Movement
T: OK once more on theory, below
>From a post I received from and American now resident in Europe: "The effort
this week by Occupy Oakland to seize a space for public use -a poorly
planned action but an excellent provocation-resulted in about 400 arrests
but also in solidarity marches in at least 5 US cities, including Boston and
New York. The young activists are reminding themselves and everyone who
cares to notice that things are not over just because they are not camped
out in public."
There's no way I can improve on that. I have seldom seen such a precise characterization of the actual course all mass movements follow.
T: It doesn't support the claim inherent in your subject line. All you are showing, I very strongly suspect, is your own disillusionment with the attenuated notion of theory that you probably lived with for a long time yourself. The character of mass movements that is described above is a reality that can be known and understood. "Messiness" as a proxy for unknowability is just lazy and naive philosophy. What is precisely important is to understand the nature of mass movements. Note that I say 'understand', not, for example, 'witness' or 'perceive'.
It was this topic, how mass movements develop and grow, that was the thrust behind my interventions in the "No Theory" thread. This limited "anti-theory" (or as I would call it, this focus on the "Scope and Limits of Theory) that interests me; not mere theorizing of theory for the fun of doing theory. The needs of mass movements are the actual subject of all my writings on "Theory."
T: All of your comments on this topic have had one central issue: the unknowability of the Kantian thing-in-itself. The trouble is you don't even have an awareness of your own regression into this epistemological irrealism. "How mass movements develop and grow", you say. Please try to show without recourse to a tour de force of verbiage how this is something that cannot be the object of theory. As for the "fun of doing theory", you are trying to reduce your opponents arguments to a straw target (as you full well know) and that is neither generous nor admirable.
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