From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Academia....
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 10:43:56 -0500
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
Doh, that's what I get for writing when I am still asleep. Caffentzis is talking about Rifkin, but Maudemarie Clark is definitely talking about Rorty. My bad.
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: cwright
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: AUT: Academia....
There are two good pieces I know of which deal with Rorty. The first is George Caffentzis' article on The End of Work or the Renaissance of Slavery, but it is not profoundly concerned with his philosophical aspects. Nietsche on Truth and Philosophy by Maudemarie Clark deals with Rorty's philosophy extensively on truth, in relation to Nietzsche and while quite turgid, it is very thoughtful. See especially the first two chapters.
That said, Rorty's writing on high-tech is considered quite radical in a lot of the IT world and he has been featured, unusual for philosophers or sociologists, in some of the tech journals where otherwise nothing philosophical or sociological ever creeps in except through the back door of someone's unstated assumptions.
Cliff, on autonomous Marxism, check out the aut-op-sy main page. I will also send you something that might prove helpful in finding sources, although the best place for articles would be the For Communism - John Gray website and Class against Class. I also have a CD with a huge number of articles by author.
Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: Cliff Staples
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: AUT: Academia....
Nate:
The more theoretically inclined sociologists, or at least some of them, will have read Rorty. The rest are too busy fussing with their latest statistical techniques or graphics programs.
Rorty is widely read beyond academic philosophy, so of course most academic philosophers hate him. He's also been trying to put them out of business, which might also have something to do with it. All that aside, some surely have serious and considered differences with the Pragmatist tradition Rorty represents. I only had a minor in Philosophy, and that was 20 years ago, so my knowledge of contemporary academic philosophy is narrow and shallow, but I can tell you that Rorty's work is in step with much of contemporary social theory. Maybe I'm just a rube, but can't imagine why anyone wouldn't find him insightful and fun to read.
I don't think anyone within what has come to be called "The Amherst School of Postmodern Marxism" has written anything extensive on Rorty, but I could be wrong. What is clear is that at least some of these folks have read Rorty and find him useful. If one loses interest in a social science that attempts to represent a free-standing "social," (i.e. modernist social science) then you need some other way of making your work meaningful. This is where Rorty (and others) seems to come in. First you see "social theory" not as a mirror of the social, but as constituitive of it-- as having consequences in the world-- and your truth is not how closely your model fits social reality, but whether or not people find your interpretations helpful. This idea isn't particularly new, of course, you can find it in Marx, and the critical social science tradition more generally (I'm thinking here of Friere, and work he inspired, such as Ira Shor's Critical Teaching and Everyday Life. My favorite philosophical explication of the tradition is Brian Fay's Critical Social Science: Liberation and Its Limits) . I see all these folks (Marx excepted, at least chronologically) as post-Wittgensteinians.
I probably shouldn't say, but I have no idea what "autonomist Marxism" is, though from reading the list I gather it has something to do with the work of Negri, which I have not (yet) read. On the other hand, if it means you don't take orders from anyone, I'm all for it.
Later,
Cliff
p.s. I'll look up that Wheeler book, thanks. It might be instructive and fun to watch him do a translation, though I'm not sure I need one.
At 03:29 PM 10/15/02 -0400, you wrote:
Hi Cliff-
First off, let me just say "sociology, bah humbug!" so you don't think the list is a complete love-fest. ;)
Second, you mentioned Rorty - one of my favorite philosophers though politically rather a fuckhead.
Is Rorty read much among sociology professors? A lot of my philosophy friends go into fits at the mere mention of his name, let alone the suggestion that he may be worth taking seriously. I'm curious if you or anyone else you know of has done work on Rorty and the postmodern/althusserian marxism you're interested in.
I ask because I don't really know how to reconcile my interest in (and the stuff I've learned from) Rorty with autonomist marxism and other radical stuff that I'm into (other than that Rorty has helped me to stop being hung up on problems that now seem a little silly).
There's a really good book by Simon Wheeler called _Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy_ that's worth reading if you haven't already, translates postmodernish or derridean stuff into an analytic vernacular that is much clearer, at least to me. (though 'translates' is a rather suspect term ...) It also points up a number of interesting parallels between figures on both sides of the atlantic.
best wishes,
Nate
From: Cliff Staples <Clifford_staples-AT-und.nodak.edu>
Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: AUT: Academia....
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 12:43:48 -0500
Okay, I can't resist jumping in here. I have undergraduate degrees in Sociology and Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Sociology (Washington State University, 1985). I have been on the faculty here at the University of North Dakota for 15 years.
Back in the Dark Ages there once was something called "Political Economy" which, either in its Marxist or non-Marxist variation, made some sense.
Now (at least in U.S. universities) "political economy" is long gone (certainly at the undergraduate level), and we now have "Political Science" on the one hand, and "Economics" on the other. The former act like they can talk about power without talking about money while the latter want to talk about money without talking about power. They're both nearly useless (a few radical freaks aside) for any critical understanding of society.
