Did You Miss Me?

You certainly missed new content—site stats don't lie, they merely differ markedly as to the number of you who stop by and the frequency with which you do so—and after five days of flying knees-tight in airplanes; driving spine-crunched in cars; sitting through commencement speeches dull enough to melt your unmentionables; and spending one evening among old friends—one of whom reads this blog but bails out on you at 1 AM (ONE AM!) pleading exhaustion—after five days of that you're just going to have to settle for missing it some more.  As of now I'm only able to produce sentences of Faulknerian length and Fourth Gradian clarity. 

But I have quite a bit on the burner for this week, including:

1. A substantial review of Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World. 
2. Advance notice of a project in which I'll devote a post per week to a prominent thespian whose works I've expressed strong dislike for in the past but which, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I've acquired a sudden desire to read seriously.
3. Answering all the email which has graced my inbox unanswered for the past three weeks or so, as well as an explanation as to why I sometimes find it difficult to answer the five or emails I daily receive from you wonderful strangers when I also have 297 student emails in my inbox.
4. Responding to the comments left whilst I was without reliable internet connection.  (There are some great ones which need responses from some better version of me than I can currently muster.)
5. Writing a response to Laura's comment  (and Marco's too) about loving the one you're with you teach, which strikes me far more forcefully now than it did last week (and which, yes, has something to do with both #1 and #2).
6. (As does the post I plan to write in response to CR's comment about the relationship of teachers to careers vis-a-vis last week's "revelatory" post about my intellectual heritage.  (I have posts responding to pretty much every comment in that thread.  I'm currently unsure which will be comments and which will stand alone as posts.  I reserve the right to change my mind without being held accountable for doing so.)
7. Recounting the two very interesting conversations I had on the trip to Houston and on the trip back.  The first has to do with Sean's current celebrity; the second, with my future celebrity.
8. And, finally, responding to the flurry of debate about a certain novel by a certain expat Russian novelist which lately has been getting reduced to, well, openly advocating pedophilia.  But doesn't.  That needs to be said and hasn't been yet. I will bravely swim counter-current and demand people stop taking literature for propaganda despite frequently treating it as such.  (Because that's how I roll . . .  hypocritical.)

And that's just the beginning. 

A week without blogging will bring harvest to this barren blog.  (Or will if I don't drown in work come tomorrow.)

Comments

[N. Pepperell]

I love the association that a focus on contradiction and inconsistency paves the way for anti-democratic political goals - I hope this isn't true of my approach, but I've certainly levelled similar accusations at some other theorists. :-)

In terms of systems theory, our impressions have probably been shaped by slightly different (though overlapping) traditions that call themselves by that same term - I wouldn't normally immediately assume, for example, that systems theory owes a primary debt to Foucault, although I would think that it employs some similar concepts and potentially embodies reciprocal influences... But this is probably because, coming at the issue from a different disciplinary perspective, I associate the term with 1950s initiatives such as cybernetics and then, within sociology, with Parsons and, more recently, Luhmann... But this is a pedantic point: I take it that your comment was more about the way that structuralist or Foucaultian concepts might express what I'm after in my meanderings about "common sense"?

Not to sound too Freudian (not a good thing to be, on this blog :-) ), I have an ambivalent and unresolved relationship with Foucault... My impulse (which I really need to ground, some day, with more thorough reading) is that there is a strong disjoint between what Foucault does, and what he says about what he does - that many of his metatheoretical comments, which seem to be picked up widely and be heavily influential (perhaps for good reason), don't reflect the tacit theory that seems to inform the composition of, say, a work like Discipline and Punish, or The Use of Pleasure. His historical practice - the way he mobilises historical evidence to underscore dramatic transformations in subjectivity - resonates strongly with me. His metatheoretical statements, though, leave me flat - probably because I've been too influenced by the German critical theory notion that a theorist who has strong normative claims (which Foucault certainly does), has an obligation to "close the loop" in their theoretical work - to explain through the social and historical analysis how one can validly assert those normative claims, within the theoretical framework. I think Foucault's historical work might provide a basis for doing this, but I'm not sure that his metatheoretical statements demonstrate that he understands (or accepts) the need...

But it wouldn't be difficult to have greater expertise then I have on Foucault, so I won't press this as a definitive critique - just as an explanation for why I'm simply not sure how similar or dissimilar some of my ideas are to Foucault's...

