> Do you see anywhere in the entire post where I characterised those
people you listed as neopragmatists?
I gave a list of folks I like, only a few of which could even arguably be called neoprags. You said that if you wanted to beat up on neoprags, you'd refer to specific texts. I inferred you thought all the writers were neoprags. I think it wasa reasonable inference.
>I'm starting to seriously doubt your inclination to read when you can opt
for a missreading that makes you able to justify some show of indignation
-- but none of these indignations bear much scrutiny do they?
We'll see
>But as Yoshie and I were saying a few weeks back,
>pomoistas don't have to pay attention to Marxism anymore, it's so passe.
> And this is relevant or true how? Oh, I see, it's not the content, but the
gesture of filiation that you need here. You're more marxist than me
As almost anyone on this list will tell you, I'm barely Marxist at all. I'm a
liberal democrat in politics, a market socialsit in economics, and a pragmatist in philosophy. But I do pay attention to Marxism, in particular the best work in contemporary Marxist theory, the analytical Marxists.
> Your version of marxism doesn't seem to
include much attention to concepts like real and formal subsumption,
Sure it does. I have in fact discussed these at porobably tedious length in oublished writings. See, e.g., my What's Wrong with Exploitation, Nous 1995, In Defense of Exploitation, Excon & Phil 1995. But I was mystified with your analogizing whatever it was you were analogizing to R/F subsumption, which I thought had to do with the rise of the factory system in the industrial revolution. You never explained what you mean in terms I could understand.
>1) antifoundationalism, the idea that all knowledge is theoretiucal and none
>is basic or given; it all depends on your subject position;
In Rorty, antifoundationalism does resolve down into the self-evidence of
the particular stance: "we, amercians" being one of his favourites.
Obviously there are different versions of antifoundationalism. Sellars, and antifoundationalist who much inflienced Rorty, thought that direct observation of things like red was noninferential but theortically dependant.
Feyerabend seems to think there is no such thing even as direct observation, it's all theory all the way down. Rorty, btw, does not think that the "solidarity" he imputes to "Americans" is self-evident but that its inescapable for "Americans." There's no "self-evidence" there if that means that American values, whatever those are, are individuyally given, one by one to all AMerucans. He just thinks that given wheere Amerucans are, you can't tear up all the planls in the boat and replace them with something utterly different.
> Lyotard perhaps, but in the same way that Rorty understands foundations?
Now you are really beginning to irritate me. I expressly said that these are themes, not that everyone I listed holds identical positions.
> But Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze/Guattari??
Derrida, whom I do not pretend to understand very well, spends a lot of time going after phenomenological foundaltionalism of the sort Husserl esposed. Foucault's early work, particulay the Order of Things, emphasized tahe our classifications of similarities was historically dependent and not read off the naturee of the world. Recall the discudssion of the Chinese Encyclopaedia? D&G,w ell, I could go on, but what's the poiunt. I don't have to prove to you that I have raed this stuff.
I am, incidentally, an antifoundatuionalist myself, being a neoprag and former Rorty student.
> I don't know anyone who
might say that all knowledge is theoretical, since I've no idea who might
still use "theoretical" in contradistinction to "real". Same goes for
subjective and objective.
Oh, dear. Look, kiddo, I think you really should wrap your head around some of the main points in modern Anglo-American philosophy. The claim that all knowledge is theoretical comes out of a long discussion based on the logical empiricists' idea that scientific theory was sort of a summary of observation. Analysis thens hwoed that observation and theory were not so distinct as the LEs thought. So the opposition is theoretical/observational.
Now, "real" isa differents tory. Lots of pomos and others conclude from the claim that all knowledge, including observatioanl knowledge, is theoretical, in the sense that even what you observe depends in large part on your theory, that there is no reality beyond our theories, nothing they are about or theories of. You really never heard this? Honest to God? Where have you been? I think the inference is bad, but it has been kicking around for a long time. See, for example, Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolution (my canon) or The Order of Things (yours, but mine too).
>2) antirealism, that there is no extralinguistic reality apart from the way
>we talk about it;
> Eh?... Who says this? You're not going to claim that Baudrillard does,
even though you haven't read where he might say this, but you have your
suspicions...
No, I won't make any claims about Baudrilliard, whom I haven't read. But Foucault sure as hell says it, and I am tolerably sure Derrida does, LaClau and Mouffe certainly say it, so does Rorty, though ihe backd away once pressed. Don't be disingenuous. It's a common pomo claim. Not just pomo of course.
