political interventions: ruffle a few feathers, hint at how we can’t think outside capitalism and how cultural studies and the rest is implicated in that, and hint at the potential of a revolutionary subject. Figures like Foucault are polemical foils most of the time, not serious theoretical opponents. This is not to say that I often find his work with his theoretical heroes, Marx, Hegel, Lacan, Kant, pretty great a lot of the time. It’s just like many good pessimistic revolutionary thinkers (especially Nietzsche and Marx), I find their critique a lot more interesting than their attempts to find a way out.
As for Butler, she is, at least in Gender Trouble, shockingly dismissive of the subject, to the point that she bends of backwards trying to explain how subversive performances could even be possible. If I remember correctly, she argues something like subversion occurs in the ‘gaps’ in reiterative performances. However, she doesn’t explain where those gaps come from. It strikes me that if there are so many subversive holes in gender, gender roles should not have a very strong hold on subjects…they should be very fragile, but they really aren’t. So I find her explanation of that curious. Also, I find her critique of Foucault on the body and her call for a completely de-essentialized genealogy of the body unsupportable. What discursive formation causes my lungs to fill with air?
Anyways, that aside, thinking briefly to how a materialist theory of transcendental critique could look, I’m quickly struck to how important theorizing the disorganization and chaos of any situation would be, and that makes me think of what I know about Deleuze. However, I’ve barely got into him, so I’m wondering what you’d recommend as a starting point to work from? Oh, also, what do you think of Habermas’s attempt to formulate a theory of transcendental critique and agency?
May 24, 2007 at 1:17 am
I share similar concerns with Derrida and Levinas. With Derrida in particular I’m bothered by how his thought remains so tied to the primacy of language and texts.
For me this would be part of the problem with Heidegger:
It is still our experience that is at stake in Heidegger’s Being and Time, and thus we have a privileged position within being. Heidegger starts to make a move away from this in his lectures entitled Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics, where he examines world from the standpoint of inanimate objects, animals, and Dasein, yet the former two are still devalued or measured respective to Dasein. I am not deeply familiar with Heidegger’s very late work, where, allegedly, he attempts to move away from this residual anthrocentricism altogether. I often speak of a number of issue pertinent to political and social theory, but my first and last interest is ontology. Specifically, I am looking for an ontology that does not subordinate beings to how they are apprehended by some variant of human subjectivity. That is, figures such as Lucretius or Spinoza are, I think, models of such a non-humanist ontology, where the social and the human are treated as one set of entities among others within being. This is not to suggest, of course, that I am Lucretian or Spinozist, only that I find a good deal of inspiration in their work.
This is an interesting way of putting it. One of my central questions is that of how patterned organizations/unities/identities arise from difference. There’s no easy place to begin with Deleuze. Generally his commentaries are more accessible than his independent works, so you might take a look at Bergsonism and Nietzsche & Philosophy.
I really don’t know Habermas very well, so it’s dangerous for me to speak of him. Generally my commitments to psychoanalysis and structuralist thought have led me to be suspicious of his normative conception of communication. What I have read bothers me in that he seems to have moved away from the Marxist roots of Frankfurt school theory and to have brushed aside issues of ideology.
May 24, 2007 at 1:20 am
Hmm…well most of this “sounds right”, but I’m not so sure. Wouldn’t the event in Badiou allow for these contexts to appear in a situation where before they were merely presented but not represented? The end of your post takes up some points that appealed to me in Zizek’s recent article for IJZS, where he made use of that unpublished manuscript by Adrian Johnston…
For instance, is it really the case that one must understand the subterranian work *first* in order to make an event legible, or is it rather the other way around – with an event making the historical contexts intelligible?
Great post, BTW.
May 24, 2007 at 1:54 am
Thanks Keith
I find this way of posing the theory far more appealing, though I wonder whether anything like this is to be found in Badiou. For Badiou, as I understand it, the event is something that appears in the situation which cannot be counted or comprehended in terms of any of the situations existing categories. There is a question, even, of whether the event actually took place. A subject declares that the event did in fact take place and then proceeds to reinterpret the elements of which the situation in terms of this event, determining whether they can be counted or not. The key point, I think, is that this procedure follows the event. As such, it seems to me that Badiou denies the possibility of engagement prior to the event, and has no place for something like the “silent weaving of spirit”. Perhaps I’m being unfair to Badiou, though.
Could you be a bit more specific?
I’m not sure it’s a question of what we understand and don’t understand. Rather, Badiou has posed the general question “how is something new possible?” I question whether he’s given the only plausible answer to this question.
May 24, 2007 at 2:06 am
Well I’ll just paste it and come back tomorrow since I’m on my way out the door, and it makes far more sense on its own than I have the time to make of it otherwise in a comment:
May 24, 2007 at 2:42 am
I confess that what I desire is a genuine metaphysics. It seems to me that the vast majority of work done by continental thinkers in the last 100 years fails in such an endeavor in that being is perpetually shackled to some other condition, whether it be history, language, the social etc. It is then asserted that everything else is filtered through these networks. Badiou and Deleuze are the only two thinkers in this tradition, in my view, who escape asserting the primacy of some sort of socio-historical cultural conditioning.
Are you familiar with Donald Davidson’s work at all? It sounds like you’re complaining about the dualism of scheme and content, and saying that only Deleuze (and Badiou, who I don’t know) really does a good job at avoiding it, among Continentals. Which seems right to me on both counts. But then maybe I’m cheating by trying to bring an analytic dude to the Continental “tradition.”
May 24, 2007 at 2:48 am
Daniel, I haven’t seriously read any of Davidson’s work since I was an undergraduate and at that time it was only his work on language and not the essays in Actions and Events. Is there anything in particular you would recommend? Could you, perhaps, flesh out Davidson’s theses on the dualism of scheme and content?
