>elucidation and justification would require a more lengthy, perhaps endless,
>discussion. that's the nature of the thing, and there's no reason to assume
>that we should in fact agree. but on to it for the hell of it.
i clipped the rest of the quote which spoke to this. i agree, which is why i pointed to the limitations of the medium. still, implied in the notion of 'pluralism' is this idea that agreement isn't presumed. engagement, however, is. and, sorry, but i expect that here, particularly from you.
i sense a resistance to actually listening to what i am saying and i'm not sure why. my suspicion, as i said before, is that it's about language. i mean that in two senses. firstly, i'm hoping for a little more translation from you. i do the work of going out and reading this stuff so i think that's fair enough. secondly, i mean that i also expect you to do the work of translation my theoretical language as well and not automatically assuming that it means what it means on your terms.
the reason i brought up rorty was because you redescribe, you retranslate your interlocutors into your language. its not clear that you've done so in as engaged a way as possible. this does not imply that either of us will get the other right, correct, whathaveyou, however.
why do i say this? when i asked as to whether zizek's account had some semblance of a theory of social change, i was read as demanding that theory dictate practice, that theory and intellectuals assume some dictatorial role in history, that my question could only assume that i must support some sort of archemedean approach to Truth.
now where exactly did that come from? you complained earlier that i dared mention rorty given your tirades against him. huh. well it was a bit surprising to me to be interpreted as suggesting above given my tirades against that sort of position. indeed you referenced a post to chaz in which it was pretty clear i rejected this position. furthermore, i made it pretty clear that i rejected such in my posts to alex. as for me daring to raise rorty, well angela perhaps i never read you on rorty? but you surely read me taking a position other than that which you attributed to me.
the method of argument here, then, is one of redescription, of making your interlocutor appear to support a position that they do not. it is a colonizing maneuver and one that's extraordinarily intolerant of the eclecticism that you say you tolerate. the method erects a grand either/or: don't' ask for a theory of social change in zizek because to do so is to speak in some other theoretical language which apparently MUST be one that supports the view that theory dictates practice. maybe it would have been good to have asked what i meant by a theory of change or looked a little harder for my position in the very posts you quoted.
> never claimed otherwise. the issue might more
>properly be characterised as both different preoccupations (we ask different
>questions to begin with) and different locations (as I mention re the market
>and state in the US and Australia in the Balibar posting).
yes. this does not make the position i'm taking wrong. to ask if a theory has a theory of social change may be to ask a question you've never even thought of before. and it might be an attempt to bring to bear a critique that might actually strengthen the theory under consideration.
ordinarily we may well ask similar questions. but i see absolutely no reason to ask other, contrarian questions, particularly of someone who i largely admire and agree with so that i can hear what she has to say, to compare what i might have said; to learn something from her and perhaps teach something to her; and often enough i do so with the very selfish purpose of shoring up my own position as distinct from hers, even though similar.
> "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."
i'm afraid that's b.s. now tell me, what happened to eclecticism? and what's the deal with calling is "wacked"?
> I don't recall using
>the words or gestures of rorty in any place here, of (in your words)
>"finding objectivism, universalism, and foundationalism in every criticism".
substitute finding functionalism, sociological conservatism, achemedean truth standards, etc etc. also, i am not quite sure that continually humbling yourself as someone who might change her mind next month and various similar gestures isn't also similarly rortian. i tend to find such moves attempts to disarm one's interlocutor in a rather disingenuous way. that's harsh, i realize, and i'm not saying that i don't do it on occasion.
put it this way, thru illustration: a fem. theo prof once defended her supportive pedagogy by telling us she didn't want to impose her ideas on us. my response was that, ultimately, she wasn't thinking a whole lot of us and our ability to think for ourselves.
now, you can defend the fallibilistic perspective and i certainly agree with it--indeed i think out here it should largely be assumed that everyone agrees with it and that such rhetorical strategies serve little purpose. if these strategies get used too often, they are meaningless mechanical gestures.
>dear, dear, who is this person who doesn't "do social research"? are you
>defining "social research" specifically as observation, interviews, the tool
>kit of the ethnographer?
obviously not. did i say such a thing? indeed i argued that social theory and social research--often posed as opposites--do the same thing.
