From: "Glen Fuller" <spacedet-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Men making men, eh, who needs women...
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 00:52:55 +0800


Stuart/Clifford,

I quoted Rorty out of a context. He was taking a pragmatic relativist stance 
to the construction of subjectivity. His (mis?)reading of Sartre , I think, 
does not lose the meaning of Sartre's work as presented by Clifford. He goes 
on to develop (on the next couple of pages) an idea of the pragmaticist, 
umm, making of the most 'self' when making the most of a situation (to put 
it crudely). So if the situation is constructed by 'man' (how many 
situations where a 'subjectivity' is needed are not created by 'man'??) then 
"men make themselves out of what other men have made of them" could be seen 
as 'true'.

Here I will chip in some Lyotard: The society of the future falls less 
within the province of a Newtonian anthropology (such as structurlism or 
systems theory) than a pragmatics of language particles. There are many 
different language games - a heterogeneity of elements. They only give rise 
to institutions in patches - local determinism.

I think Rorty was attempting to work against such deterministic qualities 
(and hence the possible inherent essentialism) of "men make themselves out 
of what other men have made of them" by (possibly) paraphrasing the 
(mis?)read section. Also, ironically, this Rorty (mis)reading Sartre thing 
is an example of the 'pragmatics of language particles'.

I brought up the Lyotard because I had just brought up almost the exact same 
query regarding the phrase 'local determinism' on the Spoons Lyotard list. 
The (generalised) response I got was that it might have been descriptive of 
rear-guard action by neo-conservatives against the 'post-modern condition'. 
(Like bastard patriarchs using the word men to denote a social collective of 
people.;) Perhaps Rorty was trying to escape the *evil* neo-conservatives? 
Eh...

Although that doesn't change the fact that Rorty did (maybe) (mis)read 
Sartre without informing his dunce readership (namely me)! Of course, 
misreading isn't necessarily a bad thing...

Yep,
Glen.

PS. Yay! Some more Lefebvre! I like Lefebvre.
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.