planning

kelley kcwalker at syr.edu
Thu Aug 26 15:07:58 PDT 1999



>Charles: I'll agree to that if you agree that it is an imperfect kind of
perfect knowledge.


> Yoshie: I think that a non-Hegelian view of knowledge and reality, as
advanced by Roy Bhaskar (and Marx himself for that matter), obviates an alleged equation of planning with the presumption of "complete or perfect" knowledge (which I don't think Charles is presuming in any case, I may add).

well apparently so given charles reversion to perfect knowledge in the above.

i'm a fan of bhaskar and critical realism. but, having sparred with ange recently, i'm guessing that this isn't quite the same thing here. simply acknowleding, as Bhaskar does, that we create objects that become for us objects of investigation does not actually obviate the problem angela is raising which i'd guess is the dream of deliverance that is nestled in here: simply acknowledging that knowledge is incomplete isn't the same thing as a lacanian formulation of subjectivity and the consequences that has for us.

bhaskar, then, is something akin to a humanist psycholgoy which says, oh yeah, human desires change and we don't always know what we want nor is what we want always predictable. so grow with the flow by trying to be as knowledgeable about ourselves as possible even while recognizing that complete knowledge isn't possible.

this is quite different from a lacanian formulation in which the very process of trying to be as knowledgeable about ourselves as possible is the very process in which those desires are generated and which obscures to us the political character of those desires because it must.



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