Scott and dialectics

[MSalter1@aol.com]

In a message dated 08/08/97 22:09:42 GMT, you write:

<< 
 MICHAEL What though of his tendency to reduce the interaction between
 universal and context-specific particulars to the latter? Isn'r
 reductionist
 the counter-dialectical strategy par excellence? I may have got Scott
 wrong
 here and if so I apologise in advance.
 
 SCOTT:
    Apology accepted. :-) What riled me about, for example, Haggarty's
 post was that his approach would have denied that the particular,
 subjective evaluation of music could have any universal import, that it
 could be objective (that is, that evaluations of music as high or low
 were anything other that expressions of "class conflict" -- and can we
 put that phrase to bed already?). I just don't see the charge of
 reductionism or a solely "particular" counter-thrust to universalism. 


In
 fact, I want to recover the objective claims of what has been written
 off as merely subjective and particular -- just like the Critical Theory
 is concerned to in envisioning a social science which explicitly
 incorporated its own evaluative activity in order articulate it and to
 criticize the "status quo".
 
MICHAEL; on reading your clarification, I would accept that your overall
position is clearly not reductionist, indeed is counter-reductionist to
subjectivist reductionism. It may be  nit-picking but I did get the
impression from your posting re Bourdieu that the mode of reflexivity you
sent back upon abstract theoreticism (which claims falsely to be
free-floating), represented a straightforward inversion rather than
demonstration of "reciprocol mediation" (as they say)

Scott

 I intend to clear things up here. I'll hint for the moment that I'm
 not concerned with proper "dialectics".  More later. 
 --  >>
Michael

I think your position is clearly implicitated in, and in many respects
exemplifies, "dialectics", whatever you concerns. But then we may simply
differ as to our udnerstanding of this ambiguously used and abused term.

All the best
Michael