Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
>Kelley, does it also not follow from your argument that causal theories of
>social maladies that imply the impossibility of their solution through a
>better "administration of things" (instead of class struggle) would fall
>outside of the realm of the policy "sciences" or the regime of truth
>generally--becoming a kind of 'soft' knowledge.
yes. there's is a related critique of the ways in which "interpretive" [soft--is that how you mean it?] theory and methodologies/methods are conceptually related to what i shall call a "politics of understanding" which, likewise, reinscribes the status quo. what is needed, instead is a distinct critical theory/methodology/political practice. basically this argument works off harbermas's claims about distinctly different kinds of social science knowledges--empirical-analytic, historical-hermeutic, and critical [forgotten exact term too lazy to look up!] but it's a stronger critique that employs analytic/pragmatist insights in philosophy of science in order to strengthen the limitations of other approaches.
k