Rationality or objectivity has claimed to be just such an overarching
meta-perspective. Habermas still thinks this is possible, that in an
"ideal speech situation" all persons of good will could agree on a
single assumptive context sufficent to resolve all disputes. This is
the claim that abstract and impartial justice administered from a
perspective of "objectivity" not distorted by power relations is
possible. This is what Foucault and Lyotard have demonstrated, at
least to my satisfaction, to be false. One must, I think, give up that
particular dream, what I would call the dream of a common language
into which all our concerns, commitments and greivances can be
translated without loss or distortion. The dream is utopian and, when
we try to put it into practice, authoritarian and violent. I buy the
Whorf hypothesis. I believe there are words in any other language that
will not translate without loss or distortion into english. This does
not mean that I can never know the meaning of these words. It only
means that if I come to know their meaning I will know something that
I can not quickly and easilly explain to most english speakers. Every
shared experience, to the extent that it is important, creates a
community of common understanding similar to a shared language. These
shared understandings are just as hard to translate as foreign
tongues. I know things I can not explain to some of the people I love
most. Finally, I can not be everything I am in any one place. My
identity is dispersed across several communities and the total of what
I am is only tallyed by suming across groups. If you ask me "who are
you really, the person you are for group A or the person you are for
group B", you might as well ask me "what are you really, your liver or
your lights?". Yet the people in group A may understand little of what
I share with group B not because I have not explained but because I
can not. I can not find a common language to express all that I am to
everyone that I love and cherish. I've never meet anyone whose life
was not impoverished who could. I'm serious. I would pity the person
so narrow and so shallow that he could explain everything he loved to
everyone he loved. Yet we have this dream of rationality, of
objectivity, of a common language into which everything will translate
without loss and distortion, that would allow any fair minded person to
explain absolutely anything of any importance at all to any other fair
minded person. The dream is insidious in its beauty. It is the last
and worst seduction. It is the disease that philosophy both is and
presumes to cure. It is the root of all evil done not out of fear or
selfesness but out of general principle. There is no one language so
broad and so rich as to incompass everything that anyone could
imagine. Trying to pretend that any one language can deminishes one to
exactly the extent of the contrast between what that language can say
and what any human being anywhere anytime could possibly imagine.
Beleiveing that one common language can say it all and that everything
worth knowing can be known from some single meta-perspective tempts
one sorely to believe that whatever does not speak its self in that
language is not human and that whatever does not scan from that
perspective is deformed. Blake said "one law for the ox and the dove
is most bitter tyranny to both". I say that one language for the ox
and the dove will keep either from speaking truely. I think this is
what Foucault is saying also. I'm a great admirer of Willaim
Burroughs. His slogan "exterminate all rational thought" was, I think,
aimed at a common language which really was not common at all. Which,
for example, kept the gentleman junkie from expresiing his need with
through and for language. In the fifties, the junkie was an invisible
man disappeared behind a (in exactly Foucaults' sense) commentary
about vice and virtue. Imagine living in a world where every mirror is
distorted. Imagine not being able to see yourself reflected anywhere
except as a failure of someone elses morality or as a social problem
from Ken Star's perspective. I read Foucault the way I do because of
Burroughs and Burroughs the way I do because of Foucault. Each is a
glas on the other and I don't think it is really possible to
understand just how much of the evil in this world flows from your
innoucent dream of a common language without reading both. Please do
not misunderstand me. I am not saying that you are evil or that your
intentions are not honorable. I'm saying that "objectivity" is the
deepest, darkest utopian dream of all. Communism pales by comparison.
Any common language will be a commentary denying the reality of any
passion which has no name in that language, or, as is more likely, a
name the passion would not gladly answer too.
Sincerely,
Tony Michael Roberts
---Michael Smith <mich98ael@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> >In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or be
> >eaten. In the human world, the rule is define or be defined. Power is
> >the power to define, to make knowledge a dispersion of what goes
> >without saying from ones' own perspective and, at the same time, a
> >commentary defining the alterity of the other as delusion and
deviance.
> > Any Comments,
> > Tony Michael Roberts
>
> "Define or be defined" is true enough, but isn't it more a question
of
> "define and be defined"? Of course, in defining the "other" we
define
> "ourselves", but can we really define "ourselves" without defining an
> "other"? Can we live by "our" own "self-definition" with out it
> implying statements about others which may or may not be true? Can
any
> "we" statement escape this implication? Are "I think" statements
> entirely free of "other-defining" implications?
>
> I'd have to say that the last is possible, that we can all talk about
> our own immediate perceptions without imposing, impinging, or
defining
> others, but I'm interested in the implications of what you are saying.
>
> It's precisely that "eat or be eaten, define or be defined" that
> interests me. There is a religion in India (is it the Jains?) that
> takes extreme caution lest microbes inadvertently be destroyed by
being
> eaten, inhaled or trodden upon. As with "eat or be eaten", I have to
> wonder how radically we are to take "define or be defined". So I
have
> to ask if we can truly define ourselves with out defining others.
