Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 11:25:27 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: Reason & Metanarratives




On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, hugh bone wrote:
> Matt, Jon et.al.
> 
> I find the above comparison very interesting.  Never encountered it 
> before.  On Marx's concept of the role of the State, I thought he
> envisioned its disappearance into communal bliss at some point after
> the workers escaped their chains and united to win the Revolution.
> 

Hugh,

I think that Communism is the ideal end to Marxist dialectics, to the
movement of history towards a classless State.  But in practise, Lenin
found it necessary to place in power, in the interim between Russian
feudalism and the ideal of Communism, a dictatorship on behalf of the
proletariat.  --I wonder what Derrida would say of this
substitution!--Some orthodox Marxists still view the interim period of
the Socialist State as a temporary stepping stone towards Communism.  But 
people from the Frankfurt School and from the French post-structuralists
view it not as an aberration to an otherwise straightforward process but
as part and fundamental to that process.  And they would add that Stalin
is the full realization of that process rather than an abitrary
"accident".  One could argue about that of course.

> -AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT-
> 
> Maybe we can discuss in depth the problem of the metanarrative, for I
> am not sure I understand it.
> 
> I think of systems of thought, of specific religions, and specific
> systems of philosophy, and systems of politics, as metanarratives.
> 
> Before learning the word, I called such systems ideologies.
> I believe Foucault, at one point, described his work as writing
> histories
> of systems of thought.
> 
> -AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT-

I think Foucault is offering possible ways of reading the production of
mechanisms of power and discourse--in other words, he offers genealogy
over history.

I understand metanarrative to mean any theory that attempts to explain
something forever, at all times, in all cultures--a universalism (like
the statement that all people are good, or there is a human nature, or
reason is the highest form of thought, etc).  Lyotard (and others) are
wary of these announcements because it is precisely due to universalisms
that the world experienced colonialism, slavery, ethnic massacres, and
ultimately the Holocaust--such things could only be thinkable, and
realizable, out of a perspective that could totalize that which is
particular.

> -AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT-
> 
> Lyotard looked at language in a fresh and different way, and found that 
> the rationality of the sapient animal, the basis of social agreement,
> disagreement, rights and wrongs, grew out of phrases which are a 
> heritage imposed on newborns.  Some of them grow up to be theologians,
> philosophers, scientists.

Don't you think that a great deal is presumed by the suggestion of a
"rationality of a sapient animal, the basis of social agreement"?  This
reminds me of Gadamer's debate with Derrida where Gadamer said that
basically we all have good will towards one another, we all wish to be
understood, and Derrida responded by asking how can one even
begin by presuming this existence of "good will"?

> 
> Scientists of the Enlightenment and today's physicists, astronomers,
> biologists employ similar techniques of reasoning, consensus, belief.
> 
> Both religions and Marxism have known successes and failures.  Science
> survives by constantly re-writing its narratives.

The problem though isn't in rewrites but in the insistence that science
alone holds "the truth"--that its findings--its way of describing the
world--is more "factual" or better than other ways of explaining the
world.  Science insists on this by way of its methodology--the prejudice
that accords greater value to a method which seems to be rigorous--the
prejudice that associates rigour with greater truth value.  This is what
Alan Sokel is forgetting when he launches into his attacks on the
French--especially on Deleuze.  He forgets that science, like any other
discourse, uses language and is no "better" or worse than poetry (what
afterall is a quark if not poetry and fiction?)

> > How can there be a
"self" without experience? How can
there be a > "society" of rational animals unless there are narratives, as
> Cashinahua,
> French Republic, etc. which serve as a basis for their description of 
> past and present, their vision of the future, and thus create
> the unity of theologians, philosophers, scientists, or the nation-state
> itself? 

Could explain where those examples are that you cite--about Cashinahua,
etc, so that I can read about them?

What do you mean by a "self"?  You realize that most post-structuralists
would reject language which retains the idea of a self or subjectivity?
Foucault talks about the body in his later writings but he's not talking
about subjectivity in the Cartesian sense (anymore than Nietzsche is).

Anyway, I look forward to you response!
Best regards,
Matt