Date: 	Fri, 27 Feb 1998 13:58:27 -0500
Subject: Re: HAB: Imagining deconstruction



On Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:32:04 -0500  M.A. King wrote:

(hi matthew)

> Well, for Habermas (if I understand him correctly), it comes 
from the binding/bonding force of communicative action.

Which is a tautological argument (it is binding/bonding 
because it is binding/bonding - it is good because it is 
good)....

>Social solidarity breaks down if interlocutors refuse to 
engage with each other on shared terms--if they refuse to try 
to understand each other, and to manifest that understanding 
to each other.

Right - Habermas must make a plea for solidarity - one that 
takes place in language despite itself and the context from 
which it springs.  You have to buy into procedures - they are 
not necessarily part of the telos of language.

>  To say something to someone and to then watch that 
person launch off in another direction, nominally in response 
to what you've said but really having nothing to do with what 
you meant, is very alienating and isolating.  (This might be 
almost the normal state of communication in cyberspace, 
though).  There's nothing *natural* about it; it's founded on the 
*assumption* that solidarity is a good thing.

Right, I agree.  Habermas makes the assumption that 
solidarity is a good thing.  What if it isn't?  And whose 
measure of good are we talking about here?  Ideally solidarity 
means freedom for all.  But does it really?  What kind of 
vision of the good is being imposed here?

> > strips it of its transitory and creative (emphatic) dynamic.  
The  accusation that someone is misreading something 
> > presupposes a *correct* (ie. objective, atemporal, 
acontextual)  reading.

> I don't think that follows at all.  There must be a correct 
reading for there to be a misreading, yes, but why must a 
correct reading be objective (in a strong sense), atemporal, 
and acontextual?

Right - the idea of objectivity doesn't really fit into the web of 
intentionality.  Perhaps in the descriptive sense but this too is 
backed by a specific ideological interest.  The search for 
objectivity is an ideologically based perspective.  What are 
the implications of this search for people?  I would argue that 
the analytical approach to language, the old school rigidity, 
claims to be objective but actually reifies its object through 
processes that decontextualize it.

> > This presupposes an objective and *natural* state of 
affairs in  language use and intention - something which can 
only be  maintained and defended with recourse to a 
metaphysical  level.

> Again, it doesn't need to be defended with recourse to 
metaphysics--rather with recourse to the social repercussions 
of not bothering to make an effort to engage each other in 
genuine conversation.

If it isn't metaphysical then it must shift to a strong 
hermeneutics - something which Habermas disagrees with - 
opting for a depth hermeneutic instead - one which can reach 
behind ideological discourses and point out the origins of sys 
dis com. 

> > The precision required for such would, literally, alienate 
> > and estrange those involved in such a argument by 
making their comments particularly foreign.

> I'm not sure why you say this.  Why is it more alienating to 
try to work with your interlocutors to arrive at common 
definitions than it is to continue talking past each other?

Working with people requires incredible amounts of 
imagination.  Putting yourself in someone elses' shoes is 
perhaps one of the most difficult things you can do.  It is 
painful, creative, empathic, etc.  It requires time and space.  
Furthermore - it might also require a surrender of certain parts 
of your identity (the alienation).  In order to come to an 
agreement I suspect, and this is just a musing, that one might 
have to make sacrifices for the sake of an agreement.  To use 
a blunt example - if one person uses the word xyz to mean z 
and you use the word xyz to mean y - then someone will have 
to "surrender" part of their vocabulary to come to an 
agreement.  There are lots of problems with this example - but 
the idea is still there - that communication is, in many 
respects, a renuciatory activity - something that Habermas 
doesn't go into much but finds a historical echo in the early 
work of Horkheimer and Adorno.

ken






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