Well in the context of Carrol's question my answer was analytical, and about language. I was not referring to any particular label, name or concept, just pointing out that behind some of Bateson's thought was the quasi-Kantian notion that we should not reduce the phenomena we are analyzing to the label, name, or concept. The label is not identical to the phenomena being labeled. This maybe an incomplete statement but I think it is basically correct.
Also the slogan on the banner might be wrong, even if the movement is somehow something that you support, in one way or another. Even the banner, or the slogan on the banner, may be a more or less good map for where the movement is trying to go. And to extend the metaphor ridiculously, even the slogan that points the way as a map, is not the territory that we cross to reach the goal, but it is hopefully a signpost that points us in the direction of the goal. ( No matter what you think of Lenin and Trotsky there ideas of how to use slogans seems to have been something along this lines. A slogan that doesn't lead anywhere, (increase of class solidarity, transition to socialist consciousness) was a slogan that they thought was deficient. In a certain sense and to a certain extent, putting aside the idea of analytical arguments, the same thing can be said of labels.
Of course in the world of political struggle there is no clear separation between the analytical and the political, no clear distinction between maps and banners. (Perhaps only in certain areas of mathematics and physics can this distinction be maintained for a limited time. Even then, such notions as the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM were used as banners within the theory. And yet at some times you will just do analysis and at others you will make banners. It is sometimes hard to do them both at once. But I have always found hard to chew gum and walk at the same time, so this, maybe, is my own peculiar disability.)
> > In the context of "El Sur", which I was not thinking about when I was
> > replying to Carrol, it is important to remind ourselves that what ever
> > we name "El Sur", or "third world" countries, or "developing
> > countries" that the name itself usually comes out of a set of
> > assumptions, implicit or explicit, that we should unpack, in order not
> > to take the assumptions for granted (or even to accept the
> > assumptions) and in order not to put all of the countries in "one
> > basket" for every type of analysis or argument.
>
> It's not for us to name. It's for Hugo Chavez, et al. to name. For
> it is their political project.
> --
Perhaps I was too general in my use of the pronoun "we", in which case I am to be faulted on that ground of ambiguity. But the "we" in this case was simply the "we" who use the label, name, or concept, no matter where the label name, or concept originates.
We all use names. Therefore when ever "we) use names, (whom ever the pronoun "we" designates in any particular circumstance) it is good to know the implications, and assumptions of the labels, names, concepts we are using. You may say it is not for us to label or name, but some of us will still use the label or name, when ever it is used, and therefore we will still be stuck with the map/territory distinction, no matter if the name is a banner to rally around or a concept for analysis.
So here is another point. The assumptions behind a concept for analysis may be the same or different than the label used for a "banner" to rally around. What is good for a slogan might not always be good for analysis. What is good for banner should be good for at least a sign post, but might not be a good map. In any of these cases we should still unpack the distinctions between slogan and concept and realize when these notions are the same and when they should be different, and what are the assumptions and premises, in all cases. This to the best of our collective abilities. And we shouldn't confuse the label for the movement for the movement itself, the map for the territory.
Further, it is possible to support a movement without agreeing with all of the banners or slogans, or even that the names used by the movement are the best. Or in a different case, it is even possible to think that the labels used for the movement are the best without thinking that those labels are the most useful concepts for doing analysis.
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