From: "matthew piscioneri" <mpiscioneri-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: HAB: From Colonisation to Compromise
Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2001 06:41:52 


Dear List,

Thanks Eduardo for more *compulsory* reading!

I was reviewing posts sent in the middle of 2000 re: the fate of Habermas's 
colonisation thesis from the _TCA_. I am wondering whether others would 
agree that in _BFN_ there is both a continuity and a disruption with this 
earlier thesis, but this change is - as was suggested six months ago - 
partially due to recognisable shifts in the modes of material & cultural 
reproduction rather than to changes in Habermas's own prescriptive 
theoretical attachments.

(I am less inclined to prioritise either a nascent trend towards 
globalisation or post-evil empire changes than I am to point to the 
consolidation of the negative utopia JH talks about in _Towards a Rational 
Society_ cf. below as the generative origins of these changes)

IMO, in _BFN_ Habermas appears to have successfully *captured* (almost in an 
aesthetic way) one sense of the changes in the social ambience which I think 
Baudrillard captures in an altogether other sense.

Whilst I may not *like* what I feel is the overall increased functionality 
of Habermas's analysis, and in particular the slippage in the forefrontal 
positioning of a CT which admits of something more than a functional 
potential in its contribution to the maintenance of social integration; 
there is a strong reasonance between JH's analysis and the increase in 
sophistication of social management practices which have been informed by 
social scientific expertise. This expertise includes JH's own theory of 
communicative action - and its dissemination through the usual conduits 
(mainly academia) into application. This process has occurred as well with 
elements of Post Structuralist/Modernist theory).

I realise I am overstating the case, but surely there is call to note the 
irony present in the critical expertise of JH's work contributing to the 
strengthening of THAT iron cage. Is the point that in advanced modernity the 
iron cage always has been something worthy of a Kafkaesque myth? Or, that in 
liberal democracies which maintain a *healthy* public sphere, there is still 
room to squeeze between the bars, as it were?

As always, awaiting the Second Enlightenment. An intellectually demanding 
and productive 2001 to all :-)

Matthew Piscioneri
School of Philosophy
University of Tasmania

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