Tuesday, August 09, 2005
The poverty of a whole lot of things
I’ve made my peace with postmodernism. That is, I’m satisfied it’s an academic trend that’s well on its way to obscurity. I find it funny that a) it revels in its obscurity and b) it’s committed to not being able to know or change things. Particularly in the midst of so much war, neo-liberalism and other real miseries that demand action.
U.S. B-52 raining death over Afghanistan - oh, how can we know anything really exists?
However, I’m going back to grad school, where the species ‘postmodernist’ still rears its pensive head once in a while. So a little Marxist philosophy is in order. In this case, the philosophy of history: how we can discover, order and refer to historical facts. I’m slogging through E.P. Thompson’s The Poverty Of Theory. Thompson is very funny. At first I thought this was just him demonstrating his wit, but now I think it’s a deliberate attempt to lighten the dense prose. In any event, this is what I've gleaned so far:
How to prove anything
He talks about how systems of thought (ideologies) work. Systems have their own logic:
New York, 2001: the Devil's work
Baghdad, 2003, second night of U.S. bombardment: God's work?
Looking at appearances alone, you can draw any conclusion you want. Most often, those conclusions fit pre-existing ideologies – especially political ones:
The postmodernist response to this (post-structuralist, in Thompson’s time) was to throw up its hands and claim, “We can’t really know anything for sure!” But Thompson says things are still knowable:
You'd look a little haggard too
It requires both theory and practice – what we think and we what we do. And, to be an honest grad student, what we think about what other people do. There is:
Both the astrologists and postmodernists are wrong. Real knowledge requires intellectual rigour, and it is possible. Marxism, as a system of thought, is prey to distortions (Stalinism, evolutionary socialism) like other systems. But when it’s done properly, joined with practice, it describes reality.
From www.socialnerve.org. But instead of just one hipster, imagine millions!
Thompson isn’t claiming Marxism is infallible (the usual charge thrown at Marxists). But Marxism combines concepts like class and exploitation with real, nuts-and-bolts activism. He's claiming that it’s a system of thought and practice which comes close enough to reality to change it.
U.S. B-52 raining death over Afghanistan - oh, how can we know anything really exists?However, I’m going back to grad school, where the species ‘postmodernist’ still rears its pensive head once in a while. So a little Marxist philosophy is in order. In this case, the philosophy of history: how we can discover, order and refer to historical facts. I’m slogging through E.P. Thompson’s The Poverty Of Theory. Thompson is very funny. At first I thought this was just him demonstrating his wit, but now I think it’s a deliberate attempt to lighten the dense prose. In any event, this is what I've gleaned so far:
How to prove anything
He talks about how systems of thought (ideologies) work. Systems have their own logic:
If we suppose that the sun moves around the earth, this will be confirmed to us by ‘experience’ every day. If we suppose that a ball rolls down a hill through its own innate energy and will, there is nothing in the appearance of the thing that will disabuse us.
New York, 2001: the Devil's work
Baghdad, 2003, second night of U.S. bombardment: God's work?Looking at appearances alone, you can draw any conclusion you want. Most often, those conclusions fit pre-existing ideologies – especially political ones:
And if we suppose the Soviet Union to be a Worker’s State guided by an enlightened Marxist theory, or that market forces within capitalist society will always maximize the common good, then in either case we may stand in one spot all day, watching the blazing socialist sun move across blue heavens, or the ball of the Gross National Product roll down the affluent hill, gathering new blessings on its way.Can we prove anything?
The postmodernist response to this (post-structuralist, in Thompson’s time) was to throw up its hands and claim, “We can’t really know anything for sure!” But Thompson says things are still knowable:
We have to fracture old categories and to make new ones before we can ‘explain’ the evidence that has always been there. But the making and breaking of concepts... is not a matter of theoretical invention.
You'd look a little haggard too
It requires both theory and practice – what we think and we what we do. And, to be an honest grad student, what we think about what other people do. There is:
an arduous nature of the engagement between thought and its objective materials: the ‘dialogue’ (whether as praxis or in more self-conscious intellectual disciplines) out of which all knowledge is won.We need more than proof
Both the astrologists and postmodernists are wrong. Real knowledge requires intellectual rigour, and it is possible. Marxism, as a system of thought, is prey to distortions (Stalinism, evolutionary socialism) like other systems. But when it’s done properly, joined with practice, it describes reality.
From www.socialnerve.org. But instead of just one hipster, imagine millions!Thompson isn’t claiming Marxism is infallible (the usual charge thrown at Marxists). But Marxism combines concepts like class and exploitation with real, nuts-and-bolts activism. He's claiming that it’s a system of thought and practice which comes close enough to reality to change it.
