File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1996/d-g_May.96, message 104


Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 01:07:29 -0400
Subject: Re: Ideology:  or, the "real" problem here...
From: mindstorm-AT-usa.pipeline.com (crispin sartwell)


On May 21, 1996 16:44:16, '"Ronald M. Carrier" <rcarrier-AT-suba.com>' wrote: 
 
 
>There is a difference between saying that physics, sociology, etc. have  
>been and are used as instruments of domination, and saying that physics,  
>sociology, etc. are _nothing_more_than_ instruments of domination.  The  
>former claim is fairly unproblematic (except in the case of the  
>aforementioned metaphorical "domination of Nature"), and if that's all  
>you're saying, then I can only wish that you had said it more clearly.   
>But if, as I suspect, you're making the latter (stronger) claim, then  
>you're going to have to give a chain of arguments that gets you from the  
>former claim to the latter.  And that chain of arguments had better be a  
>bit longer than the assertion "That's not accidental!" if you want to  
>persuade people rationally.  (Umberto Eco gave a name to the style of  
>"argumentation" that consists of asserting "That's not accidental!"  He  
>called it _cogito_interruptus_.) 
> 
>Here's a question for you to think about.  If sociology is so  
>overwhelmingly an instrument of domination that it can have no other  
>purpose, then who is the object of domination of the sociology of  
>science?  And what is the purpose of such domination? 
> 
 
that last is a very good question, and i'll think about it, especially if
and when sociology of science goes "quantitative." 
 
i think that the claim that  we've got pure research and its pure knowledge
and then problematic (but also felicitous) uses of that research and
knowledge is just too easy.  now i'm not going to give an argument: the
relevant thing would be a *genealogy* connecting the modes of domination of
the environment and of persons over the last 400 years with enlightenment
scientistic rationality.  i have actually tried to do some of that work. 
but think about how descartes, e.g., views nature, or animals: think about
that in contrast with the ways, say, that the yoruba or the lakota do.  and
then think about how these folks actually *live* in relation to the world. 
and think about the role of science in setting up that worldview and then
"confirming" it.   
 
i'm not saying that sociology is sexist; i'm saying it is for controlling
people.  i'm not saying that geology is racist; i'm saying that it deploys
a certain picture of the world as inanimate matter or resources and is used
in the "exploitation" of those resources.  and i will say, finally, that
locating truth at the level of the highest generality, whether it's polling
data of the theory of everything, is a monstrous inversion: reality appears
always only in particulars. 
 
that's why i'm both a reality-monger and a science-basher. 
 
crispin 
>La 
-- 
.................................................................... 
don't be afraid. 
 
shirley caesar 

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