On Sun, 1 Jun 1997, Doug Henwood wrote:
> John Ransom wrote:
>
> >Perhaps we can think of
> >reality and its relation to human cognition and production in terms of a
> >continuum?
> >
> >gravity homosexual
> >|------------------------------------------------------------------|
> >"no matter what" truths socially produced
> >truths
> >
> >One of the impressions I have from your posts, Colin, is that while you
> >are willing to admit (as above) that lots of truths are socially produced,
> >you become abusive and dismissive (which is fine; I'm not complaining)
> >when postmodernists try to trace out the twists and turns of
> >truth-production. And I don't understand -- not that you owe anyone an
> >explanation -- why after granting a point that after all has been
> >primarily established and popularized for by postmodernists (namely, the
> >social construction of all sorts of truths) you dismiss them so
> >contemptuously.
> >
> >The relevant question probably isn't: Do you think there's a real world
> >which exists no matter what, no matter how you interpret it? The question
> >rather is: where on the continuum above do we roughly locate the dividing
> >line (if we grant there is one) between socially constructed and
> >no-matter-what truths?
> >
> >I would put my line pretty far to the left of the continuum.
>
> I think that these sorts of battles are fought over just where to put that
> line. No one coming out of a Marxian tradition could argue with the notion
> that our notions of "truth" are socially constructed. But the questions are
> how, and how much?
Yes, Marx was a founding master at this. And in general, the "critical
theorist" is always going to maintain -- with rhetoric appropriate to her
or his theorizing -- that "the truth" is not static, that what we see in
front of us in the world is far from the last word on that world, and so
on. Sort of from the "right wing" we get this from Plato in his
_Republic_. Plato does not want to admit that the kind of dog-eat-dog
political world described by Thucydides in his _Peloponnesian War_ and
summarized by Thrasymachus in the _Republic_ itself represents an
unchangeable truth about humanity. Thus Plato has a strong *political*
interest in coming up with the "Forms" and in general some plane of
existence that could be used as a platform from which to rain down
criticisms on the world as is.
One more example: there's a great line in Rousseau's "Discourse on the
Origins of Inequality." He says that in order to undestand "natural" man
as he "truly" is we must "begin by putting aside all the facts, for they
have no bearing on the question" ("Discourse on Inequality," Introduction,
Paragraph 6). In our own century of course we have people like Lukacs,
Gramsci, and the Frankfurt School who all, with changes in rhetoric and
emphasis, make the same kind of point as a kind of "prolegomena" to
critical thought: only if the world as we find it is not written in stone
can the critical project get going.
>
> One could devise a similar spectrum covering the natural and social
> sciences. The science studies crowd seem to argue that what we might call
> Ransom's Line is also pretty far to the left on this spectrum too.
> Conversely, many mainstream social scientists, notably economists, would
> place Ransom's Line pretty far to the right, rejecting any notion that
> either their concepts are socially constructed, or that what they see as
> "laws," valid across time and space, apply only to the social construct
> known as contemporary capitalism (and apply rather spottily at that).
>
> What bearing would this sort of analysis have on, say, the pseudo-science
> of racist biology? All the bizarre notions of bio-determinism, from the
> wandering uterus to the inferior African brain, were socially constructed -
> but were refuted (or socially deconstructed if you prefer) by scientists
> who probably would locate Ransom's Line pretty far to the right. Is this
> just a matter of one social construction replacing another? Or is it a
> matter of a socially constructed untruth, masquerading as truth, being
> undone by the discovery of some "'no matter what' truths"?
>
> Doug
>
>
>
I think you're right there at the heart of the question. I would like to
say that there is a descending scale, from "most corrupt relation between
power and knowledge" to "less corrupt relation between power and
knowledge."
For instance, some of the individuals doing this work on skull size and so
on went into their work with some pretty self-conscious racist motives in
mind. Their investigations were directed in such a way to make sure they
got certain results. They even cooked the data at times. They're like
scientists who are hired by tobacco companies to scientifically prove that
smoking doesn't cause cancer.
So: it's possible to have a "manifestly corrupt power-knowledge nexus." In
fact, both the tobacco scientists and race scientists can be plausibly
accused of violating the procedures of their professions -- by supressing
or making up data. These people are corrupt not only from our standpoint,
they're corrupt from the standpoint of the practitioners of their field!
As we go down the scale we get less manifestly corrupt relationships
between power and knowledge. The federal government funds research
institutions. It's not like scientists in those institutions are being
told what to lie about and set to work -- but there are certainly
generalized expectations that the work they do, no matter how "pure,"
will somehow make its way into somebody's profit-margin. Here the
scientist has much more independence and pursues her work "wherever it
takes her."
