Date: 	Thu, 23 Jan 1997 18:45:07 -0500
From: Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: General Question



> > 
> > > Would any of you consider, or not, Marcuse's _One Dimensional Man_ a 
> > > prophetic discourse?  

Maybe only in the sense than any critique of society serves a "prophetic role." 

>Your point, Ken, about all social critique serving, or perhaps falling after the fact, 
into a  "prophetic role" is very important to me, anyway... My question stems from 
> litterally getting the shivers reading Marcuse -- becasue here's this analysis of 
trends in a culture at the time of my birth, and I find I've grown up to ihabit very 
nearly the world he was describing and seeking thereby to forstall -- redirect.  

> Ok, here we are beyond my reading, but still I venture a question: If 
> they did not see themselves as having, nor there being a possibility of 
> "special insight" then did they understand themselve as "noticing" only?  
> Sort of reporting?  Seems to me that's what Marx too himself to be doing, 
> but does that attitude continue?  And, then, in what sense did they 
> understand "insight"?  Seems to me there are people to are trained to , 
> or have a talent for (the time to ?) noticing what others do not. Now 
> that practice certainly needn't be divinly driven.
> 
	Adorno and Horkheimer, begin the arrogant theorists that we all know and 
love, in _dialectic of enlightenment_ said that their book was akin to a "message in 
a bottle" - since they argued that there is no revolutionary class (vs. marx).   
Marcuse, having sold over 300,000 copies of 1-d man was perhaps a bit more 
hopeful.  he even went so far as to claim that the future revolution was squarely in 
the hands of socialist feminism (i've got the reference if you want it).  All three of 
them were dismal (speling?) in their theory but hopeful in their outlook (so they 
say).  In a very real way, sorry Rorty, they are correct.  Their is no guarantee that 
any perspective is the correct one.  Surely Andrea Nye is right - all theory resides 
in the shadows. - but this does not mean that theorizing is useless - and may 
actually mean that an emancipatory consciousness does play a unique role (it did 
>from them, i think).  Habermas and friends argue for a "sociological deficiet" in 
critical theory, ie. the linguistic turn.  By reconstructing the normative foundation of 
speech acts Habermas thinks we have always already constructed into the idea of 
reason an emancipatory interest (now preserved in his discourse ethics).  But 
Habermas has other problems....
   The "shivers" that you feel, and i must admit that i experience them as well, stem 
>from the actual contradictions of reality.  Adorno's work captures this idea best.  
"The right consciousness in the wrong world is impossible" - we attempt to think in 
a liberating manner precisely because of the guilt of our own thoughts.

ken "probably taking everything too seriously" mackendrick