Norms of the Sociological Profession (was Re: Medieval Institutions)

Lisa & Ian Murray seamus at accessone.com
Fri Mar 23 20:28:52 PST 2001


k.


> The ability of a mirror to reflect is conditioned by its
> opacity. It is a pane of glass, like a window; but, unlike a window, it is
> not transparent nor even translucent. Opacity requires the impenetrability
> of light. In an early essay, Jean-Paul Sartre criticized the Cartesian
> tradition of reflexivity in terms of opacity. For Sartre, the
> transcendental ego to which the dualism of reflexivity gives rise has no
> reason for being. Such an ego would "be a sort of center of
> opacity.... This superfluous 'I' would be a hindrance...would tear
> consciousness from itself; it would slide into every consciousness like an
> opaque blade. Sartre, at least in his early work, rejected the opacity of
> the transcendental ego. However, Sartre's heirs -- contemporary French
> theorists associated with poststructuralism and postmodernism -- have
> enthusiastically embraced the fundamental opacity of, not only the self,
> but all projects which aim toward a reflective consciousness or knowledge
> of the social or society. Such projects, postmodernists complain,
> subscribe to an essentialist ontology and a foundationalist
> epistemology. They presuppose the possibility of locating a
> self-identical, irreducible reality as the object of inquiry and that
> social reality can and should be known objectively.
************

There's that damn mirror again! Break the mirror! The Buddhists have been onto post-self-identity for 2500 years. Hug the Boddhi tree of multi-valued logics
:-> Nagarjuna, where art thou?


>
> Essentialism and foundationalism ultimately underwrite claims for the
> autonomy of sociology and the possibility of a neutral sociological
> language which directly corresponds to its referent -- society/the
> social. Sociology's claim to a superior epistemic status resides in the
> assertion that the sociological project is product of modern, industrial
> capitalist society and yet it is, nonetheless, fully capable of providing a
> scientific, objective theory of the whole of society. <...>

********

Paging Malcolm Ashmore.
>
>
> finally, check out the subdiscipline: "sociology of sociology" and the
> work of karl mannheim, among others.
**************

And David Bloor.....

Ian



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