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

[Eric]

>  > It seems to me the distinction between behaviors and identity (as in
>>  social identity) is anything but tedious -- in fact without that
>>  distinction history becomes an unintelligible blur.
>
>Aren't you the one who's always criticizing generalizations about The 
>Left? It seemed that you were always afraid that characterizing 
>central tendencies does violence to all the innumerable 
>particularities. Now you're saying that identity - a generalization 
>or central tendency it sure looks like to me - is essential to
>understanding.

This is exactly what Carrol was on about in his post on class a 
couple of months ago. I don't see how it can be maintained, this 
absolute distinction between a subject and its functioning. It sounds 
like bourgeois mysticism to me, not only because it seems 
essentialist but because it implies a subject that preexists its 
social movement. Though I could be misreading him.

Even if it were desirable to think in these terms, identity can only 
make sense as something that is produced by a subject's ensemble of 
functions. How do you separate a thing from what it does?