godamn it ken i have stuff to do but i just want to get this and i KANT:
>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.
but i don't think this is what bernstein is saying. in terms of coming to the 'table' of people speaking this is what is minimally required. but don't think for a minute, bernstein says, that those selves are only composed of their rights to be there. those selves bring traditions, prejudices, cultures, gender, race, etc. they are embodied, historical, local, specific selves. this is not reducing selves to their rights, but simply arguing that there needs to be a normative ideal, enacted in and through social institutions, that is strong enough to suggest that we ought to come to the table with certain habits of thought and action: we ought to respect one another, try to communicate as best we can, not retranslate into our own language but respect the vitality of someone's else languages, to recognize that we have prejudices that aren't easy to shake and/or to come knowing that we will likely discover that we have them, and to respect the lived reality --the life of the momentary community that is created out of the situation of being at the table. those are the social preconditions--in addition to the 'free spaces' required for such dialogues to take place, what Habermas calls the public sphere. but the content of the selves that come to the table is NOT static, it changes by what happens there and those selves shape what happens there. so, simply by virtue of saying that there are these requirements does not mean that people can only be these requirements. indeed, that people don't act on them, that people don't become them, that they may in fact change them means that this just doesn't happen.
now you mentioned something about constitutions. this is the same thing. the bougeois liberal constitution seeks to minimally and procedurally define the the polity: the relationship be/t gov't branches, between fed'l/state, between state/citizens. the notion of citizenship in the US constitution is one of a rights bearer, as citizens who ostensibly create the state, who have rights to alter it and, indeed, overturn the state and create one anew [throw in the dec. of ind to further elaborate b/c that's not fully in the C]. but, that's the minimal institutional requirement for establishing representative democracy and it cannot and does not fully determine what constitutes citizenship, because people carry around and act on a whole bunch of other ideas about what it means to be a citizen, what one *ought* to do to be viewed a good citizen. there is no requirement in the US that people vote, but they do. that 50% do is sometimes seen as a cause for despair, but given that it's not a requirement we ought to ask what on earth makes people vote then and heck it's a miracle that 50% bother because they don't have to in any formal sense.
so i just don't get this worry over the supposed lack of content and the supposed reduction of 'the subject' to the process of coming to be a subject. '
k