Bulwark Against an Actual Empire, or another Maginot Line?

I would like to inform everyone that Timothy Burke has christened me "Scott the Merciless."  Really.  He did. 

No he didn't.  You caught me.  He said:

The deeper problem here is something Scott has been pretty merciless about at his own blog and The Valve: a meaningful reading of alliances made and alliances broken requires fidelity to those tools of analytic social science and historicism that theory (poststructuralist and otherwise) mostly abjures or uses in a mood of romantic bemusement. [...]  What I'm referring back to is Scott's remarks about the mobility of a cultural studies/theory sense of the politics: its "left" is not any kind of socially incarnated left (save the social habitus of the constituencies drawn to the writing and consumption of theory, which is semi-effaced in the writing of such work). Its sense of left-ness is derived from a mutable, shifting search of representational space for transgression, liminality, culture-war, contestation, whereupon sides are taken, tents are pitched, and a left posture affirmed.

Funny how anytime Burke says something it sounds so much more eloquent than when I do.  But he has a point: I do think that.  This whole conversation has me reliving the week I spent reading nothing but back issues of Critical Inquiry in preparation for the Theory's Empire event.

As I moved through them, I found myself attracted to the theoretical stylings of that earlier generation of theorists, none of whom seemed stricken with the unthinking commitment to irrational positions I observe in contemporary theorists.  For this reason, Alphonse van Worden's accusation struck me as willfully ignorant and particularly absurd:

This may have something to do with rational, good old fashioned Discerning Consumption's loss of market share to faddish Theory. Poor shopwindow display.

She describes "Discerning Consumption," a neologism whose wit sags with every flat iteration, as a desire for a return to something "rational, good old fashioned."  Given my oft-stated position on Derrida (articulated in the essay to which I had linked once and mentioned linking to two other times in that thread) you would think someone interested in condemning it would bother to learn what it is.  She didn't.  The quickness to condemn despite a dearth of evidence and her determination to remain ignorant of the evidence despite my proferring it is what I've come to expect from self-identified theorists.

Others have recently caused me to question the validity of this expectation.  But even they sometimes slip into bad habits.  Case in point: the current (and ongoing) conversation between Sean, Rich, Jodi and Matt in which I figure as someone who, contra Sean, attempts to take seriously the claims of all participants.  Only I'm not "contra Sean." It's unfair to Sean to ignore his recent (and forthcoming) discussion of Derrida's apocalyptic thought, in which he engages with the text as seriously as Adam praised Abrams for engaging with Derrida's earlier work.  Now, as Adam pointed out, there are problems with Abrams' interpretation of Derrida, and there may well be problems wtih Sean's.  But problematic interpretations are not sweeping dismissals.  Similarly, when I finish composing this I'm going to tackle some of Jodi's work on Zizek.  I may disagree with her conclusions, but if I honestly engage the arguments from which she draws them, would someone take issue with the integrity of the intentions I brought to the work?  In other words, to echo Sean, would my disagreement with her arguments necessarily imply that I'm another David Horowitz?  Given the figure I've become in this debate, I believe that all parties involved would assume that I approached her texts with intellectual integrity and evaluated them accordingly.  I would be no David Horowitz.

How about I confuse this?  Given my stated apprehensions about the psychoanalytic theory and weak alliegences to Foucauldian thought, I'll be strongly disinclined to agree with her conclusions because I'll no doubt find the assumptions on which her premises are based suspect. Still everyone involved in this debate will probably believe that I'm engaged in an honest evaluation of her work.  How have I earned the benefit of the doubt?  How has Sean not?  Why does he deserve Horowitzian opprobrium whereas I do not?  Institutional politics.  Sean provides an object lesson in bad faith argument when he deliberately packages Matt in the same box as Ward Churchill, Pol Pot and stupidity:

The masters of these kinds of rhetorical tactics are the likes of David Horowitz and Christopher Hitchens. Their examples are worthy of being avoided. Consider some hypothetical possibilities. If I were like David Horowitz, I could ask you: Matt, just how do you distance yourself from Ward Churchill? Or, I could say: Matt, you’re on the left aren’t you? How do you distance yourself from the show trials, the great famine, the gulag, the reeducation camps, Pol Pot, etc. That would be a stupid, meanspirited, reductive and solely polemical question, so I’m not going to ask it. Let’s choose some less incendiary examples. I could say: Matt, you acknowledge that there’s a lot of bad theory out there, yet you defend theory from its critics. How do you distance yourself from the context of stupidity?

