Subject: HAB: Lifeworld Oppression
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 10:36:11 


Gary,

Thanks for your detailed response. Maybe I do see crisis everywhere:

>But JH's discursive-methodological and conceptual
>assumptions are not *constituted* by the kind of
>waiting-for-crisis or searching-for-crisis (if not
>fostering it) that you would internalize (apparently) as
>*your* dynamic of reconstructive analysis, as if life has
>no interest for you, unless a crisis is brewing.

but I think at times Habermas's criticism of Parsons's "overly harmonious" 
rendering of subsystemic exchanges in TCA2 can be equally applied to his 
characterization of the Lifeworld.

I guess where I wanted to head with my comments on your account of the 
dynamic relational processes in Habermas's Lifeworld was not so much to do 
with the accuracy of your recount but rather how unsatisfying aspects of 
Habermas's picturing of the Lifeworld is. In particular, his lack of 
recognition of let's say the ongoing subterranean conflicts which the 
settled structures of the Lifeworld mask.

Thomas McCarthy's essay _Rationality and Relativism_ in the Thompson & Held 
anthology draws attention to Habermas's *ignoring* of ethnomethodological 
and socio-linguistic research. Aspects of these extensive researches 
indicate how oppression is ingrained in the background structures of the 
lifeworld to the extent that foreground interactions can usually proceed 
unproblematically, because - in a sense - everyone knows (or should know?) 
their place in the social hierachy.

All sorts of visual, linguistic, and situational cues present (prep.)  to 
social interactions manage the implicit hierachical and oppressive order of 
the Lifeworld.

So what am I rambling on about? In Habermas, the Lifeworld is something of a 
sacred cow. Obstacles to the development of emancipatory consciousness are 
not always institutional and the Lifeworld (as I think Foucault more clearly 
grasps) is the repository of an insidious and permanent form of 
oppression/suppression.
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Regarding this:

>You claim that "there is a dialectical core to Habermas's
>mode of inquiry," but all of your examples are about the
>*object* of inquiry, not JH's mode of inquiry...

I find it useful to understand Habermas's mode of inquiry as realizing a 
dialectical logic. I also find it useful to describe his characterization of 
the logic of self-reflection which underpin the specifically modern 
methodologies of technological/practical/emancipatory reason as dialectical. 
I notice that similar themes were discussed in a thread between you and Ken 
last month. The term "dialectic" is anathematical to you in regards Habermas 
it appears so perhaps we had better move on.
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>If we were to look in detail at JH as critical reader, we
>would see that "synthesizing strategies" misses the
>prevailing character of his critical hermeneutic.

If the prevailing character of Habermas's work was solely *hermeneutical* 
then sure forget/ignore its dialectical quality. But as you so rightly point 
out its a *critical* hermeneutic and without the promise or objective of a 
dialectical resolution (which for JH hinges on the modified and modest 
hopefulness of an *open ended futurity*) then engagement with social theory 
production is some form of aesthetic/banal intellectual pursuit which 
abandons the emancipatory task of philosophy once and for all.
___________________________________________________________________
I agree with you here:

>In
>particular, one would see that he is not reading "in
>opposition" to Horkheimer and Adorno

As he makes clear in the introductory pages to TCA2, Weber, H&A, Lukacs are 
points of departure on which he constructs his critique of functionalist 
reason.

For me one of Habermas's remarkable (and fairly brave) strategies (esp. in 
_BFN_) is - perhaps resignedly - to build (accept) the dialectic of 
enlightenment ("the dialectic of empowerment and tutelage") into his 
analysis of the topography of the social world in democratic advanced 
capitalist societies.
__________________________________________________________________

>Look, Matt: *Our* lifeworld "lives" through the archive of
>our history on this list. One can see that I don't take a
>dialectical (postive/negative, subject-object,
>oppositional-synthetic) stance toward your views. And
>*that* archived practice is my "argument" for the
>non-dialectical character of critical hermeneutics, as far
>as my "rendition of the lifeworld" is.

This is all very well Gary except for one thing: Your extensive knowledge of 
both Habermas and the philosophical tradition in which he locates himself is 
far too valuable a resource (for me at least) not to be conflictually 
exploited ;-)

Thanks for the dialogue and the open mindedness with which it has been 
conducted!

MattP


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