I had the same sort of training as Ken Hanly, somewhat later on, basically
high powered analytical philosophy: rather than Austin and Bowsma, my icons
were Quine, Davidson, and Rawls, my teachers Rorty, Harman, Kuhn, and Scanlon
(undergrad), Gibbard, Railton, and Mary Hesse (grad). I did pick up a love
for classical German philosophy from Kant and Hegel through Marx, and I was
never allegic to the continentals.
Unlike Ken, I think very highly of Foucault, and in particular of Discipline
and Punish, which I regard as a genuinely great book; Derrida is obviously
very deep and interesting too, though I do not pretend to have mastered his
thought to my own satisfaction. But I took this material seriosuly enough to
work on it and, when I was teaching, to attempt to teach it--as much to learn
it myself as anything else. By and large, I didn't like it, with the
exceptions noted above and a few others--Nancy Fraser and Iris Young are
excellent.
Colin's irritated response here accuses me of not getting it, given my
summary of what I learned. I make certain generalizations, and he says there
are exceptions. I admit that, and he accuses me of weaseling. Can't win on
that sort of argument, of course, but this is part of pomo nominalism:
everything is difference, nothing is like anything else, there are no valid
generalizations, so the very sort of critique of pomo, indeed the very idea
of a critique of pomo, is flawed from the start. Oh well.
Some brief replies:
> Then he should know that there are very large differences
among them.
Of course. As I said. But I think most of them advocate most of the positions
that I indicated.
>Who is the naive relativist
in the list above? "Relativism" is the key term in the
standard, ignorant, conflationst attack on the mythical
unity of "pomo". Relativism is
in fact a highly modernist position. See for example Haraway's
blistering attack on relativism in her "Situated Knowledges" essay.
Yeah, and Rorty has denied that he is a relativist or that relativism is a
coherent position. But he also accepts the doctrine that I understand to be
relativist that there is no nonarbitrary way of choosing between different
basic conceptions of the world or justice. We start where we are and we stay
there; our ideas are ours that thus justified. That's realtivism as I
understand it. Foucault claims that "truth" is just the operation of
power--which claims are true is determined by what the structures of
discipline and normativity will allow to be said and accepted. What's that if
not relativism? Etc. Most of the big guys and gals in this game are not
"naive"--unlike Nicole, they know the moves and countermoves, but that
doesn'r mean they are not relativists as we "modernists"--I guess I am
one--understand the term.
>
> 2) antiessentialism, and
>
> 3) anti-grand-narrativism,
> These 2 apply only in
the sense that learning how to critique these things helped a
lot of different people see deeper problems. But this is just
a first babystep. Indeed this kind of critique, by itself, is
not even terribly new.
OK, so Colin admits that these "babysteps" are actually held by most pomos,
although he regards them as nothing new. Well, Marx never claimed that class
analysis was anything new, but it's acharacterustic Marxist position anyway.
And what are these great new insights we get by discarding the idea that
people or groups of them have any objective nature or that history has any
directionality, including any progressive tendency towards greater technical
productivity or emancipation from class oppression?
> 4) Linguistic idealism; the idea that reality is constituted by local
> linguistic conventions;
>Wrong, if this phrase means anything at all. Here we can
see the kind of confusion that conflating pomo and
post-structralism produces.
Two can play at that game. No, you are wrong, and probably meaningless too.
But in fact, the relativist doctrines (denied to be such) urged by Rorty and
Foucault implicate precisely such a linuistic idealism, which after all is no
more (or less) puzzling than the claim that material objects are constituted
by ideas (Berkeley), the operation of the understanding on the intuitions
generated by the affection of the thing in itself on the mind (Kant), or lots
of other wacky idealist theories.
I suppose the second sentence is meant to suggests that postrucs may be
linguistic idealists but pomos are not. But poststrucs are an early moment in
the history of pomo, and pomos like Derrida do treat everything as a text.