>
> One thing that interests me about your post (I know nothing about
> Foucault, but I'm trying to stay intellectually active), is the
> possibility (and impossibility) of a "metalanguage" of overarching
> statements. To say, "I dislike X, because I view it against the
> background of W, Y and Z," leaving open the possibility that you may
> love X, because in your experience it is juxtaposed with or seen
against
> the horizon of A, B, and C, may be a way of making sense of the world
> and minimizing disagreements (assuming that we think it important to
do
> so). But if life is a struggle of "eat or be eaten, define or be
> defined" does one want to achieve such an "overarching
> metaperspective"
>
> Michael Smith
>
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
==
"I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." Michel Foucault
_________________________________________________________
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Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
meta-perspective. Habermas still thinks this is possible, that in an
"ideal speech situation" all persons of good will could agree on a
single assumptive context sufficent to resolve all disputes. This is
the claim that abstract and impartial justice administered from a
perspective of "objectivity" not distorted by power relations is
possible. This is what Foucault and Lyotard have demonstrated, at
least to my satisfaction, to be false. One must, I think, give up that
particular dream, what I would call the dream of a common language
into which all our concerns, commitments and greivances can be
translated without loss or distortion. The dream is utopian and, when
we try to put it into practice, authoritarian and violent. I buy the
Whorf hypothesis. I believe there are words in any other language that
will not translate without loss or distortion into english. This does
not mean that I can never know the meaning of these words. It only
means that if I come to know their meaning I will know something that
I can not quickly and easilly explain to most english speakers. Every
shared experience, to the extent that it is important, creates a
community of common understanding similar to a shared language. These
shared understandings are just as hard to translate as foreign
tongues. I know things I can not explain to some of the people I love
most. Finally, I can not be everything I am in any one place. My
identity is dispersed across several communities and the total of what
I am is only tallyed by suming across groups. If you ask me "who are
you really, the person you are for group A or the person you are for
group B", you might as well ask me "what are you really, your liver or
your lights?". Yet the people in group A may understand little of what
I share with group B not because I have not explained but because I
can not. I can not find a common language to express all that I am to
everyone that I love and cherish. I've never meet anyone whose life
was not impoverished who could. I'm serious. I would pity the person
so narrow and so shallow that he could explain everything he loved to
everyone he loved. Yet we have this dream of rationality, of
objectivity, of a common language into which everything will translate
without loss and distortion, that would allow any fair minded person to
explain absolutely anything of any importance at all to any other fair
minded person. The dream is insidious in its beauty. It is the last
and worst seduction. It is the disease that philosophy both is and
presumes to cure. It is the root of all evil done not out of fear or
selfesness but out of general principle. There is no one language so
broad and so rich as to incompass everything that anyone could
imagine. Trying to pretend that any one language can deminishes one to
exactly the extent of the contrast between what that language can say
and what any human being anywhere anytime could possibly imagine.
Beleiveing that one common language can say it all and that everything
worth knowing can be known from some single meta-perspective tempts
one sorely to believe that whatever does not speak its self in that
language is not human and that whatever does not scan from that
perspective is deformed. Blake said "one law for the ox and the dove
is most bitter tyranny to both". I say that one language for the ox
and the dove will keep either from speaking truely. I think this is
what Foucault is saying also. I'm a great admirer of Willaim
Burroughs. His slogan "exterminate all rational thought" was, I think,
aimed at a common language which really was not common at all. Which,
for example, kept the gentleman junkie from expresiing his need with
through and for language. In the fifties, the junkie was an invisible
man disappeared behind a (in exactly Foucaults' sense) commentary
about vice and virtue. Imagine living in a world where every mirror is
distorted. Imagine not being able to see yourself reflected anywhere
except as a failure of someone elses morality or as a social problem
from Ken Star's perspective. I read Foucault the way I do because of
Burroughs and Burroughs the way I do because of Foucault. Each is a
glas on the other and I don't think it is really possible to
understand just how much of the evil in this world flows from your
innoucent dream of a common language without reading both. Please do
not misunderstand me. I am not saying that you are evil or that your
intentions are not honorable. I'm saying that "objectivity" is the
deepest, darkest utopian dream of all. Communism pales by comparison.
Any common language will be a commentary denying the reality of any
passion which has no name in that language, or, as is more likely, a
name the passion would not gladly answer too.
Sincerely,
Tony Michael Roberts
---Michael Smith <mich98ael@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> >In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or be
> >eaten. In the human world, the rule is define or be defined. Power is
> >the power to define, to make knowledge a dispersion of what goes
> >without saying from ones' own perspective and, at the same time, a
> >commentary defining the alterity of the other as delusion and
deviance.
> > Any Comments,
> > Tony Michael Roberts
>
> "Define or be defined" is true enough, but isn't it more a question
of
> "define and be defined"? Of course, in defining the "other" we
define
> "ourselves", but can we really define "ourselves" without defining an
> "other"? Can we live by "our" own "self-definition" with out it
> implying statements about others which may or may not be true? Can
any
> "we" statement escape this implication? Are "I think" statements
> entirely free of "other-defining" implications?
>
> I'd have to say that the last is possible, that we can all talk about
> our own immediate perceptions without imposing, impinging, or
defining
> others, but I'm interested in the implications of what you are saying.
>
> It's precisely that "eat or be eaten, define or be defined" that
> interests me. There is a religion in India (is it the Jains?) that
> takes extreme caution lest microbes inadvertently be destroyed by
being
> eaten, inhaled or trodden upon. As with "eat or be eaten", I have to
> wonder how radically we are to take "define or be defined". So I
have
> to ask if we can truly define ourselves with out defining others.
>
> One thing that interests me about your post (I know nothing about
> Foucault, but I'm trying to stay intellectually active), is the
> possibility (and impossibility) of a "metalanguage" of overarching
> statements. To say, "I dislike X, because I view it against the
> background of W, Y and Z," leaving open the possibility that you may
> love X, because in your experience it is juxtaposed with or seen
against
> the horizon of A, B, and C, may be a way of making sense of the world
> and minimizing disagreements (assuming that we think it important to
do
> so). But if life is a struggle of "eat or be eaten, define or be
> defined" does one want to achieve such an "overarching
> metaperspective"
>
> Michael Smith
>
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
==
"I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." Michel Foucault
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com