Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 06:54:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu>
Subject: Re: To destratify or not to destratify




> On Mon, 21 Dec 1998, Jon Rubin wrote:
> 
> "Michael - are you after Unleesh to come up with criteria for deciding 
> before-hand whether some action he is about to undertake will stratify 
> or restratify, or assessing some action after he has done it to decide 
> whether it succesfully de/re stratified?
>

To which I replied:
> 
> "Both.  Either.  Anything approaching a straight answer."
> 

To which Jon responded:
>
> But a straight answer to the former question surely would run along the 
> lines of: "I can't come up with criteria either infallible, or even just 
> very good, for determining what results actions that I may hope are 
> destratifying because in order to destratify it is necessary to 
> experiment - and the nature of experiments precludes my knowing the 
> result before-hand (otherwise it wouldn't be an experiment)."

A Baconian positivist, Jon, you?  Say it ain't
so.  If science studies have taught us anything, 
it is that the nature of experiments is precisely
to know the result in advance!  Exaggeration 
aside, any sort of experiment (not only those
of the natural sciences) must be able to distinguish
the terms with which it works, at least minimally,
or else it wouldn't be an experiment -- it would
just be experience.  _What Is Philosophy?_ makes
this point, most obviously in the case of science,
where variables are set in relation to some
fixed point; but also in philosophy (the concept
is a *construction*, not a random event of
becoming -- that's chaos, which immediately 
recedes back into the infinite which it is) and
art.

And in the case of politics (which is really at
the bottom of this thread), experiment is also
guided by a variety of criteria: thence Deleuze's
emphasis on jurisprudence.  Again, the point is
indeed to invent, but without some distinctions
and criteria, the experimentation would remain
wholly indeterminate -- possible rather than
actual.  To throw up one's hands and declare
"incipit destratificatio" is not invention, it's
jumping into a black hole.  (Or more likely,
it's a purely formal, abstract "freedom" 
masquerading as experiment -- the ass which
brays "yea" to everything.)



> and a straight answer to the second would simply be history, assuming 
> that whatever destratifying actions he may have undertaken were not 
> immediately restratified - in which case it would be futile history. It 
> is hard, when writing, not to translate a notion of becoming into a 
> succesion of (small "e") events.

And a Rankean historiography to boot!  Who
says we're postmodern?  

I don't see what you mean by "simply" here
-- even supposing a record could be made
of "one damn thing after another", any post
facto discrimination would have to do just
that: distinguish one from the other.  And
that's where we started!


> 
> 
> You mentioned you're own interest in the categorical imperative, I 
> think? Have you read Cutrofello's _Discipline and Critique_ ?

As much as I could stomach.  I met him once, when
he read a paper on Hegel and Foucault.  To put it
politely, he is quite representative of English-
speaking "continental philosophy".


Cordially,

M.