Personally I’m distrustful of the whole “analytic/contintental” divide where theory is concerned, so I wouldn’t worry about bringing Anglo-American theory into these discussions. Deleuze draws on Russell throughout The Logic of Sense, Derrida translated Goedel’s incompleteness theorem, and Lacan drew heavily on Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, and others from the Anglo-American tradition. More recently Anglo-American thinkers have begun taking “continental thinkers” more seriously. Thus figures such as Brandom have been drawing heavily on the likes of Heidegger and Hegel, for instance. I feel that the rhetoric of the analytic/continental divide has been highly destructive both in terms of how it has structured the job market and in terms of philosophy. I’m a magpie and take ideas whenever and wherever I find them.
May 24, 2007 at 3:55 am
The main text for the attack on the scheme/content dualism
is “On The Very Idea Of A Conceptual Scheme.” “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge” and “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs” are also quite good, and deal with similar topics. (Davidson himself went a bit sour on “A Coherence Theory…”, but that’s mainly because the title is so bad — as he notes in “Afterthoughts” what he discusses there is not a theory of knowledge, nor is his understanding of truth a coherence theory.)
His later stuff is a lot more interesting than any of the essays in “Actions and Events.” Even “Mental Events” looks pretty lousy compared to “Three Varieties of Knowledge” (or most of the other essays in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective). Actually, most of his work is unimpressive next to “Three Varieties of Knowledge.”
The dualism Davidson is concerned with is that between (conceptual) scheme and (empirical) content — the idea that there is something immediately given to us (raw feels, sense data, nerve stimulation) which we then filter through our “conceptual scheme” (language, point of view, culture), and that this mediated product is what we actually are able to think about, perceive, or in general have cognitive access to (consciously or unconsciously). He makes the point that what is supposed to be “immediate” here ends up playing no normative role; “what is a reason for what” is a conceptual matter. But then it makes no sense to say that in thought we “apply” our conceptual scheme to something given, since the “given” here has no say in what we do with our scheme — it’s not the sort of thing which can have a normative function. But then there’s no sense in claiming that our “scheme” is somehow mediating between us and reality; having the world in view is an exercise of our conceptual capacities.
Davidson’s immediate target in “On The Very Idea” is Quine, but he recognizes that he’s dealing with a lot of folk: he mentions Sapir & Whorf, Kuhn, and Kant as all party to the dogma of scheme and content, as well as most of the rest of modern philosophy. I take it that something similar is at work when Continental thinkers suggest that we are somehow “trapped” inside our language, our historical epoch, etc. rather than having actual access to “Being.” Deleuze does a better job of chasing away “Cartesian ghosts” than his Continental brethren.
Fully agreed in distrusting the analytic/continental divide; I was mostly joking when I suggested it would be wrong to bring Davidson into the picture here. Davidson ends up agreeing with Gadamer on a great number of issues, though they came to their conclusions through very different routes; John McDowell has also expressed a great admiration for Gadamer. McDowell is with Brandom in trying to rehabilitate Hegel, and has done a better job of it to my mind. And of course Rorty never so much as paid lip-service to the analytic/continental divide. Even Sellars was drawing pretty heavily on Hegel; it just didn’t show up because Sellar’s Hegelianism mainly showed up in how he made use of Kant.
May 24, 2007 at 5:01 am
Initially, I’m not sure how useful Davidson is in this context insofar as the dualism he is attacking is an empiricist one of conceptual scheme and intutional content that is intended to undermine a certain conception of the role of experience in judgement and knowledge-claims. This seems to be getting a different issue than the one of the relation between being and some socio-historical medium or category (history, language, etc.). The latter seems more straight-forwardly metaphysical in that it is concerned with issues such as ontology and the structuation of the world rather than the epistemological issues that Davidson seems preoccupied with. But perhaps you have in mind some way to bridge these two, or think that they collapse in to one another somehow?
May 24, 2007 at 5:05 am
Oops… I should have refreshed before posting and lecturing you on the basics of Davidson which you set out very nicely above! My apologies, Daniel.
May 24, 2007 at 5:33 am
Daniel, Tom, this is all very interesting and is one of those happy convergences. One of the central themes I’m dealing with in my book on Deleuze is the opposition between concepts and intuitions. My dissertation was supervised by Andrew Cutrofello who, in turn, did his dissertation work with McDowell. Cutrofello’s central lense or interpretative frame for approaching the history of philosophy was the opposition between concepts and intuitions. In many respects, the first draft of my book was a response to the strong opposition he had drawn between these two domains (ultimately receptivity and spontaneity in Kant). I tried to show how Deleuze is working in the tradition of post-Kantian idealism (rather than traditional empiricism as is so often claimed) vis a vis Schelling and especially Maimon, and how he formulates an account of productive intuition that undermines the distinction between epistemology and metaphysics. I would agree with Daniel that these issues extend to the social sciences as well and that this distinction has been formative of a good deal of social theory. However, these metaphysical issues cannot even be properly formulated until the dogmas surrounding the concept/intuition couplet are “deconstructed” as a number of the epistemological problems from 17th century on (arguably as far back as Plato or a certain appropriation of Plato) are motivated by this couplet. I don’t know that I wholeheartedly endorse today what I argued in that book, but it certainly outlines the steps that have set me on my current trajectory which is deeply suspicious of those stances that privilege epistemology.
May 24, 2007 at 3:09 pm
One can be anti-“Theory”, and yet hold to some progressive goals, and make use of some ideas and concepts from analytical philosophy to further those progressive goals. Thomas Kuhn, I think, is a relevant figure, at least in terms of an epistemological grounding; and Kuhn was as materialist as a 30s marxist. Verification is always an issue, however quotidian; as are probability and induction in general.
