lbo-talk-digest V1 #4737

[Kelley]

At 11:21 AM 8/14/01 -0400, ravi wrote:
>Kelley wrote:
>>i pretty much agree with ken. very few criticisms have been raised that 
>>make any sense. i post at length explaining it all and not one of you has 
>>bothered to engage what i've written. now, sure, you might not have time 
>>to learn what it is we're talking about, but then, why bother other than 
>>you're just interested in railing against H...
>
>i have never read habermas and probably never will (only because of
>lack of time, since i have no particular beef against the man), but
>i remain quite interested if utterly confused by the various issues
>discussed in this thread. i am not sure there are others such as i,
>lacking the necessary knowledge of contemporary continental
>philosophy (my own knowledge is limited to hans georg gadamer), but
>i would encourage you not to despair! it has been an interesting
>experience from up here in the peanut gallery ;-) and an educational
>one. of course your post above is probably a shrewd rhetorical
>elevation of the ante...
>
>         --ravi

well, thanks, but i think doug has put a permanent end to any more habermas.

a while back, when i was working with the Centertown Project, we were 
creating a series of town forums about various problems that plagued the 
economic life of a community. It was a frustrating experience for a lot of 
reasons that i don't have time to explain. but we hit upon one of the most 
productive ways to overcome the problems we were having. we introduced what 
i call, a 'mediating object' (melanie klein): it was a documentary film 
about the controversial closing of the Brockway Truck plant. People 
actually engaged in conversations about the meaning and nature of work, how 
to deal with plant closing, etc., once they had a common object of inquiry 
between them to discuss so that the conversation could then move beyond the 
particularities of the plant closing to larger issues.

kelley