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Realism Discourse and Deconstruction
Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions addresses such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context-specific, or ‘causally efficacious’ circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which (non-discursive) social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. Jonathan Joseph is a lecturer in the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the author of Hegemony: A Realist Analysis and Social Theory: Conflict, Cohesion and Consent. John Michael Roberts is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. He is co-editor of Critical Realism and Marxism.
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Routledge Studies in Critical Realism Edited by Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie Critical realism is one of the most influential new developments in the philosophy of science and in the social sciences, providing a powerful alternative to positivism and postmodernism. This series will explore the critical realist position in philosophy and across the social sciences. 1 Marxism and Realism A materialistic application of realism in the social sciences Sean Creaven 2 Beyond Relativism Raymond Boudon, cognitive rationality and critical realism Cynthia Lins Hamlin 3 Education Policy and Realist Social Theory Primary teachers, child-centred philosophy and the new managerialism Robert Wilmott 4 Hegemony A realist analysis Jonathan Joseph 5 Realism and Sociology Anti-foundationalism, ontology and social research Justin Cruickshank
6 Critical Realism The difference it makes Edited by Justin Cruickshank 7 Critical Realism and Composition Theory Donald Judd 8 On Christian Belief A defence of a cognitive conception of religious belief in a Christian context Andrew Collier 9 In Defence of Objectivity and Other Essays Andrew Collier 10 Realism Discourse and Deconstruction Edited by Jonathan Joseph and John Michael Roberts
Also published by Routledge: Critical Realism Interventions Edited by Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie Critical Realism Essential readings Edited by Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie The Possibility of Naturalism 3rd edition A philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences Roy Bhaskar
Rational Choice Theory Resisting colonisation Edited by Margaret Archer and Jonathan Q. Tritter Explaining Society Critical realism in the social sciences Berth Danermark, Mats Ekström, Jan Ch Karlsson and Liselotte Jakobsen
From East to West Odyssey of a soul Roy Bhaskar
Critical Realism and Marxism Edited by Andrew Brown, Steve Fleetwood and John Michael Roberts Critical Realism in Economics Edited by Steve Fleetwood Realist Perspectives on Management and Organisations Edited by Stephen Ackroyd and Steve Fleetwood After International Relations Critical realism and the (re)construction of world politics Heikki Patomaki
Realism and Racism Concepts of race in sociological research Bob Carter
Capitalism and Citizenship The impossible partnership Kathryn Dean
Being and Worth Andrew Collier Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism Philosophical responses to quantum mechanics Christopher Norris
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Realism Discourse and Deconstruction
Edited by Jonathan Joseph and John Michael Roberts
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First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2004 Jonathan Joseph and John Michael Roberts for editorial material and selection, the contributors their own contribution All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-30047-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-33871-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–32263–4 (Print Edition)
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Contents
List of contributors 1 Introduction: realism, discourse and deconstruction
vii 1
JONATHAN JOSEPH AND JOHN MICHAEL ROBERTS
PART I
Realism and critical discourse analysis 2 Critical realism and semiosis
21 23
NORMAN FAIRCLOUGH, BOB JESSOP AND ANDREW SAYER
3 Critical realism, critical discourse analysis, concrete research
43
MARTIN JONES
4 How might the inclusion of discursive approaches enrich critical realist analysis? The case of environmentalisms
68
JENNETH PARKER
PART II
Voloshinov and Bakhtin 5 Will the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle please stand up?
87 89
JOHN MICHAEL ROBERTS
6 Value and contract formation HOWARD ENGELSKIRCHEN
111
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PART III
Realism and post-Marxism 7 Lost in transit: reconceptualising the real
135 137
NEIL CURRY
8 Laclau and Mouffe and the discursive turn: the gains and the losses
150
KATHRYN DEAN
PART IV
Realism and Eurocentric discourse 9 Eurocentrism, realism, and the anthropic cartography of emancipation
169 171
RAJANI KANTH
10 The dialectics of realist theory and the Eurocentric problematic of modern discourse
180
NICK HOSTETTLER
PART V
Critical realism and deconstruction
199
11 Limited incorporation or sleeping with the enemy: reading Derrida as a critical realist
201
COLIN WIGHT
12 Dialectics, deconstruction and the legal subject
217
ALAN NORRIE
13 Learning to live (with Derrida)
246
JONATHAN JOSEPH
14 Deconstructing anti-realism: Derrida’s ‘White Mythology’
262
CHRISTOPHER NORRIS
Index
298
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Contributors
Neil Curry teaches Sociology in the School of Applied Social Sciences at St Martin’s College, Lancaster. Kathryn Dean teaches Political and Social Theory in the Department of Political Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research interests include historical materialism, psychoanalysis, citizenship theory and medium theory. She is presently working on a study of citizenship and communication which aims to synthesise political theory and medium theory within an historical materialist problematic. Howard Engelskirchen previously taught Law at the University of Santa Clara and at Western State University College of Law and is now studying Philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton. His work applies the methodologies of scientific realism to law and Marxism. Norman Fairclough is Professor of Language in Social Life at Lancaster University. He has written widely on critical discourse analysis, including Language and Power (Longman, 1989), Discourse and Social Change (Polity Press, 1992), Critical Discourse Analysis (Longman, 1995), Discourse in Late Modernity (with Lilie Chouliaraki, Edinburgh University Press, 1999), New Labour, New Language? (Routledge, 2000) and Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (Routledge, 2003). He is currently working (with Isabela Ietcu) on the contrasting effects and experiences of ‘globalisation’ in ‘western’ countries and countries of central and eastern Europe from a discourse perspective. Nick Hostettler is Postgraduate Researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Bob Jessop is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Management and Social Sciences at Lancaster University. He has published extensively on state theory, social theory, the regulation approach, political economy and postwar British politics.
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His latest books are The Future of the Capitalist State (Polity Press, 2002) and State/Space (co-edited with Neil Brenner, Martin Jones and Gordon Macleod) (Blackwell, 2003). Martin Jones is Reader in Human Geography at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the author of New Institutional Spaces ( Jessica Kingsley, 1999), the co-editor of State/Space: A Reader (Blackwell, 2003) and numerous journal articles. His research interests are in post-Marxist state theory, urban and regional political economy, the governance of economic development, labour market geography and qualitative methods in the social sciences. Jonathan Joseph teaches in the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the author of Hegemony: A Realist Analysis and Social Theory: Conflict, Cohesion and Consent, as well as several articles on realism, deconstruction and Marxism. Rajani Kanth has just finished a research project for the University of Texas, Austin, and is headed for Duke University in the autumn. His most recent work is Against Eurocentrism. He is currently living in Salt Lake City, Utah, writing and directing films, and composing music. Alan Norrie teaches Law at King’s College London. His main theoretical interests are in law and social theory, and in the nature of dialectical theory, including dialectical critical realism. He is the author of three books on the idea of criminal justice, most recently Punishment Responsibility and Justice (Oxford, 2000), and an editor of Critical Realism: Essential Readings (Routledge, 1998). Christopher Norris is Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy at the University of Cardiff. He has published more than twenty books to date on aspects of critical theory, the philosophy of science and philosophical semantics. They include – most recently – Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism (2000), Deconstruction and the Unfinished Project of Modernity (2001), Truth Matters: Realism, Anti-realism and Response-dependence (2002) and Hilary Putnam: Realism, Reason, and the Uses of Uncertainty (2002). Jenneth Parker has a background in environmental and feminist movements and is currently Co-Director of the International Distance Learning MSc in Education for Sustainability at London South Bank University. She has published in applied ethics, the politics of knowledge and education for sustainability. She is currently working on ethical and political issues related to her PhD in Ecofeminist Ethics from the University of Sussex. John Michael Roberts is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. His publications include Critical Realism and Marxism (co-editor, Routledge, 2002), The Aesthetics of Free
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Speech (Palgrave, 2003) and After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere (co-editor, Blackwell, 2004). Andrew Sayer is Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy, in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University. He is author of Method in Social Science (1992) and Realism and Social Science (2000), and various books and articles on realism, economy and society. He is currently working on class and moral economy. Colin Wight is Senior Lecturer at the Department of International Politics, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His research interests are in the interface between the philosophy of social science, social theory and international relations theory. He is currently researching the role played by the ‘Idea of Science’ in the formation of international relations as an academic discipline. He has published in International Studies Quarterly, the Philosophy of the Social Sciences and the European Journal of International Relations and Millennium.
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1
Introduction Realism, discourse and deconstruction Jonathan Joseph and John Michael Roberts
This edited collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. However, despite the increased interest, this debate is still in its early stages. The aim of this book is to develop this debate by gathering a number of important articles on these issues. While the aim is not to produce a definitive viewpoint, we hope, nevertheless, to bring together what have, so far, been occasional interventions in order to promote, develop and widen what is likely to be an important area of research. The contributions in this volume are diverse. Some address the work of Derrida and deconstruction from a realist standpoint, others address discourse theory or discourse and language more generally, while others address the issue of Eurocentrism. What unites all of the contributions is a sense that it is essential to provide an alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. In their respective way all of the authors maintain, contra varieties of social constructionism, that complexly layered and often unobservable strata of reality impact upon our action and thinking. By endorsing this broad-based realist perspective the authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world and thereby stave off the worst excesses of social constructionism, especially the latter’s slide into irrealism. Albeit, it is also true to say that a variety of realisms exist with which to undertake this task. In order to avoid later confusions, this introduction will first spell out the importance of what has become known as critical realism as well as some problems that realists working within similar critical traditions have expressed towards critical realism. We will then give a summary of how the different authors in this book deal with discourse and deconstruction.
Varieties of realism In their chapter Fairclough, Jessop and Sayer state that many theorists reject causal explanation as being inappropriate for the explanation of discourse and semiosis. They give as an example the way that the
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hermeneutic tradition tends to reject causal explanation in favour of verstehen or interpretative understanding. By contrast Fairclough, Jessop and Sayer argue that semiosis is both meaningful and causally efficacious. Like many authors in this collection they employ critical realism to show how semiosis produces real effects. The generally acknowledged founder of critical realism, Roy Bhaskar, himself argues that the hermeneutic mediation of meanings must be supplemented by semiotic analysis of how those meanings are produced. If the hermeneutic moment corresponds to the conceptual aspect of social life then the semiotic moment corresponds to instrumentation in empirical work (Bhaskar 1989a: 60). So what does critical realism add to our understanding of discourse? The most fundamental conviction for any form of realism is a belief in the independent existence of a real world. The particular way that critical realism understands this is through the distinction between transitive knowledge and the intransitive mind-independent objects that this knowledge is of. Our transitive knowledge is embodied in theories, practices, discourses and texts. Critical realism argues that this transitive knowledge is socially and historically located and engendered. However, unlike postmodernism and some forms of discourse theory, critical realism maintains that there is also an intransitive world ‘outside the text’ so to speak. The intransitive is that which science seeks to study and, as Bhaskar says, ‘[t]he intransitive objects of knowledge are in general invariant to our knowledge of them; they are the real things and structures, mechanisms and processes, events and possibilities of the world’ (Bhaskar 1997: 22). The transitive/intransitive distinction is therefore an alternative to the irrealist1 tendencies of some forms of deconstruction and discourse analysis, maintaining that there is something beyond the text, knowledge or discourse, and it is this very something that makes the text or human knowledge possible. Critical realism therefore develops a transcendental argument along the lines that, given that knowledge is possible and meaningful, what does this tell us about the real world? It answers, as Bhaskar’s quote has indicated, that the real world is structured and stratified in a certain way and that this structure is relatively enduring and open to investigation. A critical realist ontology therefore comprises: • • •
structures (those intransitive properties that give an object a particular identity), generative mechanisms (those powers possessed through the structure of an object which may or may not be exercised in open, or contingent, conditions with other objects), practices (those actions and social relationships in the transitive realm of a particular object which are, themselves, partly determined by, but not reduced to, the structures and mechanisms of the object in question).
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Discourse may be an important part of this reality, but it is necessary to look at how it interacts with non-discursive social structures and causal mechanisms and how the relationship between all three takes an organised form. Critical realism also advances a theory of social reproduction and transformation that it calls the transformational model of social activity (TMSA). According to this view: Society is both the ever-present condition (material cause) and the continually reproduced outcome of human agency. And praxis is both work, that is conscious production, and (normally unconscious) reproduction of the conditions of production, that is society. (Bhaskar 1989a: 34–35)2 Typical questions that might arise through a critical realist understanding of discourse are the following: How does discourse relate to an unobservable reality? How can we understand such abstract things as capitalism or the law of value? Can discursive practices actually alter reality? And if so, what are the implications for human practice? What kinds of discourses or ideologies emerge in the process of normal social reproduction? What might be the basis for a transformatory or emancipatory discourse? Critical realism offers an explanatory critique that moves from a criticism of certain ideas to a critique of the institutions and structures that produce them, thus pointing towards the need to understand, explain and perhaps transform such structures. In this way, critical realism might be said to move from discourses to underlying reality to critique. It therefore opposes those forms of deconstruction and discourse theory – such as the work of Laclau and Mouffe – for being unable to move beyond discourse, thus failing to ontologise their arguments and failing to offer a critique or a strategic alternative. The critical realist project would seem, therefore, to offer a powerful alternative to postmodern and discourse-reductive approaches to the social world. Bhaskar’s recent ‘dialecticisation’ of critical realism seems to move closer to aspects of deconstruction, particularly with its critique of pure presence and positivity and its advocacy of alterity and absence. This convergence is noted in the chapters by Norrie and Joseph although they both stress dialectical critical realism’s greater ontological commitments. However, the development of dialectical critical realism has renewed debate about what critical realism should be. Indeed, some of the contributors to this volume are critical of critical realism more generally. Certainly there is a general acceptance of critical realism’s notion that an intransitive domain exists independently of our knowledge, but Roberts, for example, argues that there is too much of a compromise with social constructionism in the notion that we can only know this world through the transitive domain of human perception and consciousness (see also Woodiwiss 2001: 15–21).
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Further, once it is accepted that human action operates within a set of social preconditions it is then necessary to gain an adequate understanding of the historical form of those preconditions. Again, Roberts and others have suggested that the transcendental method of critical realism does not do justice to the historical specificity and socially mediated nature of particular social structures. It is necessary to look at how such structures represent the forms of a historically unique inner mediation or connection. Even though this debate is ongoing (see Brown, Fleetwood and Roberts 2002) it does imply that we can identify different varieties of critical realism at work. Critical realism is an open and evolving paradigm that includes many different perspectives and criticisms. Some approaches are more open to poststructuralism and postmodernism, others see realism as a companion to Marxist analysis while, more recently, Roy Bhaskar has taken a more spiritual ‘transcendental’ turn (Bhaskar 2000). What unites the different realist perspectives collected here is a need to provide an emancipatory critique of society and its irrealist philosophies within the tradition of socialist thought.
Realist(ic) discourse The collection of articles gathered together here is primarily concerned with presenting a realist approach to discourse theory. This is particularly pertinent because just as there can be said to exist a variety of realist positions, it is equally true to say that there exists a variety of discourse approaches. The list is extensive and includes such influential theories as Foucaldian perspectives, critical discourse analysis, social semiotics, postMarxism, Bakhtinian discourse theory, Habermasian communicative rationality, and deconstruction. What unites these theories is a concern with how social and cultural changes are mediated through relatively stable and coherent means of representation, and how these means of representation place subjects in particular relations of power. The issue on which these theories tend to differ from one another is the degree to which discourse gains an autonomous power to construct and classify social and cultural changes irrespective of how those changes themselves structure discourse. The authors in this collection agree that a study of discourse adds an important dimension to social analysis by drawing our attention to those mechanisms at work in constructing and maintaining subjectivities within particular social contexts. Occasionally these constructed subjectivities entail an epistemological distortion about the intransitive ordering of society which works in the interests of a specific social group. If this epistemological distortion serves to conceal relations of exploitation and power then we can say that the discourse in question has ‘ideological effects’ (Larrain 1983; Purvis and Hunt 1993). An example today would be the discursive sign of ‘asylum seekers’ which has been associated with those individuals escaping to the UK (and other European nations) from persecution. This
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discursive sign has been used by certain interests in society (e.g. those in the media and government) to distort the reality of why individuals feel the necessity to flee their own country against their wishes. At the same time it has been used to justify draconian state policies against those fleeing persecution and to help construct a national identity by excluding some groups from full participation in society (Hayter 2001). The sign ‘asylum seekers’ thereby contributes to a wider discourse about inclusion in British society which in turn ‘displaces’ more tangible issues surrounding relations of power such as the widening gap between social classes in the last twenty years (on which see Savage 2000). The distinction between ideology and discourse is, therefore, important for at least three reasons. First, it suggests that discourse involves a struggle over how particular signs are combined to make sense about reality so as to produce specific ideological meanings and themes. Thus, while it is true to say that signs have relatively stable meanings and themes attached to them, it is equally true to say that signs are frequently the outcome of struggles about how the world is structured. Each sign, therefore, is more often than not mediated through different ‘accents’ in both time and space. Each sign, therefore, also has traces about how the world is structured and thereby presents individuals with resources for future struggles. Second, the distinction provides a qualitative marker with which to discriminate between the effects of different discourses. On this understanding, some discourses are more insidious because they help to reproduce, maintain and perpetuate those ideological forms at particular historical junctures which mystify real contradictions and power relations. Finally, the distinction is useful because it demonstrates that while discourse theory highlights effectively how subjectivities are produced through discursive representations, it is less clear about how these representations help to reproduce underlying generative mechanisms, structures and contradictions on a daily basis. The use of ideology-critique, as is defined here, supplies this missing aspect because it prompts us to explore how certain ideas are internally related to the ‘unobservable’, though ontologically real, level and how these ideas reproduce and distort this level. Ideology-critique thereby ‘directs’ discourse to the level of the ontologically real. The authors in this collection all attempt in their own ways to develop this realist and critical approach to discourse theory. In practice this means that the often excessive claims made on behalf of discourse (e.g. discourse is self-referential, discourse constructs the world, reality is discursive in its essence, discourse is constructed through heterogeneous elements, subjects are constructed through discursively achieved fractured identities, and so on) are placed back within the deep layers of reality that overdetermine our daily lives. But rather than reject outright these excessive claims, the authors here incorporate them within realist frameworks to develop their respective discourse theories. The advantages of proceeding in this manner can be summarised through the following points.
