Re: Genetic Fallacy

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 (sorry guys i have to send it again for obvious reasons)
Larry<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
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Thanks for your very balanced and indeed very thoughtful reply. I see the following comments as signs of your magnanimity:<o:p></o:p>
?I still do not see a great gulf between your thoughts and mine. A few additional comments may offer some clarification and, perhaps, serve to sharpen some minor differences?.<o:p></o:p>
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I think without the attitude shown in these lines no fruitful debate would be possible. Few comments that were stimulated by reading your mail are presented below.<o:p></o:p>
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1)      What you have said about generalisation and related matters is all well taken. I agree with it totally. In fact your allusion to the constitutive role of generalisation with reference to Foucault is worthy of further consideration. In fact few people seem to bother about this aspect of Foucault since it does not lend itself easily to free play scenarios being fabricated in the wake of the so called liberation from the iron cage of subject etc. As a good Kantian Foucault never discounts the role of necessity in human life and human societies and systems. The only difference is that for Foucault as against Kant this necessity is historical and not transcendental and hence (in principle) tanscendable. Foucault never downplayed the terrifying power of necessity over human life despite his insistence on transformation etc. This is the fact of life, which cannot be wished away thorough imaginaries of free plays of symbols. Hence when Foucault was rejecting repressive hypothesis people were wrong to think that he was rejecting the existence of misery, far from it.   He was only rejecting the mode in which this misery is normally explained. He was offering and alternative and better way to explain our miserable present. <o:p></o:p>
2)      I think in this context your reference to Connolly is very relevant. It is because of not realising the fact that there is such a thing as historical necessity that many people do not take identities and their power over human societies seriously. Consequently they can commit easily to Hayekian sort of semi naturalism whereby they can imagine different sorts of new ideologies evolving through different societies on their own accord like grass grows in a land after rain. They do not seem to realise that the process of ?transition?   from one society to the other is an active process; it does not happen by itself, it needs agency. And when we raise the question of agency in modern times how can we shy away from imperialism and its role?<o:p></o:p>
3)      To come to the question of imperialism. For me there is no non-modern imperialism. But this is not due to any essentialism but due to how I define imperialism. My definition of imperialism is fairly close to Lenin, although I think the exploitative nature of imperialism is exaggerated in the Marxist analysis at the expense of  the value side of imperialism. To sustain itself for long imperialism does not need only exploitation but value change in colonies so that its rule should transit from the phase of the imposition of discipline to that of self-discipline.  Hence I see imperialism and capitalism as necessarily related to each other. This is because of the definition of imperialism, which is defined in terms of capitalism and its requirements. But I do not see such a necessary relationship between nationalism and imperialism. We all know that capitalism is global today; it has transcended its national phase (economically but not politically yet). However, in its initial phase capitalism has been dependent upon nation states and nationalism and its power. If Mercantilism was an important phase of Capitalism how can one ignore the importance of national state in the emergence and development of early capitalism. Similarly the phase of colonial conquest and after the colonial period the emergence and development of Fordist capitalist regime was dependent, at least, very significantly upon nation state and nationalism.  But the question of the relation between nationalism and capitalism is still a contingent and historical question as against the question of relation between capitalism and imperialism. The question whether nationalism could have developed without capitalism, or whether capitalism could have developed without nationalism are all conjectures, since we can not understand the categories of capitalism and nationalism without reference to history. There is no trans historical understanding of nationalism or capitalism available simply because we are historical beings. <o:p></o:p>
4)      Now to turn to the more difficult questions of how one can measure westernisation of any society etc. and whether modernisation in both of its senses (i.e. technological sense and value sense) can be pursued without westernisation etc are difficult questions. They are difficult questions because they involve much more complex questions than we normally seem to think. I think they at least depend upon and involve three further questions. a) the question of what one means by westernisation, modernisation and also whether one deem them as beneficial or not. b) If the process of empirical research inevitably involves selection, and if we have learnt from Foucault that to include is necessarily to exclude as well then the question of selection itself involves the question of standards of selections which is obviously a value question c) and most important the strategic interest. The question whether Japan should be dubbed as a western society or a society, which is essentially a ?Japanese? society, which has nevertheless, some surface resemblance with (say) American society, is above all a strategic question, the answer to which will depend on the strategic interests of the researcher. Whether I want to see Kurdish society as an Islamic society tied mainly to its Islamic roots or whether I want to see Kurdish society as a developed society advanced and civilised in the manner of the developed countries of today?s world or whether I want it to return to its pre Islamic past etc, these sort of strategic choices normally determine the selection process in empirical research and manoeuvring process that is afterwards is dubbed as interpretation. Thus these questions (how the level of westernisation of a society can be measured) can be answered, they are empirical questions but ultimately based on value presuppositions and strategic intents. That is why they are so difficult questions and so contentious too. <o:p></o:p>
5)      Finally your following comments that ?One can be a partisan of a nation without dreaming of paradise?, seems to be perfectly right as far as they just point to a possibility since there is no contradiction in terms involved here. But if we relate to the reality of modern nationalism it is hard to sustain. Can you think that nations can be mobilised in modern times, or built without the projects of the might and welfare of the nation? This for me is another way of saying that no nation state or nationalism can survive in modern times without being capitalist. A non-capitalistic nation state is for me contradiction in terms in today?s world. Not logical contradiction but historical contradiction. <o:p></o:p>
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I hope at least some of it makes sense.<o:p></o:p>
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regards<o:p></o:p>
ali<o:p></o:p>
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