File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/97-01-11.090, message 4


From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
Subject: BHA: Writing (was: RM conference)
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 12:45:31 -0500


Hans wrote (regarding my paper):

>       i think my 
> problem is in how you defend an alternative, and explain the 
> justification, or how you explain what is driving your critiques.  i
realize 
> this remains cryptic, we would have to push it a bit further to unfold 
> the ideas.

Yes, you'll have to spell this out sometime.  I really don't see much
methodological similarity between what I'm doing and what most PoMoMarxism
does.  Perhaps what you're seeing is just an effect of condensing a rather
complex theory into 20 minutes?  In any case I'm quite interested in
criticism.

A couple quick responses to Colin: yes, most philosophical writing is heavy
going, and I have to add that it's partly the nature of the beast--complex
issues breed complex thoughts and, no surprise, complex sentences.  I can't
pretend my own theoretical work would make a page-turner on the bus to work
either.  On the other hand, Hegel and Heidegger weren't exactly striving for
radical democracy and socialism.  As Brecht says somewhere, it isn't enough
just to write the truth: one has to write *to* and *for* someone, who will
(hopefully) use it.  I don't ask Bhaskar to be simple, and obviously I've
found wrestling with his texts to be extremely rewarding; but I do think it's
possible to discuss complex ideas with much more clarity, and politically
better too.  Marx bogs down too, but you don't have to search far before
coming across some wonderful prose from that pen (especially in his essays). 
Much of which almost anyone can grasp the first time through.

But you're quite right about the underlying commonalities between positivism
and most post-ism.

As for the connection between post-ism and the New Left, I'm also somewhat
skeptical.  But I'm not sure Hans means the "original" New Left of roughly
1950-65, or the newer leftists of (again, roughly) 1965-75.  The latter had a
much stronger relativist strain, and many of the post-ists (Derrida, Foucault
etc) made their mark then.

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


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