[lbo-talk] Incommensurability, phooey (Was Re: Michelangelo , . . . .)

[ravi]

On 28 Aug, 2007, at 11:04 AM, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> If Miles is just pointing out that the meanings we
> give to various behaviors and identities vary to some
> degree over time and we have to be aware of that in
> classifying people historically, no duh, but he hasn't
> given any example of anyone here who has been
> "essentialist" in holding that there is a single
> transhistorical set of sexual behaviors and identities
> that rigidly fit all societies and all people in all
> times and places -- because no one here, an no one
> sensible, believes that.
>
> Frankly, incommesurability talk is just tedious. We
> note various behaviors, point out similarities and
> differences, remark on how the meanings and
> understandings may differ, and sometimes they differ
> little enough for us to use words we'd use to describe
> behaviors or classification, sometimes not. Generally
> pronouncements that people Other Cultures are totally
> alien beings who concepts cannot be translated into
> ours area  tiresome trope from the 1960s and 70s that
> have been generally knocked into a cocked hat.

The last sentence does not make "incommensurability ... tedious". It  
makes the abuse of incommensurability tedious. But that's true enough  
-- about the abuse of most things. And you, as an admirer of PKF  
among others, know the difference between use and abuse of that  
particular idea!

BTW, while none here might hold the belief described in the second  
part of the first paragraph, some strong version of it is implied in  
the "inborn" argument (which I have criticised for other reasons,  
elsewhere).

	--ravi