>
> On Jun 6, 2008, at 2:17 PM, shag wrote:
>
> > charles obviously thinks his member(ship in the left) is going to
> > shrink
> > or something.
>
> But if we just keep the Lesbian Phallus under wraps, then the masses
> will sign on with an expropriate the expropriators agenda!
Jokes rarely answer questions though some times they can reveal questions, or reveal the avoidance of questions.
It seems to me that Charles, Shag, Butler, and Doug share a point of view..... They all think that there is some basic ontological difference or sameness between biology and sociality and thus studying the biological and the sociological are fundamentally separate or fundamentally the same. Thus the argument over what is called "social construction" is confused by the unstated ontological assumptions. Everybody is simply assuming that there is a fundamental ontological difference between biology and sociality or that they know what little difference there is. The assumption is there but not stated and the heat of the argument comes from the inability to overcome these unstated assumptions.
No one has ever made a convincing argument that the biological and the sociological are ontologically different. There may be different ways of studying the two as their are different ways of studying the chemical and the mental. But the fundamental assumption that they are ontologically different is not warranted. Neither is the assumption that they are not ontologically different.
The only way to study either the biological aspects of human beings or the sociological aspects of human beings is by assuming that we don't know the answer to certain fundamental questions like if there is a fundamental difference between "social 'construction'" and "biological 'constraints'".
In other disciplines I simply accept the fact that biology and chemistry and physics are different areas of study. It is possible that there is a fundamental ontological difference between the biological and the "merely" physical. If there is such a difference there has been no way to state it. There has been no helpful way to argue one way or the other either for or against the ontological difference. It is possible that the biological is fundamentally different than the mere physical. Then, again, it is possible that they are simply differing aspects of each other. The biological and the physical can only be dealt with as separate areas of study, and not as either fundamentally ontologically the same or fundamentally ontologically different.
It is the same with the ontological difference between the biological and the sociological. There is no way to determine what that difference is, if there is any difference at all, or if the question is simply meaningless. Everything I have read of Butler's (or of Foucault for that matter) seems to assume that the biological and the sociological are ontologically separate and not just separate areas of study. Yet they never argue for their basic ontological assumptions they simply assume them. Thus confusion is compounded beyond just the confusion I have in reading their prose.
Again my assumption is that we should admit our lack of knowledge in this area. We don't know one way or another what fundamental differences are between the biological and the sociological, if there are any differences at all, or if how to state these differences. I think that this is the same case with "the mental" and "the physical" and thus you run into the same heated arguments.
I have noticed though that on this list, arguments for lack of knowledge or humility of knowledge often fall flat. Most intellectuals have a hard time maintaining this kind of negative capability, which is the value of those very few intellectuals who are good poets.
Jerry