Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 22:18:42 -0800
Subject: Re: HAB: Can the HAB List archive evolve?



Gary,

Yes, I lurk regularly.  And I'll answer your questions as best I can.

At 01:42 PM 3/8/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Are you a subscriber who:
>
>-- Doesn't post to the list (or hasn't for a very long
>time) because you're not especially interested in current
>interactions? (I'm writing generally here, not having this
>day of posting especially in mind, not that today isn't
>worth focus--I don't know, I haven't been keeping up for
>several days.)

Very much interested in picking up information that guides me to further 
reading of Habermas, and I manage to do some of that from time to time.


>-- Has a background in academic philosophy (looking at JH's
>work this way, rather than basically as a sociologist doing
>"critical theory" specifically or as an activist looking
>for conceptual correlates to activism)?

No background in academic philosophy. But I'm smart and I learn. I am 
interested in critical theory, and in postmodernism, and I am technically a 
sociologist, though the only degree I have in it is a post-doc at a very 
conservative university.


>-- Interested in the *full range* of JH works, but
>especially the philosophical character of JH's works?

Very much interested in the philosophical character of JH's work, but don't 
feel I have had time enough to catch up to where I would feel I could post. 
I simply don't know really who's out there, and who might be likely to 
accept my queries. I'm a recently retired full professor, and I still teach 
on my own times and own terms, over Dear Habermas, 
http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas, which is primarily devoted to helping 
urban metropolitan ordinary folks at my college understand the 
philosophical position of Habermas, at least as well as I understand it, 
because I think that's essential to real public discourse.

My degrees are in physics, math, French, learning theory, and law. Which is 
why I haven't managed to read all of Habermas. I am content to lurk. But to 
some extent, I agree with you, that that isn't entirely fair to you on the 
list. I have the same trouble with PSN. Each list seems to have a small 
group of devotees who take the dialog off in their own little niches.


>Then, let others (or at least me) know you're "here". I
>believe that there are many tens of subscribers to this
>list, yet few post. I think we have a dim sense of what
>this "community" is (since so few post)
>
>What would you, lurker, like to see this forum do or
>become--or what would you like to do, if you believed it
>was worth your time (in case your silence means cynicism; I
>can't know why you subscribe silently).

I subscribe to learn. And to make that learning accessible to my students 
and to the local community, in the interest of promoting public discourse. 
I think that professionals need to welcome us non-professionals, because if 
we can't understand what you're talking about (and I'm a very old Phi Beta 
Kappa), then how are we ever going to encourage public discourse amongst 
real people, not just scholars, but clerks and teachers and mechanics?


>If one goes through the archive, it's obvious that finding
>good material can be time-consuming, but it's *there* to be
>found. But unorganized! A guide would be good; who's got
>the time to benefit from the irregular Moments of
>enlightening exchange? (Too bad there's no auto-indexing
>software; the search feature doesn't work well, by the
>way).
>
>It's a very large archive, and there have been some
>excellent contributions, 1995 to present; but also there is
>much topic repetition, as fits key kinds of themes
>returning "naturally" (also showing subscribers as perhaps
>unaware of the archive or as having a spontaneous
>relationship to the listserv, contrary to the interests of
>a focused learner or scholar). What's the point of that
>archive? What's your opinion of its "presence"?
>
>If the good discussions in the archive were thematized and
>catalogued into something useful for the student/scholar of
>communicative interaction, would you be more likely to post
>in the future (contributing to an evolving Conversation of
>thematic foci)?

I've had an awful time with the archive. Last semester I taught 4 courses 
and almost 300 students. That's because they knew I was retiring, and on 
the last day they all added my other courses. It was too late to change it 
when I realized what they had done, and they meant it well.  But I had no 
discretionary time, and my computer is two years old and limping, so I 
didn't have time to experiment with the archive. My new computer should 
arrive this week, and then I'll maybe get to play with it. I would like to 
learn to use the archive effectively.

When a Hab list discussion fits what my students and I are talking about I 
post it on my teaching site. And I try to remember to write and ask if 
that's Ok, as I did with Kenneth MacKinnon.  I would be more comfortable 
with linking to the archives, if that would work.



>Enough said, maybe, for one posting.
>
>Please let me know what you think (privately, if you
>prefer: <gary-AT-gedavis.com?)


I'm shy. And I can't think that anybody else on the list wants to read 
this. I did post a question about Heath's book, but no one answered. I'm 
too old for my feelings to be hurt, but it confirmed my sense that I just 
didn't know how to fit in here. Had the same problem on PSN. In some cases, 
I think I know more about what some of these people are talking about than 
they do, but we read different literature. I keep turning back to something 
Freire or Seyla Benhabib said, and relating that to my own extensive 
experience with local community people, and I just can't figure out where 
that kind of expertise meets with the Hab list.