On my own epistemology - I'm not sure I can do better than the glancing sort of statements I made above: I've "bought" the notion that a consistent sociological or historical theory (a "materialist" theory in the original use of that term) that makes normative judgments about the social world, needs to explain the historical and sociological basis for the norms it uses.

I also reject the two most common means of squaring this circle: (1) the early Marxist or "Whig" history approach, that sees history as moving in an emancipatory direction, and tries to derive its normative standards from the direction of that progress (so, criticising the present in the name of the purportedly emancipatory future); or (2) notions of "nature realising itself in time" - as found, most recently, in works like Habermas', where the normative standards are derived from principles that have purportedly always been inherent in human communication, but that have only come to structure human interaction in recent history.

The first, to me, doesn't do justice to the complex and (I think) ambivalent directional tendencies in recent history. The second, to me, seems insufficiently historical.

So, having defined what I don't want to do, I'm currently floating around through a wide range of disciplines, trying to find a good vocabulary for discussing the ways in which new experiences suggest *specific* normative potentials - not just the potential for "rupture", or the abstract possibility to assume a critical attitude - but specific, historically-determinate political ideals, for example. Something that allows us to analyse why particular ideals (or, for that matter, specific scientific discoveries, or other "discoveries") begin to resonate at a specific moment in time, without assuming (explicitly or tacitly) that one can explain this by positing that humanity suddenly and without explanation became more intelligent, or more humane, and thus stumbled across these wonderful concepts. (In this, I do share part of a project with Foucault - although, again, some of his meta-theoretical comments about the significance of this kind of work I probably wouldn't share.)

I'm also searching for a good vocabulary for discussing why competing ideals are historically plausible - suggested by different experiences, resonating with and reinforced by conflicting aspects of contemporary social experience, etc. - that still allows one to make historically and socially grounded judgments about better and worse ways to understand the potentials expressed by the society we have created...

In this regard, I'm a terrible disciplinary plunderer - grabbing concepts that may never have been intended to be used in the way I use them... And the result may just be incoherent eclecticism... But the project, I think, is worthwhile, even if my specific approach leaves something to be desired...

[Matt]

That's a perceptive remark about Foucault, N.

(Care to flesh it out?)

[Nate]

I came into this late in the conversation and in the evening so I have little to contribute. This is a very interesting discussion. I particularly appreciate N Pepperel's last comment about closing the loop, accounting for the foundational norm within the system the norm founds. I feel no such need myself, but I find that description a very helpful one of this thing that I don't feel any need for. I don't mean that as a backhanded remark. I really appreciate do it.

[Nate]

Gah! Should be "really do appreciate it." Sorry to have proven performatively my lack of contribution to make. And just to re-emphasize, I really do appreciate that as I've this is something I've struggled to articulate in conversations with people who do feel that need. Now I've got a term for it so I can say "I get the sense that you ... while I ..." and see if that reduces misfires.

[N. Pepperell]

Just a quick clarification that, although I'm happy if the "closing the loop" shorthand is servicable to anyone, I have no illusions that norms - mine or anyone else's - found anything, or provide any kind of ground on which overarching social relations are then erected, or similar concepts. I think postmodernist theory's paranoia about foundational concepts, in this respect, was always a misplaced fear...

I would argue, instead, that norms reflect our awareness of potentials for specific kinds of freedom - potentials that we create through various kinds of social practices - potentials that are sometimes related to the norms we articulate in very mediated and indirect ways... And that, within a certain kind of historical theory, one of the central tasks is to link the normative judgments of the theory with such potentials.

That said, I think that most people can safely ignore this kind of meta-epistemological fancy - I personally like thinking about it, but I don't assume, for example, that a political movement - or even most academic work - requires this sort of meta-understanding. Although I do think that, sometimes, understanding these sorts of historical issues can help a movement to anticipate potentials for unintended consequences, and can also prevent certain kinds of backward-looking, "fighting the last war" fixations, among other things.

I do think, though, that theorists who make epistemological claims - and I count Foucault among these - are fair game for this sort of critique. Which brings us to Matt's question about fleshing out my earlier comments on Foucault. I agree that I *should* flesh them out, but I think this probably requires a less scattershot reading of Foucault than I've undertaken so far (which means, of course, that my gut criticism of Foucault may not even be fair - I'm open to the accusation...).