>3) antiessentialism, the idea that all natures are wholly constructed, there
>are no real property that all members of a group objectivelly share apart
>from the way theya re conceived; the denial of objective interests
> Denial? Who does this?
Most of the above. Look, we can't talk if you are going to pretend these people don't hold their major theses.
> Anyways, I think you're
reading 'pomo' as an amplified species of social constructionism
Bingo.
> -- which
is part of the problem I keep mentioning: 'pomo' as the way in which a
whole host of writers got inserted into the US academic factory and its
pre-existing disputes.
Yeah, I'm talking about realw orld pomo, the way it plays out here in America. I think as well it played out that awy in France, mainly to attack the then-Marxist dominated French scene. Obviosuly the tune plays differenly in different contexts. In France, pomo and poststructuralism were initially exciting ways of looking through different lenses at things that convential CP, ALthusserian, and Sartrean Marxsim didn't see or wouldn't acknowledge. Here it's just quietist social constriuctionalism, an acadcemic industry of no particular distinction, for the most part.
> A bit like Taylor translates Foucault into an
acceptable version of the one of the US institutional canons -- quite
contrary to the Foucault I've read.
Taylor? Are you talking about Charles Taylor, The Canadian Hegelian communitarian? I never say any interest he had in Foucault.
>4) rejection of historical metanarratives of progress such as Marxism or
>ltraditional iberalism
Lyotard perhaps. Others might know better. Perhaps Rorty. Who else?
Certainly Marx doesn't have a metanarrative of progress in the way Rorty
might understand this.
Sure he does. Rorty is no fool, although he is raecting against an old-left culture that no longer exists--his dad was a poetr and renegade Trot who ended up writing anticommunsit screeds for Reader's Digest. But Marx believes that there is a progressive series of modes of production froim slavery through feudalism to capitalism to communism, driven by an internal dynamic. See, inter alia, the 1859 Preface. Rorty rejects that sort of model.
>5) multiculturalism, a proclivity to emphasize social analysis in terms of
>constrictedrace and gender identities
> Now you're kidding me, right?
No, you msut be kidding me. Pomos don't goa round analysing thing in terms of race and gender? The subject positions of various (particularly) subordinate groups, women., Black womwn, Latina women, etc isn''t the mainb topic of discussion when they get together? The Rortyians aside, of course. What is it that they do talk about then? Or maybe you are just dismissing the boring US academic scene who pomo in fact lives.
>Rorty, who writes clean. literate prose, at least explains why he abandoned
>traditional argument
> And what makes you assume that others don't.
Because I have read a lot of it.
> Who doesn't? Baudrillard
certainly has (it's all there in _The PolEc of the Sign_), Derrida does all
the time,
I can't speak about Baudrilliard, but if Derriuda is your idea of clean literarte proise, we live on different planets.
> Deleuze and Guattari too;
Well, fun, sure. But clean and literate? It's very obscure.
> Foucault also spends ages on it...
He's an exception among the French, which is one reason I like him. His writing isn't pretty, but it's generally functional and servicable.
> And
they each have quite different replies, ways of arguing, etc.
Yeah, well. and so? But I was mainly thinking about the bult of the American academic literarure in pomo, which is clotted and turgid, ugly and osbcure.
>some good pomo. Iris Young has a postmodernist discussion of
>justice. She presents arguments in terms that even I can follow
> [Laclau et Mouffe snipped. Sure, I agree with you about L&M, though I
would have used words like 'liberal' and 'pluralist' and they perhaps
wouldn't deny it. But this is illustrative of what, exactly, other than
something about L&M?
I find them to be pretty typical.
> Does it occur to you that 'those pomos' you like (Young and Rorty) are
yanks? I'm not saying you only like yanks, but that idiom might well
explain a lot more than you're granting about 'prose', 'argument', and
'clarity'.
No, I think not. I dispise most American pomo. I think what makes the difference is that Young, Fraser, and Rorty actually care to argue intelligibly. Taht may have to do with having been exposed to analytical philosophy,w here lucid argument is at a premium. And I am nota bigot about continental philsoophy. I love my Germans, from Kant and Hegel through Marx and on. The idiom is quite different, but these folks knew what rigorous argument si supposed to be. The French and those who follow them, don't.
--jks