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•
•
•
•
Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within contextspecific, or ‘causally efficacious’, circumstances. All of the authors show, for example, how realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation and subjectivity through discursive and other social practices and how these practices produce real effects. A realist perspective can help us understand the manner in which (non-discursive) social structures are reproduced and transformed through various forms of ideology and discourse. The authors achieve this task by maintaining an anti-essentialist realist position without embracing the relativism of social constructionist perspectives like poststructuralism. Thus a realist anti-essentialism does not mean the abandonment of the notion of social structures. By contrast, discourse theory not only gives up on the attempt to describe social ontology, but actually reflects the logic of capitalism in its philosophical stance. Because a realist approach to discourse seeks to understand underlying structures and mechanisms it is more adept than social constructionism at internally embedding its claims within the social connections of a system like capitalism. As a result it can be more reflexive about its claims at various levels of abstraction. This is particularly important as regards developing an emancipatory critique of society as many authors indicate. Hence, a critical form of realism is sensitive to ‘epistemic relativism’ while maintaining ‘judgemental rationalism’ through a commitment to the importance of ontology. Deconstruction, for example, is identified by some of the authors as a useful analytical tool. However, it is also shown to be problematical in its poststructuralist form by a lack of ontology or evasiveness.
Realism and critical discourse analysis In the opening chapter, Norman Fairclough, Bob Jessop and Andrew Sayer set out the basis for a relationship between critical realism and critical discourse analysis. They rightly note that critical realism has tended to take semiosis for granted. It is, therefore, important to look at the way that semiosis has real effects on social practice and institutions. By way of ground learning, then, the authors first address the possibility of naturalism – whether critical realism must be modified to take account of the distinctiveness of social action and institutions as compared with the natural sciences. On this subject they answer that this is a non-issue since we should always use methods that are appropriate to the object of study and, whether this involves using the same or different methods as those used in the natural sciences or, indeed, a mix of both simply does not matter in studying discourse. Second, and more importantly, Fairclough, Jessop and Sayer address the mechanisms involved in the social production of meaning and their intelligibility in terms of critical realism. A key issue
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here is the extent to which reasons can also be causes. Third, the authors consider the relationship between semiosis and other social mechanisms in the overall articulation and dynamic of social relations and their relevance to different institutional orders and the world of everyday experience. The authors conclude that critical realism is compatible with critical discourse analysis and that non-discursive approaches are best combined with discursive approaches (and vice versa) in order to enhance a dialectical emancipatory critique. The critical discourse analysis set out in Fairclough, Jessop and Sayer provides a valuable tool which the contributions of Jones and Parker seek to apply. Martin Jones builds upon Fairclough, Jessop and Sayer’s chapter by drawing together critical realism (as philosophy of science) and critical discourse analysis (as a methodology for uncovering and ‘reclaiming reality’). His contribution discusses the viability and validity of discourseanalytical frameworks in political-economic geography for studying transformation within the scales of regulation and governance. He draws on Fairclough’s three-dimensional critical discourse analysis model to examine the ideology, hegemony and discursive practices of Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) – institutions charged with delivering a skills revolution in England and Wales. In doing this, the chapter introduces the notion of a ‘discursive selectivity of the state’, which implies that the form and function of discursive practice is linked to the production of territory. Moreover, by drawing on the critical realist notions of generative mechanisms and contingent necessities, Jones suggests that the form taken by discursive selectivity, and the discursive practices therein, are related to the particular spatially-mediated institutional interrelations with the local state. This argument is explored through a case study of the discursive practices of a TEC within England’s East Midland region. Jones concludes by raising issues for the future use of critical discourse analysis in geography. The chapter by Jenneth Parker, like the two previous ones, shows how critical realism sees language and discourse as context specific and causally efficacious. As with the previous chapters, her contribution attempts to uncover issues of power, representation and subjectivity through discursive practices. In her case, Parker focuses upon environmental practice. Parker begins her discussion by noting that many welcomed the development of discourse approaches to environmental politics. In this context Parker explores the differences between John Dryzek’s cultural approach and the socio-political approach of David Pepper. Dryzek’s typologising of environmental politics contains important elements for analysis of cultural dimensions, associations and sources of environmental positions. However, the fundamental weakness of his account appears when he attempts to judge between the positions he outlines. Thus, Parker argues for the necessity of employing realist criteria in judging between different environmentalist positions and for the concomitant necessity of judging the
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interpretive and discursive aspects of environmentalist (and any other) politics. She proposes that a critical realist approach can provide a philosophical framework for these judgements. Further, Parker argues that, as moral agents, we are impelled to moral judgements of both material and discursive practices. This leads Parker to present a reading of ecofeminist critique as combining cultural, realist and ethical aspects in just this way. This analysis will underline the importance of developing moral dialogue as a central part of strengthening forms of new social movement collective action.
The Bakhtin Circle The next section continues, extends and develops a realist approach to discourse theory by focusing upon the work of the Bakhtin Circle. Emerging in the west Russian city of Nevel in 1918, and centred around Mikhail Bakhtin, the Circle included the linguist V. N. Voloshinov. When Bakhtin moved to the nearby city of Vitebsk in 1920 the influential literary theorist P. N. Medvedev joined the group (Clark and Holquist 1985). The work of the Bakhtin Circle proved attractive for many discourse theorists, and some have even argued that their work can be seen as a founding moment of critical discourse analysis (Hodge and Kress 1988). For many, part of the attraction of the Bakhtin Circle lies with their rejection of ‘psychological’ and ‘objectivist’ approaches to discourse theory. Psychological approaches apprehend language as being the property of subjective consciousness. For the Bakhtin Circle this approach fails to fully understand the relatively autonomous nature of material signs. These signs, signs such as a piece of literature, already encapsulate forms of meaning irrespective of an individual consciousness. Objectivist approaches view language as a relatively stable syntactic system of meaning. This approach brackets the social and historical processes that ‘generate’ language and give it meaning. Language is not a static system as the objectivist approach implies, but represents a constantly changing dialogic interaction between individuals, groups and the social world. For the Bakhtin Circle, therefore, psychological and objectivist standpoints must be combined in a manner that overcomes their separation from one another. The chapters by Roberts and Engelskirchen attempt, in their respective ways, to achieve this unity from a Bakhtinian standpoint. Roberts begins his chapter by noting that while it is indeed true to say that the Bakhtin Circle can be said to be the founders of critical discourse analysis, this is only one interpretation of their work. Just as critical discourse analysis has many overlapping strands so is this the case with the insights of the Bakhtin Circle. In fact, the Bakhtin Circle’s discursive investigations are especially problematic in this respect because they seem to be underpinned by different schools of thought within the philosophy of social science. This has led some to suggest that the Circle’s insights on discourse
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can be placed within social constructionism. Others suggest that the Bakhtin Circle is best viewed as working within a (critical) realist framework. Roberts seeks to disentangle these different philosophical elements in the Bakhtin Circle’s work in order to reconstruct them in a more systematic manner. This enables Roberts to argue that, while there are good grounds for believing that both of these viewpoints are representative of the Bakhtin Circle’s output, there is also a more obvious reading of their work, namely a Marxist materialist reading. This third reading is either overlooked or dismissed by many Bakhtinian scholars working today. In his chapter, Roberts seeks to develop this third, Marxist, reading of the Bakhtin Circle by engaging it in dialogue with both social constructionist and critical realist readings. While it is true that there is no one ‘true’ reading of the Bakhtin Circle, Roberts maintains that a materialist reading, with the aid of realism, can help us clarify and develop one of the Circle’s lasting legacies for critical discourse theory, that of dialogism. In the chapter that follows, Howard Engelskirchen focuses upon the work of Voloshinov in order to address a more specific dilemma for Marxist theory, the so-called ‘problem of legality’. Engelskirchen states this problem as follows: how can law (what would commonly be seen in Marxist discourse as a moment of the ‘superstructure’) be explained by economic relations (the determining ‘base’ of the superstructure) when economic relations are themselves defined as relations of ownership, a category presupposing the institutions of law? Engelskirchen argues that this puzzle extends to the phenomena of consciousness. In Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, Marx himself presents a sense of belonging as intrinsic to the concept of property. Similarly, early in Capital, Marx shows exchange to depend upon commodity possessors tacitly recognising each other as owners. Engelskirchen suggests that base/superstructure analysis would be trapped in a vicious circle if, as the ontology secreted by positivism supposes, our world were composed of atomistic events related only by the regular conjunction of an antecedent occurrence to its consequent. But advances in critical realist philosophy of science, including especially the revindication of cause as generative, and reality as ontologically stratified, allow for distinctions between patterns of events and structures of causal power. As a consequence, in the study of society an underlying economic structure such as value may be understood to be at once real and causally efficacious. As such these structures may generate legal relations necessarily. But also, if they are actually to exist, they can be shown to presuppose or depend upon the latter. Engelskirchen extends this argument to relations of representation and consciousness and it is here that Voloshinov’s pathbreaking analysis of language comes into play. In Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Voloshinov rests his analysis of the generative process of language on a rejection of empiricist concepts of mechanistic, positivist causality. By grounding semiotic interaction in an analysis of actual social intercourse,
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Engelskirchen argues, Voloshinov opens the way to show how states of mind like belonging, recognition or consent reflect material existence in its process of generation. Engelskirchen’s argument is illustrated by showing how relations of value generate rules of contract formation and, reciprocally, how the actual existence of relations of value presuppose and depend upon the coercive rules of contract.
Realism and post-Marxism The next two sections tackle the issues of discourse theory and the arguments of Laclau and Mouffe, and the struggle between dominant Eurocentric discourse and emancipatory critique. The two papers on Laclau and Mouffe criticise discourse theory for its epistemological, ontological and psychoanalytical irrealism. This irrealism derives from a particular use of Althusser and Lacan that is aimed against forms of essentialism. In particular, Laclau and Mouffe develop a critique of Marxism from the point of view of its economic reductionism. They initially focus on the importance of ideology as opposed to Marxism’s traditional focus on the mode of production and, in particular, they are interested in Althusser’s notion of the ideological interpellation of subjects. This form of articulation leads to an interest in the role of discourse and the way in which it shapes the social world. The problem with their approach is that since all social objects are now constituted according to their discursive articulation, objects may no longer be said to have a meaningful existence in and of themselves. It becomes impossible to see how ‘they could constitute themselves as objects outside of any discursive condition of emergence’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 108). This is clearly a problem for a realist approach and, indeed, critical realism would identify it as a problem of the ‘epistemic fallacy’, or the reduction of the intransitive object to the transitive knowledge we have of it. Neil Curry begins by identifying two broad tendencies in conceptualising the real. One is the ‘descent’ of the real, leading to discourse theory, the other is an ensuing ‘ascent’ of the real, prevalent in critical realism. Curry discusses Althusser as a prelude to discourse theory, arguing that the development of Laclau’s discourse approach can be traced to the Althusserian contribution, while Bhaskar, taking his leave from Althusser, reconfigured the real. By focusing on the influence of Althusser, Curry’s paper highlights how the anti-essentialist drive of this tradition leads to Laclau’s ‘empty reality’ where he cannot adequately conceptualise any ‘outside’. Curry concludes by questioning the either/or logic usually associated with the oscillation of the real from ‘out there’ to ‘in here’, and vice versa, suggesting that a better approach would be to think of the real and discourse as complementary, mutually implicated and negotiable. As has been said, Althusser is also important to Laclau and Mouffe because of his concept of interpellation. This indicates a psychoanalytical
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aspect to their work which is explored in Kathryn Dean’s chapter. Here she evaluates the political theory of Laclau and Mouffe’s post-Marxism in terms of its use of the Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts of ‘overdetermination’ and ‘lack’. What this evaluation reveals are the perverse effects of post-Marxism’s failure to theorise its borrowing of these concepts. Dean argues that by situating its analysis within a discursive (and discursively psychoanalytic) problematic, post-Marxism deprives itself of the critical potential afforded by the Freudian concept of overdetermination. It also tends to naturalise a condition which is historico-culturally specific. A return to Freud reveals this condition to be one of debilitating, insatiable desirousness and, therefore, one bereft of the emancipatory potential with which it is associated by Laclau and Mouffe. In fact, as Dean shows, Freud’s account of overdetermination can be used to develop a realist theory of the capitalist-induced fetishism first analysed by Marx. According to Dean, this development provides post-Marxism with the theoretical grounding needed to render its goal of eudaimonistic freedom persuasive by refusing the ‘anti-essentialism’ which comes with the discursive package. In the absence of this development, post-Marxism’s discursive political theory yields no more than a hedonistic conception of human well being which is perfectly compatible with the consumerist needs of contemporary capitalism.
Realism and Eurocentric discourse Eurocentrism is a concept that has come to prominence in recent years as scholars have attempted to challenge the influence of (white, male) European power relations within dominant discourse. The discussion is important since, through the notion of Eurocentrism, the relations between discourse, power and knowledge can be discussed. The contributions by Rajani Kanth and Nick Hostettler, in different ways, pose this issue in a radical new context. Both wish to broaden the critique of Eurocentrism as presently established, going beyond discourse to criticise real world relations. However, whereas Kanth sees this as moving him away from critical realism, Hostettler responds by developing an expanded version of critical realism, arguing that it is more than just a ‘scientific’ approach and that it does break from the uncritical thinking of modernity. Kanth’s contribution claims ‘Eurocentrism’ to be a politically correct term for ‘modernism’. Modernism rests on three foundations: a faith in (European) science, a belief in a usually self-justifying notion of progress, and a metaphysic of materialism. These righteous ideologies wreak havoc on the weak, hapless and unprepared. Modernism-Eurocentrism forms a coherent, and encompassing, weltanschaaung resting on identifiable ideational scaffolding that has served as the intellectual substructure for all the (European) hegemonic epistemic orientations of our time: liberal, conservative and radical. Thus, critical realism is also attacked for its own
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modernist inheritances. Although critical realism is said to avoid more reductionist forms of materialism, it is criticised for its glorification of science, its own version of truth as a universal value, and its belief in its own superiority over previous philosophies. For Kanth, then, realism is not the way forward. Rather, the European way must be rejected through a rediscovery of our ‘indefeasibly mammalian, tribalist, heritage’. It is not through ‘science’ or ‘philosophy’ but through creative regeneration that Eurocentrism can be opposed so that we can rediscover an anthropically comprehensible meaning of life. Kanth points, by transcendent delineation of what is to be undone, the way to the possibility of grasping, howsoever potentially, the contours of a self-actualising human emancipation. This is an interesting argument. For while Kanth begins with the older version of Bhaskar’s realism and accepts that it grasps something of the differentiated, stratified and changing nature of the world, but that it fails to break with the Enlightenment, he ends with a position of human self-realisation that is not too dissimilar to Bhaskar’s latest transcendental dialectical critical realist works (Bhaskar 2000, 2002). Hostettler takes an altogether different route, embracing critical realism and the work of Marx as a critique of Eurocentric discourse. Like Kanth, he is concerned to give Eurocentrism a broader context, but rather than going with Bhaskar into human self-realisation, his enlarged conception looks at the deeper aspects of the categorial structure of modern discourse, looking at Eurocentrism’s conditions of existence. By drawing on Louis Althusser’s ‘problematic’ and Roy Bhaskar’s distinction between realist and irrealist ontologies, Hostettler aims to show how ‘anthropism’ – or the relations between social being and being in general – and what he analogously calls ‘ethnicism’ – the relations between a particular culture and being in general – are similar structural features of Eurocentric – or Europic – systems of meanings. He claims that Eurocentrism is a specific form of ethnicist meaning embedded in social relations and practices which unite a range of universalising tendencies entailing real abstraction, but with illicitly universalised ‘secular’ conceptual logics. The consequence of the Europic complex is the reduction of social existence to some facet of European modernity. Discourse–discipline dialectics refers to the way social practices and relations are rendered intelligible through scientific discourse. These discourses establish irrealist modes of identification of social life and fix the relations between language, concept and reality and between discursive elaboration and disciplinary practice. Eurocentrism is thus also about how social life is mediated by scientific discourses. As an example of this, Hostettler examines Moishe Postone’s work and the way that modern conceptions of time and labour impose a categorial irrealism, an illicit universalisation. By contrast, works like Capital are realist in the sense of dialecticising these concepts and disclosing their historical emergence. Bhaskar’s dialectical critical realism is seen as identifying, appropriating and transforming the
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anthropism or anthroporealism at the heart of the irrealist categorial structure of modern discourse. It challenges the collapse of realms of social and natural being, of reductions and separations of modes of being. Understood in this way, Eurocentrism represents the reduction of any aspect of social or natural existence to some facet of European modernity by means of naturalistic causal or functional reduction. The categories of ‘time’, ‘labour’ and ‘value’ initially belonged to a specifically European cultural register. Modernity is the emergence of a peculiarly abstract form of human commonality (being in general). In this respect, despite their very different arguments, Hostettler and Kanth both point to the underpinnings of the ‘Late European Way’.