My sense is that, on one level, in his meta-theoretical statements, Foucault seems, to me, to get too caught up establishing the abstract possibility for critique - the sort of possibility you can establish by showing things like (1) the past is different, and therefore human nature doesn't biologically determine that we be the way we are, and (2) no society is a totality unto itself, and so there is always potential for movement, resistence, opposition. I have no problem with these observations - I just don't personally find them terribly interesting, I suppose because I've never assumed they might not be true...

Also, while making such points might establish some kind of transhistorical human potential to be critical, I'm more interested in historically specified questions, like: why does a particular kind of political movement arise when it does? This very abstract grounding of the possibility for critique doesn't help me answer this kind of question (although I think that Foucault does begin to answer similar questions through his structuring of historical materials...).

At the same time, there's an element of Foucault's work that seems to aim at debunking, e.g., Enlightenment ideals. Debunking ideals - by pointing out, for example, that democratic discourse masks the inequalities lurking underneath these universalist-sounding ideals - misses the extremely interesting (to me, at least) question of how movements come to be mobilised in the name of ideals that are, in fact, quite easily empirically "refuted". Surely it's a more interesting question, exactly *why* it should resonate that "mankind is born free", when everyone can in fact look around and see that "everywhere he is in chains"? In other words, the ability to debunk ideals suggests interesting questions that often addressed by debunkers...

But I have to tend to a waking toddler (apologies if I've slandered Foucault, or anyone else, in this glancing discussion of the issues...).

[Matt]

I wonder if there isn't a distinction to be made between "regulative" and "normative" (bearing in mind the danger of naturalizing, maybe).

And that description could probably work for Derrida as well, no? Anyway; thanks for the follow-up.

[N. Pepperell]

I suspect it would work for Derrida, although I'm emphatically no expert on his work.

On the regulative/normative issue: I wouldn't contest that it is productive to distinguish these concepts, but am not sure where you'd like to travel with the distinction? (But I've spent the day interviewing new homebuyers in an exurb, so my synapses may not be firing on a particularly theoretical level at the moment...)

[forgottenboy]

It's true that in my discussion of Levi-Strauss, Plato, and systems theory I was attempting to find theoretical precedents for your (N. Pepperell's) interactions between original intellectual formulations (e.g. literary works) and common sense. Since discussions like these are testing grounds for new ideas, it makes sense to me to explore which theoretical traditions might anchor a new term or critical methodology.

In using Plato as an example, I was by no means suggesting that your ideas are inherently undemocratic; explanations are ethically neutral. It is important to understand why a democratic city-state like Athens could give rise to an influential philosophy of elitism.

I'm also thinking of Luhmann in my references to systems theory. The book with which I'm most familiar is his book on love, Love as Passion. In it he does exactly what Foucault does in Madness and Civilization -- he explains how a series of versions of love compete with and replace one another over time. Like Foucault, he mixes literary analysis with historical evidence, emphasizing key terms or phrases (Luhmann analyzes "plaisir" the way Foucault analyzed “folie”). Luhmann shares Foucault’s willingness to accept a messy system, in which old and new versions of the same concepts exist alongside one another, and each new social norm is complemented by a diverse series of significant resistances. (This is why I put him in opposition to reductive structural analysis.) Finally, both Luhmann and Foucault are influenced by Marx. For example, Luhmann argues that the loss of intimacy in everyday relations provides the impetus for the overheated myth of loving intimacy. This repeats the Marxist idea that capitalism alienates individuals from each other by enforcing instrumental relations between them.

I'm also interested in how different material experiences produce competing ontologies (or “ideals”). This seems to me to be a crucial point with respect to Derrida’s legacy. For example, the differences between Habermas and Derrida might possibly be contextualized. Habermas has provided a series of useful structures for public discourse and debate; Derrida has provided an ontological foundation for aesthetic pleasure in discursive moments of difference and play. Or, to put it more mischievously, Derrida is useless at a town hall meeting where a group of people need to reach consensus. Habermas, on the other hand, can provide relief (by mediating fractured public debates) but not pleasure: he’s boring.

I wonder how Scott feels about all this. Is this the kind of theoretical speculation which historicism tries to avoid?

I feel unsure of my footing in these discussions of normativity. Let me try to indicate why.

It seems to me that there is a quantitative, evidentiary model for normativity which is uncontroversial. Most of Foucault’s books treat norms in just this fashion. It’s not particularly shocking to chart the rise of rehabilitation as an alternative to torture, and to associate this change with Enlightenment ideals of equality and humane government. When historicist critics reject theory, they often do so in the name of a return to this empirical model of evidence.

