Sunday, 9 May 2010
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Reply to: A Brief Remark on Ideology
I think the problem with your interlocutor’s argument is less one of discourse vs. objectivity/realism or the overemphasis of signification as, to borrow a Latourism, argumentative ‘short-circuiting’. The argument certainly over-privileges ideology but I think that this is less to do with the character of ideology versus whatever else as with reductionism (which can itself take various forms besides ‘ideology’ per se).
So, there is a bridge on the road leading to a beach. The bridge is too low to allow buses past. Poor people tend to take buses therefore poor people’s access to the beach is unfairly limited by the bridge. No problems here.
Your interlocutor suggests that the bridge is somehow a materialization or encrustation of ideology – you stipulate, quite rightly, that, as it stands (so to speak), it is a bridge! No more, no less. It is not a canvas, or a cinema screen and human cognition is neither the paint nor the projection required to make these ontological tabula rasa ‘come alive’. The bridge needs construction and maintenance by human hands but it wants for nothing in the moment. In other words, its being subsists in the short term apart from ideology, though it relies upon humans to exist in the long term.
Does this mean that the bridge’s shortcomings (pun intended) have nothing to do with ideology? Not at all – but nor does it mean the contrary. To establish this one way or the other requires substantially more labour – one must interrogate the bridge’s history; go and find planning records, interview the architect (if still alive), find out who and what was involved with the planning of the height of the bridge. Perhaps it was the work of a cabal of right-wing politicians, perhaps it was the result of a negligent planning process that excluded the voices of poor people, perhaps it is a very old bridge and the materials it was built from limited its size. None of this is known a priori; to short-circuit the argument by attributing a pre-established, pre-fabricated cause is insufficient. Ideology may well have played a part in this situation, it may not have.
One could equally short-circuit the argument with ‘objectivism’ (of various sorts) rather than ideology yet all of that is to be established and it is always open.
The bridge is ideological and it is objective – which aspect of its being becomes relevant in any given moment requires labour.
So, the question for me is not so much whether the bridge is an ideological construction or an objective one so much as what connections can be traced and how much labour one wishes to put into the investigation. Its shortcomings may be ideological or not – it is an empirical question in the Latourian sense of that word.
That said, the act of reducing this situation to ideology clearly indicates a preference for idealism! But this cannot be countered with objectivism of whatever sort without what I would call, again with M. Latour, ‘experimental metaphysics’!
I think the problem with your interlocutor’s argument is less one of discourse vs. objectivity/realism or the overemphasis of signification as, to borrow a Latourism, argumentative ‘short-circuiting’. The argument certainly over-privileges ideology but I think that this is less to do with the character of ideology versus whatever else as with reductionism (which can itself take various forms besides ‘ideology’ per se).
So, there is a bridge on the road leading to a beach. The bridge is too low to allow buses past. Poor people tend to take buses therefore poor people’s access to the beach is unfairly limited by the bridge. No problems here.
Your interlocutor suggests that the bridge is somehow a materialization or encrustation of ideology – you stipulate, quite rightly, that, as it stands (so to speak), it is a bridge! No more, no less. It is not a canvas, or a cinema screen and human cognition is neither the paint nor the projection required to make these ontological tabula rasa ‘come alive’. The bridge needs construction and maintenance by human hands but it wants for nothing in the moment. In other words, its being subsists in the short term apart from ideology, though it relies upon humans to exist in the long term.
Does this mean that the bridge’s shortcomings (pun intended) have nothing to do with ideology? Not at all – but nor does it mean the contrary. To establish this one way or the other requires substantially more labour – one must interrogate the bridge’s history; go and find planning records, interview the architect (if still alive), find out who and what was involved with the planning of the height of the bridge. Perhaps it was the work of a cabal of right-wing politicians, perhaps it was the result of a negligent planning process that excluded the voices of poor people, perhaps it is a very old bridge and the materials it was built from limited its size. None of this is known a priori; to short-circuit the argument by attributing a pre-established, pre-fabricated cause is insufficient. Ideology may well have played a part in this situation, it may not have.
One could equally short-circuit the argument with ‘objectivism’ (of various sorts) rather than ideology yet all of that is to be established and it is always open.
The bridge is ideological and it is objective – which aspect of its being becomes relevant in any given moment requires labour.
So, the question for me is not so much whether the bridge is an ideological construction or an objective one so much as what connections can be traced and how much labour one wishes to put into the investigation. Its shortcomings may be ideological or not – it is an empirical question in the Latourian sense of that word.
That said, the act of reducing this situation to ideology clearly indicates a preference for idealism! But this cannot be countered with objectivism of whatever sort without what I would call, again with M. Latour, ‘experimental metaphysics’!
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Middlesex 'University' Philosophy Dept. to Close
The Philogosphere is ablaze with indignation and I must confess, I feel a little sick: Middlesex 'University' (this institution no longer deserves the title) has announced its intention to close its entire philosophy department - a department that is arguably the most successful of any in the humanities in a post-1992 university; a department that is undoubtedly the finest place to study continental philosophy in the UK; a department that is both financially viable and as far as research quality goes, I had previously assumed, the jewel in the crown of an ambitious 'university'.
I have a personal connection to this insofar as I had hoped to study in this department next year - an ambition apparently thwarted.
