Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 12:06:36 -0800 (PST)
From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re:  BHA: Cogito du jour


 
I was glad to read Tobin's anguish over a day with chili and the
Bhaskar list.  I was sure I was the only one.  Maybe someone can
recommend a twelve step program.  
 
Yes, Tobin, (put on another pot of chili), I really would like you
to define sign, semiotic, semiosis, particularly, if you have found
a whole level of being wearing the label.
 
And particularly because I'm not sure there is really anything to
differentiate our views now except the label.  A domain of
experience characterized by the meaningful makes sense to me -- and
this is the way I understand Bhaskar -- because we are enjoined to
be unflinching materialists whether by faith or a spirit of equally
unflinching emancipatory critique.  A domain of the meaningful,
even understood as a domain of meaning always rooted (the inverse
of emergence) one way or another in a process of thought or
material representation or other actuality, does not well
communicate its material anchor.  A domain of the semiotic might,
depending on how you define it.
 
"Society doesn't exist ONLY in its effects -- nor does Mr. B say it
does."  But Mr. B does say "social structures . . . exist only in
virtue of and are exercised only in human agency (in short, that
they require active 'functionaries')."  (PON, 2d ed. 51).  Explain
the difference again?
 
Thanks for the boost for Althusser.  I was really being facetious
the other day and I do mean to read Reading Capital again I hope
soon.  But it is true that Balibar was wrong about essentials with
respect to law (he said capital is not in its nature juridical (!))
and it is also true that I missed whatever it was that made
Althusserians Althusserians.  
 
Thanks also for addressing the way in which the domain of signs is
larger than experience.  I will mull over this.  It is still a
muddle for me.  For me it is enough that the meaning "centaur" is
attached to the representation to say that it has joined the Zoo of
experience.  But that does not make me the least bit fearful that
I will meet one escaped running around the streets loose.
 
I've got to stir chili.
 
Howard


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