On the other hand, Foucault’s texts posit values which are controversial. It is clearly better, in Foucault, to be publicly tortured and publicly defiant, than to be kept out of sight until the moment of rehabilitation. This privileges the word over the suffering or extinction of the body. To be Heideggerian, briefly: when a writer posits a value, the effect is ekstatic. The past then becomes reorganized as the deferred or distorted expression of this primary value, the present as an opportunity for reform, and the future as a potential utopia. This pattern recurs in Marx, Habermas, and Derrida.

Re-stated in valuative (i.e. ethical) terms, Foucault becomes harder to swallow. His metatheory turns into this:

1) The human body is incapable of producing values by itself. Therefore, there is no objective standard for health or disease. (A colleague of mine used Foucault to argue that anorexia was not a disease.)

2) States should not aim at becoming totalities. Erratic, unproductive behavior should not be “treated.” There should be open combat between the community and the criminal. Pleasure should not be subordinated to other, more harmonious ends, such as health or the establishment of a family. In short, stability is undesirable because the individual pays too high a price for it.

But how would one “close the loop” or “square the circle” here? One can certainly describe the historical provocations for a particular ethic: the ache of a rigidly disciplined body, or the condition of the working class in England. Is this enough, or should all such projects admit their own contingency? I doubt they can do so without empty gestures of irony, which is why I’m indifferent to Rorty.

Finally, I’m curious about the relationship between norms and freedom. The study of norms, even those of the Enlightenment, appears to concern the potential for new communities, rather than new freedoms.

[N. Pepperell]

I should perhaps clarify that I didn't assume the reference to Plato and undemocratic ideals was aimed at me - I just thought it was a clever formulation. That said, I'm not sure that I agree that explanations are ethically neutral :-) - it depends on the explanation... I'm personally operating from a theoretical perspective that uses explanations (of, among other things, the reasons for the historical emergence its own and other theories' claims) to make judgments of various sorts - and I certainly think that some of the theorists who have been discussed in this thread wield explanations to similar effect, from competing theoretical perspectives...

I also don't disagree that there are parallels between Luhmann's work and Foucault's (although it's been ages since I've read Luhmann, so these may be much stronger than I remember). My confusion was just over the term "systems theory", and the claim that systems theory owes a specific debt to Foucault - I stumbled over this a bit because, as I mentioned, the tradition of theoretical approaches that would describe themselves as systems theoretic is older than Foucault. But this was and remains a pedantic point on my part, and not important to the substance of your comment.

On Habermas and Derrida, I can speak on Habermas more sensibly than I can on Derrida - mainly because I'm worried of projecting back onto Derrida the worst sins of Derrideans, for whom he is not responsible... I'll need to tackle Derrida systematically later this year, as he will insist on coming up in discussions like this :-), and I don't trust my memory of hasty readings of his works to formulate a defensible critique (or a critical defense...).

On Habermas: yes, he's boring. He is also very commonly misread, and usually criticised for the "wrong" things - such as the notion that his theory is primarily a useful (or, depending on your perspective, sinister) tool for assisting people to achieve consensus. Habermas is trying to explain the emergence of critical norms - trying to account for why, from a particular historical moment, large numbers of people appear to "get" critical concepts that seem to be embedded in democratic ideals: the notion that ideal communication is uncoerced, for example, or the notion that communities should govern themselves through reasoned debate, or that claims proferred in public debate can be tested in discussion by counterfactually exploring whether these can be defended in terms of their objective, aesthetic and intersubjective rationality...

What interests Habermas - and I agree that this is an extremely interesting question, although I don't personally like Habermas' answer - is why certain democratic notions should arise, why everyone should "grok" what they mean, in spite of the fact that they are nowhere realised in social practice.

It is not important, for Habermas' account, that any of these ideals be realisable in some sort of soporific consensus at the end of history (not that you used this formulation - others have). It is, rather, important that we have now entered a historical phase where we can test all institutions and practices against tacitly understood ideals of "objective truth" or "intersubjective justice" or "personal authenticity" - that we can make claims about these things, and have people understand what kind of claim we are making, what kinds of counterfactual ideals are being appeled to, even if they disagree vehemently about our personal or collective application of these ideals.

Habermas' specific answer to this puzzle leaves me flat: as I've mentioned previously, I don't personally like notions of "nature realising itself historically", and I think this is where Habermas' answer leads. I personally think we can provide a better, more historical answer than that... But it's hard to improve on Habermas without understanding what he's trying to do...

