Why is that?

[david wachtfogel]

Ken wonders:
>I was talking with my friend Scully yesterday over a
>cigarette (or two), a coffee, and a couple of beers and
>we wondered why the Frankfurt List, in general, has
>such an adverse reaction to examining concrete
>issues.  I've been looking over the last 200 or so posts
>and have found a disturbing trend...
>
>Each time someone introduces a concrete issue -
>whether hip-hop, banking, advertising, works of art,
>pensions, or the automotive industry - a series of posts
>dump all over it - some of the responses include
>identifying the concrete issues as elitist, meaningless,
>useless, unimportant, outmoded, missing the point,
>wrong, misunderstood, universalist, utopian, triffle,
>abstact, puzzling, escapist, undialectical, positivist,
>pseudo-issues, lumpen, unreasonable, irrational,
>ambiguous, indeterminate, regressive, ideological,
>false forms of consciousness, ignorant, exclusive,
>bullshit, masterbatory, secondary, of little concern,
>misguided, uninformed, ironic, and laughable... just to
>name a few.
>
>Now I'm sure, as I look through these assorted posts,
>that I have made my fair share these comments - but I
>wonder here why there is such hostility or disregard for
>concrete issues in favour of the more abstract
>questions about freedom, reason, dialectics, eggheads,
>proles, truth etc. in contradistinction to more
>substantial issues - like the speculatory practices of
>the stock market, the laws against homosexuality, the
>legal toleration of poverty, minimum wage, the use of
>technology, gender, history...  It is not that the posts
>start out so abstractly - but they always seem to end up
>there... not that abstraction is a bad thing - but it tends
>to blur what is actually going on in most instances.

I've asked myself the same question. It seems to me to have something to
do with the distinct disciplines the different contributors to this list
come from. You have your philosophers, your radical economists, your
culture students and some people from the real world (e.g. Ralph).
Now when these different people discuss a specific subject, say Hip Hop,
they tend to analyze it in extremely different terms. Your radical
economist will talk about Hip-Hop as part of the music-industry, and will
attack it as such. Your philosopher will go into the age old argument on
high and low culture. Cultural studies would examine Hip-hops cultural
status etc. And the "real people" will point to the de facto effects of
hip hop in society (as Ralph has done recently).
The problem then is that the different contributors speak in different
terms, different languages. Interdisciplinary dialogue is bound to turn
into mutual  mud-slinging, for lack of understanding. As the truism goes,
we attack what we don't understand.
We can meet on common ground on the abstract plane, because our specific
disciplinic prejudices are less relevant there. But more to the point, we
can discuss abstract subjects, because they belong to only one of the
disciplines - philosophy. On these subjects we all use the same language.
And those who don't know the lingua philosopha, can't even read these
postings, let alone criticise them.
But when discussing banks, even though it does belong to a specific field
(radical economics), we all know what banks are, and we can easily use
our common (non)sense to attack what we don't really understand. I
personally learnt quite a bit from the banking thread, and it's a shame
it was cut off as it was.
I agree with what Ken seems to be saying - we should be discussing more
concrete subject matter. Minimum wage, anyone?

                                   -- David Wachtfogel
                                      Hebrew University,
                                      Jerusalem, Israel