Why is that?

[MSalter1@aol.com]

In a message dated 07/08/97 10:04:27 GMT, Ken write:

<< 
... 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.
Michael 

Well there is somewhat problematic about undialectical comments on the FS
list given that:
1/. whatever else Adorno et al were they were dialecticians - perhaps the
most committed dialecticians since Hegel, who was the most since Plato!
2/. this applies whether the example of counter-dialectics (e.g.,
reductionism, including reduction of the credibility of ideas to the "person"
who pronounces them etc) is concrete or abstract. 

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.
 
Ken now shows the contradiction of abstractly appealing to the concrete 

And yes - this is another abstract question to attract the 
 attention of the more theoretically obsessed.  Since 
 this was brought to my attention - i just thought i'd 
 share the concern... and try to wrap my thoughts 
 around yet another problem...  Why is that?  Why do I 
 do that?  I suspect it has something to do with going 
 after the whole via the particular - but in these cases it 
 does not seem that issues are discussed with enough 
 sensitivity to the details to warrant such a leap.
 
 yours in abstraction and finitude,
 ken
 
  >>