On Rorty: Now here is the opportunity I've been seeking to look really stupid in a public forum :-) I had read only very small amounts of Rorty until a few months ago, and had read large amounts of people criticising Rorty in an offhanded, "we all know what's wrong with this guy" kind of way. The general reaction to his work didn't tempt me to look further until, a few months back, I went hunting through his works because I was looking for a foil on a particular topic. I ended up being a bit startled by what I saw, and therefore chased (albeit fairly superficially) through much of what Rorty has written. And now the embarassing confession: I'm not at all sure that I understand why he is dismissed so roundly.

I can certainly criticise him - among other things, I think he fails adequately to understand the potentials for his own pragmatist philosophy of capitalism as a form of global practice, a position that causes him to draw unnecessary divides between contemporary ethical communities. This causes him to draw completely unnecessary flak when he tosses around terms like "ethnocentrism", which, functionally, are his way of saying that he thinks values are historically constituted, but which draw (justified) fire because he doesn't consider the global dimensions of contemporary communities. Then again, I'm not sure some of his critics do, either...

But other things that he says don't particularly bother me, or seem actively useful: the suggestion you make above, for example, that the Enlightenment should be conceptualised in terms of the potential to create a different kind of community is very much the way Rorty would formulate it, if I understand him correctly... His focus on the historical groundedness of forms of perception and thought is shared with many other theoretical traditions I find useful. I'm sympathetic to his desire to overcome common philosophical dichotomies - although, here, I think he needs to take more seriously his claims about the historical basis of forms of thought, and begin to ask what dimensions of social practice might make those dichotomies seem intuitive... But I digress...

I guess my point is that I'm certainly critical of Rorty in various ways, but he is now, for me, in a category of theorists who seem worth criticising - where I feel the critique might move the discussion in interesting and clarifying directions. I have the strong impression that he is not in this category for most people, so I'm probably demonstrating my intense obtuseness here. But I am genuinely curious... er... what's wrong with the guy?

Away from specific theorists: Strangely, I'm never satisfied with attempts at historical explanation that derive a resistence or protest or similar from things like "the ache of a ridigly disciplined body" or even "the conditions of the working class". These kinds of explanations always seem only incompletely historical to me. I remember a lovely point made in an undergraduate lecture, by a faculty member who was asked whether the peasants in a particular uprising had revolted because they were starving. He replied: "In general, when people are starving, they don't revolt: they die". The existence of a historical provocation - although it often figures large in the self-understanding of a political or intellectual movement - does not account for the qualitative character, and often not even fully for the timing, of the movement.

Structurally, this kind of explanation is similar to a scientist trying to explain why, say, parallel discoveries come to be made in a particular moment in time, and replying, "Oh, because these discoveries are true". This kind of answer doesn't get us into the trenches of analysing why certain concepts or forms of perception were "in the air" at a particular moment in time - why movements take a particular form, or invoke specific ideals, or deploy particular concepts. If we don't analyse these sorts of things, we are tacitly asserting that there was a "natural" way to react to a particular provocation so, once the provocation occurred, the rest was... history.

I tend to like Foucault, incidentally, for his focus on these sorts of qualitative historical issues. Although there are also elements within his work that suggest that, e.g., resistance "naturally" happens, I think that these sit in tension with what are, to me, more interesting dimensions of his work.

In terms of "closing the loop": I worry that this phrase misleads, because in many people it seems to conjure postmodernism's strange horror of closed systems. (And yes, it's my own fault for using the phrase in the first place.) I'm trying to do something that's probably much more basic and boring than the phrase implies, and deal with some problems created by an approach that argues (1) that that forms of perception and thought I am trying to analyse, should be analysed historically; and (2) that I would sound a bit foolish, wandering around talking about how "historical" everyone else is, if I weren't then going to talk about how "historical" I am. "Closing the loop" just means: "I am going to treat myself, analytically, the same way I treat everyone else".

To me, this is just the mundane (and, yes, boring) concommitant of "materialism" - of the notion that we are going to do secular theory, combined with the notion that we think people change over time.

I'm not personally fussed about whether we want to use the vocabulary of norms, ideals or communities - the basic problem for me is explaining the emergence of what Habermas might call specific counterfactual orientations to the world. Counterfactual forms of thought - appeals to notions of what the world ought to be like, in full (or sometimes not-so-full) awareness that the world isn't that way, pose a particular problem for materialist theories, particularly once notions of "progress" have been cast aside. This is the problem I'm circling around and, as I've said, I may well personally be inadequate to the task, but the problem remains a worthwhile one.