Critical realism and deconstruction Derrida’s book, Specters of Marx, necessitates a re-evaluation of Derrida’s deconstruction. His opposition to the postmodernism of Fukuyama and critical support for Marx forces us to re-examine the deconstructive project. Of course Christopher Norris has been arguing for many years for a realist interpretation of Derrida’s work (e.g. Norris 1987) – although his postscript for this volume suggests we must see this in a slightly new light. The four contributions in this final section are concerned with furthering a dialogue by engaging with Derrida’s work from the point of view of a critical realist ontology. In fact, all the contributions here raise the question of ontology as the main problem with Derrida. It is quite possible for a critical realist to accept Derrida’s earlier work on grammatology, for this would seem to be consistent with a critical realist standpoint. His grammatology, or theory of writing, bases itself on the idea that a simple element cannot be present in and of itself and that each element is interwoven with others creating a chain or trace of differences, syntheses and referrals (Derrida 1981: 26). Such a position is consistent with a dialectical realist approach that views writing, like all other aspects of reality, not as a series of individual components but as a complex system of overdetermined relations. More generally, Derrida’s deconstruction is surely consistent with critical realism’s argument for epistemic relativism – although any tendency towards judgemental relativism in relation to truth claims must be rejected. In the most basic sense epistemic relativism is the assertion that all knowledge develops within a social and historical context. To give Derrida’s most notorious statement a truer meaning, there is nothing outside context. Such a statement should be taken to refer to the transitive domain of knowledge. The problem, then, is what of the intransitive domain of real objects that lies outside the text? In Specters Derrida opposes ontology with what he rather dramatically calls hauntology (1994: 10), something that rejects the certain foundations of ontological existence, that is representative of the bodiless apparition of
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the ghost rather than the solidity of the physical world. This ‘hauntology’ includes spectres, spirits and the messianic. The real world, it is argued, is inescapably spectral. Most obviously, this is seen in the fetishism of commodities which assume a phantasmagoric nature. The notion of ‘hauntology’ is put forward by Derrida in a bid to avoid a strong ontology but, in fact, it merely ends up making ontological commitments of its own – albeit of a more irrealist nature. Rather than accepting Derrida’s distinction between ‘hauntology’ and ontology, should we not see ‘hauntology’ as an aspect of ontology? The phantasmagoric nature of capitalist fetishism should be seen, therefore, as a manifestation of the ontology of capitalism. This, it would seem, could push Derrida’s concepts in a realist direction. But Derrida himself is keen to avoid ontological commitments. This is shown in his attitude towards Marxism. He argues that it is necessary to keep faith with Marxism as radical critique employing its questioning stance, as an emancipatory and messianic affirmation, as an experience of the promise liberated from dogmatics (1994: 89). But at the same time Derrida invokes the spirit of Marx in opposition to the body of Marx. So Derrida’s spectral critique of Marxism (or what he sees as Marxist ideology) is a critique of the spirit becoming body; it is, most obviously a critique of the bodies of Marxism – states, parties, hegemonic discourses and apparatuses. But it is also a critique of its ontological claims, its metaphysical system, its reductionism, its logocentrism, its certainty. The problem for realism should be clear, for we need to make (non-reductionist) ontological claims, we need to believe that the intransitive is open to investigation. The superiority of critical realism should be evident, for without such an ontological approach, we do indeed descend into inter-textuality for the sake of itself, or to the endless play of criticism. It is, however, in this sense that deconstruction is normally understood. Colin Wight’s contribution admits that there is a strong case for viewing realism and deconstruction as fundamentally opposed. Indeed, the idea that realism and deconstruction might not only be compatible but actually engaged in a common project would likely strike many advocates of both approaches as equivalent to ‘sleeping with the enemy’. Wight notes that Derrida’s claim that there is ‘nothing beyond the text’ sits uneasily with realism’s commitment to the ‘real’, while deconstruction’s fascination with linguistics strikes many realists as simply another form of reductionism. However, at some level Derrida and the Bhaskar of dialectical critical realism do share much in common. Both are deeply metaphysical thinkers and both can be understood as concerned with a transcendental form of philosophical inquiry; both prioritise absence over presence and both are concerned with emancipation. The case for stressing commonalities between realism and deconstruction has been forcibly made by Christopher Norris. Wight’s chapter develops some of Norris’s themes to explore the extent to which Derrida can be read as a Critical Realist. It does so through an examination of Derrida’s distinction between ‘concepts’ and
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‘aconceptual concepts’, a distinction which Derrida claims is fundamental and necessary to critical inquiry and which is an attempt to avoid the use of traditional concepts. The chapter argues that such concepts cannot be avoided since the distinction between ‘concepts’ and ‘aconceptual concepts’ is itself a conceptual distinction. Therefore, the conditions of possibility for a deconstructive reading requires a prior commitment to just those standards (truth, rigour, reality, context) that function to allow a ‘minimal consensus’. However, the chapter concludes that the necessity of concepts to Derrida does little to help decide if he could be read as a critical realist. Indeed, one can read Derrida as a critical realist, but only if one already reads him as a critical realist. Alan Norrie’s contribution also discusses the relationship between deconstruction and dialectical critical realism, but this is done by exploring their common background in, and different trajectories from, Hegel. It does so by addressing the gap between a socio-historical and a deconstructive approach to a ‘modern’ object of study such as law. Examining Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’, it argues that the problem of the gap lies with deconstruction’s marginalisation of the social and political character of its object of study. Despite such marginalisation, deconstructive concepts such as supplementarity and différance are important and ought to be preserved for a critical sociological account. This is possible once Derrida’s position is located within the modern dialectical tradition initiated by Hegel and developed by Bhaskar in his dialectic critical realist work. Both Hegel and Derrida offer important dialectical concepts for the critique of social phenomena, but both in different ways surrender them. They do so through immediate (Derrida) or improperly synthesised (Hegel) recourse to ethical standpoints which marginalise the significance of the object of study as a social and political phenomenon. Bhaskar’s dialectical critical realism is presented as a way through the resulting impasses, specifically by virtue of his dialectical and socio-historical rendition of a concept of ‘entity relationism’. This entity relationism is contrasted with the analytical concept of ‘identity thinking’ which lies at the heart of modern thought in general, and law and the legal subject in particular. The chapter concludes by outlining how a dialectical approach can elucidate problems of subjectivity and responsibility in modern society. It contrasts formal legal conceptions of the subject, which seek to exclude relational issues, with moral conceptions in and beyond the law, which open out to the subject’s relationality. Legal reasoning as a characteristically modern form of thought is located on a contradictory dialectical ‘edge’ and suffers accordingly. Jonathan Joseph looks at the recent work of Jacques Derrida and assesses its compatibility with critical realism while, at the same time, examining Derrida’s relationship with Marxism. Joseph argues three reasons for taking Derrida seriously: his radical ideas on reading, textual practice and grammatology; his critique of many of the assumptions and certainties of the Marxist tradition; and the importance of his account of spectrality. Joseph
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argues that deconstruction can be used in a realist manner and that this is compatible with critical realism’s advocacy of epistemic relativism. This in turn means that the claims of Marxism must never be accepted uncritically, but should be subject to the kind of scrutiny that critical realism and deconstruction have to offer. However, deconstruction is wrong on the question of ontology. The critique of a purely positive ontology is correct and is in keeping with the arguments advanced in Bhaskar’s Dialectic. But Derrida tries to avoid an ontological commitment by posing the spectral realm of hauntology as a kind of fuzzy, indeterminate alternative. The argument presented here is that ontological claims are unavoidable, and therefore the question is not whether to be for or against ontology, but what kind of ontology to embrace. Ironically then, the kind of hauntology presented in Derrida’s work and his account of the spectrality of capitalist relations is, in fact, a welcome addition to an ontology of capitalist society, though by itself inadequate. We find in the contributions of Joseph, Norrie and Wight, therefore, a common interest in deconstruction as an epistemological or methodological tool, but a shared concern with Derrida’s ontological stance (or lack of it). Similarly, all the contributors here recognise the importance of Christopher Norris’s work in making the case for a realist reading of Derrida although there is concern with how far this can be taken. The main part of Norris’s contribution was originally published in 1997 and argues the case that deconstruction is compatible with a realist approach to issues in epistemology and philosophy of science. Norris’s initial articles drew a response from Derrida and a postscript written by Norris for this volume replies to this response. Norris now questions whether this rapprochement between deconstruction and realism can be brought off without making significant concessions to the anti-realist position. Derrida is reluctant to commit to a notion of the real as an attribute of the objective, present, perceptible or intelligible thing. The real for Derrida is always something that eludes or transcends our modes of perception and knowledge. Norris notes that what comes out most clearly in Derrida’s response is the idea that the real has more to do with ethical otherness. This offers little comfort to those supporting critical realist positions such as the insistence on objective or verification-transcendent truths and the existence of an intransitive domain of real entities. Norris still stands by his claims in the article that deconstruction is compatible with critical realist premises. He examines Derrida’s essay ‘White Mythology’ with its detailed discussions of the role of metaphor. Contrary to the usual anti-realist reading, Norris claims that this work in fact supports the view that it is impossible to reduce truth, without remainder, to the endless play of metaphorical displacements. It is unjustified to believe that deconstruction is committed to an undoing of all truth claims. Rather, ‘White Mythology’ is about questioning such values in a manner that is consistent with the highest standards of analytical rigour.
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However, that Norris is, here, raising problems with what he calls Derrida’s ‘later’ or ‘more recent agenda’, is significant. This is possibly Norris’s most explicit statement on the differences between critical realism and Derrida, where he acknowledges that Derrida has developed a ‘very different way of thinking about matter of truth, knowledge, and ethical responsibility’. To this list we must add the crucial issue of ontology. The debates over realism, discourse and deconstruction are clearly only just beginning.
Conclusion It should be evident from the above issues that a new terrain is opening up, but that this is a difficult one. Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This can, in fact, help us to understand irrealism in the world; about categorial errors, Eurocentrism and ideological discourses. But the contributors also maintain that it would be too much of a oneway argument if discourse is seen as the active agent that shapes the world around it. As Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1990) reminds us, ethical responsibility, truth and emancipation may very well be encapsulated within the realm of discourse but they are also all structured in and through the ontology of the world at various levels of social mediation. By returning to the key issue of ontology and not just how we talk about, describe or understand the world, the authors in this collection are also concerned with how this world is structured. This requires identifying such things as social structures, generative mechanisms and material practices. By developing a realist perspective the authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Thus, this collection starts to redress this problematic by insisting that it is the world around us, in fact, that acts upon, shapes and produces the various forms of discourse, knowledge and wider social practices. Realism is concerned with how the complexly layered and often unobservable strata of reality impact upon our action and thinking. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within contextspecific, or ‘causally efficacious’ circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which (non-discursive) social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed.
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Notes 1
2
Irrealism may be defined as non-realist in the sense of being anthropic, actualist (reducing reality to states of affairs), in denying the complexity of reality, denying absence in favour of the present, as de-agentifying or as hypostatising ideas. The realist/irrealist couplet should thus be seen as far broader in scope than the traditional materialist/idealist distinction. For other good summaries of critical realism see Collier 1994; Outhwaite 1987; and Archer et al. 1998.
Bibliography Archer, M., Bhaskar, R., Collier, A., Lawson, T. and Norrie, A. (eds) (1998) Critical Realism: Essential Writings, London and New York: Routledge. Bakhtin, M. (1981) ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in M. M. Bakhtin The Dialogic Imagination, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press. —— (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press. —— (1990) ‘Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity’, in M. M. Bakhtin Art and Answerability, trans. V. Liapunov, Austin: University of Texas Press. Bhaskar, R. (1989a) The Possibility of Naturalism, second edition, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. —— (1989b) Reclaiming Reality, London: Verso. —— (1997) A Realist Theory of Science, third edition, London: Verso. —— (2000) From East to West, London and New York: Routledge. —— (2002) Meta-Reality, New Delhi: Sage. Bonefeld, W. (1993) The Recomposition of the British State During the 1980s, Aldershot: Ashgate. Brown, A., Fleetwood, S. and Roberts, J. M. (eds) (2002) Critical Realism and Marxism, London: Routledge. Clark, K. and Holquist, M. (1985) Mikhail Bakhtin, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Collier, A. (1994) Critical Realism, London: Verso. Derrida, J. (1981) Positions, London: Athlone Press. —— (1994) Specters of Marx, New York and London: Routledge. Hayter, T. (2001) ‘Open Borders: the Case Against Immigration Controls’, Capital and Class 75 (Autumn): 149–156. Hodge, B. and Kress, G. (1988) Social Semiotics, Cambridge: Polity Press. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London: Verso. Larrain, J. (1983) Marxism and Ideology, London: Macmillan. López, J. and Potter, G. (2001) After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism, London: Athlone. Norris, C. (1987) Derrida, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Outhwaite, W. (1987) New Philosophies of Social Science: Realism, Hermeneutics and Critical Theory, London: Macmillan. Purvis, T. and Hunt, A. (1993) ‘Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology, Discourse, Ideology . . .’, British Journal of Sociology 44(3): 473–499. Savage, M. (2000) Class Analysis and Social Transformation, Buckingham: Open University Press. Sayers, S. (1985) Reality and Reason, Oxford: Blackwell. Woodiwiss, A. (2001) The Visual in Social Theory, London: Athlone.
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Acknowledgements The editors and publisher would like to thank the following for their permission to use copyright material: Journal of Critical Realism for Norman Fairclough, Bob Jessop and Andrew Sayer, ‘Critical Realism and Semiosis’, Journal of Critical Realism, 5(1) (2002): 2–10; Social and Legal Studies for Alan Norrie, ‘From Critical to Socio-Legal Studies: Three Dialectics in Search of a Subject’, Social and Legal Studies, 9(1) (2000): 85–113; Historical Materialism for Jonathan Joseph, ‘Learning to Live (With Derrida)’, Historical Materialism, 6 (2000): 265–285. Manchester University Press for Christopher Norris ‘Deconstructing anti-realism: Derrida’s “white mythology” ’, in New Idols of the Cave: On the Limits of Anti-Realism, 1997. Also many thanks are due to Alan Norrie for his comments on the various drafts.
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Part I
Realism and critical discourse analysis
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2
Critical realism and semiosis Norman Fairclough, Bob Jessop and Andrew Sayer
This chapter explores the mutual implication of critical realism and semiosis. At least three major sets of questions can be posed in this regard.1 First, we argue that critical realism cannot afford to ignore semiosis, provisionally defined as the intersubjective production of meaning,2 in its more general approach to social relations, their reproduction and transformation (see Section I). In discussing this issue we interpret social relations broadly to include individual actions, the diverse relations between these interactions, and the emergent properties of institutional orders and the domain of the lifeworld. Apart from addressing the closely related, controversial, but nonetheless analytically distinct, issue of whether reasons can also be causes, critical realists have paid little attention to the nature and significance of semiosis. Prioritising the former at the expense of the latter is quite unjustified because reasons are merely one (albeit important) aspect of the causal efficacy of semiosis. In addition, their effectiveness can only be understood in and through the operation of semiosis. Second, and equally important for our purposes, we inquire into the social preconditions and broader social context of semiosis. This set of problems is well suited to the application of critical discourse analysis because the latter can provide explanatory contextualisations of the production, communication, and reception of semiosis and therefore provide a means of thinking about the articulation of the semiotic and extra-semiotic in social transformation (see Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999). But we also show that, depending on the explanandum, it may be necessary or appropriate to supplement critical discourse analysis (hereafter CDA) through more concrete-complex analyses of extra-discursive domains. This implies that, insofar as semiosis has been studied in isolation from its context, this is bound to lead to an incomplete account of social causation and therefore risks committing one or more kinds of reductionism (see Section II). Finally, we turn to a third set of questions. These concern the nature of semiotic structures, the dialectics of their constitutive role in and emergence from texts and textual practices, and their role in social structuration (see Section III). We exemplify these issues by drawing on critical semiotic analysis (especially CDA), which is a form of text analysis that is not only compatible with critical
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realism but also provides major insights into the role of semiosis in social structuration (see Section IV). Overall, Sections III and IV seek to show that semiosis involves mechanisms that are intelligible from a critical realist point of view. Our concluding section draws these different themes together to argue that semiotic analysis might benefit from paying attention to other aspects of critical realism and that critical realism might benefit from paying more attention to semiosis when exploring the social world. Addressing these three sets of questions involves identifying and exploring the real mechanisms of semiosis as a first step towards making progress on the larger problem of mind-body-semiosis-sociality-materiality. This is clearly an ambitious project and we do not expect to produce a solution in this chapter. Moreover, since critical realism qua philosophy does not entail commitments to any particular substantive social or psychological theory, alternative critical realist accounts of semiosis could also be advanced. If so, we hope our own proposals will stimulate fellow critical realists to present them.
