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