The reason given for the closure is financial - that, while the department is financially viable, it is not as potentially profitable as other areas. If this is the real reason then this is mind bogglingly stupid and repulsive on every level that I can think of. Not only is it the most anti-intellectual thing I've ever heard but for anything calling itself a 'university', even if it is only as a matter of branding, to close its most widely recognised intellectual success story seems simply bizarre.
I can only assume that there is a little more to this than has, as of yet, met the eye. While philosophy at Middlesex has achieved worldwide recognition I can't imagine anyone working there being particularly open to the direction the 'university' as a whole has taken. See, for instance, the opening of a Dubai campus and the Dean's cringe-inducing videos showing how business and academia can 'help each other out'. Might the decision have been made more on the basis of this useful asset being a long term hinderance? It seems possible. A dark day for (what remains of) my faith in academia!
http://savemdxphil.wordpress.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/29/philosophy-minorities-middleqsex-university-logic
I have a personal connection to this insofar as I had hoped to study in this department next year - an ambition apparently thwarted.
The reason given for the closure is financial - that, while the department is financially viable, it is not as potentially profitable as other areas. If this is the real reason then this is mind bogglingly stupid and repulsive on every level that I can think of. Not only is it the most anti-intellectual thing I've ever heard but for anything calling itself a 'university', even if it is only as a matter of branding, to close its most widely recognised intellectual success story seems simply bizarre.
I can only assume that there is a little more to this than has, as of yet, met the eye. While philosophy at Middlesex has achieved worldwide recognition I can't imagine anyone working there being particularly open to the direction the 'university' as a whole has taken. See, for instance, the opening of a Dubai campus and the Dean's cringe-inducing videos showing how business and academia can 'help each other out'. Might the decision have been made more on the basis of this useful asset being a long term hinderance? It seems possible. A dark day for (what remains of) my faith in academia!
http://savemdxphil.wordpress.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/29/philosophy-minorities-middleqsex-university-logic
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Beauty pt.1
By asking the question of beauty and then fixing our gaze on art are we not selling ourselves, as human beings, far short? Beauty is unimaginable and it is personal. Deeply, deeply personal. I am reminded -- this word is key -- of a childhood memory. Why, I don't know. But I am. I am reminded of my grandfather's war medals. Some day I will inherit them. What could these strange lumps of metal mean to me? More or less a socialist! More or less a pacifist! A child of the '80s no less! They mean to me a great deal, in fact. Not that I was aware of this until a moment ago. Not until I shed a tear writing this... I am reminded of the dusty box in which they were kept, underneath old papers of what meaning I do not know. In this memory my father is showing them to me and whether by instruction or intuition I know where they came from and how important they are. If this happened precisely as I recall ... I don't recall... -- it is unimportant. The moment is saturated with sentiment and no little pathos. My father had, on the whole, a poor relationship with his -- ours is far better but to a large extent distant. This recaptured -- or should it be reconstructed? -- memory turns sharply on one point: though my father was frequently ashamed of his father with his conservatism, his casual racism, simply his age, there is no mistaking that in this moment, in this memory, in his eyes he is so, unmistakably, inarticulably proud. From father to son and father to son, did Freud ever explore this inarticulable sense of pride? And what consequence this memory 'politically'? Surely I am bound by distanciation in time and space from the blood soaked battlefields of the prior century on which these aforementioned strange lumps of metal gained meaning to reject all manner of attachment to these celebrations of nationhood and bloody murder dressed as sacrifice? Are we not iconoclasts? Are we not out to expose false idols? To show the strangeness of these strange lumps of metal? To show how power grows, disseminates, encapsulates, inculcates, totalises? As if we could... How am I to understand this memory buried so deep yet springing to mind so suddenly and now so presently? What was my Proustian trigger? Not tea, not cake not falling backwards off an uneven cobble stone! Causality is clearly a ridiculous notion in this case. What can I say except that this is beautiful? Terrible but beautiful. Oddly shameful but beautiful. Impossible but beautiful. Tragic, riven with tragedy, but glowing with beauty -- a dark beauty, a beauty only barely apprehended through blurry, tearful eyes. It is precisely my inability to make any kind of sense of this ridiculous event that makes it beautiful. I am, it seems, attached at my core, at my gut, to war, nationalism and history. Who knew?! How am I to approach a beauty so fragile? Will it not shatter purely by the force of my approach? This seems likely. And is this not beauty itself? By definition elusive?
Will, then, beauty save the world? I feel on the basis of this brief and self-indulgent introspection I can answer this question most clearly: beauty is no army; it cannot be mobilised; it cannot be deployed; it cannot be disciplined. Yet beauty emerges from all these things! From war, from the state, from discipline (though certainly not these things alone -- but from all things)! It has attached itself to me -- a most unlikely victim! And, as this is a state of politics, I am quite sure that I am not alone. No, beauty cannot save the world because the world can only be made with tools that endure and shape our grasp. But the world is beautiful -- and we might often wish it was not. It is and this is nearly all there is to be said about it. Beauty is not a saviour but it is a reprieve. It is an island, not a continent. Empathy, not essence. It is a moment, not a world. A picture, not a story. And lest this become a sermon, let us be thankful just for that.