In terms of an analytically-informed political foundation, progressives could do worse than attempt to work with say Rawls’ Theory of Justice, or at least some type of reworking of Hobbesian themes; Dennett has alluded to Hobbesian themes on occasion, and really the first 20 chapter or so of Leviathan are not so distant from various Darwinian concerns (tho’ they are considered vulgar or mistaken, most leftists never bother telling anyone WHY they are mistaken, or vulgar).
The Badiou/Delueze/Zizek infatuation has become a sort of academic industry, if not dogma: european marxist intellectuals are awarded some instant credibility that Anglo-Americans are not, and much of that credibility depends on a sort of suspension of disbelief—one agrees to a certain essentialism in regards to mental entities (whether those of psychoanalysis, or metaphysics). The marxist tradition is not sacrosanct; indeed it requires a great leap of faith. Hobbes rarely demanded any leaps of faith, or resorts to ideology or dogmatic generalizations: he argues for things, as does Locke really, though one might disagree with him. The distrust of any substantial argumentation or disputation characteristic of continental tradition (apres-Derrida at least) is quite bizarre–some argument is allowed, but only with certain assumptions (usually marxist, or psychoanalytic—)…………
May 24, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I think traditional liberal thinkers are problematic for radical progressive thought because they are largely concerned with ideological justification for the status quo. This is less true with Locke, but certainly true with Hobbes and Rawls. Actually, I completely fail to see how Hobbes is useful to progressive thought, unless as part of a historical analysis of sovereignty and the logic of sovereign excess, which is how thinkers like Foucault and Agamben have used him. Consistent Hobbism brings you close to an extreme authoritarian position – I think that is wrong, but won’t go completely into why.
As for Rawls, as many thinkers have pointed out, he is basically attempting an ethnocentric apology for American democracy. I would also check out Mouffe’s criticism of his work – succinct and excellent from a progressive point of view. A simple problem with Rawls is this: in order for the disadvantaged to make any legitimate political claims, they have to make basically impossible empirical demonstrations that improving their lot won’t make the entire system worse.
Some critical thinkers have found resources in Locke (see James Tully), but its hard to ignore him as an apologist for slavery and a defender of property. So, one could remain committed to a mainstream liberal form of critique (more rights, more welfare, etc.), but I find that that fails to apprehend the nature of the political situation we find ourselves in and what possible ways there are to change it. I want to address concretely oppressive situations and ‘the system’ as it is presently, and so I find liberal thought only really works as an element for understanding that, but not one for articulating critique or the potential for action.
It is definitely not true that to work in the continental tradition you have to uncritically accept either marxism or pyschoanalysism, but the reality is that those are both enormous influential, especially on various forms of political critique, so you at least have to deal with them. I’m still wary of what I see as some of the authoritarian elements of psychoanalyses, but as far as articulating the mechanisms of capitalism, I find Marxian thought necessary. That does not mean I support the Marxist form of political action as it is often presented. Its also a bit tiring to hear that the only reason anyone cares about continental thinkers is because of some cultish mystique that surrounds them…
May 24, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I liked Mr. MSN.com better when he was Mr. Yahoo.com. Because then I could list my website as “houyhnhnm.com” and feel all clever.
LS: It’s amusing to hear that you studied under a guy who studied under McDowell. It sounds like he reacted against McDowell by forcing apart intuitions and concepts again, and then you’re reacting back by moving to something like McDowell’s position. Good to know I wasn’t just imagining things when I thought I detected McDowell’s influence in the background.
I assume the book you mention is the one that’s in the process of being printed? Or do you already have something out there in dead-tree format?
Tom: I’m inclined to think that abandoning the scheme-content dualism makes worries about epistemology largely fall away. The main reason Davidson gives against the dualism in “On The Very Concept” was that retaining it inevitably lead to skepticism about how we can know “the way the world is” at all; McDowell expands on this very nicely in his contribution to the Library of Living Philosophers volume on Davidson. Once the dualism has been given up, there’s no longer a gap between “the way the world is” and what we judge, when we judge truly. So in as much as traditional epistemology was concerned with how to bridge this gap between thought and being, mind and world, there’s no longer any need for epistemology.
If you meant that some of the things in Continental thought/sociology that look like the dualism really aren’t, because they’re concerned with how material things are structured rather than the more rarefied realms the dualism was concerned with, I can believe that. It’d be surprising if everything that looked dualistic turned out to be entirely confused; I expect that not all talk of “worldviews” or “perspectives” should turn out to be pernicious. I do think that the dualism pops up in the social sciences and their kin, though, and isn’t narrowly a “dogma of empiricism.”
May 24, 2007 at 5:33 pm
As for Rawls, as many thinkers have pointed out, he is basically attempting an ethnocentric apology for American democracy
No. Many marxist ideologues have said that; in many ways, Rawls was trying to overcome some of the problems of democracy (as was Hobbes in a sense). But the ideologues rarely bother to provide any sort of detailed critique anyway: to most leftists, political philosophy is about equivalent to like aesthetics, and Hobbes and Rawls are both tres sauvvage.
The marxist critique overlooks the fact that contractualists attempt to ground an objective, economic entitlement without recourse to metaphysics (i.e. Hegelian ghosts), psychology or any sort of intuitionist givens. That said, I agree that Locke’s criticism of Hobbes’ conclusions in Leviathan are correct, and that the right to petition the govt. for grievances is fundamental, as is Due Process of all types, however quaint that seems to continentalists. I believe Hobbes felt rights were sort of superfluous, given the proper sort of objective, covenant-enforcing sovereign in place (imagine a Leviathan ‘Bot). But he also was cynical enough to realize that once the sovereign turns tyrant, society returns to a state of nature and anarchy more or less. Hobbes’s thinking in Lev. is not so far from say Nietzsche’s anti-statist ideas initially, but his conclusions are quite different.