But who can deny that the scientifico-educato-researchish-industrial
complex tends to serve the powers that be, sometimes in quite striking
ways? For instance, somehow solar energy which, if promoted, would
undermine some corporate benefactors, never gets really dug into and
perfected.
Now, can these researchers -- perhaps unlike their cigarette-justifying
colleagues -- come up with something that's true, despite their indirect
and ambiguous ties to corporate America? Yes! Even "absolutely" true? Yes
-- depending on how we read the word "absolute."
But the truth of what they come up with is -- need we even say it? --
relative to a certain context. Part of that context is going to be
capitalist economic forms within which the truths operate. Another
contextual factor will be the hierarchic, bureaucratic institutional forms
in which new or refurbished truths are given the stamp of approval.
And so yes it is true that X combination of chemicals will produce
napalm. But is there not also a very serious sense -- for the critical
thinker, at least -- in which "napalm" and the work that went into
combining the chemicals that make it work is a socially produced truth? It
is only in the context of a very specific power-knowledge field that the
truth of napalm and the chemicals that make it up came to light.
So: unlike the paid hands of the tobacco industry who blatantly employ a
scientific cover to self-consciously produce misleading propaganda about
smoking, the inventors of napalm did not have some kind of ideological ax
to grind. They didn't cook any data. They were "objective." But what
connects them (at an abstract level) to their tobacconist colleagues is
that their researches and findings takes place within a determinate field
of forces that certainly cannot be ignored and that gives direction to the
work at hand.
I could pursue other levels of this shifting relationship between truth
and agency, but I'm going on too much so perhaps I could just sum up this
way: The vulgar postmodernist thinks that all truth is constructed,
produced by power relations, and so on, and thinks that the insight about
power's relationship to truth shows the "falsity" of all truth. The vulgar
*critic* of postmodernism takes unseemly delight in tarring all of
postmodernism's epigones with the rampant subjectivism characteristic of
the vulgar postmodernist.
The non-vulgar postmodernist insists that truth is tied to power, but
knows that this relationship occurs on a number of levels that cannot be
casually equated. Truth itself is an indeterminate term used for a variety
of purposes and it is not surprising that our angle on it should shift
accordingly. There is a relationship between truth and power in each of
the following contexts, but they're clearly not the same!
1: hired scientific workers laboring for tobacco companies
2: researchers focusing on problems that help industry or
other specific interest. Better rubber for tires. Longer-lasting
freeway pavement. Napalm.
3: scientists devising tests to capture and study quark
"particles."
4: Bentham designing the Panopticon
--John
> John Ransom wrote:
>
> >Perhaps we can think of
> >reality and its relation to human cognition and production in terms of a
> >continuum?
> >
> >gravity homosexual
> >|------------------------------------------------------------------|
> >"no matter what" truths socially produced
> >truths
> >
> >One of the impressions I have from your posts, Colin, is that while you
> >are willing to admit (as above) that lots of truths are socially produced,
> >you become abusive and dismissive (which is fine; I'm not complaining)
> >when postmodernists try to trace out the twists and turns of
> >truth-production. And I don't understand -- not that you owe anyone an
> >explanation -- why after granting a point that after all has been
> >primarily established and popularized for by postmodernists (namely, the
> >social construction of all sorts of truths) you dismiss them so
> >contemptuously.
> >
> >The relevant question probably isn't: Do you think there's a real world
> >which exists no matter what, no matter how you interpret it? The question
> >rather is: where on the continuum above do we roughly locate the dividing
> >line (if we grant there is one) between socially constructed and
> >no-matter-what truths?
> >
> >I would put my line pretty far to the left of the continuum.
>
> I think that these sorts of battles are fought over just where to put that
> line. No one coming out of a Marxian tradition could argue with the notion
> that our notions of "truth" are socially constructed. But the questions are
> how, and how much?
Yes, Marx was a founding master at this. And in general, the "critical
theorist" is always going to maintain -- with rhetoric appropriate to her
or his theorizing -- that "the truth" is not static, that what we see in
front of us in the world is far from the last word on that world, and so
on. Sort of from the "right wing" we get this from Plato in his
_Republic_. Plato does not want to admit that the kind of dog-eat-dog
political world described by Thucydides in his _Peloponnesian War_ and
summarized by Thrasymachus in the _Republic_ itself represents an
unchangeable truth about humanity. Thus Plato has a strong *political*
interest in coming up with the "Forms" and in general some plane of
existence that could be used as a platform from which to rain down
criticisms on the world as is.
One more example: there's a great line in Rousseau's "Discourse on the
Origins of Inequality." He says that in order to undestand "natural" man
as he "truly" is we must "begin by putting aside all the facts, for they
have no bearing on the question" ("Discourse on Inequality," Introduction,
Paragraph 6). In our own century of course we have people like Lukacs,
Gramsci, and the Frankfurt School who all, with changes in rhetoric and
emphasis, make the same kind of point as a kind of "prolegomena" to
critical thought: only if the world as we find it is not written in stone
can the critical project get going.
