> The present assessment of Adorno, etc., however,
> in part depends on to what extent we want to keep psychoanalysis as part of
> leftist critical arsenals. While I don't go so far as to dismiss
> psychoanalysis as a form of mysticism as Carrol might put it, the portion
> I'm prepared to assign to it is a _very_ small one (simply a nod of
> recognition that we still live in the psychoanalytic century ideologically).
I can't imagine attempting to explain the widespread appeal of something like nationalism or religion without an understanding of identification and transference. If we don't know how the mind works, and I'm certainly including the cognitive sciences here, I'm pretty sure we won't be able to figure out why we do the things we do.
> I don't class psychoanalysis into the same category as evolutionary
> biology, for instance. It's a wee bit like literary interpretation, except
> that literary criticism has a stronger claim to objectivity than
> psychoanalysis does (after all, not just interpretive conventions but also
> literary texts place certain constraints upon interpretation, whereas in
> psychoanalysis only conventions seem to do).
Objectivity? (a view from nowhere?). How can a perspective that stands nowhere do anything but verify an already presupposed understanding of the world? And I *really* don't see people like Freud or Lacan or Butler or Salecl simply abiding by convention.
> Look, why do you think that Adorno was capable of coming up with his
> outrageous statement that "totalitarianism and homosexuality belong
> together"? If he had been mindful of facts as to what fascism actually did
> to homosexuals, he might have noticed that Nazis were radically and
> fundamentally anti-homo, as some other leftists of his time did. It is
> true that his homophobia might have prevented him from taking note of
> empirical evidence sticking in his face and found 'facts' to fit his
> 'theory' in any case, but that's not an argument against empirical
> investigations -- that's an argument against homophobia.
Adorno's treatment of homosexuality is guilty of theoretical incoherence - incoherence within the logic of his own theory - in extending the dominating impulse of identity thinking to explain all expressions of homosexuality. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with the repression of difference or repudiation of otherness as such - likewise heterosexuality is no guarantee in itself of either an inherent capacity to appreciate difference. Adorno's remarks about homosexuality betray a highly undifferentiated, homogenous miunderstanding of homosexuality as a singular, pscyhologically monolithic phenomenon to which the individual sensibilities and practices of all individual homosexuals correspond. As Marsha Hewitt notes, "Adorno's theoretical inconsistency with regard to homosexuality reflects a similar undifferentiated attitude toward women... Adorno's remarks on homosexuality and women provide a clear example of the dynamics of identity thinking concerning the relationship between sex and gender, where sociocultural constructions of gender issue in a corresponding set of ontological and metaphysical assumptions about individuals on whom typified gender attributes are imposed" (Hewitt, Critical Theory of Religion).
> I already said this before on this list, but to repeat, radical nominalism
> cannot explain the collective accumulation of knowledge, esp. in science.
> Science has to _work_, after all, to become exploitable, for better and
> worse. Besides, the work of science that works is not positivistic nor
> Humean, though 'scientism' or the philosophy of science can be.
The problem is, the grounding of epistemology fares no better in making its case than poetry does of being poetic. Yeah, the earth is a sphere, but this means nothing. Science can't explain why people believe the earth is round. How about this - there is almost no evidence that a real person named Jesus actually lived. Other than a vague reference by Tacutus and a historically questionable remark by Josephus - no "outside" documents or evidence exists. But 99 out of 100 people will say, "I believe Jesus was a real person." Why? Jesus wasn't even from Nazareth - he simply walked through Nazareth... and he probably wasn't a carpenter... the word is "builder" which usually means stone mason... The problem lies with the very way in which problems are formed. The answer of "yes" or "no" to the question, Did Jesus exist? is fundamentally undecideable. Yet a good scientist, of almost any stripe, will say that the question does have an answer: it's either yes or no.
Science makes a claim that it says can or cannot be verified but it offers little evidence of its own constitutive capacity to make such judgements (string theory must be true... because it is beautiful!) (the "math lead me to it"). The trick here is how we are able to convince ourselves of things.... what internal processes spontaneously formulate problems in certain ways... and the appeal of this formulation which leads to belief and identification. What is called knowledge, or the accumulation of knowledge, is largely just a meaningless mess of practical advice. And this advice is taken to be authoritative because it is called scientific. Without psychoanalysis as a vital part of any "progressive" political agenda, we will be unable to come to terms with the most elementary ways in which people associate with themselves and with others.
The shootings in Littleton is a good example to work with. What was going on that lead to such violence? A scientific answer will arrive at an answer but will do so only at the cost of subordinating the meaningful context of the question. Ironically, science is the ultimate moralism. The facts *ought* to be separate from the meaning.
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