Dialectics [Now freed from the "Scott and"]

[MSalter1@aol.com]

In a message dated 09/08/97 13:40:31 GMT, you write:

<<  
 > STEVE replies 
 > 
 >  Alas, Michael, I see the relationship between phenomenological
 >  demonstrations and definitions/theory as dialectical and am
 >  unwilling to give priority to either. But perhaps in a practical
 >  sense it is right that I as an academic be especially cognizant
 >  of the former since I get (and give) so much of the latter! 
 > 
 >  Best,
 >  Steve >>
 > 
 > MICHAEL RE-REPLIES
 > 
 > But, both of us refuse to reduce the topics of our analysis to either
 > 
 > 1/. phenomenogical demonstration (some nominal / provisional "definition"
 > must already be presupposed in order to even identify let alone delimit
the
 > borders of the field)  or
 > 2/. a dogmatically imposed, supposedly universal and self-sufficient
 > "definition" whose fixed "identity" , from the outset, prescribes the
 > signifiance of all mere empirical/experiential content which is subsumed
 > under it.
 > 
 > Then we are still at a prelimary stage of dialectics. Here the
either/or-ism
 > of the underlying dualism is still implicitly "framing" our analysis; the
 > movement from either/or (understood as a reduction to one of two mutually
 > exclusive and positive contraries, e.g., abstract definition vs. concrete
 > experiential demonstration ) to a more reflexive neither/nor position is
 > coherent. The latter stage prescribes the limits of "negative contraries"
and
 > which seems to characterise Steve's quite appropriate response "refusing
to
 > priorities either". 
 
 I've never had a chance to think much about this issue, so your
 re-reply is helping me clarify stuff to myself.  I see the dialectic
 not as a conflict between incompatible claims (as in
 thesis-antithesis) but as a process that takes place between two
 different and reciprocally transformative modes of knowledge. 
 	- Incompatible claims:  Here some resolution is clearly
 called for, and certainly it will be useful to challenge the terms
 in which the contraries are cast, turning the "either-or" of the two
 claims into the "neither-nor" of which you speak.
 	- Reciprocally transformative modes of knowledge:  In the
 discussion running through this thread, we have been talking about
 two different ways in which we can come to know things:  by
 abstraction / definition / theoretical / philosophical inquiry, and
 by experiential demonstration.  I see two key things to notice here: 
 First, these are ways of knowing instead of facts themselves. 
 Second, each way of knowing has the ability to transform the
 products of the other.  Thus (to take a not-so-random example), the
 forces of production can transform the relations of production, and
 the relations of production can transform the forces of production. 
 [I can elaborate on this mutual transformation if it isn't clear.]
 So it seems to me that while "either-or"  might be the
 (inappropriate) nondialectical stance -- one or the other method is
 the source of Truth --, its opposite is not "neither-nor" but rather
 "both":  BOTH methods are useful and must be continually consulted. 
 In this situation I don't see much point in challenging the terms of
 the ways of knowing;  instead, we need to challenge the claim of
 each of them that it is the royal road to Truth. 
 
 Perhaps I have misunderstood you;  and perhaps I am unduly
 restricting the concept of a dialectic.  I'd be interested to hear.
 
MICHAEL RESPONDS: I think there are dialectical tendencies in both knowledge
of the social world, and in the social world itself. To differentiate
epistemological and ontological dialectics is valid only in a relative way,
as a "distinct but inserpable" relationship akin to two different sides of a
single coin, to "coin" a cliche. Neither in isolation could satisfy its
over-generalised claim to represent what you call appropriately "the royal
road to truth". Yet the mismatch between what this claim promises, and the
poverty of what it delivers in practice insititutes a theory/practice
discrepancy which an Adorno-esque/Hegelain form of immanent criticism can
exploit on both sides. This very contradiction (between promise and delivery)
is an inevitably by-product of the attempt by one part of a encompassing
totality (one side of an either/or dualism) to misrepresent its own partial
perspective as a comrpehensive basis for grasping the whole of that totality.
The contradiction thereby created, and made manifest by IC, is a motor that
helps push a process of driving forward (which can itself be regressive and
discontinuous as well as linear and progressive) 


 > This movement certainly takes us some way forward. But it only takes us
some
 > way forward towards fulfilling the possibility of "dialectics" in a more
 > fulsome sense, i.e.,as a concrete way of doing empirical research, as
 > distinct from simply adopting a abstractly universal theoretical stance
 > definable as a "method" at the outset "free" of any empirical references.
 
STEVE RESPONDS 

 I'd need to hear more about the above paragraph.  I don't understand
 it very clearly, since as far as I can tell my sense of dialectics
 doesn't lend itself to being "a concrete way of doing empirical
 research". 

 I look forward to hearing more on this from you, Mike, or from
 anyone else on the list who can shed light on how we use this widely
 mentioned and diversely understood concept.

MICHAEL (in haste)

Dialectics can be thought schematically (and hence only nominally akin to a
skeleton's relationship to a living person), as an open=ended and always
provisional movement from 

1/. unreflexive either/or dualistic oppositions (capitalism/socialism,
theory/practice universal/particular) through to 
2/. a more reflexive, if neurotic, relativistic oscillation between both
poles still within the dualism, and hence seen negatively as neither/nor, ie,
neither unmediated unviersals not unmediated particulars etc (because each
terminates in self-contradiction or self-deconstruction as in po/mo), through
to 
3/. a reconstructive synthetic stage of "both/and" in which the mediations
are articulated, the mutual presuppositions shared by each side of the
dualisms are brought out concretely, and a "new" (if emergent) third position
takes shape through reflexive totalisation which is able to preserve some of
the contents (but not the antagonistic form) of the earlier elements.

I think that the reflexive aspect of dialectics (as Scott well noted) grasps
its own interpretative schema as belonging to, embedded with and pitted up
and against a historically-specific social reality; but does as a universal
aspect of what it means to be human. Hence the dialectical relationship
between universal and particular here. This immersion means that any attempt
to portray dialectics as purely theoretical/contemplative/philosophic will -
irrespective of the personal politics of whoever says it - typically conceal,
or function as, an all-too ideologically conservative moment of closure.
Insofar as all theorising is theorising about something in the empirical
world (which - at both subjective and objective "poles" - contains concrete
but unrealised possibilities as well as established facts), then I think
dialectics does represent a move towards articulating self-consciously the
very concretisation it is immersed within and struggling against. A difficult
point here is that the so-called "immediate fact" of lived-experience is not
"concrete"; it is abstract. It takes a incremental process of
contextualisation, achieved by step-by-step articulation of different
mediations (economic, political, legal dimensions etc) to "work up" the
concrete, to articulate the fully determinate character of the object of
research. Dialectics is not an indepndent, external and self-sufficient
method in the conventional social scientific sense, any more than the object
is "facts" in the empiricist sense of "immediate givens".

Dialectics involves an initial somewhat descriptive moment of
phenomenological immersion in the rich details of lived-experience, followed
by a more reflective and analytical moment of immanent criticism in which the
discrepancy between ideological promise (of justice, equality, equal
treatment" etc) and what those on the receiving end of social injustice have
to encounter, is articulated.

A simple sense of what I am trying to get at here, is to ask Steve what does
he see his "sense of dialectics" as existing to acheive, if not to say
something insghtful about the contradictions in the subjectively lived world
of a particular type of social reality? I don't intend this to sound as
rhetorical as it does, I do genuinely want to know! 

I hope this rushed job helps
All the best,
Michael