I Why critical realism must address semiosis Critical realism has tended to take semiosis for granted. For example, its practitioners often defend the claim that reasons can be causes without making any substantial reference to semiosis as such. Our first objective is to oppose this neglect. We will then demonstrate how a critical realist approach might be used to illuminate semiosis. Social theorists and discourse analysts routinely defend semiotic analysis on the grounds that semiosis has real effects on social practice, social institutions, and the social order more generally. They argue, in short, that semiosis is performative. Though it is certainly possible for us to communicate unintentionally, we normally speak or write in order to produce some kind of response. Yet, answers to the question of how semiosis produces effects are generally conspicuous by their absence in much social science analysis. This could well be due to the many uncertainties and/or controversies over the nature of explanation in the social sciences. For some social theorists, explaining how semiosis produces effects would require a causal explanation that first identifies the social entities that produce observed effects and then attributes causal responsibility to these entities in terms of underlying causal mechanisms. But many other theorists reject causal explanation as being wholly inappropriate to the study of semiosis. For example, hermeneutics is generally taken to reject causal explanation (erklären) in favour of interpretive understanding (verstehen). Its advocates deny that semiosis and its effects can be explained in the same way as the production of chemical reactions and their effects; all that is possible (and all that is required) is to elucidate what a specific text ‘means’. This rejection of erklären in favour of verstehen is often (but not always) tied to a Humean account of causal explanation in terms of ‘constant conjunctions’
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between causes and effects.3 Thus, advocates of verstehen typically argue either that such regularities do not characterise communication and are therefore totally excluded; or that causal explanation is simply redundant insofar as it adds nothing to our understanding. Given the semiotic character of reasons (see below), this argument is linked to their conclusion that reasons are not to be treated as causes of behaviour. Instead, according to advocates of verstehen, reasons are propositions that precede or accompany behaviour and must simply be ‘understood’. If this line of reasoning were to be accepted, however, it would be meaningless and/or pointless to inquire into the causal efficacy of semiosis. In contrast, we argue that semiosis is both meaningful and causally efficacious, and we therefore need to demonstrate, using critical realist concepts, how it produces effects. To do this we need to recall some key features of critical realist philosophy. First, critical realists distinguish the real from the actual and the empirical. The ‘real’ refers to objects, their structures or natures and their causal powers and liabilities. The ‘actual’ refers to what happens when these powers and liabilities are activated and produce change. The ‘empirical’ is the subset of the real and the actual that is experienced by actors.4 Although changes at the level of the actual (e.g. political debates) may change the nature of objects (e.g. political institutions), the latter are not reducible to the former, any more than a car can be reduced to its movement. Moreover, while empirical experiences can influence behaviour and hence what happens, much of the social and physical worlds can exist regardless of whether researchers, and in some cases other actors, are observing or experiencing them. Though languages and other semiotic structures/systems are dependent on actors for their reproduction, they always already pre-exist any given actor (or subset of actors), and have a relative autonomy from them as real objects, even when not actualised.5 Second, critical realism views objects as structured and as having particular causal powers or liabilities. That is, they are able to act in certain ways and/or suffer certain changes. Thus a person who has learned a language has a rich set of (causal) powers to communicate, and she has these powers even though she does not use them all the time.6 These powers exist (often, of course, in latent form) but they can be activated in certain situations. If and when they are activated, the effects depend on the context. Thus, if we ask someone the way to the Town Hall, the effects of the question will depend on whether she speaks the same language, whether she knows the area, and so on. But regardless of whether the answer is ‘round the corner’, ‘I’m sorry I don’t know’, or ‘why do you want to know?’ it is at least co-produced by the question, and this is true irrespective of whether the relationship between the question and answer is regular or irregular in Humean terms. Causation is about what produces change (the activation of causal powers) not about (whether observers have registered) a regular conjunction of cause events and effect events.
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Hence, regularities are not necessary for explanation, whether of physical or social phenomena. Even where we do find regularities they still have to be explained in terms of what produces them. Thus, critical realism rejects the Humean, constant conjunction view of causation. Third, as the preceding example suggests, critical realists argue that reasons can operate as causes, that is, can be responsible for producing a change. Indeed, when someone tries to persuade us that we are wrong to make this argument by giving us reasons, they in turn presuppose that offering reasons can be causative in at least some circumstances. This applies irrespective of whether there are regularities for us to record. For the general absence of regularities between giving or recognising reasons and subsequent behaviour is not fatal to causal explanation. On the contrary, as we have seen, regularities are not essential for causal explanation even in the physical sciences. The effects produced by semiosis certainly depend on texts being understood7 in some fashion but not necessarily just in one, and only one, fashion. Thus, a speech made during an election campaign may offer people strong reasons for voting in a certain way. The fact that the speech might be construed differently by different individuals (even leading them to vote contrary to the reasons adduced) and hence does not form part of a constant conjunction or event regularity does not mean that it can have no influence on voting (Bhaskar 1979; Collier 1994).8 Understanding (verstehen) and explanation (erklären) are not antithetical, therefore, but can be combined to produce a more coherent and complete explanation. Crucial though this issue of reasons as causes has been in the philosophy of social science, it fails to address the specific nature of ‘reasons’ and how they come to motivate action. In particular, it ignores the semiotic character of reasons and, in the most extreme cases, treats them as simple, singular triggers of action. Yet reasons are diffuse and hard to identify unambiguously. Indeed, it would be better to think of them as emergent elements in more extensive networks of concepts, beliefs, symbols, and texts. As we show in Section II, they presuppose languages, intentionality, particular concepts and prior understandings and interests, intertextuality, conventions of inference and evidence, and so on. Even a brief reflection on the implications of this semiotic and social embedding of reasons is enough to bring home the inadequacy of a simplistic treatment of reasons. What matters is the resonance of the reasons offered to the partners in a social interaction and this depends on more than their formal content. In addition, if we reflect more broadly upon what kinds of semiotic features and events can bring about changes in behaviour (if only at the level of how people think or feel), we notice that it is not only reasons that change what we do. We may be influenced more by the tone (e.g. warm, hostile) or imagery of a speech than by any reasons for action that it might present. Consideration of these expressive qualities of communication exposes the narrowly rationalist character of the reasons-as-causes
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answer to the question of how texts produce effects. We therefore need to go beyond the reasons-as-causes argument, important though it is, to examine the nature of semiosis more generally and its place within the overall logic of the social.
II The social preconditions and context of semiosis Social scientists who have shown interest in semiosis have tended to ignore its broader social context. We aim to correct this bias in the semiotic turn by putting semiotic processes into context. This means locating them within their necessary dialectical relations with persons (hence minds, intentions, desires, bodies), social relations, and the material world – locating them within the practical engagement of embodied and socially organised persons with the material world. Semiosis – the making of meaning – is a crucial part of social life but it does not exhaust the latter. Thus, because texts are both sociallystructuring and socially-structured, we must examine not only how texts generate meaning and thereby help to generate social structure but also how the production of meaning is itself constrained by emergent, nonsemiotic features of social structure. For example, an interview is a particular form of communication (a ‘genre’ in the terminology we introduce below) that both creates a particular kind of social encounter and is itself sociallystructured, for example by conventions of propriety, privacy and disclosure, by particular distributions of resources, material and cognitive. In short, although semiosis is an aspect of any social practice (insofar as practices entail meaning), no social practice (let alone all behaviours) is reducible to semiosis alone. This means that semiosis cannot be reduced to the play of differences among networks of signs (as if semiosis were always purely an intra-semiotic matter with no external reference) and that it cannot be understood without identifying and exploring the extra-semiotic conditions that make semiosis possible and secure its effectivity.9 We therefore reject the Foucauldian-inspired conflation of discourses and material practices as one more instance of the ‘discourse-imperialism’ that has infected social theory for the last two decades. This conflation also eliminates the distinction – so crucial for critical realism – between the transitive and intransitive dimensions of scientific inquiry. It thereby produces the epistemic fallacies associated with strong social constructionism (Sayer 2000). The intersubjective production of meaning and other semiotic effects is exceptionally difficult to explain, not least because it involves more or less inaccessible mental processes. Thus, although we offer a way of explaining the power of semiosis to generate meaning, and even though semiosis involves the listener/reception as much as speaker/production, we will leave open the question of how minds make sense of texts. While meaning and motive are emergent phenomena of semiosis, they need minds with
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certain capabilities to co-construct social action and interaction (and bodies to enact them). Accordingly, our approach to semiosis goes beyond semiotic systems (including languages) and texts. Language acquisition itself is both preceded by, and ongoingly presupposes, various bodily and practical forms of nonlinguistic knowledge or know-how, skills, and sense. Regarding language acquisition, we acknowledge Margaret Archer’s demonstration of the importance of the embodied, practical and non-semiotic, indeed non-social (in the sense of intersubjective) dimensions of human practice, and their status as preconditions of language-learning and use (Archer 2000). Thus, infants have to learn a considerable amount without the aid of semiotic systems before they are able to acquire the latter. In addition, text producers and interpreters subsequently continue to rely heavily upon non-semiotic knowledge, bodily awareness or know-how in order to carry out both simple and complex tasks. Once these linguistic and non-linguistic skills have been acquired, further issues arise. First, we are often only more or less subliminally aware of ‘events’ at the margins of our fields of perception. Second, we may also respond more or less subconsciously to ‘events’. And, third, if we were not intentional, desiring beings with needs, semiosis would be redundant, for it would simply not matter what existed in reality or actuality (which provides part of the overall basis for the referential function of semiosis), there would be no performativity, and no affect or expressive communication. More generally, semiosis presupposes embodied, intentional, practically-skilled social actors, social relations, material objects, and spatio-temporality. Semiosis is also influenced by the habitus, that is, by the semi-conscious dispositions that people, particularly in their early lives, acquire through social/material interaction with their habitat and through the social relations in their part of the social field (Bourdieu 2000). Habitus and the feel for particular games that it provides can include different degrees of facility with respect to language use, for example differing capacities to deal with and learn new discourses or genres or styles (Bourdieu 1991). The relationship between these elements – actors, language, texts, social relations, practical contexts – is one of dialectical internal relations, that is, although distinct, they are not discrete (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Harvey 1996; Ollman 1993). Nonetheless, the relative weight of these different elements within the overall configuration of a social action is bound to vary from case to case. In this regard, it is worth noting that there is a range of ‘semioticity’ insofar as different social actions, events, or social orders may be more or less semioticised. For example, whereas a football match is an event that is not primarily semiotic in character, though it has semiotic aspects, a lecture is a primarily semiotic event, even though it has material aspects. Indeed, one might be able to construct a continuum ranging from technological systems through to religion in terms of the relative weight of semiosis and materiality in their overall constitution.
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No account of semiosis can evade the issues of what Habermas terms truth, truthfulness, and appropriateness. Thus, the production and interpretation of any text rests upon generally implicit (and often counterfactual) validity claims with respect to what is the case (the ‘truth’), the intentions, beliefs, integrity, etc., of agents (‘truthfulness’), and the relation of the text to its social context (‘appropriateness’). In addition, the interpretation of texts by social agents in the course of social events may also involve the attempt to arrive at explanatory accounts of the motives of other social agents for speaking or writing as they have, and of less immediate social causes. This does not mean that understanding implies agreement, though some disagreements (and agreements) may be based on misunderstanding. Of course, such interpretative effort is applied very selectively to texts and many texts receive scant attention. Moreover, the interpretability of texts (and even their intelligibility) rests on a measure of shared assumptions between social agents about what are the case, intentions and beliefs, and social relations. For instance, religious or various types of expert (e.g. technical) texts may be incomprehensible to certain social agents because of radical disparities in assumptions about what is the case. Semiosis has a dual presence in the production and identification of social events. On the one hand, social action and social processes may be more or less semiotic in character. Thus, referentially, expressively and in terms of social relations, such action and processes will typically engage the ways of thinking, specific identities, emotional responses or commentaries, vocabularies of motives, goals, and reasons for action that are available to the various actors and frame the situation in which the actors ‘find’ themselves. Whether these semiotic features of social action and social processes come from public communication or inner conversations, they can be related to real semiotic causal powers and, thus, one of our main tasks is to try to illuminate semiotic causal powers and how they might be actualised (their mechanisms). And, on the other hand, the identification of an ‘event’ and its constitutive elements (persons, objects, places, etc.) from the ongoing flow of social action and social processes necessarily requires some act of semiotic interpretation, even if what happens is totally non-semiotic (i.e. purely material, physical action). This holds true even though (and, perhaps, precisely because) much of social life escapes the notice of any particular observer and, perhaps, all possible observers. Semiosis is multi-functional (Jakobson 1990; Halliday 1994). It is simultaneously referential (or propositional, or ideational), social-relational (or interpersonal), and expressive. Thus, in the Habermasian terms introduced earlier, semiosis raises validity claims of truth, truthfulness/sincerity, and appropriateness. Though it should hardly need saying, we insist on the importance of all three, including, contra Saussureans, the role of reference: there are not only signifiers (e.g. ‘book’ as a phonic or visual form) and signifieds (concepts) but also referents.10 The ‘play of difference’ among the former could not be sustained without extensive embedding of semiosis
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in material practice, in the constraints and affordances of the material world. Just because the relation of reference between individual words or phrases and objects to which they refer is not one-to-one or self-sufficient, it does not follow that language and ways of thinking are unconstrained by the world. Not just anything can be constructed.11 This does not mean that the differentiations and qualities of the world dictate the content of knowledge – for the latter is a fallible construction and to assume otherwise is to commit the ontic fallacy. But nor is the world or being dependent on knowledge – if one assumes that it is, one commits the epistemic fallacy. This pair of arguments is important in helping us to disambiguate ‘construction’ into its two moments of construal (the fallible ideas that inform it) and construction (in the sense of the material processes, if any, that follow from it) (cf. Sayer 2000). Indeed, even in the case of social constructions such as institutions, what gets constructed is different from how it is construed; and the relative success or failure of this construal depends on how both it and the construction respond to the properties of the materials (including social phenomena such as actors and institutions) used to construct social reality. Of course, the construal need not refer to the material world: it could also refer to other semiotic phenomena, to images, smells, sounds or feelings, and states of mind.
III The role of semiosis in social structuration A critical realist account of social structuration must be sensitive to the complex dialectic that is entailed in the emergence, reproduction, and transformation of social structures from social actions and the reciprocal influence of these emergent structures on ongoing social action (see Bhaskar 1979; Archer 1982; Jessop 2001). An important aspect of this dialectic is the operation of the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention that shape the relationships between semiosis and social structuration. These mechanisms are common to natural and social evolution12 (a distinction that itself becomes less distinct, of course, as human action acquires an increasing role in natural evolution) but, as suggested earlier, their operation in the social world is bound to involve semiotic as well as extra-semiotic factors. Accordingly, we now want to highlight three interrelated semiotic aspects of social structuration. First, semiotic conditions affect the differential reproduction and transformation of social groups, organisations, institutions, and other social phenomena. Second, these mechanisms are reflexive in the sense that semiotic conditions affect the variation, selection, and retention of the semiotic features of social phenomena. And, third, semiotic innovation and emergence is itself a source of variation that feeds into the process of social transformation. Overall, then, semiosis can generate variation, have selective effects, and contribute to the differential retention and/or institutionalisation of social phenomena.
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We can elaborate these arguments by listing some semiotic conditions involved in the selection and retention of the semiotic and extra-semiotic features of any social phenomenon in the face of the continuing variation in behaviour as social actors wittingly or unwittingly innovate in the conduct of their lives and new consequences, intended or unintended, arise: a
b c d e
f g
h
The selection of particular discourses (the privileging of particular discourses over others available internally and/or externally) for interpreting events, legitimising actions, and (perhaps self-reflexively) representing social phenomena. Semiotic factors operate here by influencing the differential resonance of discourses. Some resonant discourses will subsequently become retained (e.g. through their inclusion into widely accepted hegemonic projects or their inclusion into an actor’s habitus) (see (d) below). The enactment of these selected discourses as modes of conduct, both semiotically (in genres) and non-semiotically (e.g. in organisational procedures). The inculcation of these discourses in the ways of being/identities of social agents both semiotically (e.g. ways of talking) and somatically (bodily dispositions). The objectification of these discourses in the built environment, technology, etc., in organisational practices, and in the form and function of the body/bodies (hexis). The development of filtering devices within procedures for selecting these discourses and filtering out others, including genre chains. For instance, chains of genres in policy formation that might include policy proposals, consultations in meetings of stakeholders, and reports recommending policy decisions. A variety of different and potentially conflicting discourses may figure (e.g. within stakeholder meetings) but insofar as the genre chain is legitimised these may be unproblematically filtered to favour selected discourses in a report. The selection of strategies for agents (strategies for acting and for interpreting) which privilege these discourses (genres, styles). The resonance of these discourses (genres, styles, strategies) within the broader ensemble of social phenomena to which the relevant social phenomenon belongs as well as the complementarity of these discourses (etc.) with others within the network. The capacity of the relevant social groups, organisations, institutions, etc., to selectively ‘recruit’ and retain social agents whose predispositions fit maximally with requirements (a)–(g).
