Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 01:12:20 +0200
Subject: Re: HAB: Money, power, and ... images?


At 13.46 24.2.1998 -0600, Steve wrote:

>Brian's post reminds me of something that occurred to me in
>reading TCA.  Brian (and Habermas) refer to money and power as
>means by which people communicate without having (or being able) 
>to confront one another in terms of discursive justification. 
...
>I would like to suggest that we should
>add "images" to the first two means. 
...
>I realized how much this shaping is done through images
>that, like money and power, do not present themselves in a
>manner claiming (or being readily susceptible to) discursive
>justification.  
...
>Our critical theory needs to be
>concerned as much with deconstructing these images as it does
>with deconstructing the subterranean paths of money and power.

I quote so much because I agree with most of the above and think
that Steve is making an important point. I think also Bourdieu criticizes
Habermas for essentially the same when he says that Habermas does not
take into account "symbolic power" (in one of his essays in _Language
and Symbolic Power_, if I recall the title correctly).

However, I think that this is an adequate analysis only on one level.
In certain contexts the images (including metaphors and everything
else rhetorics studies) underlying our ways of coping with the world are
more suspectible of being recognized as such. Advertising is a good
example, because we
are aware that we are being persuaded and that the advertiser has an
interest in focusing our attention in a certain way (that arouses our
desire to buy). With the slightest reflection, we realize that someone
is trying to change our understanding of a product's value, usually
by non-argumentative means.

Nevertheless, this is only a special case of image-guided world-disclosure.
It's
not just foreign cultures, but our own as well that we perceive through
deeply sedimented images and interpretation patterns. These are not
discursively justified, being for the most part below the level of
consciousness and transmitted in implicit form through socialization;
they are rather the condition of possibility of justification and
argumentation. (What I'm trying to articulate is a position similar to that
of Gadamer or
Rorty.)

I think that Habermas has always had a problem with this. Not surprising,
since he is always uneasy when it comes to the limits of rational
justification. I believe the problem here is exactly analogous to
the issue of power. Habermas uses "power" in a traditional way, to refer
to open use of power or coercion by the state institutions etc. In
contrast, Foucault and many feminists see power functioning everywhere
and by many invisible means. Steve's proposal is an important corrective
in the Habermasian spirit, in that it focuses on the "visible" use of
images (cases where we are already aware that our understanding is
mediated by them) to shape our thoughts and guide our actions. However,
it does not seem take into account their role on that level of
world-articulation
that we stand on, that which we could not deconstruct without falling into
nothingness. Or, put in another way, that use of images that would
persist in the ideal speech situation (like certain forces of power
would, too). Ultimately it comes down to the unavoidability of some kind of
rhetoric - which does not mean we should accept any, even if some
relativists would like to draw that conclusion.

In short: power and images are not just media alternative to communicative
action, but preconditions functioning within it as well. In the end,
they are not within the reach of discursive justification. It does not
follow that there isn't a lot to be gained by bringing visible forms of
traditionally recognized or symbolic power or strategically employed
rhetoric to discursive scrutiny - that power and images are more than media
does not mean that they wouldn't function as independent media _as well_.

>	I might add that I don't regard deconstruction as the
>end of social analysis;  we need to subsequently construct, on
>the standard of discursive justification, the forms we can agree
>to.  Deconstruction in all three domains is just the
>prerequisite for us to be able to make such an agreement without
>blinders on. 

This is again something that I enthusiastically endorse. I am just
somewhat more skeptical than Habermas about the extent to which we can
hope to lift the blinders. I'm not quite sure how far I already agree
with Steve, since I'm not sure what he means by "deconstruction" here.
If he means showing how images (understood in the wide sense that
I've been using) that present themselves as neutral or completely
transparent with regard to reality are actually constructed according
to certain interests (or ready-made models of interpretation which
embody them possibly unbeknownst to their users, as is most likely
the case with newsagencies working in "developing countries"), then
this is most valuable work. And if construction means recognizing that
we can't understand others or even ourselves without images, metaphors
and the like either, and consequently trying to find the most acceptable ones,
then well, I can't complain. (It would seem that the generation of such
images is beyond the reach of discourse; that is the job of imagination,
instead, and I won't mind if Ken adds "emphatic" somewhere around here.)


Antti



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