This is a response to Jim Devine's message, copied below. I frankly did not understood what Steve meant by his off-the-cuff, tongue-in-cheek (?) comment about "what you see is what you get." I didn't think it helped explain anything, and I don't think your snide (so it seems to me) response below is helpful either. Your whole post below appears to be a critique of empiricism, which anyone even vaguely familiar with the work of the Amherst School would have to acknowledge misses the target entirely. In this sense your post *is* irrelevant. Herb Gintis once said something which struck me as valid (gasp! :) ): it's easy, he noted, to criticize something by attacking its weakest points. A strong critique first builds the strongest case for its target and then attacks that strongest target. Jim, I really get the impression from you that you are not interested in understanding overdetermination, or what people in the Amherst School are doing, but rather simply in defending a more "traditional" (admittedly intelligent and sophisticated) variant of Marxism. If you really are interested, instead of spending your time attacking poor metaphors/analogies/tongue-in-cheek characterizations, why not *read* the works of people in the school. For one thing, your continued reference to "Wolff/Resnick overdetermination" is disrespectful of the many people who have contributed to the Amherst School's work, going beyond and in many cases against Wolff and Resnick's original thinking. Jack Amariglio, David Ruccio, Bruce Norton, J.K. Gibson-Graham (a.k.a. Julie Gibson and Katherine Graham), Jonathan Diskin, Antonio Callari, John Roche, Carole Biewener, Steve Cullenberg, Ric McIntyre, Jenny Cameron, Ulla Grapard, Andriana Vlachou, Claire Sproul, are just a few of the many people who have developed and applied the insights that spring from overdetermination in interesting and productive ways on a wide range of topics, from gender to race to ecology to culture to economics, as well as, of course, specifically class. (These names are just those that spring to mind immediately and I apologize for omitting other productive members of the Amherst School.) If anyone is interested in finding out for themselves what people around the Amherst School are doing, I suggest you visit their web site at <http://www.nd.edu/~plofmarx/RM.html>. (This is actually the web page for the journal RETHINKING MARXISM, which contains links to an extensive bibliography of Amherst School members' work, to books by AS folks, and to the upcoming international gala conference to be held this December, "The Politics and Language of Marxism." Regards, Blair [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim Devine wrote, >sorry if you think this irrelevant, but it's easy to erase. It's >also short... > >If I understand him correctly, Steve Cullenberg summarized the >main message for research of the Wolf/Resnick overdetermination >theory (i.e., that all entities in society determine the >character of all other entities, just as the characters of all >entities are determined by all other entities) as the >methodological principle that "what you see is what you get." >(This imples a critique of the efforts of benighted people like >myself who want to figure what's really going on. We're mere >"essentialists" and should stop.) > >Okay, I decided to apply the axiom that "what you see is what you >get" in practice. So I looked at the world for awhile. As far as >I could tell, I didn't see any overdetermination going on. I saw >cars hitting telephone poles and cruise missiles hitting Iraq. >But I didn't see any overdetermination. I saw the movie >"Independence Day" but I didn't see any overdetermination, in or >out of the theater, not even at the popcorn stand. I realized >that _not_once_ in my entire life had I ever seen overdeter- >mination. > >So based on my empirical investigation, I concluded that since I >didn't see any overdetermination, and because "what you see is >what you get," it could not exist. The concept of overdetermin- >ation should be rejected. > >But if overdetermination -- the very essence of the Wolf/Resnick >theory as presented by Steve -- doesn't exist, then the principle >that "what you see is what you get" could not apply. > >On the other hand, if I go beyond just seeing, to interpret >what's going on, to find out what's _really_ going on (as is my >usual wont), then I might decide that overdetermination is an >aspect of reality, or even the most important aspect of reality, >the essence of social reality, as in Wolf/Resnick. But then I >would be violating the principle of "what you see is what you >get." > >It seems to me that the methodological principle of "what you see >is what you get" embodies a commandment: thou shalt not think >rationally. > >BTW, how does the "what you see is what you get" principle or >overdetermination help us answer the question of whether or not >the aliens and flying saucers in "Independence Day" are real? and >whether or not the missiles hitting Iraq are real? > >I'm confused. Please help me, Steve.