>not all social research proceeds on the basis of a Methodism, and not all
>social research is sociological or indeed 'social scientific'. historically,
>sociology is only possible as a result of an historic split. as philosophy
>is only the result, or rather is, surplus theory, ie., premised on the time
>made possible by surplus labour. these last two points are simply a question
>of history, not a blanket indictment, but a precondition. the previous
>points are more specific,
>they apply to a particular kind of social research, not research per se.
you did not say this in your post. rather, you wrote: "in this sense, methodology, in particular that of the social sciences, is only possible as part of this split, as the seemingly neutral technology of control and study of those already deemed objects, made over once again into the objects of sociological research and ethnographic observation."
methodology, *particularly social science methodology," here is that of procedures of objectification and technologies of social control. this statement homogenizes all social science as engaging in these practices. you also made a distinction between sociological research and ethnographic observation which i can only presume is quant v. qual, positivist v. interpretivist. hence, i saw you lumping all of it together as one giant un differentiated mass of social science research methodology.
furthermore, you did you "science" as the broader category, as if to reduce it all to scientism
as for the historical emergence of social science, how could it have escaped your attention that i've written tirades about this many times before as well? yes, that's an unfair objection, but so is expecting me to have read you on rorty. i'm not sure where the desire to state all this comes from. did i not say several times that i agreed with your characterization of social research (as opposed to science). the entire disciplinary structure of academia is the product of this historical process.
>>worries about Doug's cranky portrayal of 'the
>> masses' are a little more than amusing.
>
>it never worried me; but why would it be amusing if it did?
you wrote: "it's important to remember though, and partly why I responded to Doug's grumpy synchrony, that the world as it is not some monolithic homogeneity."
i responded to your grumpy synchrony, that the world of social research is not some monolithic homogeneity. does a statement like that not suggest to you an historicized understanding of social science and social research?
>I would never wish most manual labour on anyone. it should be avoided as
>much as possible, and I find little virtue in it or even most forms of
>intellectual labour for that matter. I thought my constant tirades against
>the work ethic, including Sennett's lauding of such, have been fairly clear
>on this.
this is not an answer to my criticism. indeed, it's a strategy that puts words in my mouth and in fact ignores what i typed: " surely you aren't suggesting that he shouldn't do this work simply by virtue of who he is?"
so, below, you turn the question around to your favor, as if you thought it up and to suggest that there are no problems with the position you go on to take. and so, you don't have to address the question.
>the question is not whether Sennett should do manual work. the question, for
>me, is whether he should be observing and studying those who have distinctly
>less social power than he does. for whom does he do this work? to put it
>more starkly: is he a spy for the industrial sociologists and other social
>managers, hidden persuaders, etc? why is he so interested in the 'character'
>of the workers and not in how capitalism tries to outflank us?
which suggests that you do not understand his use of character. it is not some internal resource that is impacted on externally but one derived from the social institutions in and through which we live, the primary one in this case is work.
why not study
>capitalists and capitalism?
sure. maybe women should only study men? in the u.s., blacks should study latinos. the colonized should study the colonizers. the disabled should study the able bodied. lesbians should study gays. bisexuals should study.....?
which is not to say that these aren't important criticisms. in fact, i have argued this on the list several times wrt why i study managers and professionals. i took very seriously the complaints of black feminists when they argued that white women ought to move over and start asking how privilege operates. however, it is not for what i find to be the rather essentializing reason that social researchers have more power. there are good reasons why we should continue to study people w/ less power but, of course, to do so cognizant of the problems in doing so and in our potential role as police agents. rather perfunctorily my objections are:
1. this position takes a two dimensional view of power 2. it takes a dim view of the subjects of research 3. it too often is used in the service of an intellectual identity politics that is, at root, culturally essentialist 4. taken to its logical conclusion, no research is possible at all 5. a standpoint epistemology slips in through the backdoor (the slave can know) 6. it supports an 'interpretivist' method which suggests that one can 'get close to' those who one is studying by being more like them
more often than not, the issue is this stark,
>especially when I hold up _Corrosion_ against a work on a similar theme
>(ie., the experience of workers in late capitalism) such as Kim Moody's
>_Workers in a Lean World_. I find the latter much more interesting,
>insightful and worthwhile. now there's a book that I think has something to
>offer us.
but is your answer to why her work is better based solely on her identity [as part of her method] or is it because of her methodology which speaks to broader issues of the rel. b/t theory/method/practice? obviously it's the latter.