That task has largely been left to sociologists and philosophers, though even some literary types have gotten into the act. But, as was mentioned, sociology has plenty of mainstream, bourgeois practioners. The American Sociological Association is mostly liberal number-crunchers (almost all wonderfully nice people, careerism aside), and if amongst these there are those who have serious doubts about capitalism they tend to keep it to themselves. There ARE plenty of radicals, however, and you can find a few hundred of them in the Marxist Section, and elsewhere.
The extent to which a discipline is bourgeois seems to reflect-- as does much else-- its usefulness to capital, no? Hence Economics is right up there, as are the political science policy wonks. In this regard sociologists are not to be trusted-- at least since the rollback of the welfare state in the early 1970s.
One more thing. Most of the time I'll take the postmodernists and post-structuralists over the liberal number crunchers. The former come bearing radical epistemology, if not always radical left politics, and the empirical work that at least some of them do can be useful to disrupting convention. Indeed, I consider myself a "postmodern Marxist" after the fashion of the neo-Althusserians associated with the journal Rethinking Marxism. Michael might be interested to have a look at Resnick and Wolff's Knowledge and Class (Chicago, 1987) as well as their Economics: Marxian Versus Neoclassical (Johns Hopkins, 1987). I happen to think that "deconstruction," is a useful way to approach ideology critique (see Brian Fay's Critical Social Science: Liberation and Its Limits), and that we can get along just fine without essentialism (a la Rorty).
It occurs to me that maybe my primary motivation for responding to this was that it was so nice to hear my discipline mentioned, for a change, in a relatively positive light!
best,
Cliff
At 07:25 AM 10/13/02 -0700, you wrote:
I would certainly think that the social viewpoint has
something to do with the relative lefty-ness of
sociologists. However, we shouldn't overestimate the
effectiveness of their resistance, as I have known
many sociologists, particularly of the postmodern
mold, who fall into a sort of ivory tower mentality
that seems to declaw any left-wing tendencies that
they might have.
geo
--- Michael Handelman <mhandelman1-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
> This may be overly idealist of me, but do you think
> one of the reason for sociology seems to be to the
> left of Poli Sci and Economics, has something to do
> with the fact that because sociology deals with the
> study of groups and society, it tends to be
> *somewhat*
> innoculated to Bourgeois ideology regarding the
> individual (Thatcher's "There is no such thing as
> society" seems to be about as pure Bourgeois
> ideology
> as one can get, and this ideology seems extremely
> antithetical to sociology).
>
=====
"Look for me in the whirlwind - dare to struggle, dare to win"
=========================
George J. Ciccariello Maher IV
St. John's College
Cambridge
CB2 1TP
United Kingdom
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com
--- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
--- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
HTML VERSION:
--- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu -------- Original Message -----From: cwrightSent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 10:16 AMSubject: Re: AUT: Academia....There are two good pieces I know of which deal with Rorty. The first is George Caffentzis' article on The End of Work or the Renaissance of Slavery, but it is not profoundly concerned with his philosophical aspects. Nietsche on Truth and Philosophy by Maudemarie Clark deals with Rorty's philosophy extensively on truth, in relation to Nietzsche and while quite turgid, it is very thoughtful. See especially the first two chapters.That said, Rorty's writing on high-tech is considered quite radical in a lot of the IT world and he has been featured, unusual for philosophers or sociologists, in some of the tech journals where otherwise nothing philosophical or sociological ever creeps in except through the back door of someone's unstated assumptions.Cliff, on autonomous Marxism, check out the aut-op-sy main page. I will also send you something that might prove helpful in finding sources, although the best place for articles would be the For Communism - John Gray website and Class against Class. I also have a CD with a huge number of articles by author.Cheers,Chris----- Original Message -----From: Cliff StaplesSent: Wednesday, October 16, 2002 9:24 AMSubject: Re: AUT: Academia....Nate:
The more theoretically inclined sociologists, or at least some of them, will have read Rorty. The rest are too busy fussing with their latest statistical techniques or graphics programs.
Rorty is widely read beyond academic philosophy, so of course most academic philosophers hate him. He's also been trying to put them out of business, which might also have something to do with it. All that aside, some surely have serious and considered differences with the Pragmatist tradition Rorty represents. I only had a minor in Philosophy, and that was 20 years ago, so my knowledge of contemporary academic philosophy is narrow and shallow, but I can tell you that Rorty's work is in step with much of contemporary social theory. Maybe I'm just a rube, but can't imagine why anyone wouldn't find him insightful and fun to read.
I don't think anyone within what has come to be called "The Amherst School of Postmodern Marxism" has written anything extensive on Rorty, but I could be wrong. What is clear is that at least some of these folks have read Rorty and find him useful. If one loses interest in a social science that attempts to represent a free-standing "social," (i.e. modernist social science) then you need some other way of making your work meaningful. This is where Rorty (and others) seems to come in. First you see "social theory" not as a mirror of the social, but as constituitive of it-- as having consequences in the world-- and your truth is not how closely your model fits social reality, but whether or not people find your interpretations helpful. This idea isn't particularly new, of course, you can find it in Marx, and the critical social science tradition more generally (I'm thinking here of Friere, and work he inspired, such as Ira Shor's Critical Teaching and Everyday Life. My favorite philosophical explication of the tradition is Brian Fay's Critical Social Science: Liberation and Its Limits) . I see all these folks (Marx excepted, at least chronologically) as post-Wittgensteinians.
