File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0204, message 33


Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 21:03:49 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: BHA: Said from al-ahram & Realist analysis of the assault on Palestine


Hi Dafydd,

>Taken together they seem to raise the question of how democratic,
>anti-imperialist intervention in US political discourse, as recommended by
>both, can actually prevail against the imperialist geo-political
>considerations that Chomsky sees as underlying US policy and hence the whole
>political situation in the Middle East.
>
>Said has been described as a Foucauldian...and if this is true then one
>might think that Chomsky is hardly less so.
>
>Changing the world means changing consciousness, but is not just changing
>consciousness; what would our kind of realism add to these contributions?


I was hoping someone else might answer your question, if only because
I'm pressed for time and I think it important. *Very* briefly and
broadly I would say that CR, apart from providing a philosophical
elaboration and justification for the kind of social ontology and
philosophy of history Chomsky in particular tends to operate with, as
must any emancipatory social science, demonstrates that a change of
system from one based on ruthless private materialist getting and having
and controlling to one oriented towards the spiritual values of sharing
and caring and being is necessary and possible. The theory of
explanatory critique and the dialectics of freedom demonstrate broadly
how a unity of theory and practice in practice might be effected by
movements for change, with social science playing a key role. (A stream
in the CR conference in Bradford in August will be devoted to this). CR
implicitly identifies the modern global wage-slave as the main agent of
change, the support of the overwhelming majority of whom would be
required to effect systemic change. The later Bhaskar in particular
identifies the contradiction between capital's greed and growth machine
and the planetary ecology (as well as our essential human nature) as
perhaps the major contradiction of our times, and as likely to furnish
an important aspect of the 'reality principle' whereby people are
impelled to act. By bringing together all the main progressive turns of
thought in the last few hundred years - 1M the ontological (realist), 2E
processual (red), 3D holistic (green), and 4D agential or reflexive
(self-referential) - into a 'philosophy of universal self-realisation',
(T)(D)CR offers a coherent worldview whereby diverse movements for
change might orient themselves. The synthesis of science and religion,
'West' and 'East', it initiates affords a basis whereby the non-
religious and the religious might co-operate regionally and globally in
liberatory movements.

There's much more that could be said, but that's a start! It's a
question I would very much like to see addressed more often and at
greater length. Not only can CR make important contributions to
movements for social change, but I think bringing it more into relation
with actual emancipatory movements, and vice versa, is crucially
important at this stage for CR itself to develop and thrive. 

Mervyn


Dafydd Roberts <dafydd.r-AT-btinternet.com> writes
>Another, cross-cutting, take on the question Said discusses is provided by
>Noam Chomsky in an interview with ZNet:
>
>http://www.zmag.org/content/Mideast/chomsky_palestine_april2.cfm
>
>Chomsky shares something like a version of the Workers' World analysis, and
>on this bases a critique of current media representations of the ME
>situation, and calls for an understanding of the problem as a problem of the
>US - and not the Arabs or whatever - and places the chief political
>responsibility on the US citizenry.
>
>Taken together they seem to raise the question of how democratic,
>anti-imperialist intervention in US political discourse, as recommended by
>both, can actually prevail against the imperialist geo-political
>considerations that Chomsky sees as underlying US policy and hence the whole
>political situation in the Middle East.
>
>Said has been described as a Foucauldian...and if this is true then one
>might think that Chomsky is hardly less so.
>
>Changing the world means changing consciousness, but is not just changing
>consciousness; what would our kind of realism add to these contributions?
>
>Dafydd Roberts,
>London
>
>
>
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