Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 14:18:58 -0400 (EDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: BHA: Bhaskar on Adorno 


In a message dated 28/08/97 16:10:37 GMT, Colin writes:
 I
I wonder however, if you are saying that you and Ruth (perhaps) view RB as
 perpetuating the:
 
  realism/irrealism,
 >materialism/idealism were binary oppositions or antinomies, that it is one
of
 >the main (cognitive) aims of dialectical analysis to overcome. 
 
 ???
 
To me RB deconstructs the possibilty of irrealism and is at pains to reject
 the materialism/idealism distinction. He very rarely uses the term
 materialism to describe his own position and is at pains to point out the
 reality and causal status of ideas. Indeed, someone in my discipline
 actually regards himself as a poststructuralist critical realist, and
 Isaac's is also on record as viewing RB in a very similar manner. Food for
 thought perhaps, or have I misunderstood your position?
 
MICHAEL REPLIES:

Hello again Colin.

Yes DCR does have a strong position from which to "deconstruct" or perhaps
better immanently critique the performative contradictions of an unmediated
version of irrealism. My question, which I may be overstating, repeating
endlessly etc., is not whether RB either perpetuates a dualistic either/or
stance totally or has overcome it fully, but the extent to which the
vocabulary of DRC is caught up in a force field of opposition between its
pre-dialectical and dialectical phases. Such tensions can be highly
productive, notwithstanding your preference for the surely impossible ideal
of a totally internally coherent theory about an otherwise contradictory
social and ideological order. For sure, ideas are causal and real, precisely
because they are never about social reality so much as one, this-worldly
facet of that reality. Dialectical social thought is an instance of that
which it is about, unless one sticks with the archimedean point "view from
nowhere" mythology - itself all-too rooted in specific this-worldy materials
interests, AKA the "authority" of the military/technological/applied-science
nexus.

I take your point (and that of others) that it might make good educational
sense to work one's way up to DPF, although I also share Alan Norrie's view
that the thesis and implications of DPF is far more exciting (perhaps from a
social scientific point of view?). On the other hand, there are also some
clear limits to the line which states "one must start at the beginning" and
"learn to crawl before you try to walk" etc etc. How much time should someone
invest in figuring out the significance and rationale of claims, theories
etc, which even the author has, for possibly good reasons and via the
internal dialectics of debate that characterise all living traditions, come
to regard as superseded, inapplicable etc etc. Do I still need to learn
ms-dos commands before attempting to double-click on a windows icon? (file
under "yet another inappropiate analogy on the bhaskar list")

Perhaps Marx was wrong to still characterise his position as "dialectical
materialism" despite his incisive critique of
reductionist/vulgar/undialectical versions of materialism. Adorno, however,
makes the point that one cannot avoid considering the specific ideological
constellation at play when such decisions are taken, and that we have to
recall that in marx's period the predominant ideological forces took a
somewhat theological/spiritual and metaphysical kind, against which the
secular and materialist aspect of positive science made good sense as
ideology critique and inversion. Under consumer capitalism being a
"materialist" has taken on quite different, even somewhat conformist
connotations; whilst we have rather been given rather more reasons to be
cautious about linear evolutionary and causal models of historical progress
driven by iron laws of history by ideologically-neutral forces of technology
and productive economic forces, i.e., from spear to Mutually Assured
Destruction. The ideological abuse to which Marx's work was subjected to at
the hands of the undoubted "materialisms" of undialectical marxist-leninists
would perhaps have given a hypothetical "borne again marx" some retrospective
reason to regret not have formulated some other phrase, such as
straightforward "dialectician". The point I am driving at with some highly
speculative gusto is whether or not DCR may, in 50 years time say, not have
been some reason to regret defining itself negatively against irrealism
without an equi-distancing of itself from all manner of "vulgar" and
reductionist versions of realism. Yes I agree that irrealism has been shown
to be internal contradictory etc, but since various versions of "realism"
e.g., what RB calls common sense realism (and which incidently so to did
Husserl!) are also vulnerable to auto-subversion at the hands of immanent
critique, then their might be some sense in my caution about using terms
which presuppose a stark negation of a polar opposite position in order to
derive their intelligibility.


Adorno's
 >discussion of subject/object dialectics provides useful point of
comparison,
 >without some such point we lack even the ability to identify what is and is
 >not distinctive about Bhaskar's work on dialectic. If we cannot say in what
 >respects it is distinctive, then how can ever claim to have understood it
 >"first", that is, prior to any process of comparison. 
 
COLIN:  I agree absolutely, but doubt whether I will ever be confident enough
to say
 I Understand 'Dialectic'.
  >>
Michael

Well, I got the distinct impression that you were pretty confidant about your
understanding of DPF, even to the point of agreeing "absolutely" with this
minorly dialectical response to Alan Norrie (doesn't RB make a similar
dialectical/relational point about about how differentiation from what X is
NOT, is the means to get at what X "IS"?); but I am pretty pleased that
neither of us are too keen to risk our own lives  upon confidant claims about
what we do and do not understand from that marvellous book. 

BTW do you think that in 200 years people will still be using Hegel as a foil
against which to establish their latest "new version" of dialectic, as they
have for the last 200? Or are you confidant that Bhaskar will have come to
play that axiomatic role? Tricky socratic and rhetorical question?

Look forward to seeing you at Warwick

Michael


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