Will, then, beauty save the world? I feel on the basis of this brief and self-indulgent introspection I can answer this question most clearly: beauty is no army; it cannot be mobilised; it cannot be deployed; it cannot be disciplined. Yet beauty emerges from all these things! From war, from the state, from discipline (though certainly not these things alone -- but from all things)! It has attached itself to me -- a most unlikely victim! And, as this is a state of politics, I am quite sure that I am not alone. No, beauty cannot save the world because the world can only be made with tools that endure and shape our grasp. But the world is beautiful -- and we might often wish it was not. It is and this is nearly all there is to be said about it. Beauty is not a saviour but it is a reprieve. It is an island, not a continent. Empathy, not essence. It is a moment, not a world. A picture, not a story. And lest this become a sermon, let us be thankful just for that.
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Something gains substance by its unique relational emplotment not in spite of it. A substantial thing is related to but non-identical with anything else. The more unique the more coherent; the more coherent the more substantial; the more substantial the more unique (in a spiral-form rather than a circular sense with the missing dimension being relationality).
Latour's Substantiality
Harman criticises Latour for reducing everything to relations. Against this Harman posits substance as that which withdraws from all relationality. Latour of course also has a conception of substance - in fact it is central to his ontology. Whereas Harman sees substance as an absolute distinction - either something is a substance or it is not - Latour, as he so often does, gradientialises it - something becomes a substance through its trials of strength; substantiality is a badge of honour, a hard won achievement. What is stopping us from reconciling these two positions? What if we abandon Harman's absolute distinction between substance and relationality and instead see substance as something earned rather than something simply inherited? Can we not say that the more substantial an entity becomes the more it withdraws from relationality? The fire consumes the cotton in its entirety only if the cotton is relatively ill defined in relation to the fire. If the respective entities are firmer, more distinct and substantial then each have properties that elude relationality - i.e. their encounter through burning.
Sunday, 21 March 2010
On Latour's Reflections on Critique
Denunciations of ‘fact’ may fall into the same trap as their opponents – they regard a ‘critique’ of a ‘fact’ as a significant event. Both sides seem unable to see facts as something produced rather than in/adequated, though the critical camp stray closer to this terrain.
Bruno Latour points out that a physics paper that would, if widely read, revolutionise its field will have no effect if, as is the fate of most scientific papers, it remains entirely unread. It contains, then, no truth that transcends its particular emplotment in space, time and matter; if read it might be hailed as the new Truth, but unread, devoid of any and all alliances it can be no such thing. Does not the drive to critique fall into this same trap? To submit an ‘essentialism’ to critique is seen, in some quarters, as an inherently valuable event. ‘Take that substance metaphysics!’ But if this critique has no effect – if no one reads it – what critique (as a kind of event rather than a theme or genre of literature) has actually occurred? Does a largely unread critique have more, less or the same existence as a largely unread fact? If being is an effect of language and language alone can the relative expediency of an unread critique or fact over a read one be ascertained?
Plainly, to switch from a demand for adequation to a demand for inadequation is insufficient. Hitherto ‘critical scholars’ have just ‘critiqued’ the world; the point is to change it (I thought we all knew this by now).
Bruno Latour points out that a physics paper that would, if widely read, revolutionise its field will have no effect if, as is the fate of most scientific papers, it remains entirely unread. It contains, then, no truth that transcends its particular emplotment in space, time and matter; if read it might be hailed as the new Truth, but unread, devoid of any and all alliances it can be no such thing. Does not the drive to critique fall into this same trap? To submit an ‘essentialism’ to critique is seen, in some quarters, as an inherently valuable event. ‘Take that substance metaphysics!’ But if this critique has no effect – if no one reads it – what critique (as a kind of event rather than a theme or genre of literature) has actually occurred? Does a largely unread critique have more, less or the same existence as a largely unread fact? If being is an effect of language and language alone can the relative expediency of an unread critique or fact over a read one be ascertained?
Plainly, to switch from a demand for adequation to a demand for inadequation is insufficient. Hitherto ‘critical scholars’ have just ‘critiqued’ the world; the point is to change it (I thought we all knew this by now).
"Mark Fisher and Mike Watson: Dialogue on Free Education, Capitalism, and its Alternatives"
Mark Fisher at Indieoma
For years, workers in education have been bullied by a management telling them that they are in an ivory tower, protected from the hard realities of business, and that educational institutions really ought to be run more like businesses. Now we have seen that businesses can’t be run as businesses – and we in public service will have to pay the price.
"Strategising the Free University"
Nina Power at Indieoma
The free university must build on the trials and errors of earlier attempts to perform similar roles: the twenty-first century must not be simply the era of fees, cuts, admin and the betrayal of learning.
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Monday, 8 March 2010
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Ken Meets Chuck
Ken W.:
Realist theory predicts that balances disrupted will one day be restored. A limitation of the theory, a limitation common to social science theories, is that it cannot say when.Chuck P.:
On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.Me:
On a long enough time line, any prediction can come true. / On a long enough time line the notion of prediction becomes ridiculous.
