Bhaskar, immanent criticism, Adorno, Lukacs, Rockmore--oy!

[Giles Peaker]

Dear Michael,
I've cut your original comments from this for reasons of length, I hope 
without losing sense.

[snip]
GILES:  But the scepticism can only be born of hope. It is not a pure 
cynicism, 
 surely.

MICHAEL REPLIES:  yes I largely agree, perhaps the tension is between an
overly naive hope and disenchantment. If IC leads to a stronger sense of 
the
latter, then it undermines the former which is itself required as a 
condition
for wanting to do IC at all?

GILES REPLIES:  A sceptism born of hope, but also a hope born of 
scepticism - beyond the easily frustrated and easily abandoned naive 
hope. The two are perhaps inseparable. Would not an initial scepticism 
also seem to be a precondition for wanting to do IC?

[snip]
GILES:   Hmm. Perhaps the foundationalism (leaving aside any 'species 
being', 
 which I tend to go for, but which doesn't apply here) that you perceive 
 is that of the liberal confronted with the extremes of capital and/or 
 fascism? The critique of fascism could be made through not its lingering 
 'constitutionality' but, (via Benjamin perhaps), of its claims to give 
 expression whilst destroying the individual. Cultural more than legal, 
to 
 be sure, but isn't that the point? The 'foundationalism' of IC seems to 
 me to be based upon historical possibilities - and the totalitarian 
state 
 is/was also based upon the historical condition of the individual. Now, 
I 
 will admit that this side-steps the cultural relativism jibe by 
 prioritising a particular historical drama, but I for one wouldn't 
object 
 to a definition of IC that suggested that its importance lay in 
 discerning the key historical factors. To demonstrate that any claim to 
 'finality' is inherently contradictory is not simply to sucumb to 
 'they're all the same' but to respect the (historical) claim to truth 
 that is embodied there. Even fascism - through that claim to expression 
- 
 has its (perverse) moment of truth. Otherwise, this is the cliched 
 opposition of an incoherent foundationalism and what you point to as 
 moral relativism. Surely, for a Marxist, mounting truth claims of the 
 moment, without claims to transcendence, isn't a problem?
 
MICHAEL REPLIES: I think I have not made myself too clear on this one. The
foundationalism (including appeals to "species being" "universal human
rights" basic human needs etc is arguably required for the critic to avoid
the implications of moral/historical relativism which otherwise flow from 
IC.
I would agree that dialecticians should not resort to dualistic either/or
alternatives that posit transhistorical foundations as the polar opposite 
of
cultural relativity, perhaps this points the way out.

GILES REPLIES:  It was rather my lack of clarity and accuracy in 
response. I now realise that you were looking for a non-foundational 
objection to relativism. What I was tentatively leading to was agree with 
your suggestion that a practice of IC is anti-foundationalist in that it 
is historically reflexive, to the extent that it is ineluctably part of 
that which it critiques (thus there is not a 'model' of IC, rather there 
are anecdotes about it?). In the F.S. or Adornian works of IC that I have 
in mind, I would suggest that its practice is not morally relativist 
either through the same historical reflexivity; relativism tends to take 
'things' at face value, and as distinct (incommensurable even), whereas 
IC practice goes beyond, and includes, the limits of their self 
definition, as you and I mentioned before. What this implies is a concept 
of totality - not a picture of it - which construes the object of IC as a 
part of its historical situation, or rather, encounters that historical 
situation in its object. The disparity between claim and realisation, and 
the nature of that disparity, point to that historical situation. To that 
extent, works of IC might, I suppose, be said to be foundationalist, but 
not transhistorical. Thus my suggestion about fascism as a response to a 
demand for expression. If IC practices result in showing its object as a 
(failed?) response to a historical demand, then they are, I suppose, 
inevitably 'on the side of' that demand, which is to say, on the side of 
historical possibility over historical actuality. The frequently raised 
objection is the the practioner 'knows this in advance' and goes looking 
for the point of failure that s/he is sure to find. If so then I would 
have thought it would be an inadequate analysis, because it will not 
figure the practice of critique within it - its own limits (see below).

I don't quite see that moral relativism and historical relativism are the 
same thing, which you seem to suggest. (Marx on Aristotle and a slave 
economy flashed through my mind, or the section on money in the 
Grundrisse).

[snip]
GILES:   In part, see above. This is not, per se, a matter of 'the 
enlightement 
 project' as right or wrong in a transcendent sense, but of it offering 
 possibilities of freedom that cannot socially be fulfilled. So, the 
 question is not one of 'divine' (cf sub pomo scribbles) truth -v- an 
 equally transcendental flux, but one of politics - or, more precisely, 
 one of history and historical possibilities.

