Shag: -clip- A social constructionist, and you don't have to be pomo/poststruct/whatever to take this view, would ask to what extent we're projecting when we perceive orderliness in nature. indeed, I seem to recall that positivists no longer insist on invariable natural laws, but look for statistical probabilities. Someone with more of a natural sciences background should jump in here....
Poststructuralists/Pomos/whatever take this further though and don't worry about how our biases, beliefs, assumptions, etc. shape how we see nature, instead, they get at _how_ this narrative of how nature works is part of the way power operates -- how such conceptions of nature are productive or generative of various struggles for power.
In other words, implicit in chuck's response here is the assumption of our ability to finally grasp nature as it is, without our biases shaping our perception. If we just get out of our disciplinary straightjackets and embrace nature, unmediated, we can finally get at the truth of nature. It will, in all its orderliness, reveal itself to us, unmediated by power relations. Its a dream of deliverance from uncertainty, in a pomo world view, a dream of deliverance from having to be responsible for the way our biases, beliefs, etc. etc. are, uh, always already there, that there is no Archimedean Point from which to stand to take some dog's eye view and, finally at long last, see the natural world as it is, as if we aren't there to observe it. blahbeddy blah blah.
sorry. outta time.
shag
^^^ CB: This seems like a good summary of post-structuralism's crux issues.
How would you apply this critique specifically to Marxism , historical materialism, the theory of classes ? On the face of it, Marxism does not seem to have bias _for_ the power structure in the way it looks at the power structure. It seems to have a bias against the powers-that-be.
So, when social constructionists include Marxism in their critique, they seem to do a service _for_ the power structure or ruling class whose biases the social constructionists claim to be exposing. If social constructionists are exposing how power works, they should be promoting ,not subverting Marxism. I'd go further and say social constructionists should be upholding , not demolishing, philosophical materialism, but that's a longer discussion (see posts from the last few weeks on materialism)
Marxism seems to be a science that already, before post-structuralism, exposes how power works. So, when social constructionists (postmodernists/poststructuralists/whatever ?) use their approach to knock down Marxism, I become suspicious that postology is working for the powers-that-be, helping to cover up, not expose how power works. See what I mean ?
Marxism isn't a master narrative. It is a slave/peasant/worker's narrative. So, when somebody pops up claiming that Marxism is a master narrative, one has to wonder whether they are actually working for the master ( and don't know it :>) ).
As to whether we can observe nature directly, that reminds of Kant's unknowable-things-in- themselves. I subscribe to the Hegel/Engels way of dealing with that. In a few words, practice as the test of theory cuts throw the problem that our cultural/symbol system bias mediates our observation of objective reality.
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