Reply to Bill re: Hurt Locker
I have not seen The Hurt Locker so my comments are more in reaction to others. My main question is in what way does a filmmaker have a responsibilty to do anything other than make a piece of art and tell a story the way that they want to? If you are arguing that because the filmmaker didn't do certain things with the story you did not find the film enjoyable, fine. But if not, I fail to see where such a responsibility eminates from.The question of creative responsibility is a fair one. I would agree with you insofar as I think it wrong to apply individual 'blame' on two counts:
First, it overemphasises the importance of 'authorship.' While the director is clearly a key component in the production of a work such as this she is but one of an extremely large number of individuals who bring such a project to fruition. Not only must funding be won, producers hired and actors allowed creative control over their own characters, the ideas that are produced through such a creative process are heavily dependent upon existing ideational structures, be they cinematic conventions, racial stereotypes or, indeed, language itself. Even 'auteur-ship' is, then, not 'author-ship' because one can never take total creative control over one's own culturally constructed dispositions. Thus, critique is (or should be) nothing specifically personal - it is a political and a social act.
Second, as I mentioned below, the remarkable thing, for me at least, about this film is not so much the film itself but its (relatively un-)critical reception. To speak of the film in this context highlights its embeddedness in wider narratives than the film's own. It is precisely thinking about the film in this way that highlights its intrinisic political content because, whatever else happens, films will always be cultural spaces for the portrayal and construction of ideas about life and, in this case, war and racism. What, after all, is more remarkable: a film being made that operationalises questionable racial stereotypes or such a film being made and its being talked of as perhaps the finest made in an entire year? To validate this film is to validate what it can be seen to endorse, however implicitly. This is the crucial point.
Therefore, I don't think anyone here is accusing the filmmaker of 'racism' as such. What we are engaging in here (on a very small scale) is cultural criticism: the critical assessment of a prominent aspect of our cultural lives and its political connotations. I think this is extremely important but it is certainly not about placing 'blame' on any one individual. That said, the director does bear a significant degree of responsibility for what she has played such a large part in making. She is, then, responsible for her own role in her own life, just as well all are. She is no more exempt from politics for being an 'artist' than I am for being a librarian. Of course, she most likely has a different interpretation of her film; one that would not make her responsible for any kind of negativity - such is life. She is entitled to her opinion but it being her opinion doesn't make her exempt from responsibility for her creative actions.
Musings on race in Hurt Locker
Reply to:
Having said that though, I also partially agree with the reviewer because this film shows just how impossible it is to make an apolitical war film. War contains far too much politics for it to remain excluded by ignorance. It creeps back in through the spaces in the narrative that are neglected, glossed over or otherwise over-simplified - i.e. every moment there is a faceless, non-descript Iraqi simply taking up space, or an Iraqi acting in a hysterical or otherwise stereotypical manner; so, that is often. (Surely the 'professor' is the most stereotypical character in the film - even more so than his wife. He is the 'good, Western-ish Arab', the exception that proves the rule. He could've been plucked straight out of a cut scene in 24.)
You can't make an apolitical war film. It's like trying to make an asexual porno.
If you ignore the politics then THAT is your politics and, frankly, it is one of the worst sorts.
Making the mise en scène a blank canvas for your protagonist (whether he is a 'hero' or an 'anti-hero', it makes no difference) you cannot avoid endorsing and participating in the narratives that portray the Arab 'other' as an equally blank tabula rasa ready for imperial imprinting.
It is an interesting film with a unique atmosphere and I can see why it was nominated on that basis but its weaknesses far outweigh its strengths. It was apparently made on the basis that ignoring certain issues makes them go away. Now, it is not necessary for every war film to be a pro- or anti-war polemic but to work through a relatively subtle, character based plot in circumstances such as this requires substantially more subtle filmmaking than was on show here.
I too am surprised at the critical acclaim this film has received. I don't suppose the filmmakers ever dreamed that the film would be as successful as it has been and in this sense I think that the fact this film has been so well received is more important than the specific construction of the narrative itself. Clearly there is a strong appetite for films that give the appearance of gritty realism (to what extent these appearances are valid is an open question). To me this film suggests that many people want to get a 'soldier's eye view' on the war without being subjected to difficult questions about their own complicity in the acts they see occur. This desire is passed off as 'mature' filmmaking, surely a distant cousin of academic 'objectivity'.
These wars are now so deeply engrained in popular consciousness and popular culture that they are developing their own narrative conventions and it could be that this sort of withdrawn, 'matter of fact' aesthetic will become more popular and achieve a place alongside the masturbatory, gun-toting action movies and bleeding-heart-liberal platitude-reels. We will see. What is certain though: a minute spent watching the Oscars is a minute wasted!
When I heard that the "Hurt Locker," a drama set in the midst of the Iraq War, was nominated for several Oscars, I was intrigued. Americans have not shown much interest as a people in either of the current official wars and even less interest in documentaries about and dramas set in these conflicts. My initial hunch was that this film, was selected to balance out "Avatar", the narrative of which clearly questions militarism and imperialism (while also reveling in astounding levels of mindless violence). So I assumed that "The Hurt Locker" would make a conservative counter-argument which justified the necessity of this war of choice. After finally seeing it, I was stunned that this film was nominated for any awards.'Hurt Locker' seems to me to be an attempt to make an 'apolitical' war film. So, I partially agree with those disagreeing with the review - the film doesn't engage with issues of race, etc. because it's not interested in them, not so much because of any political programme. It is true that this film could have been set in any war (any war with unexploded munitions, at least). The plot concerns the main character(s), not the overall context and this point is made fairly explicitly.