>both you and Michael have said there are criticisms, fatal ones Michael said,
>but what are they? I detect a bit of hesitancy to articulate exactly what
>these are.
only because i want to focus in on HIC right now and don't feel like trekking to the library or spending money on books. all i had to go by were notes from a research proposal for a community study i was involved in a bit ago. so i'm not prepared to dig in and give you a report just yet. and Michael is just plain busy. i can't speak for michael, but i was pointing out that sennett's work is much more complex than has been suggested thus far. i took your claim to being eclectic as one in which you read authors not from your tradition, theoretical perspective and so i was simply suggesting that denunciations of corrosion shouldn't necess. invalidate the worth of reading HIC which seemed to be what you were implying and that corrosion is prob best read in conjunction with other work.
the crux of it for me, though, is this: i'm not particularly fond of any critique which doesn't engage in some sort of immanent critique. in order to do that i think you generally have to work with an author's body of work and not just one text.
> if
>it's about sennett, then it might be that he's become more conservative. it
>might be a combination of both. who knows?
my memory is that he can't be pinned down, b/c the shift between leftish and conservative impulses has always been there. in my response to eric, i was attributing that, in part, to his training. how much more confusing could it be to have been in harvard's soc dept at the time of the upsurge against parsonian functionalism? and, as mc notes, his relationship w. foucault is also an important issue.
>as I said in the previous post: " [he] pretends to really listen as if this
>in itself is a virtue, taking on all the aura of the priest in the
>confessional, etc.....
still doesn't specify that nature of his pretending to listen. i'm asking *how* you came to this conclusion that he didn't really listen? from what i've read elsewhere, he's arguing that flex capitalism erodes the capacity for people to make narrative sense of their lives. and it sounds as if he takes this linear narrativity as necessary to human life. so, what you're really canning him for is his modernist approach to narrative which he imposes on people's lives and then finds them wanting, but which he attributes to capitalism as a force that erodes that capacity.
now tell me something, had he explicitly said something like, "capitalist modernity produces the narrative sensibility and flex capitalism undermines it as evidenced in the difficulty these men have in making narrative sense of their lives," would that have been more acceptable?
>no one can 'really listen', there are always mediations, as you've said, and
>I would add non-transparencies, including that of compulsive misrecognitions
>(as in seeing rorty everywhere).
or compulsive misrecognitions as in seeing epistemologies that you reject everywhere? this, i'm afraid, is what i refer to as methodological dualism: everyone else does this but i don't. do you see nothing offensive in labeling my responses to you 'compulsive'? had you first sought to show that you understood what i was saying, at least tried to reinterpret me--and yes i no transparency isn't possible, but some semblance of understanding is otherwise we should all shut off the 'fusers.
do
>I object to the topic or the narrative and politics in sennett? the latter.
>is this objection overcome if he declares them? no.
of course not, but this wasn't what i was suggesting. i find it particularly problematic that you would say this given my distinction between method and methodology.
>do I need to elucidate more? how can it be overcome? it would require a
>different narrative/politics.
angela, i'll eat my hat if i didn't not say several times that surely sennett's politics ought and should be declared wrong if they are. but, to declare this by way of the claim that his research is useless on the basis of his identity seems foolishness. and to declare this on the basis of the fact that he took as his subject matter people who have less power is also foolishness. and then to go on to say that socl psych, urban anthropology can only play a "conservative role" and acts as part of the panopticon is generalizing and homogenizing once again. and unfairly so. yes, you qualify all this here, but you didn't previously. i think it was incumbent on you to do so.
>what was the agenda he spoke of in 1971?
we'll get to that in the list reading.
kelley