Strangely, Jodi--whose attempt to package anti-theoretical arguments in the same box with racism, sexism and nationalism inspired Sean's response--agrees that this gesture is the product of an institutional logic, one in which the "politics," despite being couched in the familiar left/right vocabulary, are institutional.  As she says:

so-called theory positions are just as situated as so-called anti-theory; in the US, a left-right politics has built up around this; this does not reduce either side to these politics, it's simply part of their institutional contexts.

In this snippet she's still providing an intellectual history of the way the theory and anti-theory positions were mapped onto positions on the popular U.S. political spectrum during the height of the so-called Culture Wars in the '80s and '90s.  Her map of the debate accurately depicts the arbitrarily but intensely "political" arrangement back before the stakes were so high.  Stakes?  High?  As she says:

[The] evolving nature of the university and practice of scholarship are, particularly now, part of large scale political struggles. The Right has been actively organizing and recruiting students, passing legislation to guarantee that conservatives will be hired, that those teaching in Middle Eastern studies will be 'fair,' etc. This is part of the culture war of the last 20 years, but also taken to new levels. I have noticed a difference in my classrooms since 9/11, one that is hard to pin down, but one that asserts faith over reason more often than before.

She couldn't be more right.  But the conclusion she draws from this situation is one I can't brook.  She seems still to consider the map of institutional political terrain--the one formed when the stakes of the debate were whether and/or how much Plato/Shakespeare/Milton/&c. students should be exposed to--an accurate survey of the contemporary extra-institutional political terrain.  She suggests--and Jodi, if I misrepresent your position, please correct me--that the terms of the debate as they were prior to this upswell of conservative faux-populism are identical to those now.  That what needs doing is retrenchment of positions already staked instead of a reassessment of all tactics. 

In short, she advocates the construction of an intellectual Maginot Line, when what is direly needed is a reevaluation of the "political" quality of "academic politics" in light of the organized, mobilized and conventionally political threat represented by an adversary of an entirely different sort.[1]  In this respect, despite my (now possibly fleeting) status as the figure welcomed by both "sides" or whatever quasi-martial metaphor you prefer, I must say I come down strongly on Sean's.  Either intimations of racism, sexism, anti-semitism, nationalism, &c. are politically charged or they're better left unmentioned.  To continue to play the institutional politics of '80s and '90s is to fundamentally misunderstand or overestimate the importance of purely institutional affiliation in contemporary society. 

I've tried to finish this post for two days now, but people won't stop talking.  So I'm stuffing my ears full of cotton, fixing my blinkers and posting without seeing how the debate has proceeded in other places so that I might 1) read about Zizek and 2) write about London.

[1] This is not latent Francophilia, merely an observation about a famously failed military tactic predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the new challenge.

Comments

[Jodi]

Rich,
can you say something about the rights, truth, consequences, and reality that you think that you, I, and the religious right can all appeal to in order to come to agreement or even have a conversation?

on pro-choice: actually, the religious right does not claim that pro-choice means the choice of a fetus for life; they claim that pro-choice means being not pro-life. Here, at least, the rhetorical strategies are relatively clear and to the detriment to those of us who are pro-choice, I might add, insofar as the right gets the good 'life' side of the argument. Feminists have been trying to reappropriate the language of life, particularly by trying to talk about already living children, living wages, conditions of life, etc. It hasn't caught on as of yet.

[Timothy Burke]

Jodi:

To me this feels as if you're confusing the activity of persuasion with truth-claims. Whether you're able to persuade someone or not is one thing. Whether you're creating knowledge with some sense of constraint because of a responsibility to truth and knowledge which are not just an instrumental product of your own felt needs and subject position is another thing entirely. If we observe that constraint, then we may sometimes end up somewhere that we didn't intend or anticipate, at a conclusion that wasn't preordained, at a knowledge that isn't just instrumental. We can patiently try to persuade others about what we come to know if we've come to know it in good faith. And I think it's strange to say that a person who identifies with the religious right is so alien that there aren't points of dialogic connection on truth, rights, knowledge and so on. Even if there are none such, that doesn't free us to just think or know whatever it is that we deem it necessary and instrumentally useful that we ought to think and know.

[Jodi]

Timothy,
In my view your comments about my 'confusion' are misplaced. What I have in mind involves the justification of validity claims (some of which are 'truth' claims). Within a discourse model of truth, the conditions under which a claim to validity are justified involve a set of demanding assumptions, what Habermas would call the ideal speech situation. In the more everyday language of blog talk, it seems appropriate to talk about the possibility of finding a place or location that those who may disagree can occupy or agree upon in order to resolve disagreements. This is not the same as persuasion. Rather it involves the possibility of a shared epistemology. In my view, epistemological difference 'go all the way down.' There is not a neutral relation to the truth capable of providing a bedrock point from which to resolve disagreements.

