> "engaged fallibilistic pluralism...means taking our own
fallibility seriously--resolving that however much we are
committed to our own styles of thinking, we are willing to
listen to others without denying or suppressing the otherness
of the other. it means being vigilant against the dual
temptations of simply dismissing what others are saying by
falling back on one of those standard defensive ploys where
we condemn it as obscure, woolly, or trivial, or thinking we
can always easily translate what is alien into our own
entrenched vocabularies..."
> richard bernstein, the new constellation: the ethical-political
horizons of modernity/postmodernity
It's nice that Bernstein has the leisure to listen to others. And Bernstein provides not qualification regarding what is motivationally necessary for an "engaged fallibilistic plurality." All Bernstein is doing is making a pathetic case for openness. So what? (as you keep asking me). The civil society model that Bernstein employs (I can think of no other name for it) relies, as with Habermas, with an alligience to a quasi-transcendental principle: some sort of wacked one way street transparent communication ethic. Habermas calls it discourse ethics. And despite his agreement with Wellmer, that we have obligations to human beings, not to reason or language, Habermas cannot escape the snare of enchantment.
And I don't see Bernstein doing much more than this. At least someone like Peter Dews has the presense of mind to point out that this is what they are doing. Bernstein, like Habermas, fails to acknowledge the democratic structures revolve around a fundamental impossibility (most models of democracy seek to abolish contradiction - how very postmodern!). The worst of all systems but no better one exists.
You seem to be making the accusation that Zizek is somehow "cheating" - that his theory only has the illusion of being able to outflank the positions that he contests (Nah nah, I'm more reflexive that you are!"), but I don't get it. Zizek explicitly states that these "fundamental antagonisms" are historically contingent - and that the solution to these problems is possible, although only provisionally. So class struggle could be eliminated, but this wouldn't *necessarily* eliminate other social anatagonisms such as sexuation, race, colonization, or what have you. He notes that the attempt to level *all* tensions in one nice package is a totalitarian urge - economic fundamentalism, environmental fundamentalism... I mean, Zizek understands his position to be rationalist - using the force of reason for the purpose of traversing fantasy. This is no different than Marx or Freud. If you are able to identify the reason being for the form of a particular symptom, then you've made a step toward changing the content. An emphatic democracy is the place in which these antagonisms can be contested and worked through. Politics is Traumdeutung, not unlike what Adorno meant when he talked about "working off the past."
ken