While the preceding list has been phrased to emphasise the role of semiosis in securing social reproduction, semiotic conditions may also militate against this. For example, relationships of contestation between discourses (i.e. relationships of contestation within a social practice in their semiotic
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aspect, and/or relations of contestation between the social practices in question and other practices in their semiotic aspect) may impede the selection/privileging of particular discourses for interpreting events, legitimising actions, and (perhaps self-reflexively) representing the phenomenon and associated phenomena. Where such contestation occurs, factors (b)–(g) in the preceding list will either be absent or, at least, limited in their overall operation.13 This will create, in turn, conditions favourable to successful innovation in the semiotic and extra-semiotic dimensions of the social world in the sense that significant variations are selected and retained to produce a durable transformation in that world. Among the relevant semiotic conditions here are the internal relations between discourses and the external relations that obtain between discourses concerned with associated social practices. Both are germane to questions of intertextuality. For their relations should be such that a new selection/privileging of discourses is possible, allowing the development of factors favouring the retention of selected discourses (b)–(g). Examples of this would include the absence/weakening of competing discourses internally or the development of new relations between such phenomena of a (partially) semiotic character favouring the recontextualisation of external discourses with regard to that phenomenon. Rather than pursue such arguments in the abstract, however, we will illustrate how these mechanisms actually operate.
IV Semiotic formations and their emergent properties: from abstract to concrete It is precisely because semiosis is the making of meaning through recourse to language and other semiotic systems that, as critical realists, we need the tools and skills of critical semiotic analysis (linguistic analysis, discourse analysis, etc.) to reflect (critically) on any text. Competent language users typically get by on a day-to-day basis, of course, without knowing about the arcana of critical semiotic analysis (hereafter CSA); but, if, as critical realists, we are interested in how actual semiotic effects are generated, we must focus on the complexities of the real mechanisms that, according to semantic content and overall context, produce effects that tend to escape the attention of lay persons and non-specialist social scientists alike. This is the semiotic aspect of critical semiotic analysis. As regards its critical aspect, CSA (e.g. ‘critical discourse analysis’) is concerned with the truth, truthfulness and appropriateness of texts, their production, and their interpretation. That is, it is concerned with the relationship between semiosis and the material and social world; persons and their intentions, beliefs, desires, etc.; and social relations. It is concerned with the description of texts, the interpretation of how people produce and interpret texts, judgements of texts in terms of truth, truthfulness and appropriateness, and explanation of the social causes and effects of texts.
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Thus, a CR approach to the explanation of concrete phenomena such as semiosis, analyses them as conjunctions of structures and causal powers co-producing specific effects. To do this it abstracts these structures, identifying them and considering their respective causal powers and liabilities. Having done this, it then moves back towards the concrete, combining the abstracted constituent elements, noting how they combine, with what consequences. While, for the sake of simplicity of exposition of critical realist method, it is usual to consider simple cases involving discrete structures and mechanisms, semiosis is an extreme case where concrete phenomena are the product of dialectically-related elements and, hence, whose interaction is non-additive. Hence the abstractions made by CDA are analytical distinctions that have to be used in a way which acknowledges their dialectical interdependence. Concrete events have a more or less semiotic (‘textual’) character but even primarily semiotic events are co-produced by mental, social and material as well as specifically semiotic structures. Semiotic structures include semiotic systems – most obviously languages – which have distinctive properties (e.g. the properties formulated in grammatical rules) not found in other structures. Nevertheless, even languages show the dialectical interpenetration of otherwise operationally autonomous structures – i.e. they are overdetermined by other structures. Thus, there is a differentiation of major components of grammatical systems corresponding to the referential and social relational functions of language (Halliday 1994). But semiotic systems can only partially account for texts (semiotic facets of events). In CR terms the gap between the productive potential (‘real’) of semiotic systems and the ‘actual’ of semiotic facets of events is such that other structures need to be postulated at lower (i.e. closer to the concrete) levels of abstraction. We call these ‘semiotic orders’. Semiotic orders (or orders of discourse, Fairclough 1992) comprise the forms of social structuring of semiotic variation. Their main elements are genres, discourses, and styles. Genres are ways of acting and interacting in their specifically semiotic aspect; they are ways of regulating (inter)action. An example would be (a specific form of) interview. Discourses are positioned ways of representing – representing other social practices as well as the material world, and reflexively representing this social practice, from particular positions in social practices. An example would be a particular political discourse – let us say the political discourse of the ‘third way’ (New Labour). Styles are ways of being, identities in their specifically semiotic (as opposed to bodily/material) aspect. An example would be the ‘new’ managerial style described by Boltanski and Chiapello (1999). A semiotic order is a specific configuration of genres, discourses, and styles, which constitutes the semiotic moment of a network of social practices (e.g. a field in Bourdieu’s sense, for instance the political field). The relationship between genres, discourses, and styles is dialectical. Thus, discourses may become enacted as genres and inculcated as styles. What enters a practice as a discourse such as the discourse of ‘new public
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management’ may become enacted as new ways of (inter)acting, which will, in part, be new genres (new ways of (inter)acting discursively). And such a discourse may become inculcated as new ways of being, new identities, including both new styles and new bodily dispositions. Moreover, in addition to the intra-semiotic flows between discourses, genres, and styles, there are also flows between semiosis and other elements/moments of social practices. For example, it may become materialised in new buildings, new technologies, etc. It is important to stress again ‘may’: there is nothing inevitable about these ‘socially constructive’ effects of discourse, they are conditional upon the specificity of the practice. Elements of semiotic orders such as genres are overdetermined to a greater extent than semiotic systems through their dialectical articulation with other structures. For this reason, whereas semiotic systems can be studied in relatively abstract-simple terms, semiotic orders are best studied in relatively concrete-complex terms. The categories of semiotic systems are abstract-simple (i.e. relatively autonomous from other structures, e.g. ‘noun’, ‘sentence’) whereas those of semiotic orders are more concrete and complex (i.e. overdetermined by the categories of other structures, e.g. ‘discourse’, ‘genre’, ‘dialect’). Thus, while critical semiotic analysis attributes causal effectivity to semiotic/linguistic forms, it does so without falling into a semiotic/linguistic formalism. Indeed, the effectivity of forms depends on their semantic content and social context. For example, processes in the material world may be semiotically represented as events or as objects, in the linguistic form of finite clauses (e.g. ‘Multinational corporations are changing the ways in which different countries trade with each other’) or of nominalisations (e.g. ‘The modern world is swept by change’). But the social effectivity of nominalisation depends upon what is nominalised (reducing processes to their effectivity and thus concealing details of both process and agency) and on the specific social context in which it occurs (for more extended examples, see below). Attending to nominalisation as a linguistic form is germane to the critical analysis of the social effectivity of semiosis but this attention must be combined with an account of meaning and how meaning is mediated in and through textual interpretation. It would make a difference, for example, whether or not there was widespread critical awareness of such features of texts. This lack of one-to-one relations between formal features of texts, interpretations, and social effects implies that generalisations about semiosis are difficult. However, there is nothing exceptional about this. Social systems – and, indeed, most physical systems – are open and hence unpredictable. As critical realists have emphasised, the contingent emergence of new phenomena in and through the complex interactions between systems and their environments makes constant conjunctions rare. Semiosis is an instance of emergence par excellence and in moving back towards the concrete we attempt to register how meanings emerge in texts. When post-structuralists emphasise the endless possibilities for meanings
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to emerge from the play of difference, they are referring in CR terms to emergence. Intertextuality is a crucial property of semiosis in terms of emergence. It has more concrete and more abstract aspects. Concretely, particular texts report, echo, etc., particular other texts for both speaker and listener. More abstractly, texts may stand in complex relationships to semiotic orders – they may articulate the discourses, genres, and styles of different semiotic orders together in complex ways. The objection to post-structuralist accounts of emergence is that they idealise semiosis – they ignore reference and truth conditions and attribute properties to semiosis as such in a way that ignores the dialectical interpenetration of semiotic and non-semiotic facets of social events. The ‘play’ of difference is materially, socially, and psychologically constrained. This is clear if we think about intertextuality. Texts may, and do, articulate different discourses, genres, and styles together in innovative ways, but these semiotic articulations are, at the same time, articulations of social fields, social groups, social activities, space-times, desires, etc. Semiotic emergence is tied not only to shifting articulations of discourses, genres, and styles as such, but also to texts as processes, the ‘texturing’ of texts, the working together of diverse elements in texts over time and in space. Texturing manifests the causal powers of agents in texts. The following texts illustrate the processes at work here. The first text is an extract from a meeting of (mainly) supervisors in an Australian subsidiary of an American multinational company, discussing the introduction of team management (the data was collected by Lesley Farrell): We thought you know maybe maybe I should be the facilitator for Grace’s group or something where I’m away from the people a bit and um SALLY: Yeah BEN: just have a background in what’s going on but just sort of keep them on the right track and let them they’ve got to really then rely on each other instead of relying on the supervisor to do the work GRACE: Well I think kind of in the groups that are gonna come along that’s what’s gonna have to happen. I mean I know the first ones that start off I think we have to go down this path to try to direct people onto the path and therefore we kind of will be in charge of the meeting but then we have to get people to start their own teams and us sort of just being a facilitator rather than JAMES: The team leader [. . .] yeah GRACE: I mean it’s hard to get started I think that’s where people are having trouble and that’s why they’re kind of looking to you Ben and you know things like that PETER: I’m not the only one I’m having trouble maintaining the thing [. . .] yeah BEN:
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I just can’t maintain it at the moment you know a couple of days you know a couple of days crook there and you know just the amount of work that builds up it just goes to the back of the queue sort of thing it’s shocking JAMES: So what you really want is the um you’ve got a a group you start a group and you want one of those people to sort of come out and [. . .] facilitate the group PETER: Just to maintain the group you know like just to keep it just keep the work flowing BEN: What I’m trying to get across PETER: Cause BEN: is I’m too close to those people because I [. . .] yeah BEN: already go outside of the group and then I’m their supervisor outside on the on the floor where maybe if I was facilitating another group where I’m not I’m not above them you know I’m not their supervisor or whatever um I can go back to my job they can go back to theirs and they still um you know it’s this their more their team than SALLY: Yours PETER:
This extract shows an element of the (new) ‘global’ discourse of team management (‘facilitating’) being locally appropriated by being worked in the course of the interaction into a relationship of equivalence with elements of existing discourses (e.g. ‘keep them on the right track’, ‘they’ve got to really rely on each other’, ‘people . . . start their own teams’), and into a relationship of difference from other elements of existing discourses (e.g. ‘(being) the team leader’, ‘direct people onto the path’, ‘be in charge of the meeting’). The ‘work’ of texturing these relations of equivalence and difference is evidenced in the high incidence and the distribution of ‘hedging’ expressions such as ‘or something’, ‘just’, ‘kind of’, ‘sort of’, and ‘modalising’ expressions such as ‘maybe’, ‘we thought’, ‘I think’, which mitigate in various ways degrees of commitment to propositions and proposals. The texturing of such relations of equivalence and difference can cumulatively produce new configurations of discourses and, in so far as they are enacted and inculcated, of genres and styles (in this case, the meeting itself can be seen as a generic enactment of the new discourse which it is locally appropriating). If we assume a social theory of learning as active participation in the innovative meaning-making practices of a community (Lave 1998; Wenger 1998), such examples can be seen as instances in cumulative processes of organisational learning that can produce changes in knowledge, social relations, and social identities (semiotically: in discourses, genres, and styles). To show how instances of semiotic emergence figure in processes of social transformation we must also consider the resonance of emergent semiotic properties within orders of discourse. The second example is a
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preface by Tony Blair to a White Paper on Competition produced by the Department of Trade and Industry (1998). The modern world is swept by change. New technologies emerge constantly, new markets are opening up. There are new competitors but also great new opportunities. Our success depends on how well we exploit our most valuable assets: our knowledge, skills and creativity. These are the key to designing high-value goods and services and advanced business practices. They are at the heart of a modern, knowledge driven economy. This new world challenges business to be innovative and creative, to improve performance continuously, to build new alliances and ventures. But it also challenges Government: to create and execute a new approach to industrial policy. That is the purpose of this White Paper. Old-fashioned state intervention did not and cannot work. But neither does naïve reliance on markets. The Government must promote competition, stimulating enterprise, flexibility and innovation by opening markets. But we must also invest in British capabilities when companies alone cannot: in education, in science and in the creation of a culture of enterprise. And we must promote creative partnerships which help companies: to collaborate for competitive advantage; to promote a long term vision in a world of short term pressures; to benchmark their performance against the best in the world; and to forge alliances with other businesses and employees. All this is the DTI’s role. We will not meet our objectives overnight. The White Paper creates a policy framework for the next ten years. We must compete more effectively in today’s tough markets if we are to prosper in the markets of tomorrow. In Government, in business, in our universities and throughout society we must do much more to foster a new entrepreneurial spirit: equipping ourselves for the long term, prepared to seize opportunities, committed to constant innovation and enhanced performance. That is the route to commercial success and prosperity for all. We must put the future on Britain’s side. Tony Blair (signature) The Rt Hon. Tony Blair MP, Prime Minister This example shows the texturing together of the spacetime of ‘global’ economic change and the spacetime of national policy formation. The text is organised on a problem-solution model: the problem is defined in ‘global’ spacetime in terms of irresistible processes without social agents (e.g. ‘new markets are opening up’, not for instance ‘business corporations are opening up new markets’) in a timeless present and an undifferentiated ‘universal’
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space; the solution is defined in a national spacetime in terms of what national agencies (‘we’, ‘[the] government’, ‘business’) ‘must’ do. We can relate this to the general problems that face any social formation (indeed, more or less any social interaction short of fleeting contacts) in articulating different spacetimes (Harvey 1996; Jessop 2000). At one level this articulation tends to become a banal accomplishment of everyday life and a banal accomplishment in texturing but there is also a problem around securing relative compatibility among different spatio-temporal horizons in different contexts, different institutional orders, and on different scales. One aspect of contemporary social transformation associated with neoliberalism, especially in more macrosocial terms, is the sort of articulation of global and local spacetimes illustrated here, and that is now a pervasive feature of neo-liberal discourse in business, government, education, etc., and at international (e.g. agencies like the OECD), national, regional and local levels. Unlike the first example, the Blair text does not show semiotic emergence in process, but is, rather, one of many possible illustrations of the extraordinary resonance and ‘flow’ between fields and across scales of a recently emergent semiotic re-articulation of spacetimes.
V Conclusions We wish to draw three main conclusions from this first cut at promoting a debate between critical realists and critical discourse analysts. First, we have argued that the study of semiosis would benefit from articulation with critical realism. This has already occurred in critical discourse analysis, of course, with its even-handed concern with context as well as text. But we suggest that it should be extended to other forms of semiotic analysis. This does not mean that we reject the hermeneutic approach; rather, we argue that hermeneutics by itself cannot provide an adequate explanation of social phenomena even at the level of face-to-face communication and interaction. There is always an extra-semiotic context to the operation of hermeneutics (especially if this is extended to the notion of the ‘double hermeneutic’ practised by social scientists) and any serious explanation of social phenomena must be adequate both at the level of meaning and at the level of social (extra-semiotic) causation. Once we reject a Humean account of causation in terms of constant conjunction, verstehen and erklären are not so much antithetic as complementary. Given the prolific nature of semiosis with its infinity of possible meaningful communications, understandings, and (mis)understandings, it is important to explore the various extra-semiotic mechanisms that contribute to the variation, selection, and retention of semiosis as well as the contribution of semiosis to the reproduction and transformation of social structures. Second, we have argued that critical realism would benefit from sustained engagement with semiotic analysis. For critical realism has tended to operate with an insufficiently concrete and complex analysis of semiosis. It has
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tended to take symbol systems, language, orders of discourse, and so on for granted, thereby excluding central features of the social world from its analysis. One consequence of this is that critical realism cannot give an adequate account of the complex semiotic, social, and material overdetermination of that world. Semiosis has its own distinctive elements, necessary properties, and emergent effects and, even though (and precisely because) these qualities and their associated causal powers and liabilities interpenetrate, interfere with, and overdetermine other types of social relations and institutional orders, they must be integrated into a more comprehensive critical realist analysis of the social world. In this way we can move to provide explanations that are ‘socially (or semiotically) adequate’ as well as ‘objectively probable’ in the sense that they establish the discursive as well as extra-discursive conditions of existence of the explicandum at an appropriate level of concretisation and complexification. And, third, in exploring the distinctive features of semiosis, we began by emphasising how semiosis frames social interaction and contributes to the construction of social relations. Within this context we then discussed the construction of identities, modes of calculation, vocabularies of motives, etc.; and their role in providing the motivational force behind actions. At the same time we took pains to argue that semiosis works in conjunction with extra-semiotic (or extra-discursive) elements. By mapping some key aspects of semiosis, especially its extra-discursive conditions of existence and effectivity, we attempted to block off a purely rationalist or ideologist view of social relations. In developing this argument, we oppose theorists such as Laclau and Mouffe (1985), who, in a manner reminiscent of the analysis of the production of commodities by means of commodities offered by Sraffa (1960), one-sidedly emphasise the discursive production of discourse from discourse. This leads them to neglect the extra-discursive as well as the discursive factors that shape the resonance of semiosis and the willingness and capacity of actors (and other social forces) to respond to interpellations, appeals to their identities and interests, hegemonic projects, etc. Against this, we argue for at least equal weight to be given to the consumption of semiosis as well as its production. In particular, we have stressed that both the production and the consumption of symbolic systems (orders of discourse, etc.) are overdetermined by a range of factors that are more or less extra-semiotic.
