File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2004/bhaskar.0409, message 64


Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 08:55:00 +0200
From: Par Engholm <Par.Engholm-AT-soc.uu.se>
Subject: Re: BHA: Polyadization


Hi Dai, Mervyn and others,
Weel, yes, that's a bit in line what I tried to formulate a couple of days 
ago, but  I think Bhaskar uses the notion of primary dyadization and 
polyadization more as a way of marking his case off from all identity 
theories, which he assembles under the umbrella of  'The Primal Squeeze on 
the Platonic fault-line' and further of the 'anthroporealist exchanges' 
(see e.g. PE 49). The notion of 'detachment' is central to this critique of 
identity theories (epistemic/ontic fallacies). We are acquiring a sense of 
selfhood via this socialisation/polyadisation by an enactment of 
existential and cognitive/perceptual detachment - which involves e.g. what 
Polanyi speaks of (following to some degree Gestal psychology) as an 
identification of a non-random 'identifieable' object against its 
'accidental surroundings' (Personal Knowledge 38).
Indeed the notion of primary polyadization could  be regarded as being 'a 
calque on the much better established (practically omnipresent) term 
"primary socialization"', but it not only corrects its 'metaphysical and 
ontological assumptions'; its argument is established quite differently. 
Bhaskar again argues for the necessity of an ontological distinction 
between the different domains of the world (domains of the real, actual, 
empirical, positive, negative...) using transcendental arguments. Monism 
and solipsism are refuted in an argument which uses a reductio ad 
absurudum: 'Whoever autogeneticized themselves?' (DPF 230) Perhaps we can 
also find a little bit of Marx of the 'Theses on Feuerbach' squeezed in 
here too, especially the third...

Best,
Pär


At 01:13 2004-09-22, you wrote:
>Hello again Mervyn,
>
>I have just remembered something that I intended to mention three years ago
>but never got round to it... which is my suspicion that "primary
>polyadization" is a calque on the much better established (practically
>omnipresent) term "primary socialization", popularized by Berger and
>Luckman, following G. H. Mead, although quite conceivably in use in social
>psychology before them, and very, very much in the air in the Sixties and
>Seventies.
>
>To refresh memories, here's a para. from someone's summary of Berger &
>Luckman's *Social Construction of Reality*:
>
>1. Primary socialization is a type of socialization during childhood through
>which people first become a member of a society. It ends when the concept of
>"generalized other" - abstraction of roles and attitudes from concretely
>visible significant others - has been firmly entrenched in the consciousness
>of a child. When this generalized other has been crystallized within the
>consciousness, the objective and subjective realities become "symmetrical"
>within the mind of the child. What is presented as objectively real in the
>outside world in turn becomes the subjective reality in the mind of the
>child, too.
>
>http://ssr1.uchicago.edu/NEWPRE/CULT98/Berger.html
>
>If I'm right, then "primary polyadization" refers to "primary socialization"
>while at the same time marking a rejection of the metaphysical or
>ontological assumptions of social interactionism.
>
>It's a bit closer than the Pythagoreans...
>
>Regards,
>
>Dai
>
>
>
>
>      --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

-----------------------------------------------------------
Par Engholm; Par.Engholm-AT-soc.uu.se
Uppsala University, Dept. of Sociology
Box 624; SE-751 26 Uppsala; SWEDEN
Phone: +46 18 471 7399; Fax: +46 18 471 1170
Home: Botvidsgatan 14 B; SE-753 27 Uppsala
Phone: +46 (0)18 696348; Mobile: +46 709 783546
http://www.soc.uu.se/staff/par_e.html




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