Having said that though, I also partially agree with the reviewer because this film shows just how impossible it is to make an apolitical war film. War contains far too much politics for it to remain excluded by ignorance. It creeps back in through the spaces in the narrative that are neglected, glossed over or otherwise over-simplified - i.e. every moment there is a faceless, non-descript Iraqi simply taking up space, or an Iraqi acting in a hysterical or otherwise stereotypical manner; so, that is often. (Surely the 'professor' is the most stereotypical character in the film - even more so than his wife. He is the 'good, Western-ish Arab', the exception that proves the rule. He could've been plucked straight out of a cut scene in 24.)
You can't make an apolitical war film. It's like trying to make an asexual porno.
If you ignore the politics then THAT is your politics and, frankly, it is one of the worst sorts.
Making the mise en scène a blank canvas for your protagonist (whether he is a 'hero' or an 'anti-hero', it makes no difference) you cannot avoid endorsing and participating in the narratives that portray the Arab 'other' as an equally blank tabula rasa ready for imperial imprinting.
It is an interesting film with a unique atmosphere and I can see why it was nominated on that basis but its weaknesses far outweigh its strengths. It was apparently made on the basis that ignoring certain issues makes them go away. Now, it is not necessary for every war film to be a pro- or anti-war polemic but to work through a relatively subtle, character based plot in circumstances such as this requires substantially more subtle filmmaking than was on show here.
I too am surprised at the critical acclaim this film has received. I don't suppose the filmmakers ever dreamed that the film would be as successful as it has been and in this sense I think that the fact this film has been so well received is more important than the specific construction of the narrative itself. Clearly there is a strong appetite for films that give the appearance of gritty realism (to what extent these appearances are valid is an open question). To me this film suggests that many people want to get a 'soldier's eye view' on the war without being subjected to difficult questions about their own complicity in the acts they see occur. This desire is passed off as 'mature' filmmaking, surely a distant cousin of academic 'objectivity'.
These wars are now so deeply engrained in popular consciousness and popular culture that they are developing their own narrative conventions and it could be that this sort of withdrawn, 'matter of fact' aesthetic will become more popular and achieve a place alongside the masturbatory, gun-toting action movies and bleeding-heart-liberal platitude-reels. We will see. What is certain though: a minute spent watching the Oscars is a minute wasted!
Being against foundationalism does not necessarily make one an ‘anti-foundationalist’ – to self-identify with such a moniker effectively reduces the identity of one’s work to that project – the iconoclastic critical-theoretical destruction of foundationalism. While my work does share this aim I fear being reduced to it – anti-foundationalism will not get very far until it broadens out its scope and has the confidence to assert its own assumptions without making the justification of those core assumptions the central point of the argument. In other words, anti-foundationalism will only succeed by administering its own dissolution – it will fail by having this dissolution thrust upon it by foundationalists.
A quick, exciting thought
Not only is history necessary for the understanding of the international but, if we recognise the importance of Hegel in the intellectual life of the contemporary euro-west, the international may well be necessary for the understanding of history. Because, as Agamben puts it quoting Hegel:
‘Great men’ are merely instrumental in the forward march of the universal Spirit. Like individuals, ‘they do not know what is commonly held as happiness’. ‘Once they have reached their goal, they sag like empty sacks.’ The real subject of history is the State.
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Reply to Prof PTJ
Comment on: http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2010/02/two-philosophers-shoveling-snow.html
A very witty piece. I basically agree. However, I think something needs to be challenged: the notion of 'intersubjectivity' as the privileged site of knowledge (and thus 'reality') construction.
The primary disagreement between Roy and Will seems to be Roy's fury over Will's refusal to attribute the 'in-itself' (i.e. the snow in its 'intransigent' materiality) any 'agency' (loosely speaking) with regard to its own understanding. For Roy the snow has both transigent and intransigent qualities and while it can be understood differently by people with different sensory/cultural dispositions it nevertheless possesses a certain 'snowy-ness' that cannot be ignored; to ignore it, it is supposed, is to commit the 'epistemic fallacy', which assumes that mind arbitrarily 'makes' world (Alex Wendt's 'pigs don't fly just because you think they do' skit is a typical example of this reductio ad absurdum argument). In other words, as Will rightly points out, critical realists of this bent assume a dichotomy of possibilities where either mind is exterior to the 'real' world and imperfectly 'reflects' this reality or mind is coiled up in its own interiority 'creating' all fictive experience in the manner of an auteur. This, of course, assumes that mind can only ever be conceived of in the classical sense of an abstract ideational thing suspended in the ether, separate from 'reality' and (most likely) 'materiality' too. The likes of Will, on the other hand, take the mind to be far more extensive and always-already involved in and constituted by the 'real', which, instead of being the creative produce of a sovereign, rational, unproblematically legible mind, is produced intersubjectively (this is the key point).
So, this assumes that there exists a network of cultural-linguistic beings, all constituted by their shared reality. The 'epistemic fallacy' no longer works because the creation of reality no longer centres around the individual but rather is the product of the network of intersubjectivity, which precludes the narcissistic volitionalism of the subjective idealist that critical realists try to imagine all their opponents as. And yet the general thrust of the critical realist critique - that subjective idealism is narcissistic/solipsistic - is not, I think, rebutted - at least not entirely. I think this because the intersubjectivist theory remains resolutely anthropocentric. Why is it only subjects (i.e. humans) that get to play this game? For all our fancy tricks, what is so special about us flesh-bags?