I probably shouldn't say, but I have no idea what "autonomist Marxism" is, though from reading the list I gather it has something to do with the work of Negri, which I have not (yet) read. On the other hand, if it means you don't take orders from anyone, I'm all for it.
Later,
Cliff
p.s. I'll look up that Wheeler book, thanks. It might be instructive and fun to watch him do a translation, though I'm not sure I need one.
At 03:29 PM 10/15/02 -0400, you wrote:
Hi Cliff-
First off, let me just say "sociology, bah humbug!" so you don't think the list is a complete love-fest. ;)
Second, you mentioned Rorty - one of my favorite philosophers though politically rather a fuckhead.
Is Rorty read much among sociology professors? A lot of my philosophy friends go into fits at the mere mention of his name, let alone the suggestion that he may be worth taking seriously. I'm curious if you or anyone else you know of has done work on Rorty and the postmodern/althusserian marxism you're interested in.
I ask because I don't really know how to reconcile my interest in (and the stuff I've learned from) Rorty with autonomist marxism and other radical stuff that I'm into (other than that Rorty has helped me to stop being hung up on problems that now seem a little silly).
There's a really good book by Simon Wheeler called _Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy_ that's worth reading if you haven't already, translates postmodernish or derridean stuff into an analytic vernacular that is much clearer, at least to me. (though 'translates' is a rather suspect term ...) It also points up a number of interesting parallels between figures on both sides of the atlantic.
best wishes,
Nate
From: Cliff Staples <Clifford_staples-AT-und.nodak.edu>
Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: AUT: Academia....
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 12:43:48 -0500
Okay, I can't resist jumping in here. I have undergraduate degrees in Sociology and Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Sociology (Washington State University, 1985). I have been on the faculty here at the University of North Dakota for 15 years.
Back in the Dark Ages there once was something called "Political Economy" which, either in its Marxist or non-Marxist variation, made some sense.
Now (at least in U.S. universities) "political economy" is long gone (certainly at the undergraduate level), and we now have "Political Science" on the one hand, and "Economics" on the other. The former act like they can talk about power without talking about money while the latter want to talk about money without talking about power. They're both nearly useless (a few radical freaks aside) for any critical understanding of society.
That task has largely been left to sociologists and philosophers, though even some literary types have gotten into the act. But, as was mentioned, sociology has plenty of mainstream, bourgeois practioners. The American Sociological Association is mostly liberal number-crunchers (almost all wonderfully nice people, careerism aside), and if amongst these there are those who have serious doubts about capitalism they tend to keep it to themselves. There ARE plenty of radicals, however, and you can find a few hundred of them in the Marxist Section, and elsewhere.
The extent to which a discipline is bourgeois seems to reflect-- as does much else-- its usefulness to capital, no? Hence Economics is right up there, as are the political science policy wonks. In this regard sociologists are not to be trusted-- at least since the rollback of the welfare state in the early 1970s.
One more thing. Most of the time I'll take the postmodernists and post-structuralists over the liberal number crunchers. The former come bearing radical epistemology, if not always radical left politics, and the empirical work that at least some of them do can be useful to disrupting convention. Indeed, I consider myself a "postmodern Marxist" after the fashion of the neo-Althusserians associated with the journal Rethinking Marxism. Michael might be interested to have a look at Resnick and Wolff's Knowledge and Class (Chicago, 1987) as well as their Economics: Marxian Versus Neoclassical (Johns Hopkins, 1987). I happen to think that "deconstruction," is a useful way to approach ideology critique (see Brian Fay's Critical Social Science: Liberation and Its Limits), and that we can get along just fine without essentialism (a la Rorty).
It occurs to me that maybe my primary motivation for responding to this was that it was so nice to hear my discipline mentioned, for a change, in a relatively positive light!
best,
Cliff
At 07:25 AM 10/13/02 -0700, you wrote:
I would certainly think that the social viewpoint has
something to do with the relative lefty-ness of
sociologists. However, we shouldn't overestimate the
effectiveness of their resistance, as I have known
many sociologists, particularly of the postmodern
mold, who fall into a sort of ivory tower mentality
that seems to declaw any left-wing tendencies that
they might have.
geo
--- Michael Handelman <mhandelman1-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
> This may be overly idealist of me, but do you think
> one of the reason for sociology seems to be to the
> left of Poli Sci and Economics, has something to do
> with the fact that because sociology deals with the
> study of groups and society, it tends to be
> *somewhat*
> innoculated to Bourgeois ideology regarding the
> individual (Thatcher's "There is no such thing as
> society" seems to be about as pure Bourgeois
> ideology
> as one can get, and this ideology seems extremely
> antithetical to sociology).
>
=====
"Look for me in the whirlwind - dare to struggle, dare to win"
=========================
George J. Ciccariello Maher IV
St. John's College
Cambridge
CB2 1TP
United Kingdom
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com
--- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
--- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005