From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
Subject: Re: BHA: Post-whateverism (was: RM conference)
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 15:55:25 -0500


Colin--

Well, we seem pretty much on the same wavelength.  I tend to agree that
post-ism's dominance creates some leverage for up-ending it, particularly
insofar as many of its adherents think themselves on the Left.  Which,
relative to where politics seems to be going (at least in the U.S.), most of
them are.  I'm not sure how you mean that "it might be possible to remove the
sting from the tail": I'm less interested in disarming them, than in showing
how their philosophical arguments undercut their moral stance, not to
mention surreptitiously accept key arguments of their positivist nemesis,
and CR provides a far more coherent and powerful radical critique.  In other
words, a *sharper* sting!  (Of course, some post-its will prefer intellectual
status games and ivory-tower purity.)  In any case I don't buy the "permanent
dissident" notion that whatever is dominant must be bad: I'd be delighted if
socialist politics in almost any form were dominant among U.S. intellectuals,
not to mention the U.S. political spectrum.

I do wonder however if post-ism *isn't* in some sense opposed to the idea of
explanatory knowledge.  I think that for some of them, anyway, that idea
reeks of the notion of mastery.  (Consider the arguments claiming that any
notion of totality is intrinsically totalitarian.)  The fact that this
association derives from a particular account and history of scientific/
technological practice and theory is unlikely to faze people who think this
way, precisely because of the degree to which they accept certain tenets of
positivism.  So it still seems to me that strategically, the issue of science
doesn't provide the strongest starting point for struggles with post-ism,
even though I absolutely agree that it has to be confronted at some point. 
To me, we'd be better off starting with an ethical argument (perhaps, what
must the world be like for the experience or simply the claim of oppression,
exploitation, abuse and the like to be valid?).

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gwi.net
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce



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