Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 22:22:17 +1000
Subject: Re: HAB: The practical import of our work


G'day Steve,

Always nice to read a Chiltonism here.  Dunno how much understanding and
agreement has emanated from your contribution here, but I thought it
appropriate to register my understanding and agreement at least.  Good on
you!

Of course, Ken would be the first to point out that, as meaning is
subjective, I may be agreeing with something you hadn't realised your
comments could be taken to say.  In other words, I may not have understood
or agreed at all.  And anyway, as we are strangers in our own houses (even
the solipsism of the neoliberal privateer is a bridge too far), even what
coordinated action we could agree to undertake would not be emancipate us
from our apparently essentially incarceration-loving, yet also unknowable,
selves.

Matt might - and I may be catching more than he actually threw - add that
we must ever continue our dialogue, as we can never know we understand, and
anyway, its the bit before we respond, as our imaginary eccentrically
aligns and connects the communicative symbols, that's the most interesting.

I know I sound a bit, well, rude - but where's Habermas in that?  And, if
Habermas actually is in there (meaning I've misunderstood him, too),
where's the raison d'etre of the bloke?  If, through intersubjectivity, we
can not acquire insights all could understand as valid principles upon
which the amounts and sorts of freedoms potentially available to a
definitively social creature might be based, then why have a Habermas list?
To cut the link between communicative action and meaning (as I still think
Ken's 'imaginary' does), or between meaning and coordinated action (as
possibly Matt's 'imaginary' does), is to leave nothing of Habermas's
project, isn't it?

I mean, isn't it radical scepticism of such an order that Hume felt obliged
to consign to the flames ... ere he'd be left impotent in a world needful
of action?

Anyway - whatever.  Thanks a lot for your refreshing note, Steve.

Yours Kropotkinally,
Rob.



Steve had written:

>I have been meaning to write this for some time but was prompted
>to today when I happened on this passage in Steven Best's _The
>Politics of Historical Vision_ (NY:  Guilford Press, 1995), p.226,
>noting Steve Seidman's 1991 & 1992 works along the same line:
>
>"In the case of Habermas, despite his numerous political essays,
>we see a clear example of how the concern for providing
>foundations for critique has overtaken the initial goal of theory,
>which was to engage in social critique and political analysis....
>All too often, Habermas's political 'addressee' is not the new
>social movements or citizens, but rather fellow academics.  The
>Habermas industry has engendered a new form of scholasticism that
>rivals medieval Aristotelianism in its arid, obtuse jargon."
>
>I believe this applies to us.  The debates and discussions on this
>list seem to me to have gradually drifted away from any practical,
>critical, normative commitments.  I grant that this list, if
>anywhere, is the place for technical debates over fine points of
>H's work and its general concerns.  I cannot and do not point
>fingers at any particular person or posting as representing the
>above-condemned "scholasticism".  My concern really derives from
>the overall tone of our postings, not any one particular.  I would
>like it if as we do our work, each of us would ask ourselves what
>connection this has to practical political issues.
>
>Let me clarify two things in closing.  First, by "connection to
>practical political issues" I don't mean that we should be
>printing our works as broadsides and passing them out in the
>streets.  I don't ask that we do policy analysis.  I don't intend
>to write articles like, "A Habermasian View of Street Light
>Placement in Duluth, Minnesota".  I don't demand such a direct
>connection.  But I do ask that as we work, we retain a
>consciousness of how our work does ultimately connect to practical
>political issues.
>     Second, I don't mean that any of us has to avoid any specific
>topics or change any specific contemplated posting.  My concern is
>with our general drift.  If we keep in mind the connection that I
>sought in the previous paragraph, we will drift back to our
>underlying concern without any of us having to be compulsive about
>it.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Steve
>
>P.S. By a curious coincidence, I first ran onto Habermas (and the
>Marxian / post-modern tradition generally) in a reading group
>organized by Steve Seidman back in the early 1980s at New Mexico
>State University.
>
>*************************************************************
>| Stephen Chilton, Associate Professor, Dept of Pol Science
>|    Univ of Minnesota-Duluth / Duluth, MN 55812-2496 / USA
>|
>| 218-726-8162/7534   FAX: 726-6386   Home: 724-6833 (home)
>| www.d.umn.edu/~schilton    EMAIL: schilton-AT-mail.d.umn.edu
>|
>| "Socialist papers have often a tendency to become mere annals
>|  of complaint about existing conditions.  The exploitation of
>|  the laborer in the mine, the factory, the field is related;
>|  the misery and sufferings of the workers during strikes are
>|  told in vivid pictures;  their helplessness in the struggle
>|  against employers is insisted upon;  and that succession of
>|  hopeless efforts exercises a most depressing influence on
>|  the reader . . . .
>|       "I thought, on the contrary, that a revolutionary paper
>|  must be, above all, a record of these symptoms which
>|  everywhere announce the coming of a new era, the germination
>|  of new forms of social life, the growing revolt against
>|  antiquated institutions.  These symptoms should be watched,
>|  brought together in their intimate connection, and so grouped
>|  as to show to the hesitating minds of the greater number the
>|  invisible and often unconscious support which advanced ideas
>|  find everywhere, when a revival of thought takes place in
>|  society . . . .  It is hope, not despair, which makes
>|  successful revolutions."
>|      -- Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, 1898,
>|  quoted in The Catholic Worker (March-April, 1993), p.5.
>*************************************************************
>
>
>
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