In my view, recognizing this fundamental gap is actually more generous to one's opponents than presuming bad faith or stupidity on their part. So, rather than saying that Scalia argues in bad faith or that he is stupid (which is clearly false), it seems more appropriate to say that his epistemology differs fundamentally from my own (much as the epistemological assumptions of scientists who accept evolution differ from scientists who push intelligent design).

[Rich Puchalsky]

Jodi Dean: "it seems more appropriate to say that his epistemology differs fundamentally from my own (much as the epistemological assumptions of scientists who accept evolution differ from *scientists who push intelligent design*)." (my emphasis)

Bruno Latour: "And yet entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives."

[Jodi]

Very interesting quote, Rich, but it doesn't answer the question does it? An actual answer would have to at least gesture toward an epistemological position capable of moving beyond the impasse Latour points to. The impasse is real--it is the case that extremists are using the arguments. The problem is how to solve or redress or confront this stand off. And this is an epistemological problem.

[Rich Puchalsky]

No it isn't, Jodi. You are willing to see politics in everything just up to the point where an actual political conflict is reached. At that point, you redefine the conflict as an epistemological problem.

To quote you again, you write: "can you say something about the rights, truth, consequences, and reality that you think that you, I, and the religious right can all appeal to in order to come to agreement or even have a conversation?"

The question of reproductive rights is an explicitly political one. The conflict is not going to be won by having a conversation, or coming to an agreement. It's going to be won by using the methods of politics. But you have systematically disarmed the side in favor of reproductive rights from using any claims based on "rights, truth, consequences, and reality". After all, according to Theory there can be no right of autonomy that is not a mirage, no scientific truth that the fetus is not yet an independent entity, no historically known consequences of making abortion illegal that can not be revised away, no reality of the misery of unwilling parents and unwanted children that the right wing can not deny by holding to their own version of reality. You can't even see that your own "I don't have any doubt in my position" rhetorical strategy is vulnerable to postmodern attack, simply because you haven't yet encountered one that affects your particular issue on a large scale. Well, you will.

[Jodi]

First, on my lack of doubt in my own position. I agree that this is a political claim. And, I agree that it is a political claim because there is no further one can go, no point from which it might be reconciled, mediated. It's a point where politics and epistemology meet.

Now, I don't think I've systematically disarmed the pro-choice side, but I take your point to be one of that blames Theory for undermining all solid foundations. And isn't this the real question: is the lack of solid foundations simply a claim of Theory or is it now part of our condition? I take the latter view.

On autonomy: the point is not that it is illusion. Nietzsche and Foucault argue that it is produced through specific practices. Lacan and Zizek argue that it is necessarily tied to a point of non-autonomy, a dependence, lack, or point of fixity. Even Kant argues that freedom is but a supposition, a necessary precondition of morality that cannot itself be proven.

Scientific truth on fetus--I don't think that here is there a point where science and religion meet at all. So, there is not a point where science defeats religion on the basis of truth or the facts. And this is not the fault of Theory. How could it be?

On the results of illegal abortion and unwanted children: the facts do not speak for themselves. The Right argues that the bad results are results of moral decline, lack of family values, etc. This is not my view, but again, one comes up against competing interpretations where there is not one that can carry the day.

And, on confronting 'postmodern views'--for the record, my own view is a kind of combination of Zizek, Lacan, and Marx. It is not yet fully put together or consistent. It is the case, however, that the Lacanian theory posits a Real as well as a very specific notion of the subject. Most 'postmodern' approaches reject this view, just as they view a Marxist emphasis on the economy as essentialist. I disagree and can make arguments, but there isn't a place from which they can be resolved. Again, there is a point where politics and epistemology meet (and hence why Badiou and Zizek are interested in the Truth Event.)

[Rich Puchalsky]

Jodi: "And isn't this the real question: is the lack of solid foundations simply a claim of Theory or is it now part of our condition? I take the latter view."

In other words, you think that reality is socially constructed. Yes, I knew that. But it is not true that reality is socially constructed. There are brute facts as well as social facts. The difference between "scientists" who push intelligent design and those who accept evolution is not merely one of epistemology.

Some of your material is just very odd. For instance:
"I don't think that here is there a point where science and religion meet at all. So, there is not a point where science defeats religion on the basis of truth or the facts. And this is not the fault of Theory. How could it be?" Well, the religious right disagrees with you. That is why they are so eager to squash evolution, among other things. When a religious right person says that God created man in the fashion described in the Bible, this is a truth claim -- one that can objectively be proven false. And the religious right knows it. Only you do not know it. You rush in and say, oh, your two dialogues just don't meet. And they smile and say, why not then teach them both? Which of course means that one can not be true, there are on an equal footing. By this means you assist them in concealing brute facts under social facts.