[Matt]

Or, to put it more mischievously, Derrida is useless at a town hall meeting where a group of people need to reach consensus. Habermas, on the other hand, can provide relief (by mediating fractured public debates) but not pleasure: he’s boring.

Insofar as this echoes (an older, and since improved) Terry Eagleton soundbite ("you wouldn't want Derrida on a jury, har har"), it does strike me as a rather common (and lazy) misconception, bordering more on cliché than mischievousness. For instance, see "Philosophy in a Time of Terror."

(Seeking to relegate Derrida to the realm of the aesthetic being surely, by now, a familiar enough refrain, at least among the literary crowd, to demand more serious question, &c.)

[forgottenboy]

This thread continues to enlighten and entertain. Matt, it is killing me to be a Terry Eagleton who's even dumber than Terry Eagleton. The only Eagleton I've read was a book on Shakespeare, and in it Eagleton made the atrocious claim that King Lear is a monarchist play. He also used Lacan to justify his notion of Lear's "semiotic crisis," a move which reminded me what a great pleasure it is to think with Lacan.

My question is this: do you really want Derrida in Henry Fonda's seat in 12 Angry Men? Do you really want him to have to prove that he can speak in concise and linear terms? I was a little let down when I read Derrida's exchange with Searle. It was obvious that Derrida didn't want to debate, because he's uncomfortable with discourse regulated in that manner. So Derrida chose to play "loser wins": he wrote a series of digressive, tangential responses to Searle's huffy arguments. This delighted his fans and confounded the analytic philosophers. Still, I don't have much use for mockery when it doesn't make me laugh out loud.

I'm aware that in his later years Derrida began to assume a more serious tone, especially in his interviews. He outlined a number of positions which demonstrated his sense of social responsibility. For example, one of his moves in "Philosophy in a Time of Terror" is to argue that 9/11 was not a "major event," meaning that it did not indicate a need for a new conception of "the event." Instead, it was a continuation of a global political situation ongoing for decades. This is a progressive position, insofar as it reminds us to search for causes in our own past policies, rather than falsely proclaiming a new epoch. At the same time, Derrida acknowledges that the death of innocent people on 9/11 makes a claim on our compassion.

I agree with all this; I just don't think it's ground-breaking. Like Zizek's editorial columns, it's so reasonable that it is less of a revelation than Derrida's earlier polemics. An analogy: I love Picasso's blue period, but "Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon" is of a different order.

N. Pepperell, I applaud your willingness to come to Rorty's defense. I should have been more clear. I agree with Rorty's calls for openness, self-criticism, and a historical awareness of the necessity of certain ideas, even ones which appear false (returning to your notion of "norms").

However, Adorno articulated this self-divided position much more rigorously and thoroughly in Negative Dialectics. Furthermore, I think that Rorty attempts to make history responsible for certain claims he wishes to make.

For example, in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty argues that Enlightenment ideals are "exhausted" and lack vitality at this historical moment. This is not true in my case: I find Rousseau, Voltaire, and Locke extremely interesting and persuasive. So Rorty ends up calling me names for being historically retrograde, instead of simply making his argument for a different kind of thought.

Perhaps this is also a good way to explain my problem with Habermas. Habermas insists that we all know how to judge "personal authenticity," because it has somehow arisen as a useful standard in human communication. However, it is easy for a philosopher like Derrida (and he wouldn't be the only one) to systematically refuse to grant such definitions. Habermas is free to retort that Derrida is writing in bad faith, but at some point this claim becomes laughable in the face of language that refuses to be chastened. Derrida can make himself the exception to the universal standard of authenticity and objectivity, just as I can make myself the exception to Rorty's exhausted Enlightenment.

I take your point about the peasant revolt: historical facts are insufficient as reasons for new counterfactual discourses. The same could be said of bad historicism. The fact that London had waste disposal problems is not the reason why Dickens wrote Our Mutual Friend. One must, it seems, look at the relations between all the facts. After all, if the peasants hadn't been starving, they probably wouldn't have revolted.

This ought to give us pause when we try to put ourselves in historical context. I'm reminded of some of the posts earlier in this thread about problems from childhood; presumably many other people who have similar histories do not produce similar work.

