File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1996/96-07-26.024, message 35


From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 10:46:27 +0100
Subject: Dialectic


Since I can probably be partly held reponsible for this discussion perhaps I
should  take part. First, Hans, thanks for your reading, I accept that it's
not to be taken as _the_ definitive one, but it is a start.

I take Doug's point about:

>Although I certainly think abstract thought is crucial, I also
>think abstraction should address concrete problems, and I am having
>difficulty understanding the problems that all this theory is attempting to
>solve.

I too wondered about this. But perhaps it's a little harsh. Given a realist
ontology one should always look and be prepared for stratification. This
applies in the realm as knowledge also. There is, in my mind, a set of clear
distinctions between philosophy, meta-theory, theory and applied research.
The problem Bhaskar is addressing in Dialectic is a philosophical one not an
applied one. It may certainly have substantive pay-offs for concrete
research, but then again it may not.

Re: bhaskar and postmodernism. This as we all know is a minefield. Hans notes:

> Doug suggests that it seems from my posts that Bhaskar is 
>>accomodating aspects of postmodernism.  Before specifics, i think 
>>this to be correct.  Bhaskar says in his preface (1993:xiv) following 
>>acknowledgments that "new geographers within this network played a 
>>decisive role in the formative proces of this book, as did those who 
>>persuaded me to take post-structuralism more seriously.  The 
>>influence of both groups will be felt."  
>>

I think both Doug and Hans are right to a certain extent, but then again
both wrong. Hans, I think is misreading what RB means here by "taking
seriously". I think what RB means is that he has been persuaded, by Sayer
and others, that postmodernism/poststructuralism can no longer be dismissed
as an intellectual fad, but that it has taken hold in the academy, perhaps
even now attaining the status of normal science. By taking seriously I take
Bhaskar to mean, in order to refute it. I think this is substantiated by his
many critiques of such approaches, certainly when they go into superidealist
overdrive, in PLato etc.

However, there are real complications. Derrida for example. Whose reading of
Derrida are we referring to? Take for example the Yale reading of Derrida
and set it against Norris's. If we take Norris's reading, then Bhaskar and
Derrida share natural affinities; Chris Norris being an avowed Critical
Realist (see his article in New Left Review on 'Criticism and the Growth of
Knowledge'). Likewise, Jane Flax in 'Thinking Fragments' gives an account of
Derrida that if read by anyone having read Bhaskar, will seem remarkable
similar to his general distinctions between the intransitive and transitive
dimensions. More importantly is Derrida himself, who of course declared:

"I never cease to be surprised by critics who see my work as a declaration
that there is nothing beyond lnguage, that we are imprisoned in language; it
is, in fact, saying the exact opposite. The critique of logocentrism is
above all the search for the other and the other of language." (sources on
request, I haven't got them in the office)

Given this, then, Bhaskar's turn to absence as an ontological category and
not an epistemological one, or better, an intransitive mode of being not a
transitive mode, accords with Derrida's critique of the metaphysics of
presence. However, I agree with Doug that Derrida does take it to far. In
Spectres of marx for example, he leaves us with a total absence of Marxism.
that is he proposes that we accept a Marxism without marxism, as Eagleton
puts it (Radical Philosophy, 1995).

But what is Bhaskar up to in Dialectic. In my opinion, he want's to make a
case for an intransitive category of absence. This is contrary to all other
categories of absence which he argues are idealist. That is he wants to
argue the case for a real, non-anthropocentric category of absence. I really
don't know enough about the dialectic in Hegel and Marx to say anything
about his treatment of the concrete/abstract/concrete issue, but Hans has
thrown some light on this. (BTW, I'm going to try and get to grips with
Hegel and Marx's dialectic this summer so if anyone can give me some reading
starting points I'd be pleased)

I basically accept RB's general arguments for the reality of the category of
absence. I think he makes this well be showing how absences have causal
powers; the absence of food kills for example. But he seems to go too far by
giving absence ontological priority over presence. I just don't think this
move is necessary to sustain his argument. Moreover, taken too far, as
Collier pointed out, every presence can be described as an absence and vice
versa, hence the category becomes meaningless. 

>    Doug finishes his post with expressing the same aniexity of Hegel 
>and Marx and the Young Hegelians, how can theory help with concrete 
>(or better practical) problem.  i too believe this to be the issue.  
>The point, as i understand (and often express), is to understand 
>natural and social structure, and of course agency itself, so to 
>change the world for the better.  Perhaps this is a rather utopian 
>way to say it, but i doubt we disagree. 

I think this is correct, and would mirror RB's views but it is a  decidely
anti-post-whatever position. 


Thanks,

Colin
 

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*******************************************************************

"We stand at the end of the age of reason. 
 A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising.
 (Adolf Hitler)

*******************************************************************

Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA

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