Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 10:27:39 +0000
From: Colin Wight <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: DPF Reading ch 2.4 Contradictions: Misunderstandings


Hi everyone,

Just to emerge momentarily (under the combined weight of essay marking and
PhD supervision) from my lurker status. Mervyn, thanks for your comments.
let me just situate myself. I reject any notion of a DCR/CR divide. I see
nothing in DCR that negates (absents) anything is CR - in short I see no
contradiction. I read DCR through my understanding of CR - how else? I find
DPF infuriating at times, and magnificent at others. The dispute between
differing understandings over RBs style seems to me, to me primarily
aesthetic - and everyone should by now know that I am a subjectivist on
this issue. 

I accept some of Tobin and Ruth's concerns about the relationship between
RBs writing and political practice, but equally see knowledge itself as
stratified, hence see no reason why we should expect a book orientated to
an understanding of the concept of the Dialectic (albeit making large
claims about this Dialectic as the pulse of freedom) should necessarily be
written at a level at which everyone (however defined) should understand;
the social/human sciences take a pure/applied distinction also and we
should not ask of every piece of inquiry, "of what practical use is this?"
Early in my PhD I desperately wanted RB (or someone else) to write a book
and explain to me what a CR/DCR version of International Politics would
look like. Thankfully no one did. I'm still struggling, but it is the
struggle which is the fun.

Anyway, on Mervyn's specific comments. I have a problem, Mervyn, kindly
responded to my comments with:

>To the extent that we act on "both 'A' and 'not A'" we will have no
>rational grounds for action. But we can always seek to resolve the
>contradiction, which would give us rational grounds (see p. 57 - he
>reminds us at the top of page 80 that he has talked about this before -
>where he says the consequence is axiological indeterminacy "*unless* the
>terms are redescribed and/or the discursive domain is expanded (as
>happens in Hegelian dialectic)", ie some way is found around the damn
>thing. Meanwhile, we might well have to toss a coin, but we don't act
>rationally unless we look for that solution. He then goes on to mention
>how we might do so - 'good' and 'bad' dialectics etc.

Maybe I've got this wrong but aren't you in danger of committing error (e)
the belief that all contradictions _can be resolved_? What if we encounter
a logical contradiction that cannot be resolved? In such a situation as Rb
has it, rational agency would not be possible, whereas he has consistently
stated that rational agency is always possible. Now, I do have my own
answer, derived I might say from my CR reading of DCR. It seems to me that
RB, at least in this section we are discussing is in danger of assuming
closure and that contradictions are atomistic. However, we rarely, if ever,
encounter a contradiction in isolation and the grounds for rational agency
can very possibly located elsewhere. (RB, to be fair, does note exactly
this later in this section and my concern is only with this one small
section) This does not mean that we resolve the contradiction so much as
understand it as part of a totality. I don't think that we ignore it or
minimise, as RB seems to suggest later (although at times this may be
necessary) so much as understand it as a potentially necessary part of the
totality.

I accept, BTW, Mervyn that you later suggest just this. I just wanted to
point it out in relation to this specific issuse of the relation between
logical contradictions and rational agency. However, I do fear that this
answer would not be of much help to a mathematician, who may well not know
how to proceed when confronted with alogical contradiction.

On the postmodern point, I don't think it is this easy. Certainly their
quarrel seems to be with science, but the kind of contradictions I have in
mind, are; their anti-humanism existing alongside with their claims to be
the champions of difference; the denial of reality as they talk of it;
their rejection of truth as they depend upon it. It seems to me that
theory-practice inconsistency (an important point of critique in the CR/DCR
corpus) is in a sense dependent upon the possibilty (and necessity) of
critiquing logical contradictions that arise between a given theory and
practice. My worry is that RB's position here could well be used by a
postmodern to minimise the effects of the contradictions. To me there is a
massive contradiction between living and postmodern theory. In effect, does
living make postmodernism impossible? Or, is this contradiction simply one
that can be minimised, and treated as a "mere" gnat on the body of a
progressive programme?

Thanks,


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales
Aberystwyth
telephone: +44 (0)1970-621769
fax      : +44 (0)1970-622709
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