We need another character; let's call him Alfred. Also a mind/world monist, Alfred agrees that knowledge is created intersubjectively but he wants to go further than this. He argues that 'experience' (his term) is a property common not just to subjects but to objects as well. He is, then, a panexperientialist - like a panpsychist (who thinks that all matter has the property of 'mind') but with a distinction made between experience and cognition. Knowledge and thus reality, for Alfred, are inter-objective productions (in the broadest sense that subjects are also objects - very distinct kinds of objects both existentially and ethically but objects nonetheless).
His theory is, like the intersubjectivist's, perspectival - what is 'real' depends entirely upon one's perspective, whether one is a subject or an object. In other words, there exist an infinite number of possible realities on one ontological plane. Humans are no longer the be-all-and-end-all that intersubjectivism would have them, yet every human individual's experience is distinct and each experience is a reality, just like intersubjectivism.
So, when Roy is raging about Will's refusal to take the snow's 'in-itself' as 'real' and Will, effectively, just shrugs it off, Alfred would be able to transcend both positions and come up with, I think, a far more satisfactory answer: the experience of shovelling snow is created inter-objectively with Will's culturally and linguistically imbued dispositions shaping the particular reality of the experience but the snow's 'actancy' (to borrow Alfred's grandson Bruno's term) also contributing in its own right. (The event of Will shovelling the snow is, then, in a manner of speaking, every bit as much a 'conversation' between two agentially empowered but relationally and processually constitued actants as the conversation between Will and Roy.)
Will maintains his monism and Roy's blood pressure can return to safer levels providing he can accept the loss of the 'in-itself' for the gain of the object as an 'actant', which, knowing Roy, he won't but that's his problem not Alfred's!
A very witty piece. I basically agree. However, I think something needs to be challenged: the notion of 'intersubjectivity' as the privileged site of knowledge (and thus 'reality') construction.
The primary disagreement between Roy and Will seems to be Roy's fury over Will's refusal to attribute the 'in-itself' (i.e. the snow in its 'intransigent' materiality) any 'agency' (loosely speaking) with regard to its own understanding. For Roy the snow has both transigent and intransigent qualities and while it can be understood differently by people with different sensory/cultural dispositions it nevertheless possesses a certain 'snowy-ness' that cannot be ignored; to ignore it, it is supposed, is to commit the 'epistemic fallacy', which assumes that mind arbitrarily 'makes' world (Alex Wendt's 'pigs don't fly just because you think they do' skit is a typical example of this reductio ad absurdum argument). In other words, as Will rightly points out, critical realists of this bent assume a dichotomy of possibilities where either mind is exterior to the 'real' world and imperfectly 'reflects' this reality or mind is coiled up in its own interiority 'creating' all fictive experience in the manner of an auteur. This, of course, assumes that mind can only ever be conceived of in the classical sense of an abstract ideational thing suspended in the ether, separate from 'reality' and (most likely) 'materiality' too. The likes of Will, on the other hand, take the mind to be far more extensive and always-already involved in and constituted by the 'real', which, instead of being the creative produce of a sovereign, rational, unproblematically legible mind, is produced intersubjectively (this is the key point).
So, this assumes that there exists a network of cultural-linguistic beings, all constituted by their shared reality. The 'epistemic fallacy' no longer works because the creation of reality no longer centres around the individual but rather is the product of the network of intersubjectivity, which precludes the narcissistic volitionalism of the subjective idealist that critical realists try to imagine all their opponents as. And yet the general thrust of the critical realist critique - that subjective idealism is narcissistic/solipsistic - is not, I think, rebutted - at least not entirely. I think this because the intersubjectivist theory remains resolutely anthropocentric. Why is it only subjects (i.e. humans) that get to play this game? For all our fancy tricks, what is so special about us flesh-bags?
We need another character; let's call him Alfred. Also a mind/world monist, Alfred agrees that knowledge is created intersubjectively but he wants to go further than this. He argues that 'experience' (his term) is a property common not just to subjects but to objects as well. He is, then, a panexperientialist - like a panpsychist (who thinks that all matter has the property of 'mind') but with a distinction made between experience and cognition. Knowledge and thus reality, for Alfred, are inter-objective productions (in the broadest sense that subjects are also objects - very distinct kinds of objects both existentially and ethically but objects nonetheless).
His theory is, like the intersubjectivist's, perspectival - what is 'real' depends entirely upon one's perspective, whether one is a subject or an object. In other words, there exist an infinite number of possible realities on one ontological plane. Humans are no longer the be-all-and-end-all that intersubjectivism would have them, yet every human individual's experience is distinct and each experience is a reality, just like intersubjectivism.
So, when Roy is raging about Will's refusal to take the snow's 'in-itself' as 'real' and Will, effectively, just shrugs it off, Alfred would be able to transcend both positions and come up with, I think, a far more satisfactory answer: the experience of shovelling snow is created inter-objectively with Will's culturally and linguistically imbued dispositions shaping the particular reality of the experience but the snow's 'actancy' (to borrow Alfred's grandson Bruno's term) also contributing in its own right. (The event of Will shovelling the snow is, then, in a manner of speaking, every bit as much a 'conversation' between two agentially empowered but relationally and processually constitued actants as the conversation between Will and Roy.)