[Jodi]

I don't think that 'reality' (what we experience as reality) goes all the way down. That's why I mentioned above the notion of the Real.

But, the real question is about the scientists. Your view seems to posit them as bad-spirited, as knowing the truth but denying if for their own purposes, so they know that evolution is a fact but also know that it problematizes religion and so they want to challenge evolution to save religion. So, you hold onto a singular notion of 'real life' that everyone really accepts and experiences and anyone who denies this is mystified or deceived or something. Is that right?

[Rich Puchalsky]

No, Jodi. Reality actually exists; evolution is a real process whether people believe in it or not. It doesn't matter whether the so-called "scientists" who support intelligent design are mystified, deceived, or whatever; they are wrong. The single trick of naive constructionism is to imagine that everything is a social fact, to say, look, gender roles are social facts -- therefore gravitation is a social fact.

[Jodi]

It may be a trick of naive constructivism, but that's not really the point. I'll try one last time. Some of the remarkable characteristics of science involve method--experimentation, hypothesis-testing, verification. These processes, moreover, are carried out through discussion--presenting and publishing research for critique. For the most part, contemporary science relies on probabilities over certainties. There is recognition of all sorts of neat mysteries and further questions. Solving problems is in part addressing what is not known, that is, recognizing the way that what we experience as reality is non-all, open, incomplete, something to be questioned and examined--like the radical proposition that the earth is round and spinning when we experience it quite differently.

What is particularly striking in the present is the way that the very methods of science are adopted by those you would, I guess, call pseudo-scientists or non-scientists, to prove their points. So, there are scientists who contest global warming. This is strange, but true. There are scientists who have captured light for up to a minute in crystals to use in quantum computing. Again, strange but true.

It may be that further discussion of this is futile. My view is that the present is marked by competing conceptions of reality, that the conceptual anchors that had enabled a singular view, if they ever really held, have lost their moorings. Are the different views equal in validity? No--but part of the problem is the way that they present themselves in terms of incommensurable types of validity claims. In my view, simply to say, this is reality anyone who says otherwise is wrong, nuts, duplicitous, is not helpful. It's a claim that anyone can make that doesn't go far to dealing with incommensurability.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Jodi, I agree that this way not be worth pursuing further, because I don't think that you are really willing to analyze your own views in the way that you analyze others'. Nor do I think that you really understand science well enough. The sentences: "So, there are scientists who contest global warming. This is strange, but true. There are scientists who have captured light for up to a minute in crystals to use in quantum computing. Again, strange but true" are so full of category errors that disentangling them appears futile. To just start with one of them in the first sentence, yes, there are scientists who contest global warming. This is not strange at all -- the business of scientists is to contest accepted theories, where data permits it, and every theory undergoes some level of continual challenge. Of course there are also nonscientists who contest global warming for various ideological reasons. But the world will in actuality either suffer from global warming or not.

Are there incommensurable types of validity claims? No. There is only one physical reality, and this provides a basis of comparison for all such claims. "What we experience as reality" may be incomplete, and may be questioned in any way that you like, but reality itself is not incomplete, and if our perceptions of it move too far away from what it really is, it has a way of correcting us.

I recommend that you re-read the thread, looking specifically for the places in which you cast doubt and do not cast doubt. As I said near the beginning, a wholly doubting stance is not useful, nor is a wholly trusting one. You wholly doubt science -- perhaps even physical reality, it is hard to tell -- and wholly trust your own unexamined statements of politics.

[Jodi]

If you say that reality is not incomplete then you have to think that people are completely determined, that is, that there is no space for change, agency, autonomy, intervention. If there were something like human agency, then reality would be non-all, this incompleteness would be the very space of the subject.

My guess is that you think that really think reality is complete because of your statement that the world will suffer from global warming or not. In my view, the extent to which the world will suffer from global warming will be a result of how the scientific discussion and research proceeds. So, there are very real stakes here. And, rather than wholly doubting science--which I do not--I think that how those scientists who are concerned with global warming are able to defeat their opponents is crucial to the survival of the planet.

I agree with you that scientific theories undergo continual challenge. That's part of science. And, here is the interesting thing: the intelligent design people accept this view as well and think that what they are doing is part of this practice of challenge.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Believing that reality exists is not the same thing as asserting determinism. And of course human agency has the capability to affect future events. This has nothing to do with whether any particular theory is true or not.

[Jodi]

And, then we are back at the question of the way that the validity of a claim to truth is established.