From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: Re: BHA: Neglect of Bhaskar (Marx?)
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 09:08:25 -0400


Hi Tim & Colin--

Odd, here I was toying with the idea of replying to Tim that it's too bad
postmodernists don't write nearly as well as Shelley.  Not a poet among 'em.
Rhetoricians, yes.  (As Colin suggests.)

> The point is this, the likes of Butler and other pomo types have one very
> big advantage. They aren't really after the truth of positions but in
> winning converts, which they consider to be winning the arguments;
> intellectual hegemony is quantifiable. To this end, since truth is not at
> stake, they can pursue the aesthetics and ruthlessly deploy extravagant
> rhetorical flourishes with a blither disregard to the staus of content and
> consistency. They are more interested in style over content. I can best
sum
> it up by describing the pomos as "sophists in Armarni suits". And the
> Armarni suits are the key.

I agree that PoMo's, despite their earnestness (though maybe I should say
self-righteousness), nevertheless disdain the very concept of truth, and
insistently reduce knowledge (or rather, "knowledge") to power.  And that
they deploy extravagant rhetorical flourishes.  But I don't think they have
much real interest in aesthetics, and I have found most of them to have
little understanding or regard for how artists work.  They may like the idea
of the artist, but for the most part their aesthetic sensibilities are
rather wooden, and they seldom make a point of engaging art.

As probably everyone remembers, a few years ago Alan Sokol got a lot of
people upset when he wrote the worst piece of postmodern tripe he could
manage, and successfully had it published in Social Text, whose editors were
completely taken in.  He gave a talk when I was in Helsinki, in which he
argued that what most of the PoMo's are doing is philosophy, and *bad*
philosophy at that -- a point that I think stands up well.  (I also found
his position quite close to CR, but I had only that talk to go on.)  His
action really was dramatic, and laced with irony.  But who would vote for
the guy?  If the response not long after at the Rethinking Marxism
conference is any guide, the PoMo's got in a huff, called Sokol various bad
names, and then the whole thing blew over.  (An opportunity missed, I
suspect.)

And as I recall, a disappointing number of them attended the performance by
an important black actor, doing a one-woman show which must have been damn
hard to sustain in that hall.

Of course, most scholars are dismissive of the arts, and CR is hardly immune
from this (though I can only speak to the first CR conference).  So I'd
recommend caution with the notion that PoMo's pursue aesthetics, not only
for the statement's dubious accuracy, but also for its attitude toward the
arts.

Despite this -- no, excuse me, *because* of this -- I think Colin is right
about the importance of rhetoric in intellectual disputes.  But the
rhetoric's strength is not altogether self-standing: PoMo can easily take a
beating thanks to its very commonalities with positivism, its function as
positivism's flipside, which Bhaskar (among others) has done much to reveal.
The "opposition" between the physical sciences and the social
sciences/humanities is part of that common foundation, and it's worth noting
that this opposition was one of the major assertions to come from the
Romantics: Tim's reference to Shelley is apt.

CR certainly could do with a spokesperson who is charismatic, witty,
quick-thinking, and a breathtaking writer.  Equally certainly, it isn't
going to be Bhaskar; or at least not anymore.  A pity.  But a lot is going
to depend on finding ways to unseat PoMo on what it sees as its home turf,
particularly radical politics.  I've written elsewhere that without a
concept of truth, PoMo cannot coherently sustain any notion of oppression or
repression.  I think that's a start, but surely there's more.  However, my
feel for the game says that so far, critical realists have barely even tried
to reach a larger audience.  In this sense I agree with Karl's comment that
CR has tended to be overly introspective.  Something does need to be done
about that.

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




     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---