Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2002 15:22:02 +0200
From: Claus Hansen <clausdh-AT-tdcspace.dk>
Subject: Re: Theory and Practice: More Verbiage Ahead!


Dear Matt,

thank you for your very inspiring post - I have some comments which I would 
like to share with
the rest of this list...

At 13:51 07-09-02, you wrote:

>I just dont think (a) there is a gap between theory and practice, and (b) 
>that it counter-productive to maintain this distinction. For a start Ralph 
>it encourages the sort of anti-theory/anti-intellectual position you 
>polemically assert in your posts. More name dropping, but Habermas's essay 
>on Neo-Conservative Cultural Criticism in the U.S and Germany is worth 
>reading on the type of anti-intellectual rhetoric you indulge in. 
>Basically Habermas points out that this type of anti-intellectual rhetoric 
>has been a staple of the conservatives since the C19th.
>
>There are two moments of a unified praxis which perhaps for the sake of 
>categorization can be described as "theory" and "practice". I can accept 
>this distinction as a pragmatic discursive device. The problem is that 
>this distinction leads to confusion and sectionalism or divisionism a loss 
>of solidarity - which then gets exploited by the bastards. There is the 
>practice of theory production and this happens alongside the practice of 
>social action. Moreover both types of practices are interpenetrated by the 
>other and operate mainly in a positive feedback cycle I would suggest, 
>although I dont know how helpful the language of cybernetics is to this 
>discussion. I am happy to post a fairly extensive discussion of this issue 
>which also challenges what Habermas called the ontological illusion of 
>pure theory, and via Wittgenstein and Sellars suggests that the social 
>knowing of mindless actionism as revolutionary practice can only be 
>mediated via a theoreticiz ed and ideologized use of language. In this way 
>theory becomes a type of practice, and practice is only known to be such 
>via theory. I say lets leave the theory/practice distinction in Marxs 
>eleventh thesis on Feuerbach and back in the dualistic philosophical 
>politics of the C19th where it belongs.

I think the main problem for me to accept this way of seeing things is that 
is misses out on a crucial aspect of how 'theory production'
today is done. Adorno writes in his "Introduction to Sociology" about this 
kind of gap - a gap which is one of the aspects
of the theory/practice dichotomy mentioned above. He says that - being a 
sociologist in spe - one has to choose between wanting
to 'make sense of the world' and 'doing socially useful labour'. In other 
words - it is not possible - in Adornos opinion to reconcile these two 
contradictory aims. The real problem about the theory production today is 
that it is TOO theoretical - most theories are not based on careful 
observation of the social world - but are 'books about books' as Manuel 
Castells puts it. The theories (Habermas is a brilliant example) are not 
second order reflections of the theories the everyday actor uses in her 
handling of her daily life - instead they are third order reflections: 
discussions of how other theoreticians have interpreted the world. On the 
other hand, the scientists who actually study the world are so narrow 
minded that they only see how our reified and ugly world looks like on the 
surface - they never penetrate beneath it to reveal the true state of 
society because they lack the conceptual tools for doing this. One of the 
things which make Marx so admirable is that he actually studied the world 
and from these observations tried to draw some consequences - both 
theoretically and practically. This practice practically doesn't exist in 
the social sciences of today - and this has the consequence of producing 
some kind of gap between theory and practice. Perhaps the only exception is 
the late Pierre Bourdieu...

Couldn't one of the problems of the left be that there are no theories you 
could be inspired by to make new visions of a better world?
How about blaming the philosophers and sociologist who have all lacked the 
ability to use their imagination to pave the way for such visions? Habermas 
and Giddens being prime examples of this tendency to write books about 
books - instead of studying the world they live in? Isn't their conclusions 
about the inevitability of capitalism due to precisely this lack? Because 
they have never for instance studied the potential for resistance which 
still exist throughout the world - for instance in the anti-globalisation 
movement? In my humble opinion one has to revive the ideas of Horkheimers 
original statement on the task of an Institute of Social Research and which 
Habermas tries to carry on. However, one would have to ask the professor 
himself (in this case Habermas) to participate in this program and study 
the world instead of only letting his research assistants do it!

Being from a European country (Denmark) I cannot share your celebrations of 
resistance against Bush's warmongering. I wonder if one could actually 
interpret it as a form of resistance? Bearing in mind the changes of 
goverments throughout Europe during the last two years it seems as if it is 
time to a new round of neoliberalism in Europe and while the public is 
indeed critical towards the Bush-administration (and with very good reasons 
for being so) I can't stop wondering if this is not just another sign of us 
Europeans wanting NOT to be involved in the problems of the world and 
instead barricading ourselves her which would make Fort Europe offlimits to 
anyone not coming from the rich parts of the world. This is anyway - how I 
see it - especially when one bears the current debate on immigrants in mind 
- both here in Denmark and in the Netherlands and France...

Claus