> > It's like saying, you are where you came from,
without exception.
> but i don't think this is what bernstein is saying.... [selves]
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....
Kelley, I love you sweet 'ums, and I love this: an institution that is strong enough to suggest... Institutions don't "suggest" one come to the table, the table *is* the institution, along with the lock on the door.
> 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....
Yes, and when you put it like this, isn't Zizek's summary of Habermas's theoretical argument completely appropritate: pathetic. We ought to love one another. They nailed some guy to a cross for saying this a long time ago. I suppose it's revolutionary. Oddly enough, Rorty says the same thing - "don't hurt one another." Institutions simply turn this moral ought into a practical imperative. The result being absolute bitterness (ie. Woodstock '99, the LA riots...). The problem with it is that people don't identify with it institutionally. It doesn't cater to their fantasies (see Renata Salecl on Rawls, The Spoils of Freedom). If you are told to love someone that pisses you off, don't this just piss you off more? Aren't don't you just get damn right hostile when you are *forced* to sit beside them and make small talk? At least that's usually how I feel.
> 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.
Do you think Bernstein would make a distinction between a "mature" subject and an "immature" subject? I suspect he would, and this is my gievance. He borrows a hierarchy to escape the paradox of subjectivity. Just like B. Russell does to escape the paradox in set theory.
ken