Really contracturalists are trying to circumvent the problems of democracy, consensus, utilitarian hedonism etc., OR a non-democratic marxist–or fascist– state. Hobbes does not say the sovereign simply takes power–he argues that rational humans would serve their interests best by entrusting their covenants and contract enforcement to a sovereign ( which is not necessarily a monarch).
The discussion in the Leviathan of ethical and economic foundation is what remains interesting: the process leading up to the sovereign. Few leftists even bother with a discussion of political process, or of economic “justice”, entitlement, etc. ; Hobbes or Kropotkin or even JK Galbraith have all been replaced by the aesthetes, the theorists, the psychologists.
May 24, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Do you think that Deleuze falls into one of two camps? Bonta and Protevi in Deleuze and Geophilosophy try to show how Deleuze resolves the structure v. agency problem through the concept of emergence. I quote, “In its politically-informed complexity theory, where signs are triggers of material processes and emergence extends to subjectivity from ‘desiring machines’ below and from subjectivity to social machines above, A Thousand Plateaus provides an escape route from the conceptual gridlock of ‘structure’ as either a merely homeostatic self-regulation or a postmodernist ‘signifier imperialism’ and ‘agency’ as a mysterious exception somehow granted to individual human subjects in defiance of natural laws blithely free of social structure” (6). My understanding of their argument is that in a rhizome or an assemblage (an intensive network), the system achieves focus and thus produces something extra (emergence), thus you have structure (the system and the relationship among the elements) yet there’s also room for novel creations (emergence), which is no longer just constrained to the human subject (since you can go up to social machines and go down to desiring machines). In Deleuzian ontology, in other words, you see both the workings of structure and the subject. Would that be in line to what you propose?
May 24, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Ryan, I don’t feel that Deleuze falls into either of the camps I mentioned, which is why I didn’t list his name. For me the verdict is still out, however, with regard to the question of whether he develops a robust theory of agency.
May 24, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Daniel, yes I was referring to the book currently being printed: Difference and Givenness
May 24, 2007 at 9:29 pm
[…] 24th, 2007 A recent post over at Larval Subjects calls for a more fully developed account of agency. This is something that […]
May 25, 2007 at 1:52 am
Daniel:
Thanks for your reply. I’m familiar with that way of taking Davidson from Rorty, that with no scheme-content dualism then (representationalist) epistemology is meant to be defunct. It’s interesting to hear that McDowell wants to go down this sort of route as well, since I think his overall position is certainly much more attractive than Rorty and Davidson’s. I have been a little unsure of the general conclusions to be drawn from McDowell’s discussion of ‘minimal empiricism’, of how much distance that put between him and the Rorty-Davidson camp. In this respect, the spirit of his invocation of Wittgenstein always seemed on target, that:
But exactly how much substantive metaphysics also evaporates after this rejection of ‘constructive’ epistemology (especially without Wittgenstein and McDowell’s quietism), I’m not certain yet. I’ll try and look up that collection on Davidson when I have time.
With respect to the wider question, you are right to note that it is a suspicion of quite how fundamentally the scheme-content dualism undergirds other dualisms that I am suspicious of here. At least, I don’t see this issue as the main issue picking out Sinthome’s targets here, which appear to go beyond ones of the purportedly defunct question of ‘access’ to a stronger one of the ontological dependence of entities to some further condition that individuates them as themselves, and similar. (Again, this may be a result of my failure to grasp the full implications of rejecting the scheme-concept dualism, or indeed a misreading of the continental tradition.)
May 25, 2007 at 2:03 pm
The Philosophical Investigations has about as much political and economic relevance as like the works of Lewis Carroll do. I tend to share Popper’s view (and others thought the same, including perhaps the aged Russell) of Mad King Ludwig as a talented dilettante (the talent a bit more evident in the Tractatus), with more than a few hints of charlatan….”Meaning as use” is itself quite a mad concept: sort of austrian anthropology, if not ebonics for philosophy types………
May 25, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Malfeasancio, I have little to add to Steven’s excellent response to your post, but I think your references to Rawls indicate a fundamental misunderstanding as to what many variants of continental theory are doing. Rawls is a moral theorist trying to ground a normative theory of right. Marx is a thinker attempting to grasp and explain our historical situation. Marx’s explanations of our contemporary situation might be adequate or inadequate, but it makes little sense to talk about them as being “right” or “wrong”, “just” or “unjust”. A good deal of continental political theory has this nature. For instance, Foucault’s account of power is designed to account for certain historical formations. I’ve found that Anglo-American thought generally does a poor job in theorizing or thinking social formations.
If N.Pepperell is reading– these comments are addressed to others rather than Mr. M as it’s clear that he’s a troll with an axe to grind who has little interest in entering into a discussion with anyone or understanding what he’s denouncing –Malfeasancio’s remarks and his tendency to pitch questions in moral/normative terms rather than in terms of empirical analysis are one of the prime reasons that I’m so deeply leery of any talk of normativity. In this case, Marxism gets reduced to something someone is “for or against” rather than a cogent analysis of our contemporary situation.
May 26, 2007 at 1:21 am
I’m always reading, if not always able to comment cogently :-)
I figured that there was a vocabulary, rather than a substantive, issue behind our discussions about “normative ideals” in critical theory. You’ve discussed in your most recent post on Whitehead the notion that a self-reflexive theory is one that can capture, not only how the theory explains the world, but how the world explains the theory. This task is more difficult for a critical theory, than for an affirmative one – as a critical theory points to the potential for the world to be other than what it currently is (I know you know this – I’m just trying to shove relevant thoughts into one linear space). So critical theory requires an unusual move of positing the “reality” of a counterfactual – the reality of a potential that has not yet been fully expressed. The empirical existence of such a potential relativises the form in which the world currently exists – giving the lie to any narratives of necessity, suggesting targets for political practice aimed at transformation, etc.