>
> One could devise a similar spectrum covering the natural and social
> sciences. The science studies crowd seem to argue that what we might call
> Ransom's Line is also pretty far to the left on this spectrum too.
> Conversely, many mainstream social scientists, notably economists, would
> place Ransom's Line pretty far to the right, rejecting any notion that
> either their concepts are socially constructed, or that what they see as
> "laws," valid across time and space, apply only to the social construct
> known as contemporary capitalism (and apply rather spottily at that).
>
> What bearing would this sort of analysis have on, say, the pseudo-science
> of racist biology? All the bizarre notions of bio-determinism, from the
> wandering uterus to the inferior African brain, were socially constructed -
> but were refuted (or socially deconstructed if you prefer) by scientists
> who probably would locate Ransom's Line pretty far to the right. Is this
> just a matter of one social construction replacing another? Or is it a
> matter of a socially constructed untruth, masquerading as truth, being
> undone by the discovery of some "'no matter what' truths"?
>
> Doug
>
>
>
I think you're right there at the heart of the question. I would like to
say that there is a descending scale, from "most corrupt relation between
power and knowledge" to "less corrupt relation between power and
knowledge."
For instance, some of the individuals doing this work on skull size and so
on went into their work with some pretty self-conscious racist motives in
mind. Their investigations were directed in such a way to make sure they
got certain results. They even cooked the data at times. They're like
scientists who are hired by tobacco companies to scientifically prove that
smoking doesn't cause cancer.
So: it's possible to have a "manifestly corrupt power-knowledge nexus." In
fact, both the tobacco scientists and race scientists can be plausibly
accused of violating the procedures of their professions -- by supressing
or making up data. These people are corrupt not only from our standpoint,
they're corrupt from the standpoint of the practitioners of their field!
As we go down the scale we get less manifestly corrupt relationships
between power and knowledge. The federal government funds research
institutions. It's not like scientists in those institutions are being
told what to lie about and set to work -- but there are certainly
generalized expectations that the work they do, no matter how "pure,"
will somehow make its way into somebody's profit-margin. Here the
scientist has much more independence and pursues her work "wherever it
takes her."
But who can deny that the scientifico-educato-researchish-industrial
complex tends to serve the powers that be, sometimes in quite striking
ways? For instance, somehow solar energy which, if promoted, would
undermine some corporate benefactors, never gets really dug into and
perfected.
Now, can these researchers -- perhaps unlike their cigarette-justifying
colleagues -- come up with something that's true, despite their indirect
and ambiguous ties to corporate America? Yes! Even "absolutely" true? Yes
-- depending on how we read the word "absolute."
But the truth of what they come up with is -- need we even say it? --
relative to a certain context. Part of that context is going to be
capitalist economic forms within which the truths operate. Another
contextual factor will be the hierarchic, bureaucratic institutional forms
in which new or refurbished truths are given the stamp of approval.
And so yes it is true that X combination of chemicals will produce
napalm. But is there not also a very serious sense -- for the critical
thinker, at least -- in which "napalm" and the work that went into
combining the chemicals that make it work is a socially produced truth? It
is only in the context of a very specific power-knowledge field that the
truth of napalm and the chemicals that make it up came to light.
So: unlike the paid hands of the tobacco industry who blatantly employ a
scientific cover to self-consciously produce misleading propaganda about
smoking, the inventors of napalm did not have some kind of ideological ax
to grind. They didn't cook any data. They were "objective." But what
connects them (at an abstract level) to their tobacconist colleagues is
that their researches and findings takes place within a determinate field
of forces that certainly cannot be ignored and that gives direction to the
work at hand.
I could pursue other levels of this shifting relationship between truth
and agency, but I'm going on too much so perhaps I could just sum up this
way: The vulgar postmodernist thinks that all truth is constructed,
produced by power relations, and so on, and thinks that the insight about
power's relationship to truth shows the "falsity" of all truth. The vulgar
*critic* of postmodernism takes unseemly delight in tarring all of
postmodernism's epigones with the rampant subjectivism characteristic of
the vulgar postmodernist.
The non-vulgar postmodernist insists that truth is tied to power, but
knows that this relationship occurs on a number of levels that cannot be
casually equated. Truth itself is an indeterminate term used for a variety
of purposes and it is not surprising that our angle on it should shift
accordingly. There is a relationship between truth and power in each of
the following contexts, but they're clearly not the same!
1: hired scientific workers laboring for tobacco companies
2: researchers focusing on problems that help industry or
other specific interest. Better rubber for tires. Longer-lasting
freeway pavement. Napalm.
3: scientists devising tests to capture and study quark
"particles."
4: Bentham designing the Panopticon
--John