What is the role of technological development in your theory of counterfactual discourse? I think it's interesting to consider how, for example, the discourse of abolition was assisted by a declining need for slave labor in the Northern states, and then exceeded (by its own laws) that material foundation to become a demand in the adjacent Southern economy, where slavery was still lucrative.

[N. Pepperell]

I was worried, after posting, that I should have been clearer that I wasn’t intending to hold you personally responsible for Rorty’s current status as comment-whipping-boy in a few theory blogs that I frequent, or assuming that your criticisms would be the same as those made by others (or even, as was probably clear from my post, that I have a clear handle on why other people often criticise him). If it comes to a choice between Rorty and Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, then of course… I guess my current impulse to defend Rorty derives from my recent surprise at discovering, after reading so many offhand dismissals, that Rorty might even vacation in the same half of the theoretical universe as Adorno…

I’d also agree that Rorty is too quick to declare that certain historical moments have passed – maybe it’s just my southern upbringing, but I prickle every time he casually tosses around the claim that religious sensibilities have definitively declined… Given your reaction to the “historical retrograde” insinuations in Rorty’s work, though, I had expected you to go in a different direction when you returned to Habermas: Habermas, too, effectively criticises (a rather wide array of) intellectual and social movements on the ground that they are historically “regressive” – such that he can’t really grasp, for example, fundamentalist movements – or postmodernism, for that matter – as fully modern phenomena. I find this to be a major weakness in his theory…

I’m not convinced, though, that Habermas believes that we all share (or ought to share) the same notion of, e.g., “personal authenticity”. I know it is extremely common to criticise Habermas for holding this position, but I think he is actually claiming something far more abstract, which is often incorrectly concretised by many critics. I think the only thing Habermas believes we share is a conception that there might be something like “personal authenticity” – that we “get” that there is a divide between objective, subjective and intersubjective interactions, and that we can apply different forms of reasoning to each of these realms.

There are all kinds of criticisms one could make of Habermas’ fixation on our ability to distinguish objective-subjective-intersubjective worlds: he may be naively embracing Piagetan models of personal development, or early anthropological visions of “primitive” societies as societies that could not differentiate between internal and external worlds, etc. I’m highly sympathetic with these lines of critique.

But I think it’s important to recognise the kind of claim Habermas is trying to make – and it’s not a claim that requires that we agree on what “personal authenticity” would be. In fact, his framework is intended to explain why debate on issues such as “is it authentic?”, “is it just?”, and “is it true?” emerges in such a radical, corrosive, liberating way in the modern era: he thinks that, cognitively, we just weren’t up to it before then… That religious or traditional restrictions on thought and practice restricted us from taking full advantage of the potentials embedded in communication.

Once those restrictions were lifted, then we could finally slug it out on all of these issues – perhaps attaining temporary truces and working compromises on how we choose to define “authenticity”, “justice” and “truth” at particular moments, but always with the notion that such truces are inherently unstable – because authenticity, justice and truth are counter-factual critical orientations, rather than shared concrete definitions of specific concepts.

Now, personally, I agree with very little of this, so perhaps I’m just being pedantic in insisting that we criticise Habermas for the “right” things. But I always have this nagging sensation that, the stronger the arguments of our opponents, the more useful they can be to the development of our own thought.

On your question about the role of technological development: I don’t know that I could give a response without a case in mind – I don’t think I have a generic theory about technology. I’ve written a bit in other contexts on the ways in which internet technologies came to be invested with libertarian aspirations – on the ways in which various people believed that these aspirations weren’t being projected onto the technology, but arose naturally from the nature of the technology itself, such that the knowledge economy would, for example, make private property, or government regulation, or similar institutions, impossible – and on how this faith impeded the ability to mobilise an effective politics around intellectual property… But I wouldn’t necessarily extrapolate from my thoughts on that topic, to any general theory of technology…

[Matt]

My question is this: do you really want Derrida in Henry Fonda's seat in 12 Angry Men?

Hmm.. This again. Actually, I would like to watch that version, sometime, though I hear it was a bit of a banal caricature, especially the cliché mold in which Derrida's wild and reckless, abstruse impersonator found himself. Then again, that was inevitable, as far as sensational contrasts tend to go.

Really, FB, if we can leave the tired, though obviously perfunctory caricatures and derisions at the door, I personally think Derrida would have made a damn fine juror. If only most jurors were half as sensitive to the language of law and pursuit of justice.