Notes 1 A fourth question that some may want to raise is that of naturalism and, more specifically, whether semiotic analysis can be assimilated to the methodology of the natural sciences. We regard this question as misguided. What is important is not whether their methods of analysis match those of the natural sciences but whether they are appropriate for their subject matter. Answering the former question incidentally supplies a response to the latter, of course; our paper answers yes and no to the latter question. For the study of semiosis requires both similar and different methods from those of natural science.
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2 We use the term ‘semiosis’ throughout this chapter. Although we initially gloss it as the inter-subjective making of meaning, our understanding of semiosis as an element/moment of ‘the social’ is necessarily relational and will therefore emerge more fully during the chapter. We prefer ‘semiosis’ to ‘language’ and ‘discourse’ (used as abstract nouns) for two reasons. First, semiosis involves more than (verbal) language – it also involves, for example, ‘visual language’ (photographs, pictures, diagrams, etc.). And, second, ‘discourse’ as an abstract noun is a notoriously problematic and confusing term. In any case, we later use ‘discourse’ as a count noun for particular positioned ways of representing aspects of the world. Likewise, we shall later use ‘languages’ (count noun) for particular language systems (e.g. English). When referring to concrete social events from a semiotic perspective, we use the term ‘texts’ (count noun) in an extended sense to include not only written texts but also spoken conversations, ‘multi-semiotic’ texts such as TV ads (which mix words, images, sound effects, etc.), and so on. This extended use of ‘texts’ is common in certain areas of linguistics, though we recognise that it is not a very satisfactory term. 3 For example, in her critique of Bourdieu, Judith Butler (1999) assumes a Humean concept of causation. Unsurprisingly, then, she fails to note that to acknowledge performativity is to concede the causal efficacity of discourses. 4 Empirical is not an ontological category counterposed to the ‘real’ or the ‘actual’ but an epistemological one. Parts of the real as well as the actual may be observable. 5 Critical realists have debated whether social structures, such as those of language, exist independently of their enactment (Bhaskar 1979, 1989; Benton 1981; Collier 1994). 6 This is an example of a set of powers that need a certain amount of use if they are to be sustained but, at least in the short run, we have these powers even though they are only activated intermittently. 7 ‘Felt’ or ‘sensed’ might better describe some of the less articulated responses. 8 Interestingly, according to Ringer (2000), this view was shared by Max Weber, one of the founders of interpretive sociology. While Weber is widely associated with an allegedly unsuccessful attempt to unite explanatory (causal) and interpretive (hermeneutic) analysis, this negative judgement arises because most interpreters have assumed that Weber followed a Humean model of causation based on constant conjunctions. However, Ringer shows that Weber rejected this model as well as related arguments that anticipated Hempel’s neo-positivist, deductive nomological ‘covering law’ model of causal analysis. Weber came to appreciate that ‘reasons’ could be causes. He concluded that an adequate explanation of a specific historical, cultural, or social phenomenon must be adequate both in terms of motivational intelligibility (i.e. its social meaning for the relevant actors) and its production through the contingent interaction of causal processes in specific circumstances. Bhaskar’s first critical realist defence of the possibility of naturalism incorrectly cites Weber as seeing constant conjunctions as necessary for an adequate explanation (1989: 2, 137–8). He presents Weber as combining a neo-Kantian methodology with methodological individualism and contrasts this approach with Marx’s realist methodology and relational ontology (1989: 31). He also argues that there are two key differences between Weberian sociology and transcendental realism: (a) whereas Weber accepts, realism rejects, constant conjunctions; (b) whereas Weber denies, realism accepts, that correction of agents’ perceptions may be a necessary part of a social scientific investigation (1989: 135–8). Bhaskar is wrong on both counts since Weber also discussed ‘wrong thinking’ and other forms of irrationality. Another problem that is directly relevant to our own analysis below is that Weber does not adequately distinguish between
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the actual and the real. In using terms such as ‘pressing toward’, ‘developmental tendencies’, ‘moving forces’, and ‘impeding’ factors, Weber supported a dynamic conception of causal analysis. But he also argued that such notions do not constitute ‘real causal interconnections’ at an ‘elementary’ level but involve no more than tactically useful constructs in the practice of historical reasoning (Ringer 2000: 76). For an interesting discussion of semiosis and its conditions in relation to realism and pragmatism, see Nellhaus (1998). The signifier/signified relationship is often mistakenly interpreted as one of text to referent. It is part of a threefold relation among signifier/signified/referent. See Thibault (1997). See Archer (2000) for an interesting argument on the pre-linguistic and material bases of logic. On the role of variation, selection, and retention in evolution, see Campbell 1969. Long-term critical engagement with a contested discourse can, of course, serve to reproduce the terms of a given debate at the expense of moving beyond it (e.g. the relationship between base and superstructure in Marxism or the primacy of structure or agency in sociology).
Bibliography Archer, Margaret S. (1982) ‘Morphogenesis versus Structuration: on combining Structure and Action’, British Journal of Sociology, 33(4), 455–83. —— (2000) Being Human, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Benton, Ted (1981) ‘Realism in Social Science’, Radical Philosophy, 27, 13–21. Bhaskar, Roy (1979) The Possibility of Naturalism, Hassocks: Harvester. —— (1989) Reclaiming Reality, London: Verso. Boltanski, Luc and Chiapello, Eve (1999) Le Nouvel Ésprit du Capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard. Bourdieu, Pierre (1991) Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Polity. —— (2000) Pascalian Meditations, London: Verso. Butler, Judith (1999) ‘Performativity’s Social Magic’, in R. Shusterman (ed.), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 113–28. Campbell, Donald T. (1969) ‘Variation and selective retention in socio-cultural evolution’, General Systems 14, 69–86. Chouliaraki, Lilie and Fairclough, Norman (1999) Discourse in Late Modernity, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Collier, Andrew (1994) Critical Realism, London: Verso. Department of Trade and Industry (1998) Our Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge Driven Economy, London: HMSO. http://www.dti.gov.uk/comp/competitive. wh_int1.htm Fairclough, Norman (1992) Discourse and Social Change, Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, Jürgen (1987) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, Cambridge: Polity. Halliday, Michael (1994) Introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edition, London: Edward Arnold. Harvey, David (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, Oxford: Blackwell. Jakobson, Roman (1990) On Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Jessop, Bob (2000) ‘The Crisis of the National Spatio-Temporal Fix and the Ecological Dominance of Globalizing Capitalism’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, 24(2), 323–60. —— (2001) ‘Institutional (Re)turns and the Strategic-Relational Approach’, Environment and Planning A, 33(7), 1213–37. Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London: New Left Books. Lave, Jean (1998) Cognition in Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nellhaus, Tobin (1998) ‘Signs, Social Ontology, and Critical Realism’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 28(1), 1–24. Ollman, Bertell (1993) Dialectical Investigations, London and New York: Routledge. Ringer, Fritz K. (2000) Max Weber’s Methodology: the Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sayer, Andrew (2000) Realism and Social Science, London: Sage. Sraffa, Piero (1960) Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities: Prelude to a Critique of Economic Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thibault, Paul (1997) Re-reading Saussure, London: Routledge. Wenger, Etienne (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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3
Critical realism, critical discourse analysis, concrete research Martin Jones
Introduction Other chapters in this book have critically appraised the philosophical basis of critical realism and have suggested some new and exciting avenues for taking forward its ontological and epistemological interventions. Although this chapter applauds this work, it also recognises that ‘philosophy is sound only if it guides the selection of methods in carrying out empirical research’ (Yeung 1997: 70, emphasis original). In effect, any critical appraisal of philosophy must also critically reconsider method. As Yeung puts it: ‘What is missing badly in the existing realist practice . . . is how such concrete research is actually conducted to examine generative mechanisms and contextual contingency’ (1997: 70, emphasis added; see also Pratt 1995). With this in mind, the chapter seeks to contribute to debates in critical realism by trying to reconcile theory and empirical research. This is not an easy task and the chapter does not offer a solution to the methodological challenges of critical realism, which is a massive and ongoing project (see Archer 1995; Bhaskar 1993; Collier 1994; Lovering 1991; Sayer 1992, 2000). It builds on the chapter by Norman Fairclough, Bob Jessop and Andrew Sayer by arguing for a coming together of critical realism (in this case, as philosophy of science) and critical discourse analysis (in this case, as methodological for uncovering and ‘reclaiming reality’). Though the use of critical discourse analysis is by no means limited to critical realism, the chapter argues that it provides an excellent example of how a method for analysing data can be judged in accordance with the principles of critical realist ontology (see also Dixon and Jones forthcoming). Following Norman Fairclough (1989, 1991, 1992, 1995, 2000), critical discourse analysis (CDA), of course, not only works to unpack communication itself along the lines of structures and mechanisms, it also allows for an understanding of how other social structures are maintained and transformed in and through various forms of languages and discourses (or ‘semiosis’ in Fairclough et al.’s words). Using CDA to analyse data sources such as policy documents and interview transcripts, for example, critical realists can reconstruct the operation of generative or causal mechanisms at
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play in particular events. By referring to such mechanisms, critical realists, of course, try to ‘go beyond the recognition that something produces some change to an understanding of what it is about the object that enables it to do this’ (Sayer 1992: 106). And the way in which a ‘causal power’ is actually activated then ‘depends on conditions whose presence and configuration are contingent’ (ibid: 107). Analysis will then require that the researcher not only translate the subject’s everyday language about causes into a critical realist understanding of structures and mechanisms, but also that the researcher reflect on how, why, and to what effect, that everyday event (in this case discourse) operates. In turn, critical realism has much to offer CDA by situating language and discourse within context-specific, or ‘causally efficacious’ (see the chapter by Fairclough et al.), circumstances. In both cases, attempts can be made to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity through what Fairclough (see below) calls ‘discursive practices’ and ‘social practices’. The chapter’s object of inquiry is local state restructuring within Britain during the late-Thatcherite era (i.e. occupying the period 1990–1997) and within this context the territorial shifts under way in the governance of training and enterprise policy through the introduction of the Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) in England and Wales. Although TECs have recently been replaced with new institutions that possess different policy remits and have a different geography, the chapter suggests that this economic development initiative demonstrates the methodological potential of critical discourse analysis, namely, its ability to uncover some of the causal mechanisms through which new spaces of local economic governance were actively created, which in turn had a subsequent bearing on the local politics of training, at that time. The remainder of the chapter is organised as follows. It first provides a brief overview of the CDA approach as advocated by Fairclough. After this, attention is focused on the social practices of TECs and the processes in and through which TECs became locally established. The latter section explores the processes of local institutionalisation and ways in which these lead to a locally distinct territorial geography. The chapter then moves to consider the ‘discursive practices’ of North Nottinghamshire TEC in the East Midlands. I analyse a real text Focus and Growth: TECs and LECs of Great Britain (North Nottinghamshire TEC 1994a) and also comment on a number of other policy documents produced by North Nottinghamshire TEC during this time (especially North Nottinghamshire TEC 1994b, 1994c). I argue that language and discourse are important for embedding and reproducing institutional hegemony and the form that discursive practices take is contingent on local institutional structure. Deploying critical realist ontology, then, discursive practice and territory (i.e. the reterritorialisation of local economic space) operate dialectically. The case study reveals that North Nottinghamshire TEC uses semiosis to assert its claims to territory, both within the contents of policy documents and also through
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the ways in which such documents are circulated within its locality, to secure spatial legitimation. By undertaking CDA and unpacking the discursive practices of North Nottinghamshire TECs, the chapter suggests that the production of territory is an important causal mechanism at work and the particular form that day-to-day events take is contingent on institutional interrelations (i.e. how this TEC relates to the other institutions in the local state). The chapter, then, should be seen as addressing Bhaskar’s (1993) calls for a ‘dialectical critical realism’ where ‘space, time, tense and process’ are prioritised as objects of analysis.
Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis Discourse analysis, an ‘ambiguous concept’ (van Dijk 1988: 24), is defined by Fairclough as the study of ‘spoken or written language’ (Fairclough 1992: 62). As an academic discipline, discourse analysis consists of two main strands, the critical approach and the non-critical approach (for reviews see Fairclough 1995; Howarth 1995). In both cases, attempts are made to go beyond strict linguistic analysis. This said, non-critical discourse analysis prioritises semiology, textual linguistics, and natural language. Critics of this approach suggest that it does not offer a social orientation, consequently playing down social struggle and power relations, because the focus is mainly ‘text in itself’ (production, distribution and consumption are not discussed). By contrast, critical discourse analysis is concerned with uncovering relations of power and ideology and their effects on social identities and relations (Pêcheux 1982). Its focus is on ‘variability, change, and struggle: variability between practices and heterogeneity within them as a synchronic reflex of processes of historical change which are shaped by struggle between social forces’ (Fairclough 1992: 36). Working within the tradition of critical discourse analysis (CDA) Fairclough (1989, 1992, 1995), proposes a three-dimensional discursive event model based on: ‘Text’, ‘Discursive Practice’ (production, distribution and consumption) and ‘Social Practice’ (Figure 3.1). Textual analysis (Table 3.1) is divided into four main headings ‘vocabulary’ (individual words), ‘grammar’ (words combined in sentences), ‘cohesion’ (how sentences are linked together) and ‘text structure’ (the large-scale organisational properties of texts). These four dimensions to text are the backbone of most non-critical approaches to discourse analysis. Fairclough, working within critical discourse analysis, seeks to go beyond these categories. Outside of these four categories Fairclough (1989, 1992) adds three other dimensions: the ‘force of utterance’ (acts of speech), ‘constitution’ (coherence of several texts) and ‘intertextuality’ (linkages of messages within several discursive practices). These latter three dimensions are allocated higher degrees of importance and through their combination, a reduction in textual ambivalence is claimed to be possible. ‘Force of utterance’ gives text a ‘sequence of sounds’, consisting of meanings and episodes. The exact nature
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Social practice Discursive practice Text (Seven dimensions)
(Production, distribution and consumption) (Ideology and hegemony)
Figure 3.1 Fairclough’s three-dimensional discourse analysis framework Source: derived from Fairclough (1989: Fig. 2.1; 1992: Fig. 3.1; 1995: 98)
Table 3.1 Fairclough’s seven dimensions of text Dimension
Object of analysis
Vocabulary Grammar Cohesion Text structure Force of utterance Constitution Intertextuality
Individual words Words in sentences Sentence linkage Organisational properties Acts of speech Coherence of texts Links with other discursive practices
Source: derived from Fairclough (1992: 73–78)
of ‘sounds’ depends on ideological dimensions being reinforced. Intertexuality has two dimensions. First, there is a recognition that documents are interrelated and as such the goal of CDA is to find common themes within several documents (written and/or verbal), originating from the same source. Second, is the importance of a ‘historical perspective’, often used in documents to displace previously embedded ideology, believed to have run its course, with new ideological messages (Fairclough 1989: 155; 2000: chapter 1). ‘Constitution’, stressing a ‘top-down’ approach to text, attempts to extend the ‘bottom-up’ dimensions of textual coherence (Fairclough 1992: 80–81). Constitution thus stresses document form, beyond sentence structure, giving discourse an ideological coherence. While many involved in discourse analysis would be content in deploying the seven dimensions of text in this form, Fairclough (1989, 1992, 1995) stresses a second emphasis, discursive practice. This is introduced in order to theorise discourse production, distribution and consumption. These dimensions are mostly absent from non-critical discourse analysis literature.