While it is possible to ground such a potential very abstractly – in, say, a general non-identity of the subject with its context, or in an intrinsic creativity or unpredictability in any environment, or in any number of similar ways – it may also be possible to ground a determinate potential, generated within some specific assemblage or constellation, to transform itself in some particular way. This kind of determinate potential for transformation has specific, identifiable characteristics – rather than positing that change might happen (of course, I would agree that it always can), we can posit that a specific kind of change exists as an ever-present possibility within a particular kind of environment – that we are irritating ourselves into wanting specific kinds of transformation to take place.
This kind of determinate potential is all I mean when I talk about a theory’s “normative standpoint” or “standpoint of critique”: I’m asking whether the world explains the theory, by looking at whether the theory is able to point to some determinate potential for transformation that lines up with the kind of change the theory seeks to produce in the world. So the question of “normative standpoint” or “critical standpoint”, for me, is nothing more than a question of whether a theory can offer a cogent analysis of our contemporary situation, that reveals the possibility for specific forms of transformation. To me, the first generation Frankfurt School theorists cannot do this – and thus their theory becomes unreflexive and “pessmistic” – a critique that I’ll sometimes express as this group of theorists failing to “ground their normative standpoint”. But all I’m saying here is that their analysis of the society they are criticising isn’t adequate to what they are trying to do.
All this said, L Magee has been pushing me mightily on the specific issue of whether a critical theory can really stop here – of whether this sort of approach is adequate, or whether (as I think he believes) a normative theory in the sense you mean it above is still required at some level. I don’t want to make his point for him, as I’m likely to misrepresent it – his hesitation seems to come from the fact that a theorist like Marx doesn’t just describe the situation and its potentials: he prefers that a particular potential be realised, rather than another. LM believes that defending this preference requires a moral or normative theory in the conventional sense.
My instinct so far has been to tell him that he’s still operating within a subject-object framework, or a framework in which the only good truths are transcendent ones… ;-P I think there are various ways to deal with the issues he raises without stepping onto the terrain of moral theory (I won’t burden this comment thread with a recount of this discussion). But I may be wrong, and LM’s not around at the moment to defend himself. I’ll see if I can prod him into writing on the issue at Rough Theory when he’s back around, and then maybe we can see where this will take us.
But, assuming I can hold LM’s critique at bay, I think I understand what I’m doing in fairly similar terms – I’m just perhaps using an awkward vocabulary for it (although I do like the notion of reappropriating and redefining terms like “right” or “good”, to see what they become when you don’t posit a transcendent frame of reference for them – but perhaps this is simply confusing, and pushes people’s thought back into the more intuitive meanings for those words). In more formal writing, I actually do tend to use “adequate” and “inadequate” – I experiment more on the blog.
Apologies if this isn’t the best formed response…
May 26, 2007 at 3:46 am
You are misreading Rawls: he was closer to left than to right, and arguing for a sort of rational egalitarianism (that’s what sane, rational AGENTS would select, given the right decision matrix), in a rather more precise manner than say Zizek (the Parallax Gap reads about like Lenin’s ad hoc bolshevik rants with a bit of Lacan added: yes the minimal difference man!). It’s a foundation for economic rights, not an apology for neo-liberalism. But whatevs. Every proposition you put forth has a moral ratio attached to it: those who uphold marxism (however obscurely) are given Good button; those who criticize, Bad (or fascist, capitalist, neo-liberal, imperialist, etc.). Or perhaps it’s just Continentalists, good; Anglo-American, bad (vulgar, yada yada). Yet Rawls arguably closer to a sort of Kantian empiricism (in ethical terms) than any postmods you can name.
The contractualists are the economic materialists, without the Hegel ghosts, and yet still holding to the “subject”, without the postmod reifications. OR they simply reject the state or contracts altogether; and that is the bad Hobbes, a few sips of cognac away from Nietzsche in the Genealogy of Morals. But Nietzsche chants are OK; Hobbes chants, schmutz (tho’ Hobbes a far more methodical thinker and scholar than about any German metaphysician, Kant included). Perhaps like, given your “historicity” you might recall politics sans Due Process, sans rights, sans even consensus: you want Hegelian politics, stripped of ANY notion of individual entitlement (or disputation) think of Stalin or the third Reich. In a VERY real sense, that was Hegelian-machiavellianism manifested.
May 26, 2007 at 10:37 am
You are misreading Rawls: he was closer to left than to right, and arguing for a sort of rational egalitarianism (that’s what sane, rational AGENTS would select, given the right decision matrix), in a rather more precise manner than say Zizek (the Parallax Gap reads about like Lenin’s ad hoc bolshevik rants with a bit of Lacan added: yes the minimal difference man!). It’s a foundation for economic rights, not an apology for neo-liberalism.
You’re missing the point. Marx is not providing a “political theory” in this way or a theory of the “ideal state” such as whether the ideal state is a Platonic republic, monarchy, democracy, etc. This is what I was getting at with my remarks about normativity. Marx is a socio-historical economist. That is, Marx seeks to explain how various types of societal formations result from differing forms of production. For instance, he shows how social form of Feudalism resulted from a particular form of production. The point, then, is that comparing Rawls and Marx is comparing apples and oranges. They’re asking two entirely different types of questions. It’s not a question of “being for” Rawls’ understanding of how society should be organized versus “being for” Marx’s theory of how society should be organized. Rather, it’s a question of whether Marx and Marxists provide a cogent analysis of how society is organized. The thesis that Rawls is an apologist for neo-liberalist thought would simply be the thesis that a normative theory of the State such as that found in Rawls can only appear under certain conditions of production. That aside, I don’t see how Rawls has ever contributed anything to any actually existing political movement, so I don’t know where you get the idea that he’s contributed so much to leftist thought.
