Subject: [HAB:] Habermas & Spin Doctoring Democracy
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 01:02:34 +0000


Ali, List:

A couple of recent on & off list discussions have broached the 
obligatoriness of reciprocating responses. IMO not to reply to each and 
every post is NOT discourteous. Often, and I think this is a sentiment 
shared by other participants, being inspired to think and write a response 
that clarifies and furthers one's own position is a beneficial outcome. Like 
wise with the following :-) In many ways we are talking to ourselves by 
imagining an audience (weird !).


Ali,

Thanks for your response (8/9/3). Your exposition of Foucault’s position on 
the reflective impact of his work on the present was much appreciated. I 
guess I was seeking to find from you how you might see the Foucault-effect 
on the present. I liked the Zizek essay. Does Zizek correlate to your p.o.v?
-----------------
>4) But I do not agree with your comments that [Except for a philosopher of 
>freedom he tends to underestimate the degree of *free* complicity involved 
>in processes of capitalist subjection.]. I cannot see how Foucault 
>underestimates the ‘free’ complicity? In fact he is a theorist who makes 
>this ‘free’ complicity central to his analysis of the capitalist mode of 
>governance.

So would Foucault say that a social actor who freely (in the sense of 
“knowingly”) enjoined processes of capitalist subjection was experiencing 
“freedom” ? I don’t think so, because the type of subjecthood and autonomy 
this requires (free agency in the conventional sense) is antithetical to 
Foucault’s position on the construction of individuality and autonomy. There 
is a quasi-contractualist “thing” (also mysterious and not explicit I admit) 
that also goes on in the social world. In return for obedience and 
compliance the collective doles out material and existential security. This 
adds up to complicity not unknowing subjection. Foucault is spot on when he 
exposes how the fairytale of “freedom” is the icing on the cake or the sugar 
coating on the bitter pill, but part of the contract is the willingness to 
be lied to, as it were.
---------
5) You say “Aren't you in danger of falling into the economist fallacy: ALL 
is economics?”. But I am saying the exact opposite of it. I am saying ALL is 
NOT economics. I am going even further than this. I am saying even 
capitalism can Not be reduced to economics!! And I am claiming that this is 
Foucault’s position. And of course capitalism (and not just capitalism) is a 
contingent historical phenomena. But also ‘necessary’ to the extent that it 
is our present (Foucault’s historical a priori).

Sorry about my misreading on this one. Again I am hoping to extract your 
take on Foucault’s normative or prescriptive position. OK. If capitalism 
isn’t all economics. What is it? A specific type of rationality. OK. What is 
to be done? Explorations of suppressed or alternate rationalities. Or, as 
Lyotard would have it: ‘Social oppression results from a suppression of the 
plurality of forms of rationality embedded in language.’ (Foster, Philosophy 
& Social Criticism, 25,2) . Haven’t we seen how attempts to “liberate” 
alternative rationalities end up being coopted. It’s the story of the 
revolutionary 1960s and 1970s.

As critical philosophers part of our duty statement is to ask “How did this 
happen?” We can look perhaps to Horkheimer and Adorno’s logic of identity, 
which is to say, maybe human nature has something to do with it:

[out of sequence]

7) Just a brief note that ‘human nature’ among other things must be 
understood historically. I guess both Habermas and Foucault would agree on 
this.

Having mapped the human genome, having (possibly) cloned human life etc., I 
have thought for several years that critical philosophy’s trepidation to 
take seriously a conception of “human nature” is more part of the problem 
than any sort of solution. There are at least two main reasons why critical 
philosophy has steered away from “human nature”:

1.	Fears of the ‘is’ to ‘ought’ and the bogey of social Darwinism. If you 
read the sociobiology debates of the 1970s and early 1980s, the dominant 
Marxist camp in academia were hysterical about the emergence of a 
sociobiology. It is something Dennett talks about when he discusses memetic 
theory.
2.	Why the hysteria? In part, the conditions of possibility for critical 
social philosophy (Marxism and feminism eg.) rest on not so much the 
perfectibility of human kind, but – let’s say – the ‘room for improvement’ 
of human kind. These well intentioned attempts were premised on the 
fallacious belief that human nature is “fixed”. As the radical research 
undertaken by Ted Steele shows, Weissmann’s barrier is pervious. There is 
reverse transcription between soma and germ cells. In other words, in 
principle at this stage at least, environmental conditions can – in a 
Lamarckian way -  affect the genetic material passed on from generation to 
generation. In other words, random mutation and advantageous adaptation - is 
not necessarily the driving force of evolution. Human nature was NOT fixed 
in the primordial soup.

So while I am not dismissing culture I am suggesting that a far more 
holistic approach be taken to the nature/culture issue in critical 
philosophy. As I suggested above the utter rejection of human nature by 
constructivist critical theory obfuscates the potentials for critical social 
theory and in doing so becomes as much a part of the problem as specific 
rationalities and systematically distorted modes of communication.

6) You say [I think part of JH's strategy is to suggest that we are NOT 
powerless against the military/industrial? political elite.]. I agree. And 
Foucault’s point was the same. However he though that this belief cannot be 
based on a "less rigorous" [rosey?] analysis of the situation. It would be 
deluding ourselves.

Yes. This is the crux of the matter. I argue in my thesis that JH’s position 
is in fact based on a more rigorous analysis than I have given him credit 
for in recent posts. JH’s work certainly up until BFN was still premised on 
H. & A’s dialectic of enlightenment thesis. Put simply, Habermas’s cautious 
proceduralism is shaped by his deep anxieties that the type of praxis 
philosophies of life (Nietzsche, Foucault) and other crude revolutionary 
agendas promote MISCARRY with horrific results (Nazism, Stalinism). So, I 
guess the question that can be asked is who is being less rigorous? So, in 
respect of his fears, Habermas chooses the far less than perfect position of 
maintaining the ideological veil of democratic capitalist systems whilst 
urging that the enlightenment template is there to be drawn on if “we” will. 
Throughout JH, individual will-formation is primordial. What he doesn’t 
appear to be willing to countenance is the degree to which the 
universalistic morality of the lifeworld has been very cleverly distorted so 
as to maintain the appearance or semblance of democracy. Habermas overlooks 
the spin doctoring of democracy. Spin doctors = witch doctors. Yes. 
Enlightenment has reverted to myth. What else can it do? As Durkheim 
suggested, and I take this very seriously, the social is a ‘phenomenon of 
general biology whose conditions must be sought in the essential properties 
of organized matter.’ (The Division of Labour In Society, 1933: 41). 
Actually, I read someone somewhere recently who considered Foucault to 
belong to the Durkheimian tradition of French sociology. (Don't all French 
sociologists? One might ask!)

Durkheim is there in Foucault if you want to find it. Foucault was a 
physicalist, yet this truly radical aspect of Foucault has been jettisoned 
by camp-followers who want to hold onto a human - rest of the physical world 
divide. The persistence of religious horror. Sacre bleue. I don't think we 
know how to interpret Foucault's physicalism. I would suggest examining it 
from the Durkheimian functionalist perspective pointed to above.

8) And Matt I do not understand your final question!!

Pretty much the subtext of most of the above discussion. What do we do? 
Follow Habermas’s cautious conservativism? Risk opening Foucault’s Box and 
letting Pandora out (again)? My exact point was I think Foucault’s 
less-deluded analysis of the present wins him the prize for descriptive 
critical sociology. My question is does Habermas win the prize for 
prescriptive or normative critical sociology?

MattP.

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