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Within discursive practices, institutions are claimed to possess specific routines for processing texts, linked to achieving hegemony and power, through the dissemination of ideology. Applying this concept to the state, Fairclough insists that: [G]overnment departments produce texts in ways which anticipate their distribution, transformation, and consumption, and have multiple audiences built into them. They may anticipate not only ‘addressees’ (those directly addressed), but also ‘hearers’ (those not addressed directly, but assumed to be part of the audience), and ‘overhearers’ (those who do not constitute part of the ‘official’ audience but are known to be de facto consumers). (Fairclough 1992: 80, emphasis added) Discursive practices are socially constrained and their nature is contingent on the ‘nature of the social practices they are a part of’ (Fairclough 1992: 80). In this respect, although not explicitly stated in Fairclough’s work, struggles around local discourses are important, particularly those around production, distribution and consumption. Fairclough recognises that discursive practice and struggle are dependent on the ‘inherent historicity of an intertextual view of texts’, namely, the type and order of preceding discourses and the nature of their social institutionalisation (ibid.: 85). Some have extended this to suggest that a historical process of ideological and textual embedding or layering takes place, which is reflected in and through the ideological, social construction and institutionalisation of local discourse (see Hastings 1998, 1999; Pratt 1991; Pred 1989; Stenson and Watt 1999). Others have suggested that ideological conflict and struggle can lead to a process of disembedding existing ideology and the sedimentation of a new ideology in discursive layers (see Laclau 1990). Fairclough’s third dimension, social practice (or sociocultural practice) advances discourse analysis beyond narrow textual categories and is arguably the most important, yet theoretically fragmented, area. Through social practice, Fairclough explores notions of ideology and hegemony. Ideology is viewed as being located both in the structures and in the reproduction and transformation of the structures. Fairclough examines social practice through Gramsci’s notion of hegemony (intellectual, moral and cultural persuasion). Here, state institutions are believed to repress the institutions of civil society (religious groups, trade unions, political parties, the media and cultural associations) by enforcing ideological and social control. Ideology here ‘come[s] to be structured and restructured, articulated and re-articulated’ (Fairclough 1992: 93). Fairclough discusses specific instances of hegemonic struggle in relation to Thatcherism (Fairclough 1992; cf. Fairclough 2000, on New Labour). Fairclough emphasises three strands to Thatcherism: authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and populism. Authoritarianism is emphasised as being
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evident in the strengthening of state apparatus and controlling the money supply and trade union activity. Neoliberalism is selectively levelled as a commitment to a free market. Populism is expressed as being an appeal, which constructs people as a political entity with characteristics of active citizenship. As most of these themes are ideologically contested, hegemonic struggle within Thatcherite discourse tends to produce a distinctly aggressive textual style (Fairclough 1989, 1991). Several coherent themes in Thatcherite written discourse are thus emphasised in bold fonts, attempting to reinforce neoliberal ideology. Fairclough draws attention to the sounds of ‘independence’, ‘ownership’ and ‘radical change’ (Fairclough, 1989: 169–196; cf. Gaffney, 1991). These themes combined, suggest that Thatcherite discourse attempted to ideologically reinforce, ‘the constitution of a new political base and agenda, itself facet of the wider political project of restructuring the hegemony of the bloc centred upon the bourgeoisie in new economic and political conditions’ (Fairclough 1992: 93). Again, one ideological dimension that perhaps does not receive sufficient discussion in Fairclough’s approach to CDA is ‘localism’ and specifically the local institutionalisation of semiosis through notions of territory. Fairclough (1989, 1991, 1992) makes passing references to hegemonic struggles and these could be interpreted as being locally based. It was, of course, at the local level where Thatcherite discourse came into conflict with discourse produced by local government and other institutions. Others have, however, explored similar themes at the local level and their work is useful for extending Fairclough’s concerns. Swyngedouw, for instance, has suggested that capital is inevitably locked into the struggle which crystallises around the various territorial claims of institutions and as such territory is defended by ‘institutional-regulatory codes and practices’ (1992: 429). Likewise, Sack claims that ‘social organisations are territorial’ and where territorial assertions are made ‘[t]he form such territorial structures take and the functions they provide depend on the nature of particular [local] political economies’ (Sack 1984: 34). These themes are discussed further in the next section, which applies Fairclough’s CDA to tease out the connections between semiosis and the production of local territory through a case study of England’s Training and Enterprise Councils.
Training and Enterprise Councils: social practice and national discursive practice The Training and Enterprise Councils’ (TECs) story is complex containing many, often contradictory strands, that converged towards the end of 1988 (see Jones 1999). The aim here is not to deconstruct the TEC story, which itself was discursively ‘sold’ to the world of politicians, training providers and institutions in the local state. Instead, I briefly highlight ideological and hegemonic elements of the TEC ‘project’, linking with strands of Fairclough’s framework.
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Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) were proposed in the ‘Employment for the 1990s’ white paper (Department of Employment 1988). In the period 1990–1991, 82 TECs were launched in England and Wales and 22 Local Enterprise Companies (LECs) in Scotland. TECs subsumed local functions of the Training Agency, formerly the Training Commission and Manpower Services Commission (MSC). The MSC operated training programmes for the unemployed and grants for small firms. LECs, their Scottish equivalent, have the added remit of economic development, made possible by absorbing functions of the Scottish Development Agency (SDA). Ideologically, TECs combined the localist strand of Thatcherism, with its neoliberal element of flexibility and cost-saving concerns – themes ‘borrowed’ from North American Private Industry Councils (PICs). PICs attempted to mobilise local private sector interests in training, an area where they had previously taken a limited role. This occurred at the same time as reductions in state funding and shifts within the nature and scale of social policy. Localism was thus combined with privatism and workfarism (Bailey 1988). Borrowing this ideology, TECs were locally based, privatised, and business-led bodies (see Stratton 1990). TECs operated within the constraints of contracts laid down by central government, concerned with providing market-relevant training and enterprise services for the unemployed. This market system was ideologically perceived to restore, through supply-side measures, the dynamism and competitiveness of local economies (see Peck and Jones 1995). For some, however, TECs epitomised an ideological trend towards ‘local workfarism’, a belief that recipients of state support should work for benefit ( Jones 1999; King 1995; Peck 2001). TECs can also be seen as an institutional metaphor of Thatcherism, where ideology and hegemony dove-tailed to produce a localist project aimed to restructure central–local state relations along neoliberal lines. In this ideological framework, previous central–local structures, perceived as threatening Thatcherite hegemony needed to be removed. In their organisational structure, policy priorities and economic discourse, then, the TECs are one example of the Thatcherite hegemonic antipathies towards elected government, trade unions and corporatist planners. This is, of course, situated within a neoliberal ideological agenda of deregulation in the labour market, the ‘marketisation’ of welfare and the privatisation of training and enterprise support ( Jones 1999; also Brenner and Theodore 2002). TECs assisted the securing of hegemony through their approach to accountability. TECs were one example of a new institutional form of governance, being forced to fulfil two roles. TECs were first a customer of government and, second, saw their communities as clients. This dual role was reflected in how the TECs were perceived to be accountable. When TECs were launched, accountability was essentially to take two routes. First, accountability to the government was connected to the annual operating agreement and, therefore, seen as financial accountability. Less
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formally, accountability to the community rested on the composition and sub-structures of the TEC board. These boards consisted of unpaid non-executive directors, of which two-thirds must be drawn from privatesector chief executives and chairmen, ‘calibre . . . acknowledged leaders, willing to put their reputation on the line’ (Training Agency 1989a: 11). Ideologically, through TECs, the government therefore sought to ‘place “ownership” of the training system where it belongs – with the employers’ (Department of Employment 1988: 40). TECs were unaccountable by design. Board directors were appointed as individuals and were not representative of any organisation that could remove or replace them. In practice, few TEC boards reflected the composition of a community, with little representation from women, ethnic minorities and the voluntary sector (Haughton et al. 1995a, 1995b). This design of governance limited local democracy and, more importantly, sought to secure hegemony by preventing exterior interference. Outside these ideological and hegemonic dimensions, TECs had interesting discursive practices. TEC discursive practices essentially followed two production courses, the Employment Department (later DfEE) route and the individual TEC route. Employment Department documents were produced centrally from a Sheffield head office. Distribution was maintained privately. Pitched at multiple audiences, Employment Department documentation contained key ideological concepts, gave introductions to development, and charted claimed national and local achievements. Where individual TECs had been able to produce ‘interesting’ local variations of national training programmes or new ‘innovative’ business programmes, these are detailed, thus attempting to reinforce the ideology of the system. At the back of these documents, contact addresses and phone numbers are given for Regional Offices and local TECs, where ‘hearers’ and ‘overhearers’ can obtain further information (Fairclough 1992, 1995). A map of the TEC network is also included, defining the geographies of this institution. Often prefaced by the Secretary of State for Employment, an example of such documentation is Training and Enterprise Councils: The Challenges Facing Britain Now (Employment Department 1991). Increasing world competition. The accelerating pace of technological change . . . They are the realities of doing business today . . . All successful businesses throughout the world recognise this. People are the business. So if you want your company to grow, you have to make sure the people in the business grow. And that means you have to invest in them . . . [W]ithout an adequate skilled workforce businesses will find themselves facing acute competition, fishing for more skills in a shrinking pool as the number of young people falls dramatically. You won’t be able to ‘buy in’ skills, and you may find yours being ‘bought out’ . . . [T]hat is why Government has joined with employers and communities in a radical initiative to raise the local skills base and spur business
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growth. This initiative is led by the new Training and Enterprise Councils – TECs. TECs are about changing attitudes and values . . . TECs are about reskilling Britain, about local economic growth, and about community regeneration . . . TECs unlock potential: of individuals, companies and communities . . . Your TEC will work for you. For further information, contact your local TEC. In addition to documentation produced centrally, the local TECs were required to actively produce and be involved in local discourse, particularly through the publication and distribution of annual reports. The annual report, a glossy A4 document, was portrayed as a key constituent of local accountability, democracy and legitimacy. Their contract with central government (called the ‘Operating Agreement’) stated the form and contents that each annual report should follow. [T]he TEC [annual report] shall include a mix of hard fact and description, to a balanced picture of how successful the activity has been . . . The TEC shall give its Annual Report as wide a circulation as possible in the local community . . . the following specific topics shall be covered . . . an account of initiatives undertaken in support of the Single Regeneration Budget . . . particular European initiatives . . . any local initiatives . . . (Employment Department 1994: 73, emphasis added) These requirements resulted in high degrees of similarity across different TECs, which, according to Coffield all embody the ‘language of the market, of management training manuals, and of social control . . . [and] read as though produced by the same computer’ (Coffield 1992: 26). In addition to the operating agreement requirements, each TEC had to produce documentation on its perceived local successes and partnerships were frequently mentioned. Local TEC documentation was distributed through the channels of membership schemes, public libraries and through publication displays contained within TEC offices. The volume of publications and their glossy nature and ambitious claims has often been a point of antagonism within local communities (Haughton et al. 1997; Jones 1999; Peck 1998). I also want to suggest that such publications played three additional roles: the legitimation of TEC activity through ‘scripting’ of information, the discursive construction of a territorial consciousness, and the production of that territorial consciousness through intertextuality.
TECs and space: national blueprint, local territorial forms This section traces the territorial development of TECs at two levels of abstraction. First, the prescribed territorial form of the national blueprint (in critical realist terms the ‘necessary’ conditions at work) is explored
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through the changing policy guidance issued to prospective local agents. Following this introduction, local contingencies are discussed through the example of North Nottinghamshire TEC (hereafter NNTEC). Retracing the formation of NNTEC, contingent institutional interrelations are shown to lead to territorial instability. NNTEC is the only institution that operates at its territorial level and thus has a precarious institutional relationship, which leads to institutional friction. By exploring the formation of NNTEC, this section tries to tease out connections between discursive practice and territorial form, which are discussed further in the chapter. In contrast to the Scottish LECs, whose nascent boundaries were presented in the Scottish Enterprise white paper (Industry Department for Scotland 1988: annex a), the TEC territories were not defined. At the stage of drafting Employment for the 1990s there were discussions on whether TEC boundaries should be based on either travel to work areas, local authority areas and existing Training Agency area offices (see Jones 1999). During these discussions, ‘no economic analysis of the size of TEC required’ was made and perhaps as Bennett suggests, this was ‘an amazing approach to follow’ (Bennett et al. 1994: 274). This lack of economic analysis lies in tensions between TECs being centrally conceived and yet rhetorically being institutions of the local community. Transatlantic lessons seem to be important in deciding the outcome of TEC territory. The approach used in [the United States] to establish and implement PICs was a near disaster and accounts for much of today’s meritocracy. In 1983, a statute was passed and within months all PICs were certified . . . We have been very careful to avoid that situation in Britain. We now know that effective partnerships must be grown organically from the bottom-up at their own pace. (Stratton 1990: 72, emphasis added) Seeking to avoid the US experience of top-down implementation, TEC boundaries were not prescribed. This did not, however, hide the fact that TECs were central government creations. Rhetorically linking this to notions of organically grown community institutions, TECs are best described as centrally orchestrated ‘bottom-up’ organisations ( Jones 1999; Peck 1998). These principles were incorporated into Employment for the 1990s and future discussions concerning territory were stated as being in progress. The Government do not intend to prescribe exactly what the boundaries of each TEC should be – this will be the subject of future discussion – but in general they are likely to be based on subdivisions or, in certain conurbations, aggregations of the existing 57 Training Agency areas. (Department of Employment 1988: 42)
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The central (top-down), local (bottom-up) praxis was apparent in this original guidance. By advocating existing Training Agency areas and yet at the same time presenting a system where ‘localities are more likely to find solutions that work’ (ibid.: 39), was not without its problems and some saw this as hampering the early business-driven TEC mission (Bennett et al. 1994). Stratton, throughout this period, argued for a structure that would lead to a ‘credible community institution’ (Stratton 1990: 73). Unpublished documentation from this period, gives a clearer insight into the rationale of supposed community group influence into TEC territorial form. It is expected to take three to four years . . . driven by the readiness of groups to come together and assume all the responsibilities expected of them. There is no predetermined geographical structure for the network; the aim is to build a network which is suited to market needs. (TEC Project Team 1988: 13, emphasis added) Later advice, however, still contained central top-down elements. The TEC Prospectus stipulated the role of the Regional Director in carving up the map, no doubt wishing to preserve existing Training Agency area office boundaries and staff security. It is for the prospective TEC to determine its geographical coverage, in consultation with the Regional Director of the Training Agency. It is expected that there will be some 80 TECs in England and Wales – this would lead to an average working population of 250,000 each. Normally, a TEC will be expected to cover a working population of more than 100,000 unless there are exceptional local circumstances. (Training Agency 1989a: 11, emphasis added) This emphasis on ‘exceptional local circumstances’ proved to be the deciding factor and was advocated by the National Training Task Force (NTTF). An employer-dominated body formed to assist in the establishment and development of a TEC network, the NTTF was responsible for overseeing bids from local communities and regulating the calibre of board directors (Department of Employment 1988). In the absence of a spatial remit, the NTTF followed three broad principles for awarding TEC bids funding: that TEC bids should display a ‘[network or] firmly structured inter-relationship with the wider community’, that these interrelationships encompassed a ‘balance sheet of [the TEC’s] local community’ and ‘behind each group, there have been councils of [high calibre] people from local industry . . . the criteria [of which] simply are not flexible’ (Wolfson 1989: 5). In many cases these principles overrode the original suggestions of a minimum working population base and were incorporated into the Guide to the Development.