Will maintains his monism and Roy's blood pressure can return to safer levels providing he can accept the loss of the 'in-itself' for the gain of the object as an 'actant', which, knowing Roy, he won't but that's his problem not Alfred's!
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Reply to Michael Dawson re: academic freedom
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/07/social_science_and_the_public_sphere#comment-94856
@Michael Dawson:
My point was hardly that everything published in academic social science journals today is hunky-dory (if you permit me the phrase), nor that there are not serious weaknesses across the (intellectual) board. I myself would not accept the familiar chant you adopt of 'po-mo must go!' as I find many of these theories, if engaged with, are very important; perplexing perhaps but then I get that when I read anything by a hardline rational choice theorist (no less taxing on the terminological front). That said, there is a fringe orthodoxy concerning this sort of (po-mo) work that is somewhat intellectually stagnant, but that's another matter.
In fairness while I did have the po-mo 'critical' brigade partly in mind when I wrote the above, the only name I made reference to was Robert Cox who surely could not, save for causing him extreme offence, be associated with postmodernism yet he would likely share many of my criticisms, I think, with regard to the dangers of reification of objects of study (the state, human nature, etc.) and the strictures (and structures) of academic discipline that restrict the possibilities of knowledge production. One might legitimately disagree with him and all that he stands for but I don't think one can deny his rigour or the vitality of his thought, nor the space he holds open for critical thought. It was this sort of critical-ness I had in mind primarily.
By the way, I know Walt did not mention anything to do with 'critical' theory, I brought this up as a following-on point from my interpretation of Walt's comments, which I interpreted as relating to this point - and this I stand by.
I appreciate your candor, however.
To reiterate: my point (insofar as I intended to convey it) was that to reject in a somewhat ambiguous manner whole swathes of academic literature without naming any names (as your reply also fails to) is not only unhelpful vis-Ã -vis constructive debate but is in fact dangerous for academic freedom because it plays into the gaping jaws of an increasingly loud narrative which pronounces that the overarching structures of current political life are fine (even natural) and the only valid research paradigm addresses the production of ways of doing things within these wider structures.
In other words: "We've got the polity sorted, go make us some policy". ("Nothing to see here, move along!")
Given the economic, ecological and political problems that we all face, regardless of our nationality (it was this that perhaps irked me the most in Walt's post - the suggestion that academics owe a duty of deference to their nation rather than to their scholarship; this is a dangerous road), we have to consider that the things we take for granted might be involved inimically with the problems we actually face. Narrowly 'policy-oriented' research cannot address this kind of thing (not that such research is without value, of course - I do not believe this at all).
By way of rearguard defence: I would not by any means say that there are no articles published in decent journals that fall below standards I would consider acceptable. I simply consider it hysterical to suggest that this is some sort of cancer that can and must be removed; that there is 'good' research and 'bad' research and that someone (or anyone) should deem which is which so generally without giving good reasons as to why. I do not consider it the role of anyone - a nobody grad student like me or a well-known and respected, tenured, Ivy League professor like Walt - to say what is of value and what is not in such a sweeping manner (throwaway blog-post or not). Ascertaining the value of these things requires much more carefully defined terms and, dare I say it, more rigour.
There seems to be a number of issues that have become merged here and part of that might be my fault. There is a legitimate concern over excessive methodologism; I would accept that and see now that this is perhaps what others were getting at while I waxed tangential. On that I say this: it is important to be self-reflective on how academic knowledge is produced, surely no one would deny this, yet, I agree, in some quarters this becomes all encompassing and the Academy closes in on itself as the weight of its own intellectual circularity reaches a singularity at which point no life nor light escapes its pull (if you allow me the poetics - its late). This problem, if we accept for a moment that it is such a thing, cannot be addressed by wholesale rejection of nameless literatures.
I repeat the main point I was trying to make: I think this is, simply, dangerous. There are forces at work (not all that 'dark' perhaps but no less real or severe for their existing out in the open daylight) that are attempting and have attempted (with a lot of success, it must be said) to restrict the possibilities of academic knowledge production.
I am not a rudderless idealist when it comes to university life, as it happens. I wouldn't even accept that 'knowledge is a virtue in itself' - I just think that you can't always predict what will become valuable. I will defend to the comment word-limit, however, this assertion: universities should not be reduced to being simply and solely places for turning young people into economically utilisable units and turning unreflectively accumulated data into deferentially served-up policy for the same old ways of doing things. Prof. Walt would probably agree with this I'm sure. He just might not agree, and this is my point (if there actually was one after all this), that the manner of his post (I feel fairly silly for expending all this energy on one blog-post, but, alas, it is done) plays into this denigration of the institutionalised production of high-level, high value knowledge.
I do not think prof. Walt 'conservative' or even uncritical on the whole. He is a lone critical voice on a number of issues and I commend him for this and wish others had the same moral fibre. If I thought otherwise then I probably wouldn't read this blog. I just value academic freedom. And this is under threat. Plus it is, of course, possible to be refreshingly outspoken on, say, Middle Eastern politics and conservatively un-self-reflective on other issues such as, say, the historical contingency of realpolitik. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Bottom line(s): Even if there are some elements of academic research that wouldn't be missed if they disappeared, these cannot be fairly singled out as if they carried some distinguishing, essential feature; this kind of question is much to important to jump to such conclusions.
