> reconciliation requires only that what we share is the recognition of one
another as subjects. recognition of one another as subjects, tho, does
not eliminate difference for it is always present and must be present in
order for reconciliation to have any meaning.
But what are we recognizing here? This is just it. Bernstein sees in other subjects a moment of sameness (reconciliation). That person is the same as being insofar as we are both subjects, which is defined by the process of coming to be a subject. It's like saying, you are where you came from, without exception. This is why I mentioned that Bernstein is relying on a *pre-political ethics.* Following Habermas, subjectivity is defined by human rights (and Bernstein does this: he claims that both communicative ethics and deconstruction share a committment to universality - a shared pluralistic ethics) (it is no small wonder that Bernstein takes refuge in William James' pluralistic mysticism). So the person I see is different from me in many ways, but shares the same rights that I do. In effect, universal equality defines human beings. The substance of a human being is seen to be precisely these rights. And this is precisely the location of the master signifier. "Human being, these are your rights!" You can't reverse this and say, "Rights, these are your human beings." So what a human being is, the universal substance of humanity, is these (abstract) rights. In effect, 'human beings' who do not live up to the "substance" of these rights, are not human! "All human beings are free, and have the right to determine their existence however they see fit, as long as this does not interfere with the freedom of other human beings." So people who aren't free, aren't human. This is the problem with identifying human beings with the process of subjectivization - ie. "you are the process of integration." The problem with this understanding of universality, is that the universal is given substance - the universal is defined by the particular. What subjectivizations mask is the lack, the lack which is the subject. In other words, subjectivity isn't defined by human rights, subjectivity is precisely the impossibility of its own representation, the impossibility of arriving at human rights as a final resting place.
> this is a hoot. how does bernstein empty people of substance when he
continually compels us to remember that critique is local, specific,
historical?
That's just the problem. He defines subjectivity by identifying subjects with the processes of subjectification and social integration. So if it takes a whip and a hammer to get someone to be a subject, then so be it. Human beings are defined by the forge that made them. To arrive at reciprocity and symmetry, you have to hammer people into shape so that they fit the mould.
Hence, the terror of the French Revolution.
Bernstein's one way Hegelianism runs like this: you have the subject (reconciled substance) and then you have the rupture (the historical determinations) and then you have the synthesis (democratic praxis - ie. engaged pluralistic fallibilism) which maintains a 'dialectical' tension as rupture and reconciliation. A closer look at Hegel would reveal this to be a 'bad infinity.'
A more Zizekian reading would run like this: subjectivity (as something that is devoid of content, without substance). Then, in order to determine what the subject is, one looks to the lived reality of different people and different characterizations of subjectivity - as biological organisms, citizens... each of these "negate" the first concept, subjectivity. The "negation of the negation" (Hegel's synthesis) is not a positive formulation (praxis) rather it is identical with the the negation, the determination, except it is simply viewed different. Subjectivity is the discordance and incompatibility of the opposing determinations. The "negation of the negation" does not abolish the antagonism, but it is precisely what permits the subject from achieving a "full identity" - it is the mutilated form of subjectivity which achieves a minimum of possible consistency (this is what Lacan means when he talks about the subject as split). This minimal consistency is the sublime object which is constitutive for the subject - which is the precisely the ellusive object cause of desire, the lack which is constitutive of the subject as such. This radical negativity which is subject, in order to obtain coherency, must embody itself is some miserable and radically contingent leftover (the spirit is a bone) - the subject is nothing but the impossibility of its own signifying representation - the empty place opened up in the big Other by the failure of this representation. And this is how 'substance becomes subject' - when the subject takes upon her or himself the leftover which eludes active intervention. This taking upon oneself is the very elementary process of symbolization (the very act of 'creating' the big Other) - the substance of the subject is only substance insofar as it is experienced as substance - the subject itself is the name for this inner distance of the substance toward itself.
You must realize that I'm playing here, and being totally neurotic. A kind of ernest jesting. I cannot claim to stand by this, and offer it as an alternative reading.
ken