From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Sun Oct 30 2005 - 21:40:42 EST
Or, perhaps you might take a look at the >attached intro that provides a critical genealogy of postmodernism, and postmodernism in >economics, and develops what we call the often-overlooked "postmodern moments" in much theory. Steve, I could only skim this. But near the end you discuss the critique of humanism and the subject. I think an accurate genealogy would have to include Pashukanis. Balibar recognizes the seminal importance of his work, which thus antedates by several decades Althusser, Lacan and Foucault. Pashukanis is a name lot less sexy, and more likely to lead to marginalization, than the later French thinkers. But he already raised question of as what do subjects mutually recognize each other in civil society, as I argued with Axel Honneth. As Pashukanis showed on the strict basis of Marx's writings, it is not the act of respect that has the active power as in Kant's formulation but the system of generalized commodity exchange. Here is the practical basis for respect, that is “awareness of a value which demolishes my self-love” (Kant): Commodity exchange requires of each recognition of the other as a proprietor like him or herself, hence having the right of ownership of his or her product and the right to dispose of it freely; such mutual recognition then implie, as Carol Gould shows in her reading of the Grundrisse, that each exchanger is bound not to take the other’s property by force and second to exchange for this property on the basis of a free agreement on its equivalent value. In civil society individuals are interpellated as legal subjects, posited as free and equal with each other; and thus forced to assume a persona which in Roman jurisprudence originally derived, as Sharlet reminds us in his reading of Pashukanis, from the function of an actor’s stage mask; the mask enabling the actor to conceal his real identity and to conform to the role written for him. Transposed into modern civil society, man must assume a legal mask in order to engage in the activities regulated by legal rules Well before post structuralist skepticism about agency--and Gould does not realize how deeply Marx's writings cut into the concept of autonomous subject or the agent--Marx presented the mutual recognition of zoological individuals as free and equal bearers of abstract right in the act of commodity exchange as a phantasmorgia and a mode of subjection, a reification and self-reification of persons. But we don't need postmodernism for these insights; they are more profoundly developed in the Grundrisse and by an early (and eventually 'liquidated') Bolshevik. The postmodernists may not want to admit this, but Althusser would not have denied it. Rather the postmodernists seem to go back to Nietzsche for a critique of humanism. And I do not think Marx and Nietzsche are compatible. On questions of economic determinism and causality, I don't know whether the Austro marxists or the famous debate between the dialecticians and the mechanists anticipates the post modern critiques of these two topics. But my reading suggests that they did. On the question of causality we do have other than post modern critique the dialectical work of Levins and Lewontin and the critical realist work of Bhaskar, Sayer, Collier. I do worry that these critiques are even less appreciated than the post modern ones. Godelier is also an important thinker for his rethinking of the various forms in which the relations of production can appear (so we are not lead from the importance of religion and politics in previous societies to a post- modern rejection of an even a weak form of so called economic determinism; Godelier also theorizes the place of thought in social reproduction so that we are not led again from a critique of economic determinism to idealism in general). Postmodernism may well have something to teach us, but Marxism is a richer body of work than it is often thought to be. That said, Marx's value theory cannot be simply classified as objective or subjective, materialist or idealist. It does explode such simple binaries. And post modern forms of thought can help think in more complicated ways. Rakesh At the same time, I am very interested in poststructuralist thought. > This work may not bring forth the revolution but it plays some modest role I would argue. > > Steve > > > At 08:29 PM 10/28/2005 -0400, you wrote: > On Fri, 28 Oct 2005, Ian Wright wrote: > > Why has this postmodern style of writing become popular in some > quarters? > Hypothesis: Picking up on and emulating this style requires a fair > degree of intelligence and a fair amount of reading in the style. > So being able to do it is a badge of some sort: membership of the > smart club. On the other hand, acquiring the knack of writing in > this style is much easier than acquiring a good working knowledge of > a (any) scientific discipline, so it's an easier entree to getting > recognition and publishing your work. Not only that, but you get to > feel superior to those toiling in specific scientific disciplines, > since the standpoint of "deconstruction" gives you an Olympian > overview of all human intellectual activity (denials of "privilege" > to particular levels of discourse, blah blah etc, notwithstanding). > > Allin. Stephen Cullenberg > Professor of Economics > University of California > Riverside, CA 92521 > > Office: 951-827-1573 > Fax: 951-787-5685 > Email: stephen.cullenberg@ucr.edu > http://www.economics.ucr.edu/people/cullenberg.html >
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