@Michael Dawson:
My point was hardly that everything published in academic social science journals today is hunky-dory (if you permit me the phrase), nor that there are not serious weaknesses across the (intellectual) board. I myself would not accept the familiar chant you adopt of 'po-mo must go!' as I find many of these theories, if engaged with, are very important; perplexing perhaps but then I get that when I read anything by a hardline rational choice theorist (no less taxing on the terminological front). That said, there is a fringe orthodoxy concerning this sort of (po-mo) work that is somewhat intellectually stagnant, but that's another matter.
In fairness while I did have the po-mo 'critical' brigade partly in mind when I wrote the above, the only name I made reference to was Robert Cox who surely could not, save for causing him extreme offence, be associated with postmodernism yet he would likely share many of my criticisms, I think, with regard to the dangers of reification of objects of study (the state, human nature, etc.) and the strictures (and structures) of academic discipline that restrict the possibilities of knowledge production. One might legitimately disagree with him and all that he stands for but I don't think one can deny his rigour or the vitality of his thought, nor the space he holds open for critical thought. It was this sort of critical-ness I had in mind primarily.
By the way, I know Walt did not mention anything to do with 'critical' theory, I brought this up as a following-on point from my interpretation of Walt's comments, which I interpreted as relating to this point - and this I stand by.
I appreciate your candor, however.
To reiterate: my point (insofar as I intended to convey it) was that to reject in a somewhat ambiguous manner whole swathes of academic literature without naming any names (as your reply also fails to) is not only unhelpful vis-Ã -vis constructive debate but is in fact dangerous for academic freedom because it plays into the gaping jaws of an increasingly loud narrative which pronounces that the overarching structures of current political life are fine (even natural) and the only valid research paradigm addresses the production of ways of doing things within these wider structures.
In other words: "We've got the polity sorted, go make us some policy". ("Nothing to see here, move along!")
Given the economic, ecological and political problems that we all face, regardless of our nationality (it was this that perhaps irked me the most in Walt's post - the suggestion that academics owe a duty of deference to their nation rather than to their scholarship; this is a dangerous road), we have to consider that the things we take for granted might be involved inimically with the problems we actually face. Narrowly 'policy-oriented' research cannot address this kind of thing (not that such research is without value, of course - I do not believe this at all).
By way of rearguard defence: I would not by any means say that there are no articles published in decent journals that fall below standards I would consider acceptable. I simply consider it hysterical to suggest that this is some sort of cancer that can and must be removed; that there is 'good' research and 'bad' research and that someone (or anyone) should deem which is which so generally without giving good reasons as to why. I do not consider it the role of anyone - a nobody grad student like me or a well-known and respected, tenured, Ivy League professor like Walt - to say what is of value and what is not in such a sweeping manner (throwaway blog-post or not). Ascertaining the value of these things requires much more carefully defined terms and, dare I say it, more rigour.
There seems to be a number of issues that have become merged here and part of that might be my fault. There is a legitimate concern over excessive methodologism; I would accept that and see now that this is perhaps what others were getting at while I waxed tangential. On that I say this: it is important to be self-reflective on how academic knowledge is produced, surely no one would deny this, yet, I agree, in some quarters this becomes all encompassing and the Academy closes in on itself as the weight of its own intellectual circularity reaches a singularity at which point no life nor light escapes its pull (if you allow me the poetics - its late). This problem, if we accept for a moment that it is such a thing, cannot be addressed by wholesale rejection of nameless literatures.
I repeat the main point I was trying to make: I think this is, simply, dangerous. There are forces at work (not all that 'dark' perhaps but no less real or severe for their existing out in the open daylight) that are attempting and have attempted (with a lot of success, it must be said) to restrict the possibilities of academic knowledge production.
I am not a rudderless idealist when it comes to university life, as it happens. I wouldn't even accept that 'knowledge is a virtue in itself' - I just think that you can't always predict what will become valuable. I will defend to the comment word-limit, however, this assertion: universities should not be reduced to being simply and solely places for turning young people into economically utilisable units and turning unreflectively accumulated data into deferentially served-up policy for the same old ways of doing things. Prof. Walt would probably agree with this I'm sure. He just might not agree, and this is my point (if there actually was one after all this), that the manner of his post (I feel fairly silly for expending all this energy on one blog-post, but, alas, it is done) plays into this denigration of the institutionalised production of high-level, high value knowledge.
I do not think prof. Walt 'conservative' or even uncritical on the whole. He is a lone critical voice on a number of issues and I commend him for this and wish others had the same moral fibre. If I thought otherwise then I probably wouldn't read this blog. I just value academic freedom. And this is under threat. Plus it is, of course, possible to be refreshingly outspoken on, say, Middle Eastern politics and conservatively un-self-reflective on other issues such as, say, the historical contingency of realpolitik. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Bottom line(s): Even if there are some elements of academic research that wouldn't be missed if they disappeared, these cannot be fairly singled out as if they carried some distinguishing, essential feature; this kind of question is much to important to jump to such conclusions.
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