In law school at UCLA I found a similar problem. I went back for my J.D. 
when I was 50. The young people in the section were intensely competitive. 
Notes were stolen. So I xeroxed some to replace them for the desperate 
student. Articles were scissored out of library texts. So I xeroxed eighty 
or so copies and distributed them. And we ended up the nicest section in 
the school. Needs to be something like that in public discourse. I've been 
wondering what I could post that would have the same effect I managed at 
UCLAW. That's why I posted the question on Heath. But it didn't work.

I hope this helps. And thank you for being perceptive enough to recognize 
the problem and to ask. And for goodnesss' sakes, don't chase me from 
lurking. It's in the best interest of "each one teach one" right now.

love and peace, jeanne


>But, to get more arcane....
>
>=== Fantasy Querying of the Archive ==>
>What is the difference between online communication and
>online discourse? How do major themes develop from
>individual queries (or usually fail to develop)? How can
>this be done more deliberatively? Is it impractical to
>consider an online venue as a seminarial channel? (Is it
>too much to ask of others' scarce time? Does this say
>something important about this medium?)
>
>Should there be multiple lists: This "dialogal" one for
>entering into JH's work well vs. another forum for pursuing
>difficult, focused issues in some evolving discursive sense
>for each key issue? Would it be good to work in a medium
>that allows detachable files (papers in draft, extended
>discussion archives as stand-alone documents, etc.)?
>
>Could the HAB list become a "body" of work(ing) topics that
>can be seen to be evolving, as cognizance of past good
>discussion is recommended and good new discussion is
>recognized in an archival catalog? (Whose catalog? Multiple
>catalogs? A discourse of thematology?) Has somebody got
>grant money for working on this?
>
>What is the importance--advantages and limits--of the
>*textuality* of "dialogue" (an especially hermeneutical
>issue) for deepening understandings of communication
>(durability, "objectivity" of the text) or advancing
>philosophical interests broadly, in a globally-accessible
>medium? (Becoming like an online journal of philosophy, in
>the Habermasian "spirit").
>
>Can there develop a sense of the e-mail archive as a
>potentially evolving Conversation or topography of evolving
>themes that might branch into more specialized venues of
>JH's work (as Frankfurt School list subscribers initiated a
>Habermas list)? For example: [A] Habermas and the Frankfurt
>School (Habermas up to, say, 1972); [B] Habermas and
>(re)constructive human science; [C] Habermas and
>contemporary issues in philosophy; [D] Habermas as public
>intellectual.
>
>Can a "good" archive organization serve as material for the
>study of online discourse as such (standing between the
>mode of a "live" seminar and a thematic discussion section
>of a print journal). How can themes be advanced in this
>medium, in some cumulative or progressive sense? What
>inhibits this? What promotes this? Can we inhibit an ethic
>of the mall (chat room) with an ethic of the seminar? Is
>this improper for an unmoderated public list? Is a
>moderated list a constructive option? Would YOU more likely
>write for an online journal than a "discussion" list? What
>might a good moderator ethic include?
>
>Can good discursive interaction in this medium be usefully
>standardized, to some degree, for the sake of advancing
>understanding or critical efficacy or generalizable
>learning, etc.? (To what degree is it good to take a
>methodological approach to discourse? Is this fostered by
>the listserv medium?) What might an editorial ethic for
>subscribers--posting guidelines--include?
>
>-------------------------
>
>What *are* the key philosophical issues with Habermas's
>work that an archive should preserve, going forward into
>this century (looking at new interdisciplinary areas of
>research)? How can this kind of question be served by this
>archive (or a good future one) or not be served by any
>archive?
>
>Does such questioning become less "Habermasian" and more
>philosophical, in such a way that JH's work becomes *part*
>of a Conversation in which his work can no longer be the
>axis? What is that Conversation? Is it simply philosophy,
>generally? I've asked this before: What is the discourse
>that JH's work fosters which is other than specifically
>JH's discourse? Better: What are the discourseS in which
>JH's work is complementary? (JH doesn't own the discourses
>he fosters). We must look to the world of the discourses to
>gauge what's an advance and what's not, and to gauge where
>the discourse *is* going vs. where it "should" be going;
>what's relative to [merely] JH's sense of the discourse vs
>what most belongs to the discourse itself, apart from JH's
>view of it.
>
>---------------------------------
>
>Where is the boundary (where are the boundaries) between a
>German philosopher addressing a German audience, translated
>into English (thereby overheard transculturally); and a
>philosopher as such addressing any other (all others?), who
>happens to write in German (heard first locally, in a
>de-provincializing process)? What is the importance of
>especially German philosophy in the global environment (as
>a sharing of the especially German place of history with
>audiences having very different histories)? What is truly
>cosmopolitan or global or universalist in the philosopher's
>work vs. What is historicist or properly Eurocentric?
>
>-------------------------------------
>
>So, here are lots of questions that I hope are useful.
>Again, please let me know what you think (privately, if you
>prefer: <gary-AT-gedavis.com>)
>
>Thanks,
>
>Gary
>
>
>
>
>
>
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