But whatevs. Every proposition you put forth has a moral ratio attached to it: those who uphold marxism (however obscurely) are given Good button; those who criticize, Bad (or fascist, capitalist, neo-liberal, imperialist, etc.). Or perhaps it’s just Continentalists, good; Anglo-American, bad (vulgar, yada yada). Yet Rawls arguably closer to a sort of Kantian empiricism (in ethical terms) than any postmods you can name.
Remarks like this really diminish whatever point it is that you’re trying to make, as they amount to name-calling. You seem to be suggesting that those who are sympathetic to Marx (or postmodernism) are so simply because they have an irrational attachment to these figures because they must have commitments to these figures to belong to certain groups in the world of academia. I get the sense that you feel excluded or unrecognized by these groups, which is not unsurprising given your generally poor and uninformed understanding of what you’re trying to criticize. Generally one increases their credibility as a critic when they demonstrate they possess an informed understanding of the arguments of those positions they’re targeting. In your case, your references to what you criticize sound more like curses than references to real positions others advocate. There is something called being persuaded by arguments, and one endorses Marx because they are persuaded by his arguments and believes that he provides a cogent and illuminating analysis of the social world. Obviously if someone believes Marx provides such an analysis, they’re going to feel that the critic of Marx either makes bad arguments or doesn’t understand Marx. For instance, when you say “…Rawls is arguably closer to a sort of Kantian empiricism (in ethical terms)” it is clear that you probably have never read a single page of Marx, as Marx is not giving an ethical theory, but an analysis of various social formations in terms of their different structures of production. Apples and oranges. Of course, your motives in these discussions is not entirely clear. In a previous post you remarked that “no Caucasian, American or European male should support Marx or postmodernists”. Apparently, for you, there are nationalistic, gender, and racial issues tied up in the question of whether to support various figures. If that’s true, there’s really little reason to enter into discussion with you at all as an argument is sound or unsound regardless of whether they are articulated by a particular nationality, gender, or race yet you seem to have deep difficulties discerning this. One imagines that you’re the sort of person that will only eat “freedom fries” out of a fear that you would be contaminated by “french fries”.
The contractualists are the economic materialists, without the Hegel ghosts, and yet still holding to the “subject”, without the postmod reifications. OR they simply reject the state or contracts altogether; and that is the bad Hobbes, a few sips of cognac away from Nietzsche in the Genealogy of Morals. But Nietzsche chants are OK; Hobbes chants, schmutz (tho’ Hobbes a far more methodical thinker and scholar than about any German metaphysician, Kant included). Perhaps like, given your “historicity” you might recall politics sans Due Process, sans rights, sans even consensus: you want Hegelian politics, stripped of ANY notion of individual entitlement (or disputation) think of Stalin or the third Reich. In a VERY real sense, that was Hegelian-machiavellianism manifested.
What are you ranting about here?
May 26, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Marx doesn’t address meritocracy, or rights, or the social contract–he assumes that’s all part of bourgeois ethics or something. And his economic generalizations are not necessary truths, or even probable: the surplus labor theory may hold in some cases, not in all (besides, given orthodox marxism, academics should toss their shingles and become electricians, tractor mechanics, nurses, gulag tech. II’s etc. And many clerics and academics were forced to give up positions by both bolsheviks and maoists, unless they were more expediently dealt with, say, in a mineshaft).
May 26, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Marx doesn’t address meritocracy, or rights, or the social contract–he assumes that’s all part of bourgeois ethics or something.
Again, these are the wrong sorts of questions to be asking when trying to understand Marx. Marx does address these questions but in a different way than you’re asking. These values have not always existed but emerge at a very particular point in history under a very particular type of production. Marx does not “assume” that these things are bourgeois. Rather, these types of values came-to-be with the emergence of capitalism. Aren’t you the least bit curious as to why this particular set of values emerged at precisely this point in time and no other? You are posing these questions like a Platonist, in that you treat values as invariant, ahistorical truths, thereby exempting human thought from history. As such, there is a strong non-materialist core to your thinking about these issues, as one of the marks of a genuine materialism is the thesis that everything comes to be and passes away in time, and this is absent in your thought.
And his economic generalizations are not necessary truths, or even probable: the surplus labor theory may hold in some cases, not in all.
Of course his economic generalizations are not necessary truths. Insofar as Marx is a historical thinker, he recognizes that there are different forms that economy takes at different times in history.
(besides, given orthodox marxism, academics should toss their shingles and become electricians, tractor mechanics, nurses, gulag tech. II’s etc. And many clerics and academics were forced to give up positions by both bolsheviks and maoists, unless they were more expediently dealt with, say, in a mineshaft).
I have problems with these things as well, but you’re confusing Marxism with actually existing socialism in the Soviet Union. These are not the same things. You’ll find little, if any, account of how the State should be organized in Marx. This is why I keep suggesting that you’re asking the wrong sorts of questions and do not seem familiar with Marx’s particular form of social and economic analysis. You keep raising normative and ethical questions, rather than asking questions as to why the social emerges in the particular way it does at a particular point in history.
May 26, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Not trying to feed trolls, but just to mention that, although Marx is often read as a kind of left Ricardian offering some kind of normatively-charged form of economic theory, I’d agree with Sinthome that this isn’t the most interesting or useful way to engage with his work.