> 5) "marginalism," an affection for groups at the margins of society
(not the
> working class) which is also connected with
> Right only to the extent that 2-3 above compel attention
to exclusions and omissions, and call into question
(which is not the same thing as deny) simple unities
like "the working class."
OK, so I am 3 for 5 so far by your very own accounting--that's not half bad.
And while we are attacking people for simple reductionsim, who are you
thinking of regards the working class as a "simple unity"? Certainly no
Marxist I can think of. The history of Marxist theory is the history of the
struggle to apprehend and analyze the divisions within the working class as
well as in society. What do you think the point of Marx's theory of ideology
is, first and foremost?
> 6) An identity politics that focuses on respect and recognition rather
than a
> class politics that focuses on interests and power.
> Howlingly wrong. Post-structuralists like Said and
Spivak are sharply critical of identity politics.
Postmodernism is *nothing* if not a
critique of the whole notion of identity, and has thus
always been sharply at odds with identity politics and
standpoint theories.
Howl, howl. Well, take it up with Young and Fraser: Young argues, i think
correctly, that a major, maybe the main positive political lesson of pomo is
that interest-based class-type politics ignores both the variosu dimensions
of difference among the oppressed groups and the need for recognition and
respect for their identities as self-created rather than merely opposed.
Fraser has tried womanfully to integrate this sort of insight with the older
recognition that without a focus on interest, the oppressed will never get
recognition or power.
>The author wants to make a set of sweeping claims
and yet escape responsibility for them.
No, I'll stand by them, but this is typical pomo argument. try to pin an
unreasonably broad generalization on your oppoent and deflate it, and when
the target acknowledges distinctions and exceptions, attack him for
inconsistenct. Geras notes in his Discourses of Extremity that LaClau and
Mouffe argue this way against Marxism: it's rigid economic determinism, a
false position no serious Marxist theorist has ever maintained, or it's
self-contradictory.
> The first logical problem here is that the set of theorists named
is so broad and diverse that if you try to find a set of propositions
that they all share, you either get a very reduced
set of banal propositions (e.g. 2 and 3 above)
Interesting that you think merely banal the denial that humans or groups of
them have objective properties (antiessentialism) or that history has no
directionality and historical materialism is false (no grand narratives).
Those are not what I would call banal propositions. In fact they strike me as
exceeding interesting, though false, and verys trong.
> People who want to debate "pomo" construed in these
broad terms want to debate mush. There is no there
there.
Well, we come close to agreement again about what is there. But, as I say,
here we have the trope that one cannot criticize pomo--only Derrida, or maybe
recent Derrida, or maybe his latest book, or maybe p. 13 of his latest book .
. . .
> As a general rule, folks, anyone who conflates
post-structuralism and postmodernism doesn't know what
they're talking about.
Thanks for enlightening us about this important difference.
>THis is another illogical move, widely represented
on pen-l. You assail the silliest postmodernist
you can find. When it's pointed out that this is
mere strawmanbashing, you claim that there is
nonetheless some essential link -- that the serious theorists
are responsible for the silly ones, as in the
metaphor "amplify" above.
Well, I think you owe Nicole an apology. She's at least an honest student
trying to learn and think things through. I have criticized her errors, but
she at least had enough integrity to present to use what she actually thought
in terms that were plain enough to understand.
> It is
up to the author to pick a particular theorist
and make a critique, with textual evidence.
So, as I said, the only kind of permitted criticism is author by author. In
fact, though, one can prove negarives. You say, some bad people (Marxists one
presumes) view the working class as a simple unity. I showed--very
briefly--that thsi is not true of Marx,a nd in fact is not true of the
Marxist tradition. Btw, I should say that I am very far from being a
reflexive Marxist and many would say that I am not one at all.
> The kind of work I mention above
shows social science that has digested these
successive schools of thought, learned from the
debates between them, and moved on. We should too.
Well, I am a lawyer and a philosopher, so I respond to the philosophical
theses: I would talk about the critical legal studies stuff-pomo in law--if
anyone had showed any interest.
--jks