Maybe he would have been a little bored with the process, or inclined to tangential remarks on linguistic ironies (but a boredom somewhat inherent to legal proceedings, generally...as anyone who has endured a trial will tell you - hence indeed the appeal of over-dramatized, pop-psychological redemptive plays being hailed as "classics"; though I agree "12 Angry Men" is an intelligent, compelling one, however removed from reality - still waiting for the hispanic version!). As for:

Do you really want him to have to prove that he can speak in concise and linear terms?

Do you really want to risk being heard saying this with a straight face? So it's tempting to ask, is this a serious question? Or just an identity-group slogan, a banal and meaningless clichéd platitude, similar to those of Tim Burke, as if they offered either anything original or remotely authoritative. It's a common perception, this caricature of Derrida, I'm sure, and partly deserved.

I just don't have anything to say to it. Indeed what could anyone, besides nodding in agreement? It's a sentiment of basic frustration entirely common to anyone who's ever first tried reading Derida. It's repeated almost like an excuse, trying to provoke the other into into rudeness to confirm the correctness of one's own laziness, or to convince others to join in not reading, made by everyone who never really tried hard to push past the text's resistance in order to read, who gave up on Derrida without reading him. Every reader of anyone worth a damn has had it. It's on that level. So, indeed: whatever.

[Matt]

(In other words, why it's "killing" you to be even dumber than someone you haven't read more than once(!?), or why you merely repeat said dumbness, damn near precisely, in your own defense, remains beyond me! But hey, this is no peoples' court; so please carry on.)

[forgottenboy]

I wasn't so much carrying on, people's court or no, as reading with enjoyment Scott's newest postings on the blogging market and the problem of leftist vulgarity.

I feel as comfortable criticizing Derrida, as Derrida clearly felt criticizing Plato. I don't see it as a risk so much as an obligation. But, since the discussion has risen to a meta-level (now concerning what I should or should not want to say), I can think of two meta- comments which are perhaps applicable beyond this particular debate.

First of all, I am not embarrassed by supposed affiliations, and find the tactic of affiliating my words ridiculous. Whether or not Tim Burke, Terry Eagleton, or the zombie hordes of lazy first-time Derrida readers have made points similar to mine is irrelevant as a criticism of those points, because it says nothing about their truth.

To wit:

"Aren't you embarrassed to say something which has already been said before?"
No. That is an indifferent fact.

"Aren't you embarrassed to say something which has been said by a person whose work has been of mixed or poor quality?"
No. Maybe they got lucky. If they recanted, as you say Eagleton has, that was a personal decision and once again is not a sign of truth or falsehood. (cf. Sydney Hook and Norman Podhoretz recanting their leftist politics)

Second, I am not persuaded by critiques which attempt to frame my comments as a problem of my reading style. I do not need to re-read Eagleton to determine whether King Lear is a monarchist play; I can recall his argument sufficiently to assert its falsehood. Likewise, I believe my summary of "Philosophy in a Time of Terror” to be accurate.

I am not looking for homework assignments, particularly if they can never end until I have admitted a given thesis about Derrida and separated myself from the lazy excuse-makers. Such assignments are disciplinary; they share none of the generous spirit in which one friend recommends a book to another. Rather than going over well-remembered texts, under the guilty imperative to “push past the text’s resistances,” I would rather be working with like-minded academics to help construct alternatives.

[Matt]

I fail to see how clichéd caricatures may ever mark this "generous spirit" you speak of. Unless, of course, you were just being honest in your condescension, or speaking generally.

Look, FB. I agree with everything you say, in a most general, commonly-speaking level. These conversations are only too familiar in that way. However:

Your summary of _Philosophy in a Time of Terror_ is "accurate" insofar as it is just an interview, with all the limits that entails. That you take these inherent limits as license to a)fixate on the first several pages, and b)to dismiss by implication the entire body of work around these themes, and spanning several decades and literally scores of books, is, well, lamentable.

But then again, maybe such frustration is understandable. There is, after all, a good deal of truth to seeing these more patient writings (and Foucault's certainly included) most accurately as largely private conversations, and among 'friends,' concerned for more than just easy points for accuracy or falsehood.

This recurring point of contention regarding "potential affiliations," as you say, has long seemed to me to signal -whenever it is so deployed- a deeper disciplinary rift, albeit on terms one side would obviously prefer to dictate.

But to be brief, it also doesn't seem to work here for a simple reason, as you were making the exact *same* argument, such as it was, as Eagleton. So in my earlier comment, taking issue with both of you at once was therefore entirely reasonable.