Padd Solutions

Converted by Falcon Hive

The Subject of Pipe Dreams

Posted by moses @ 18:38 • , , , , , • 0 comments


Postmodern approaches to social theory emphasise multiplicity and de-centring, and these themes find their natural articulation in cultural analyses. Such analyses focus on the richness of cultural interaction and the reproduction of identities in non-linear ways, and where they concern themselves with politics and social organisation, they seek to realise this vision of cosmopolitan society—a society consisting of empowered and complex Subjects. Some theorists have even gone so far as to announce that we live in the age of the Subject.

Is this true? The last claim is especially dubious; our everyday experiences are enough to cast serious doubt on it. There are structural and physical limitations that ensure that Subject-Object relations continue to exist in force and often dominate the social terrain. Thus, trying to establish the existence or even plausibility of pure Subject-Subject relations in mass society amounts, at least under present conditions, to an exercise in wishful thinking.

Such limitations can be observed most clearly in political processes. Indeed, politics may be said to define these limitations insofar as it is considered as the necessary framework of social organisation. Politics, therefore, exercises a restrictive rule on the freedom and the pure reciprocity that would give rise to a society consisting only of relations between empowered Subjects.

The agents that enforce this rule are institutions. Institutions impose their decisions on Subjects in non-negotiable ways, and this happens every day in processes of governance. Democracy and dialogue fade away when individuals are faced with institutional decisions made under the guise of systemic necessity. Dreamers might continue to insist on the democratic possibility of changing such outcomes, but as Marx said, "Between equal rights force decides."

The will of individuals as Subjects and systemic concerns (as they are treated by institutions) are thereby locked in a Hegelian moral opposition—the dialectic is a forceful one. Even Subjects with dialogic aspirations for society need to be able to resort to confrontation in order to assert themselves in reforming or recreating institutions to carry out the vision of a cosmopolitan society.

It is no wonder, then, that non-violence and compliance are attributes that are often considered highly desirable, if not the most desirable, in liberal democracies—institutions may depend upon them to survive when there is potential conflict with the will of the demos, the collective body of Subjects.

Hence, democracy as an ideal exists only in its immutable form in a theoretical revolutionary moment, when the will of the demos is able to assert itself without institutional restriction. Echoing the structuralist critique of the metaphysics of presence, the ideal of democracy is not actually present in everyday procedures of governance and planning. There is typically only the reality of individuals acting as economic units under systems that often vaguely recognise their status as free and equal beings.

What about dialogue? Is there more that can be said about it? Indeed, the critique of dialogical interaction can be expanded from an institutional focus to the relations between Subjects within the demos or the public sphere itself. Some of these relations are no doubt power relations, but the existence of Subject-Object relations can be established beyond the influence of power and as the product of necessity as well. Once we move from small-scale interpersonal relations to mass society, it becomes difficult to avoid the constitution of Subject-Object relations. Mass communication is inherently objectifying because it is depersonalised—in addressing a mass of individuals, Subjects communicate without the ability to recognise particular and distinct Subjects as the recipients of their messages. As such, they must necessarily generalise about and even essentialise their audience, moulding the latter's image according to their messages. While dialogue is possible, it is nevertheless unable create a public sphere consisting of Subject-Subject relations as long as the whole of the mass is considered. The conversation will not be able to take into account every individual in his/her full complexity as a Subject; nor will it empower every Subject by allowing his/her unique voice to be heard fully.

So where does this leave postmodern approaches that try to construct a rhizomatic web of non-essentialising relations between Subjects? The pessimistic answer is "Nowhere"—there will always be Subject-Object relations and they will continue to have great relevance in social organisation. However, to give a more optimistic assessment, postmodernists may take a cue from modernist approaches and seek to address the actual existence of centres, instead of pretending that the Subject has got the better of them. Otherwise, like the proverbial ostrich, they can only make themselves more vulnerable to objectifying processes.

On the relative unimportance of the relativity of truth

Posted by moses @ 18:02 • , , , • 0 comments


I wonder how often the pronouncement that "It's all relative anyway" is accompanied by the knowledge of why exactly that is so. Perhaps utterance without precise understanding is somewhat apt within a relativist paradigm. In any case, it would certainly be apt to draw upon one philosophical tradition, which grounds beliefs on a particular theoretical basis, in order to explain and mitigate the notion that truth is relative. Hence, I want to look at structuralism and its take on the crisis of foundationalism.

The structuralist critique of foundationalism and the metaphysics of presence revolves around the arbitrariness of the link between the signifier and the signified. Essentially, it denies that inherent ideas or mental states accompany the utterance of words such as to supply the words with fixed and unmistakeable meanings. The arbitrary nature of the signifier/signified connection, however, does not imply that individuals simply decide what they mean when they say something. Meanings are decided, subject to perpetual change, through the relations of words with one another, governed by principles that constitute a language (by which I mean langue or a system of signification) and that are beyond the simple agency of individuals.

The implication is that truth claims are problematic insofar as the instability and arbitrariness of meaning make the communication of claims about objective or universal truths impossible—meanings and the truths they are supposed to convey do not necessarily translate from language to language or, depending on which philosopher you are reading, between communities that speak different languages based on the respective forms of life that characterise them. And if thought is a form of internal communication insofar as it is constructed linguistically, then it seems to follow that it is impossible to apprehend objective truths that must by nature correspond perfectly in the minds of all individuals.

Thus, there appears to be two aspects to the problem, one communicative and the other epistemological. In downplaying the practical implications of relativism, I will focus on the communicative aspect as it seems more directly applicable to our everyday lives. This seems, at any rate, appropriate in view of the linguistic orientation of the structuralist critique. Moreover, communication that is not crippled by relativism may help address the epistemological dimension to the problem, so it might be useful to deal with the communicative aspect first.

What indications are there that meanings are not hopelessly relative and mutually unintelligible when we communicate with each other? For one, there is the interesting fact that individuals who may be regarded as belonging to different communities are capable of being ‘on the same page’ while communicating to each other, even when they are making truth claims. This may be attributed on a broader level to experiences that are common to all human beings, which may, for example, make certain ethical propositions more or less universally acceptable. Even if we were to narrow down the scope of our analysis, we would find that shared experiences that constitute what is called ‘intersubjectivity’ do not permit us to neatly categorise people into distinct communities that draw on exclusive pools of meanings. We often share experiences with one another and thereby establish common grounds of shared meanings that cut across all divisions that traditionally delineate communities.

As part of our daily experience, communication in turn helps us find and perpetuate such common grounds. The act of communicating the structuralist critique of foundationalism itself presupposes shared meanings that are communicated in an effort to create a larger common ground with a potentially vast group of individuals from a range of different communities. Hence, intersubjectivity is arguably an inevitable outcome of communication.

This suggests that even if the epistemological side of the problem proves intractable, even if we can never really know whether objective truths exist, we can get by pretty well without being mutually unintelligible to an extent that cripples communication. And part of our process of getting by would undoubtedly involve having beliefs in ‘objective’ truths that we share with others who are able to empathise with the reasons for those beliefs.

Furthermore, communication can help us to come to know more about objective truths through processes of discourse, as theorists of communicative rationality might argue. In this sense, as I have mentioned earlier, the communicative aspect may be said to precede the epistemological.

Most importantly, however, the fact that we are able to communicate with a diverse range of individuals from different communities means that the relativity of truth, whether it is itself objectively true, is almost irrelevant to our daily practices in a modern liberal society. And in times when the notion of multiculturalism is under sustained attack, it reminds us that there is likely no water-tight philosophical reason for not being able to coexist and communicate with each other.