>i think there's a lot of will in foucault, the will to power being the most
>obvious example.
Come to think about it, isn't 'the will to power' afforded ontological status by Foucault and his mob? Very humanistic, no?
>is this too pessimistic in 'discipline and punish'? probably.
>but foucault is certainly on the side of those who argue for will as a key
>explanatory principle, which he perhaps why he is closer to weber than marx.
Nice insight. Ta.
> i hear tell foucault's last work was on ethics, but i go by rumour here,
>not >having read it.
Aren't ethics problematic without subjects? And you may be right, but I was of the impression he was still on his history-of-sexuality project.
>i don't get upset when people want to study penthouse or mills and boon.
>i think there is a difference between validation, as in celebration, and
>validation as in they are both appropriate things to study and learn from.
>as >you say, there is a difference in how one goes about this
>pedagogically, but i >reckon, what's the big deal? not every analysis of
>popular american culture is >a baudrillard, gushing away at it. so, the
>problem is not what one takes up as
>illustrative or as an object of study, but how. i'm more offended by
>>conservative cultural studies, whether that be of shakespeare or of mills
>and >boon.
All fair enough. And one senses conservatism has crept into some important niches amongst the cultural crowd, too.
>not everyone labours or does so (or is allowed to do so) creatively. does
>this
>mean they aren't truly human.
I reckon it might mean they're alienated from their essence. Very old-fashioned, but there you are.
>doesn't habermas' ideal speech situation look suspiciously to you like the
>>mythic classical model of citizenship? does to me. remember, the
>citizens >were citizens because they had slaves, not because they were
>naturally endowed >with communicative rationality.
I agree Habermas is a big problem when it comes to history. But I do reckon the ISS (which he seems to have sacked, incidentally) is a critical ideal he got out of the humanistic claims he makes for language (inbuilt communicative rationality an' all that).
>but i try real hard to remind myself that even this rationalist
>fantasy of mine is most likely a desire to submit all communication to
>>transparent and decided premises, which is just not how we are. in any
>case, >i'm better now.
Well, of all the sprachspiels in which we could be engaged, perhaps we are in fact applying those norms here! After all, here we're trying to nut out an issue in political theory. I'll get a chance to pour that Irish whiskey down you one day, and when that day comes, I plan to wallow in irrational self-indulgence myself and submit all communications to nowt whatsoever. Context is the thing, methinks.
>on a different tack: who decides what these rules of logic and rationality
>are?
Doesn't H. reckon they're built into language?
>doesn't logic impose a law of non-contradiction? contradicting oneself
>may >well be a pain for those talking to you, but ( a la freud), it is
>probably a >signpost to the truth of what one is saying which they am
>unable to say without >contradiction for reasons which are not transparent
>to the person speaking. >and, a la marx, any attempt to wipe out the law
>of non-contradiction would >wipe out the possibility of understanding the
>relation between (e.g.) labour and capital.
That phenomena are ever in the process of change, related both to external and internal dynamics, is not an illogical assertion, is it? If we then factor that change into our take on said phenomenon, we'd have to admit it might have been something it doesn't seem to be now and will one day seem something else again. As it has a role to play in things later on (everything being connected to everything else - that's what I reckon 'the totality' is), when it might not manifest as it does now, logic would seem to allow that we see it as a (clumsy-wording alert) relational-complex-in-process-of-transformation. Is that a useful tangential thought or a load of crap. I wouldn't have a clue. I'm way out of my shallowness here ...
>every time i see someone argue that human nature is the rock that society
>can't
>fully overcome, sounds to me like a pretty powerful rhetorical strategy in the
>service of this or that teleology. but this doesn't finally convince me.
You're absolutely right in heeding the warning sirens.
>> But as soon as you abandon the notion of human nature you have to admit
>> humans might as well exist under any one order as under any other.
>
>well, why not? they already have and will continue to. they 'might as
>well', >but this is not saying they would not exist as well or they would
>exist better >in other kinds of arrangements...
If they could 'exist better', what is it about them that decides this is the case? That's the point where I reckon we make humanist claims, you see.
>> Discourse is, inter alia, a
>> set of prescriptions, isn't it?
>
>sure, but it has contradictions, the space in which you find both the
>>possibility of freedom and of things being other than they are. there's
>a >difference between regulating communication with the brickbat of
>moralism that >is humanism and accepting that rules can and should be open
>to contest. we - >as in anyone i've ever come across and most of the
>world's population - is not >in power are we? so, why would we protect
>the unspoken rules of discourse and >action from contest by asserting a
>divine or natural basis for those rules?
