> turn it around and say, "i saw a flik and thought it was great,
then someone told me how much it sucked." while i could no
longer see the movie in the same light, my experience of
delight and enjoyment first time round doesn't go away, my
memory of that isn't replaced by another memory.
But surely you can imagine an instance in which your enjoyment could be removed by a retroactive interpretation... like if you found out how much the performers were paid? My point is that we construct our past from the future.
> >Jealous history is an effect which precedes its cause (its
hidden kernel, its meaning).
> ????
We suffer the symptom, and then we determine the cause, as a justification of the effect. So the explanation / meaning of the cause comes after the effect. The "cause" of WWI can only be seen *after* its effects (to use an example from high school).
> >Bernstein's regulative ideas stem from Habermas's
pragmatic analysis of language.
> where do you see regulative ideal of discourse ethics
operative as strictly that? why is DE divorced from the social
here?
DE isn't divorced from the social here. Bernstein's interest in Habermas's reconstructive project is a practical one: as a "strong practical consequence for orienting our ethical and political activity." Bernstein collapses Habermas's reconstructive project into practice (which, in a sense, it already was). He replaces with a hope or a belief (a pragmatic performative attitude) in universals and "strong" reason. This is a shrewd gesture. One possible danger here is the possible collapse of theory itself: everything is reduced to a performative attitude in conversation. So B does see, as far as I can read, that discourse ethics serves in a regulatory way for the way in which we approach a conversation. His position is quite close to Gadamer actually.
> what is the process of subjectivization.
Bernstein understand subjectivization to take place in community... and the 'fullest subject' (my term) is the decentered subject ("what has come to be called the decentering of the subject is integral to the pragmatic project") (328).
> > So he installs a *pre-political ethic* into the very idea of
what it means to be a citizen in a democracy...
> but particularly so because what those mean are local and
specific. a good citizen at the bad subjects list is quite
different from the good citizen at lbo and different still from
other lists.
But clearly Bernstein is interested in making us "decentered subjects." He acknowledges plurality, and tips his hat but, in the final determination, he's really interested in folks who listen well and speak their mind. This is the pre-political ethics. This is the crucial difference between Bernstein and Zizek. Bernstein demands (yes, demands!) openness, reciprocity, and a democratic ethos. Zizek simply notes that the only political ethics that can be said to exist is this: don't give up on your desire (without privileging any particular model).
Can we at least agree that Bernstein thinks a decentered subject is qualitatively "more democratic" than an egoist?
> > The subject is not the substance of the retroactive
imposition of meaning and narrative.
> huh? this makes no sense. so the subject makes meaning
autonomously?
Yes! We derive meaing from our fantasies. But our fantasies are a synthesis of the Other (the symbolic order). This is why the Freudian unconsciousness is so important.
> so here though you've misunderstood what he's said. it's
not simply about the regulative ideal of the respectful and
reciprocal citizen and it's not a universal. the citizen is local,
specific, historical and always has content which is specific to
that particular enactment of citizenship. see, you leave out
society which is what bernstein is cautioning against in
that statement.
Bernstein is enough of a hermeneuticist to think that reason itself is the universal (something that we all share in common,
something which is not dimished by this plurality). This is how he holds all of these theorists together - by invoking a common interest in reason, whether in the form of irony, fallibilism, or arguments.
A Theory of Social Change
Subjective activities are coordinated by the pulse of desire. Key to this process is transference and identification. Hermeneutics argues that social change is mediated by mutual understanding, a practical attitude about a common object. Gadamer, in Truth and Method, calls this the *miracle of understanding.* Pace mysticism, psychoanalysis explain, in detail, how this happens. What exactly goes on in the process agreement (transference). For more details on this: Hegel / Marx. The motor of social change derives from antagonsims, which produce symptoms, which we more or less identify, which guide our activities in communities (Our nation, our selves!).
Habermas has the lifeworld, the background consensus fastened together by the spellbinding power of the sacred. Gadamer has miracles. Durkheim has glue. Weber has rationalization, Marx has labour, Hegel has Geist, Castoriadis has imagination... change is negotiated in everything from conversation to war. In the end, its all a dream.
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