Notions that labour is the ultimate source of wealth emanate from some forms of classical liberal economic theory: Marx is writing a critique of political economy, not a leftist version of political economy; classical economic theories are not forms of thought that Marx endorses, but forms of thought whose emergence he is trying to understand. The reason he is trying to understand these forms of thought is that, on their face, they are actually quite easy to contradict empirically: it’s not difficult to point to forms of material wealth that do not require an investment of human labour; it is also not difficult to point to disjoints between things like price and labour expended in production. As industrial production develops, it becomes even stranger to act as though wealth someone hinges on the investment of human labour. Marx is basically asking: if such forms of thought are so evidently false on their face, why do they “resonate” – why do otherwise apparently intelligent and insightful people find them persuasive? What’s the “rational core” that makes such theories plausible – perhaps as plausible Newtonian approximations of some aspect of social experience? Marx’s answer to this question is complicated, but boils down to an argument that the expenditure of labour is genuinely central to capitalism – but not for the reasons people generally have in mind when they discuss “the economy”.
Marx sees capitalism as characterised by a strange central contradiction – on the one hand, it promotes historically unprecedented forms of increased productivity, while, on the other hand, it reconstitute the expenditure of human labour in new forms – displacing labour into new forms, as productivity increases phase out the need for it in old forms. These contradictory pressures for productivity increases (which displace the need for the expenditure of labour) and the displacement of labour into new forms cannot, in Marx’s account, be explained “economically” – the simple need to produce and distribute goods doesn’t account for the existence of such a dynamic. Marx therefore sets about trying to explain how, in spite of not consciously intending to create a society characterised by this dynamic, social agents nevertheless manage to do so unintentionally, as a side effect of actions directed to other purposes. Along the way, he analyses the forms of perception and thought that becomes plausible in such a multifaceted context – including, incidentally, notions of rights and social contract theories – with an eye to demonstrating the greater adequacy of his account over other accounts, by demonstrating how his approach can make sense of the same sort of phenomena other approaches are trying to explain, as well as of the emergence of other forms of theory, in terms of its own more overarching social analysis.
Marx’s “labour theory of value” is an ironic inversion of the similar sounding theory in classical economic theory: Marx argues that labour is, in fact, central to capitalism – but for arbitrary social reasons that have nothing intrinsically to do with production or distribution in a complex and differentiated economic system. We are, in his account, a society that (structurally) values the expenditure of labour, quite apart from what labour might contribute to material wealth. He believes this structural pressure then distorts social life in other ways, both generating the potentials for particular kinds of freedom, and restraining the realisation of those potentials. Emancipatory transformation requires, among other things, overcoming the structural centrality of labour.
From this standpoint, something like the Soviet system – which, among other things, valorised labour – would be an oppressive, state-centred variant of capitalism.
I understand that Marx is often read in other ways, and I’m not particularly interested in the exegetical issue of what Marx “really meant”. I mention this reading simply because I think it is more useful for contemporary critical analysis, and also because it hugs a bit closer to the sort of thing I understand Sinthome to be talking about, when discussing Marx as a potential example of a non-normative social theory. I say this, of course, with the caveat that I am of course not speaking for Sinthome, or assuming that anything I’ve outlined here would necessarily reflect Sinthome’s own views.
May 26, 2007 at 7:24 pm
NO, the psychologizing of Marx, and the de-economizing (de-materializing?) of Marxism are characteristic of trolls; even ones with tenure. The division of labor issue, for one, WAS a problem for Marx, as was commodification, exchange, money/value/price, property, finance, speculation, etc.; thus he does address issues similar to those discussed by Smith and Ricardo; it is the postmods who are misreading and mis-appropriating the text, aestheticizing it, giving it some bizarre Freudian-lacanian gloss. I think Marx is wrong on many things, and his remaining Hegelianisms a real problem: but he does make some definite assertions about economics (and exploitation, really) which are capable of being shown– empirically –false, or contingent. And perhaps true in some situations. He does not doubt that his analysis applies to real, objective conditions.
Marx may not have been a “populist” leftist (the P-word!), but he’s certainly no psychoanalyst or metaphysician—and I think the psychoanalytical tendency is itself a type of anti-materialist viewpoint.
AS far as “moralizing,” I do not think one should assume an attempt to justify an objective entitlement is prima facie mistaken, or really moral. You might not care for the ethical discussions of a Hobbes, Locke or Kant, at least not until the Cheka smashes in your door and arrests you on trumped up charges: at that point you would probably wish that the KBG men knew something about the categorical imperative, if not the US Constitution……….You and Comrade Peppermill sound like you already are in place in some grand bureaucratic hall, making plans for the Peoples, regardless of what they actually want or need (and I think that is postmod’s raison d’etre—justifying a type of secular monarchy. Marx provides his own Leviathan (a rather more sinister one than even Hobbes offered))
May 26, 2007 at 7:34 pm
What the heck are you talking about, Malfeasancio? Do you just free associate and conjure things out of free air? I can’t say that I’ve ever known any oppressive powers to be persuaded by things such as the categorical imperative or ethics. At any rate, I’m far more worried about neocon lackies banging my door down, arresting me, and engaging in torture than the KGB. You sound like Michael Savage ranting on talk radio. These people seem to know nothing about either the categorical imperative or the Constitution.
May 26, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Really I think what bothers you is someone who does not sign-off on the shadow ideology of marxist revolution. Economic reform is possible, but many academics don’t appear to desire it. They don’t want to discuss distribution, or the division of labor, or economic entitlement, or say housing, property, agriculture: that is considered plebian or populist, who knows what. The postmods are the anti-materialists, it seems. Chomsky has said some similar things.