MICHAEL REPLIES: Yes but if CT is to be radical in the theoretical sense,
then it should not leave latent presuppositions and commitments 
unexamined;
one of these, a prior commitment to freedom. self-determination,
democratisation etc  is presupposed as the prior basis for doing IC, hence
any specific instance of IC can only rest on "foundations" that it cannot
confirm or deny independently. Now maybe thats no big deal, may be all
knowledge will always have some lack of total transparency, some 
ideological
grounding etc, but I don't think we can simply accept the conservative
implications of that line of thought (not yours)

GILES REPLIES:  I take your point. Again, I would suggest that that very 
historical reflexivity means that the presuppositions and commitments are 
not unexamined in that they necessarily (historically) form part of the 
object. However, it is true that 'independent' confirmation cannot be 
had. IC practice _is_ historically implicated, and is necessary because 
in the current historical situation, knowledge cannot be transparent 
(there is a presupposition for you). In that situation, knowing that it 
is not transparent, whilst recognising the truth of the demand for 
transparency, is what is possible. The 'always' is the conservative part 
in what you said, but I don't see that as implied through IC practice (at 
least the particular, Adornian, critiques I am thinking of, I couldn't 
comment on Bhaskar.). 'Not possible now' still contains the hope of its 
possibility, whilst denying its currency in practice - hope born of 
scepticism, perhaps?

[snip]
GILES:  Indeed. This is the big question. My instant response would be 
that the 
 error is to restrict the critique to 'law'. (I am an art historian by 
 training. The equivalent for me would be 'art can change the world', a 
 popular misconception.) This is not a straightforward disciplinary 
 (academic or juridical) concern. Any IC would have to expand beyond the 
 limits that the object had had set for it by its producers. This is 
 surely a fundamental tenet. (CF Facism and aesthetics, above). Those 
 limits are part of the object of critique - thus, for instance, the 
legal 
 individual and the socio-economic individual would have to meet (or 
 rather not meet) in the analysis. Adorno makes this point frequently, I 
 think, and for a rather rich example, see 'The Essay as Form' in Notes 
to 
 Literature. As to the 'exposure of incoherence' being the agent of 
 change, well, there you have me... or at least if you take IC as a mode 
 of intellectual revelation alone. The problem is if one can only see it 
 as a mode of intellectual critique. Sometimes people's own life 
 experiences can lead them to the contradictions, but then this happens 
 all too rarely at the moment.
 
 IC certainly falls down when held to be foundationalist or when 
 restricted to an 'internal' discussion, but, if you will pardon me 
saying 
 this, that is to miss the point.
 
MICHAEL REPLIES:  I think your last point mischaracterises my point 
(perhaps
through lack of clarity on my part). I was contrasting foundationalism of
transcendent critique (as Adorno put its, to the relativistic/historicist
implications of IC - not holding IC to be foundationalist. Indeed the 
latter
is mixed up incoherently by Habermas as I tried to show in my review 
essay on
his Between Facts and Norms. Also bear in mind that - as I said at the 
top of
the posting - I am exploring the contradictions within the standard
objections to imm crit - in order to strengthen not weaken its underlieing
rationale.

GILES REPLIES:  Indeed, the last comment is withdrawn nearly completely 
(it was late at night). But I still feel that your comments on practising 
IC 'within the field of' legal and polical theory do suggest a certain 
formalism. In the section that I was responding to the emphasis seemed to 
be on the 'internal' critique and reform of the legal. I'll quote a 
section:

>>Immanent criticism of law presupposes that its target is
> >reflexive in the sense of possessing a discernable self-interpretation of
>>the
> >normative value of its own practices. If this presupposition turns out to
>>be
> >invalid, then it is not only pointless to expose discrepancies between the
> >rhetoric and reality of law but also naive to expect this 'disclosure' to
> >lead to any practical difference in institutional practices. Another
>>related
> >assumption is any exposed discrepancies will be perceived as a problem by
>>the
> >institutions themselves sufficient at least to alter their institutional
> >practices. Lichterman notes: 
> >
> >"In a sense, academic practitioners of immanent critique and its variants
> >also accept the premise that law's putative ideal of formal, rational
> >discourse pervades society, if only by implicitly asserting that mere
> >exposure of contradiction or incoherence can bring about social change."
> >(1994: 1053-54).

Whilst I take the point of Lichterman's objection to ideology critique, 
the first objection is rather different. It was to that which I partly 
responded. What if the 'problem' is not simply within the institution? At 
the beginning of your first mail, you wrote:
> Within the field of
>political & constitutional and legal theory there does appear to be
>considerable scope for contrasting discrepancies between what liberal
>democratic ideologies of freedom, justice and equal treatment promise as
>universal entitlements of citizenship, and what an antagonistic society
>actually "delivers up" at the level of the empirical lived experience of
>those it victimises.
>
>My own question is what are the limits of, and difficulties for, the
>dialectical strategy of immanent criticism, even within this apparently
>fruitful sphere of application? 

In my own humble attempts at practising IC, it was the 'within' that 
rapidly became problematic. Here I would tend to agree with Ralph's 
suggestion that the principles of IC cannot be formulated and then 
applied to a field (although I am aware that I have just had a bash at 
writing just such a formulation. I have tried to avoid a 'model', 
thinking rather of particular practices and where my own efforts led me, 
but still, it is far too abstracted.). What I meant to suggest that one 
of the 'difficulties' for such a practice of IC is precisely if it is 
kept 'within'. The meta-reason for me, inevitably, being exactly that 
antagonistic society. 

Yours

Giles