Either we abandon human nature (which deprives me of my Marx, and I've yet to suffer a more compelling and heartening a misapprehension that him ... ) or we put up a version that rings true, is modest enough to be extremely flexible accross human differentials etc. Is this too naively simple, d'you think?
>and rob, you really can't claim that anti-humanism leaves you with no
>politics,
>that it just relativises everything (including history). this is kinda
>>petulant. it's also quite wrong. where do you and everyone else get your
>>politics from?
I'm not being petulant, just confused. I may well be wrong. I get my politics from the conviction much that is human by nature is currently grossly ostracised from human being.
>not nature, but from the spaces of contradiction that are present here and
>now,
Is what I just said not a declaration of a contradiction with historical significance and political content?
>which
>includes the versions of the past that you have been instructed in. why
>does this
>trouble you? why isn't it enough? it's more than enough for me. it also
>forces
>me to justify my politics in ways i find harder but more satisfying than
>simply
>claiming i know what human nature is or is not.'conditions of possibility of
>statements' is actually kant's question. was i asking about conditions of
>possibility? i don't think so. i was asking about the context of the
>citation
Sorry. I wrote quickly - addressing you at one moment and Foucault at others - all without due notice. And I don't think our politics manifests very differently, so I'm not sure our chat (which is hard for me as I keep thinking I'm missing your point) is as important as I thought it might be a couple of days ago. E-mail ain't the sharing of a few snorts, is it?
>we could debate for ages about whether or not marx thought capitalism was
>wrong >in moral terms or on its own terms. i go for the latter.
I wasn't positing an either-or, just a comfily mutually inclusive 'both'.
>there's a long answer, and a short one. the short one is this: here you have
>slipped from asserting the primacy of human agency to slipping in nature
>as the
>immutable bedrock. have i misconstrued?
No, I may be confusing myself here.
>> P1: Society must invest labour into extraction and production to survive
>> (labour is definitively social, if you like);
>
>extraction of what?
I was making a transhistorical claim (as I think Marx does with that 'any child would understand' routine - I still don't have access to my books). I simply meant get food and shelter etc.
>some hunter gatherer economies did not produce a
>surplus - are/were they not human?
They were human - I think Jameson refers to them somewhere as necessarily 'primitive communist'.
>is this the same as surplus value? neither
>production nor surplus has any abstract status in marx - that's the whole
>point >of the exercise.
I wasn't actually saying otherwise - just that there's stuff you can say about humanity across history (though not as much as some would suggest) and there's stuff you can say only within and about capitalism. I think a humanist fan of Marx would have to say something like this.
>...what hidden selves? the 'behind their backs' stuff is an argument against
>subjectivism and voluntarism, not an argument for why capitalism is bad or
>even
>for asserting a true hidden self.
Well, I don't reckon it's an argument against voluntarism at all. It sounds to me like someone is trying to tell us, 'you will not be the subject of history until you recognise what's going on behind your backs.' Just recognising the privations of the exchange relation ain't sufficient for social transformation (but it is necessary for a Marxist change), we still gotta undertake some co-ordinated action, and this, I submit, IS a moment for voluntarism.
>then you should recall the comments i made about the contradiction of capital.
>marx names workers - productive workers -as the only ones capable of
>>overturning capitalism because they are the antithesis and precondition
>of >capital. there's no moral weight assigned to workers. gee rob, are
>you >getting all lassallean on me?
That workers are the 'logical' (I suddenly feel the need for the scare quotes, what are you doing to me?) revolutionary class is not a moral argument. But as co-ordinated action (quite possibly dangerous and difficult action) is a likely prerequisite for making capability become revolution, I submit we're also talking about ethics here. Do I stay out of the moment and hope my ilk do the hard yards for me? If everyone thought like me, nothing would happen, would it? Wouldn't I need to have a moral dimension to me to be a revolutionary?
And I know the big fella couldn't stand Lasalle - but I wouldn't have a clue about the details of their differences (methinks all these years of lecturing have produced within me an authoritative tone not always warranted - especially when I'm discussing Marxism, which confuses me no end yet pulls at me relentlessly).
>the rest later,
Please.
Thanks for going through all this, Ange. What a patient antihumanist you are.
All the best, Rob.