Orthodox marxism was empirical, data-based, sociological: Marx recognized some obligation to offer true accounts (or at least plausible accounts) about existing and historical socio-economic conditions. In a sense he ducks the normative issue, but it is still there. So instead of justice, or entitlement, rights, etc, there is exploitation, inefficiency, distribution problems. It is the ideology–when Marx or Engels stray too far from evidence—that is problematic and speculative.
However distasteful economic materialism and empirical research may be to some “leftist” aesthetes, authentic progressives must acknowledge the absurdities of specific business practices, whether petro-business, or agriculture, technology, corporate excess, etc., it seems to me. I’ve yet to see any of the “leftists” in this little circle even mention the commodity market, finance, or oil racket, IT barons, etc.: that’s now considered “green” or populist, or neo-liberal or who knows what.
May 26, 2007 at 9:36 pm
This is a convenient argument for you, but I do not believe this is the case. In case you hadn’t noticed, my research and intellectual work revolves primarily around questions of metaphysics and epistemology, and sociological questions. While I am sympathetic to Marx, he certainly isn’t a central focus of my work and I am by no means an expert where his thought is concerned.
As others in this discussion have pointed out, there is no requirement that you sign-off on some idea of Marxist revolution. Indeed, continental thought is itself a diverse body of thought and there are a number of disagreements concerning political theory. Indeed, there are a number of continental thinkers that are not Marxists. You seem to assume, for inexplicable reasons, that all Continentalists are Marxists.
You are welcome to disagree and engage in spirited debate, but to be taken seriously you need to minimally have an accurate understanding of what it is that you’re arguing against and to present cogent arguments. Such debate is even welcome as it tends to improve thought and theory. Yet so far nothing you have said indicates that you have an informed understanding of what you refer to as postmodernism, psychoanalysis, or Marxism. For instance, in your most recent post you make the outrageous claim that Marxists don’t wish to discuss distribution, division of labor, economic entitlement, property, agriculture, etc. There is a vibrant body of Marxist literature out there and much of it deals with precisely these sorts of questions and is data-based, empirical, and sociological. Yet because you’ve never taken the time to investigate what you so breezily dismiss you don’t know that this exists and therefore confuse your own ignorance with something Marxists aren’t allegedly doing. Your final paragraph is even more bizarre. You suggest that progressives never speak of these things, when in fact these are focused topics of debate all over the place if you just care to take a look.
Malfeasancio, what exactly is the purpose or goal of your participation on this blog? Why is it that you participate at all?
May 26, 2007 at 10:05 pm
in your most recent post you make the outrageous claim that Marxists don’t wish to discuss distribution, division of labor, economic entitlement, property, agriculture, etc.
No, you are not dealing with the specific issues I raised, again. I don’t see those sorts of discussions occurring on blogs, or most big name sites, and the few “marxist” sites are very identity-politics driven, and not so concerned with taking on capitalism, finance, corporate tyranny etc. Instead there are belle-lettrists, psychoanalysis, a sort of Baudrillardian-cyber riff here and there, Zizek/Badiou/Lacan ad nauseum, and then some theology people. As with here, or Jodi Dean’s site, the Long Sunday crew, the Weblog.
You do on occasion address somewhat interesting philosophical issues (the Hume and more analytical stuff), but I really don’t understand what YOUR goal or intent is. I mean, why, especially given your stated materialism, dig up Whitehead again? Process philosophy is a strange, sort of crypto-Hegelian theology: and Whitehead was quite a conservative, certainly to the right of his crony Bertrand Russell (it’s ok for some to invoke Whitehead, but Osiris forbid that we discuss Russell, either his writing on logic and language, or politics). There are no debates really: first, though you proclaim some allegiance to analytical philosophy and empiricism, you devote countless threads to psychoanalytical topics. You advocate materialism and empiricism, research, etc. and then a few paragraphs later are making claims about thinking, the subject, desire, etc. Really, even Hume doubted that there was anything like a philosophy of Mind; and I think that skepticism to Phil. of Mind extends to psychoanalysis as well.
May 26, 2007 at 10:19 pm
We are not in disagreement concerning this. There is a lot of this. But perhaps the people engaged in these discussions understand something about the nature of the social and ideology that you fail to understand due to your lack of grounding in social theory. There is also a lot of talk about “corporate tyranny, taking back capitalism, finance, etc”.
Whitehead is of interest to me because he develops an ontology of relations, complex systems, and systems that are dynamic and developing, i.e., processes. I do not advocate materialism of the Lucretian or Democritan sort, where everything is ultimately atoms bouncing off one another in the void. In my view, matter is composed of ongoing events and interrelations among events. In the attempt to formulate such a position I’m engaged in research pertaining to any philosopher that has sought to thematize relations, systems, and events. This does not make me a Whitehead. Nothing prevents you from talking about Russell and I’m not sure what would give you this impression. Didn’t you notice a rather productive discussion on this blog about Davidson recently?
I have never claimed allegiance to analytic philosophy or any other philosophical school. I take useful concepts wherever I find them in the attempt to articulate my own thoughts. Psychoanalysis, incidentally, is not a theory of mind but a theory of what takes place in the clinical consulting room between analyst and analysand. You might think of it as a particular sort of micro-sociology. As a result, Hume’s critique of mind is quite irrelevant.
With all of this said, I believe you have worn out your welcome here. You have shown that you are only capable of ranting and have absolutely no respect for what I and the other participants on this blog and other blogs are engaging in. As such, there is no point in further discussion with you or in allowing you to use my blog for your rants. If you are unable to minimally entertain the ideas of others and treat them respectfully then it is impossible for any discussion to take place at all. You have the dubious honor of being the very first person I have banned from my blog or the numerous academic email discussion lists I maintain in about ten years of engaging in online activities.