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Martin Jones [The prospective TECs] . . . should reflect the mix of local businesses [and also] form effective links with local employer organisations such as Chambers of Commerce and trade, regional organisations of the CBI, Local Employer Networks, Group Training Organisations, representatives of Industry Training Associations; and with the Rural Development Commission, Local Enterprise Agencies and other small business support organisations. (Training Agency 1989b: 6)
Approving bids based primarily on the strength of these principles, whose combinations are inevitably contingent, led to territorial fragmentation. In turn, the NTTF ‘reluctant to become embroiled in local parochial disputes’ and at the same time ‘under political pressure to keep up the pace’, lacked a strategic approach to territorial allocation (Bennett et al. 1994: 41). In the absence of strategy, leading local groups ‘were able to make pre-emptive strikes . . . allowing them to carve out parts of the map at an early date’ (ibid.: 41). Other areas, not familiar with partnership working, perhaps due to difficult local politics, had their bids rejected and were left with the territory discarded by those successful in ‘pre-emptive strikes’. Needless to say, more TECs emerged through this process than was originally expected. Some local areas, primarily rural, resembled a ‘doughnut phenomenon’, where local business leaders managed to carve up territory, leaving a residual metropolitan hole). This has also been termed the ‘swiss cheese effect’, implying local fragmentation (Bennett et al. 1994). Both metaphors imply a sense of feudal warfare, characterised by territorial battles, leading ultimately to difficulties in developing a local spatial coherence. More importantly, by allowing institutional networking, collaboration and support to come to the front of the NTTF agenda, contingent local institutional configurations would consequently play a significant role in deciding future individual TEC policies and politics. The TEC network, then, has been described as ‘reflect[ing] a particular combination of politics, personalities and economic geography’ (Guy and Howells 1994: 33). Teasing out this notion of local institutional configurations, Jones (1999) has suggested a tentative mode of insertion. This seeks to define degrees of TEC integration into the local institutional configuration. Rather than emphasising a simple top-down metaphor of TEC insertion, a dialectical reading of TEC territoriality is advocated, in which local institutional spaces (hosting the new organisations) mould emerging TEC policies and their political forms. This situation has been brilliantly summarised by Peck. The geographies of governance which are emerging under the TEC regime can be understood as a national TECscript (comprising a particular framework and policy discourse) being interpreted in a range of different (though bounded) ways by local actors. The way that this national script is read locally is strongly encoded in the different
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structures of local political-institutional relations in which individual TECs are enmeshed. Within the scope of nationally defined parameters, the particular structures, styles and strategies exhibited by individual TECs are contingent on the nature of the local institutional spaces into which they are inserted. (Peck 1998: 13–14, emphasis original)
North Nottinghamshire TEC: the dialectics of territory and discursive practice Set within this context, North Nottinghamshire TEC (NNTEC) represents one of the early ‘pre-emptive strikes’ made by business leaders to forge a local identity in a fragmented declining industrial region, interspersed with a series of isolated market towns. This distinct rural economic and political geography is captured in the following interviews undertaken during the mid-1990s. The problem is that there are not any big towns in the county to provide a coherent identity, [this area] is very much based on one city, medium sized town and loads of small market towns. Between these market towns, there is a lot of antagonism, [the town in the east] won’t communicate with the [the town in the west]. If you look in the north, people can’t agree if [town A] is the capital of the area [or town B]. (Former officer, chamber of commerce) The city is located in the south, county hall is south of the river and it is an awful long way from there to the north . . . There has always been difficult politics in the city area, with a lot of jealousy and infighting in the city and with surrounding areas. (Former director, NNTEC) The business community here has always consisted of regional directors and not the big wheels from headquarter locations, we are a bit of a branch plant area . . . With this [lack of a] business pool to pick from, the connections that they [directors] have is purely incidental . . . the chamber is very weak and you tend to get the networks that occur via the rotary club, via the trouser leg brigade, you know the free masons. You can see all those networks operating, but they are [especially here] entirely secretive in the closed relationship sense. (Officer, local authority) With this existing territorial tension and somewhat fragmented business networks, the impetus for NNTEC originated from the lobbying activities of a local industry association, based in Bassetlaw (the north east of the
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county). This industry association attempted to fill the vacuum formed by the absence of a chamber of commerce in that part of the county. According to one interviewee: It is a recognition that we don’t have any real chamber of commerce activity in this area . . . With any elongated county, where there is a city at the foot, the other end tends to feel disunited and alienated . . . The county chamber never really did anything outside the city and [the industry association] was founded to make up for that gap. (Former director, NNTEC) Receiving news of the government’s intention to introduce TECs, the industry association endeavoured to gain a TEC solely for their own northern patch, an area with a working population of just over 40,000. A single TEC for the County of Nottinghamshire (encompassing five travel-to-work areas) was believed to be a disaster, diverting resources to ‘city urban problems’ and away from ‘our rural needs’. Brian Wolfson, chairman of NTTF, partially convinced by an argument of the need to avoid a ‘City plug hole’, advised members of the industry association to seek support from surrounding areas. There was a notion right from the beginning that we needed two TECs in the county . . . There was a strong feeling that if there was a TEC based in the city for the whole county, then resources and attention would be attracted [there] and the north of the county and [its issues] would not be addressed. Wolfson was quite sympathetic to our territorial claim and told us to go away and find some friends. (Director, NNTEC) Faced with the task of gathering friends, the nascent private sectordominated NNTEC core managed to persuade several key local actors in the west (Ashfield) and central area (Mansfield) of the county to band together or else suffer the consequences of ‘being eaten alive by a county wide TEC’. A reactive, opposed to proactive, coalition was formed and the gathering friends process focused on eastern territory in the county. The local authorities in this area didn’t want to know, they saw us as just another quango and we viewed them as descendants from Lenin . . . After careful negotiation we managed to get three large areas into one pot, mainly through them not wanting to go south to the city. We then trotted off to rustle up support in [the east] of the county . . . After a few months we sussed out who the movers and shakers were and we eventually got all the major employers on our side and they went against the chamber, who wanted to go south. (Former director, NNTEC)
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What resulted, then, was a TEC formed through a reactive galvanisation of interests, which produced a territorial shape without a coherent identity or consciousness. By banding together disparate interest groups, who had a history of antagonism, NNTEC was forced to straddle four district councils and a large proportion of the county council. NNTEC thus had a precarious institutional relationship with its colleagues and is the only institution that operates at its geographical level. A private sector-dominated board that does not contain representation from NNTEC’s institutional colleagues heightens this lack of a ‘spatial fix’. My opinion is that it is just the chief executive and the chairman of the TEC that are driving the organisation. The rest of the board just don’t seem interested or aren’t sure why they are there. If you look who is on the board, they don’t have any real connections. The county council have a representative that only turns up once in a blue moon. The voluntary sector has a member of the clergy . . . who does he answer to? . . . [In the east] the TEC is represented by [farmers], who are hardly the prime movers are they? [In the central area] the two district councils have representatives that are just there to watch where the money is going . . . [The other radical] district council just doesn’t want to know. (Training provider, North Nottinghamshire) Additionally, fragmented sub-structures under the board provide limited local linkages. NNTEC’s advisory group, which was convened on a monthly basis, was perceived to be ‘only capable of disseminating ideas and not receiving the community voice’. NNTEC’s directors claim that attendance on their part is ‘very poor’ and those that do participate feel they are ‘on the firing line’. With this background of local fragmentation, partnerships are difficult to forge, which ultimately leads to institutional friction. The culmination of this lack of local connection means that the politics and policies of NNTEC are best described as a continual search for friends, required to access partnership-based government funds. Attracted solely by the smell of its money, ‘partners’ are critical of NNTEC’s motives. Some claim that the TEC ‘is forever blowing its own trumpet’ and ‘championing perceived local successes’. NNTEC, desperate to attract friends and income, applied for every national pilot during the 1990s, a process augmented by an ‘empire building’, ‘Napoleonic’, Chief Executive (which coincidentally had the initials P.R.). This territorial backdrop is vital for situating North Nottinghamshire TEC’s semiosis. The context of continually searching for friends, at the same time empire building within a precarious institutional environment, has a profound impact on NNTEC’s discursive practices. I argue that the NNTEC uses discourse to assert its imagined territory, in the process of striving to secure local spatial legitimation. From general observations, NNTEC publications invariably follow a glossy format, containing maps and photographs
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of the rural landscape. No doubt trying to overcome territorial insecurity, this documentation frequently exploits notions of ‘coherence’, ‘accessibility’ and ‘tranquillity’ which, over time, strived to embed stability. Photographs are also shown of the TEC working with its local ‘partners’. Attempting to legitimise a role, NNTEC directors are pictured shaking hands with local businessmen, council officers and politicians (see North Nottinghamshire TEC 1994b, 1994c). Likewise, local businesses are presented as ‘portraits’ with accompanying photographs and quotes stressing reasons for locating within the NNTEC territory. One ‘portrait’ company, whose chairman is an NNTEC director, claims that ‘good labour relations’ and a workforce at ‘a competitive price’ are this TEC’s hallmark. In addition to written documentation that endeavours to discursively embed a sense of territorial consciousness within NNTEC’s fragile territory, several publications pursue wider ideological arguments based on the success of TECs as a national movement. NNTEC is, then, claimed to be a success through its local association with this national movement. I argue that by drawing on the contents of one of these documents, Focus on Growth, NNTEC tried to overcome its territorial insecurity not by stressing local coherence, but by discursively constructing a case for local territorial success based on the broader ideologies of the national TEC project at that time.
Deconstructing discursive practice: Focus on Growth Focus on Growth. TECs and LECs of Great Britain is a 13-page document, produced by a former member of NNTEC and was aimed at a wide range of audiences, both within and beyond the local community (see North Nottinghamshire TEC 1994a). This is apparent by virtue of sponsorship from the TEC National Council, who endorses the documents and its contents. Due to this sponsorship, several thousand copies were printed in 1994 and distributed inside and outside the NNTEC territory. Distribution occurred locally through the main TEC office, its membership scheme and subsidiary offices. NNTEC’s main office contained an extensive publication stand, from which my copy of the document was obtained. In addition to this formal distribution route, the 1994 annual general meetings provided a platform for its dissemination. According to one NNTEC director: We do have a very effective AGM. There is no question at all that the AGM is extremely well attended. This is partially due to us managing to attract a top rate speaker, normally a local or national celebrity who can give us a good profile. This usually brings the crowds in . . . It’s all about discourse, you know. I am all in favour of glossy photographs of our achievements. I think this is one way of being accountable to our community, as long as we don’t go over the top of course. (Director, NNTEC)
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Focus on Growth is structured within the following classification schemes: Employment and Training, Economic Development, Enterprise, and Education. Some of these classifications are ideologically contested and are thus interesting in subject content. Economic development is an activity that is historically the domain of local government and thus an area that brought TECs into potential conflict with other agencies (Haughton et al. 1997). Education was also an area which has been historically controlled by local authorities and at this time was being challenged by other institutions. Likewise, Enterprise was ideologically contested, crossing the remits of the enterprise agency network and council economic development departments. Employment and Training was, perhaps, an area where the ideological contest was lowest, recognised at the time as ‘TEC domain’ and accounting for over two-thirds of their income ( Jones 1999). Within these main classifications ‘overwording’ is evident in the vocabulary, which continually emphasises localist sounds, interestingly an area that was previously thought to have been a confused domain.1 The overwording of local can be seen as an ideological struggle with previous public sectorbased attempts at economic development, believed to have produced ‘unsatisfactory’ and structurally rigid solutions. Locally based flexibility is offered as a route to securing competitiveness, as opposed to public sector ethos of ‘rigidity’. Quotes 1–4 illustrate these themes: 1 2 3 4
‘Locally the picture was confused for the customer’. ‘Local clarity, coherence . . . to local economic development’. ‘[D]riven by an underlying strategic aim, to stimulate local economic development’. ‘[F]lexible solutions relevant to the needs of local communities’.
Other prominent themes in vocabulary are those of ‘partnership’ as a prerequisite for economic growth, success and innovation. Grammatical analysis in the document is also important in identifying subject orientation and agency. Throughout the document the customer is referred to as the subject, emphasising private-sector influence on the language and orientation of public policy. The customer, frequently seen as local business community, is thought to be able to contribute to the wealth of the community and is, hence, given priority over the wider community per se. Reinforcing issues of vocabulary, ‘partnership’ is grammatically explicit in economic development and organised in three categories, ‘leading’, ‘partners in’ and ‘supporters’. Quotes 5–8 illustrate this: 5 6 7
‘TECs and LECs work closely with government departments’. ‘TECs and LECs . . . produce shared acceptance of roles and responsibilities in the context of locally agreed strategy’. ‘TECs and LECs, with their local partners, have sought to maximise the impact of European Funding for the development of innovative and additional projects’.
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8
‘TECs and LECs are leading facilitators in local partnerships to establish Business Links’.
Throughout Focus on Growth text structure is active and has a double positive and negative aspect, displayed in the grammar and vocabulary. Negative grammar is used to suppress former public sector-conceived state agencies and replace them ideologically and discursively with new ‘innovative’ structures, believed to be able to meet the changing economic environment. These two aspects of grammar are often used as logical connectors in sentence construction, for example public sector is not working and cannot work, the private sector is the solution, closer to government, and can work.2 The logical connectors are effectively used to give the text a two-dimensional aspect of cohesion, evident in the following quotation, constructed out of several paragraphs: [P]ublic sector conceived [agencies], sought to tackle the issues of economic change. The outcome, in many respects, was unsatisfactory . . . This has now changed in a radical way by the creation . . . of TECs . . . a radical shake-up . . . [who devise] clear, coherent high quality business services . . . professionalism and management calibre to local economic development . . . delivering action. The text structure follows the classification schemes introduced in the vocabulary section, namely: Employment and Training, Economic Development, Enterprise, and Education. Each of these sections is reproduced on separate loose pages, complete with glossy photographs, inserted into a folder. Linking in with notions of coherence and constitution, economic development would appear to be the dominant message in the text’s architectural form, an area stated as being ideologically contested. This is interestingly placed at the front of the folder. Likewise, the force and utterance of the document supports the message behind the architectural form. Sequences of sounds emerge by the using of the words, ‘Radical’, ‘Vanguard’, ‘Real Influence’, ‘Credibility’, ‘Leading Facilitators’, ‘Ambitious’ and ‘Innovators’. These words combine to produce a text that gives an impression of radical change. Within such change TECs, the new ‘coherent’ institutions, are presented as the only way of dealing with the local economy. When considered as a complete document, Focus on Growth, is an interesting example of intertextuality. As discussed previously, this refers both to linkages between sections and between different documents to give a dynamic reading of semiotic transformation. Combined, these two dimensions stress that new forms of discourse have the capacity to uproot previous ideology and embed, through repeated inter-document references to change, a new territorially based ideology. Some aspects of intertextuality have been previously mentioned with regard to sentence construction and logical connectors, namely an attempt to replace the discourse of public
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sector-conceived agencies, which could not meet the challenge of the 1980s, with ‘the new flexible TECs’, believed to be responsive to customer needs. The evidence and power of intertextuality is, however, greater when considering complete passages in documentation: All parts of Great Britain have wrestled for decades now with the forces of structural economic change and their impact on local economies. In the UK during the 1970s and 1980s a proliferation of agencies and measures, often public sector conceived, sought to tackle the issues of economic change. The outcome, in many respects, was unsatisfactory. National measures were less than sensitive to local circumstances and difficult to adjust to changing events. Locally the picture was confused for customers – businesses, new entrepreneurs, unemployed people and the workforce. This has now changed in a radical way by the creation in England and Wales of 82 Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) and in Scotland, of 23 Local Enterprise Companies. This passage gives an immediate ideological impression that the methods and structures deployed previously are incapable by design of producing satisfactory outcomes in a global economy. The local picture is thus presented as being confused due to its institutional make-up. In opposition to local confusion, TECs are perceived as being the only institution capable of reviving local economies. Restructuring from the ‘bottom-up’ is causally connected to creating structural competitiveness. This ideological strand is common throughout other TEC documentation, where ‘national measures’ are continually stressed as not working and the TECs and LECs are presented as the only solution for reviving the fortunes of localities (see Bennett et al. 1994; Coffield 1992; Jones 1999; Peck 1992, 1998).
Community reflections on discursive practices NNTEC’s discursive practices are associated with high degrees of antagonism within its community. Lavish annual general meetings are referred to as resembling a ‘royal wedding reception’, held in ‘an expensive marquee with silk lining and chandeliers’ (interviews of local stakeholders). Seeing over the gloss and paraphernalia of discourse, members of the community offer interesting insights into the ideological nature of publications and links with territory. Prompted with a discussion around Focus on Growth and NNTEC’s publications in general, one community member offered the following analysis: The volume of publications produced at the TEC is amazing. I tend to pick up a handful every time I visit Edwinstowe . . . I am always impressed with their glossy style and wonder where they get the money
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Martin Jones from. Next time I visit the TEC I am thinking of taking a transit van to carry all the latest publications back to my office! (Officer, unemployed workers forum)
Evident here, is the objection to the volume of publication and whether there is justification for spending public money on this form of discourse. A second commentator picks up this theme: NNTEC seems to have its publications everywhere . . . they are always championing something and act as if they need to tell the whole world about it, you know . . . It is almost as if they haven’t got a role and try to hammer home what little they have achieved by flooding the community with glossy A4 publications . . . I think it’s hilarious and sad in a way, it is as if they haven’t got anything else to do. (Officer, voluntary sector organisation) Apparent in this quotation is the perceived need of legitimising NNTEC activities through the production of discourse. Although commenting on the volume and nature of the ‘gloss’, this observer is claiming that NNTEC needs to tell others in the locality its role, through the dissemination of discourse. A third commentator continues this theme: I think that the TEC uses its publications to mark its territory. If you look through the latest gloss, you can see all the different places mentioned . . . I suppose it is rather like the primitive cave men and their paintings . . . defending their area, or more crudely, like a cat urinating up a bush to warn others away! (Officer, district council) Clearly visible here is the issue of deploying discourse to pronounce territory. In this process, NNTEC also reproduces its territory through discourse. This can be expressed as a process of discursively embedding ‘spatial imagery’ – constructing a mental map of NNTEC territory through spatial referencing within written discourse (cf. Haenggi et al. 1995). Taking one document as an example of this practice, the 1994 Annual Report, for instance, contains photographs and case studies that detail all the major locations (both urban and rural) within North Nottinghamshire (see North Nottinghamshire TEC 1994b). Combining this with the previous comment on the volume of publications, NNTEC tried to remove the existing discourses on economic development produced and distributed by other institutions. In its place, NNTEC constructed an alternative North Nottinghamshire territorial-economic consciousness. Interestingly, this latter observer draws a somewhat crude parallel with primitive activities. By using animal metaphors, discourse is clearly associated, in this instance, with territorial marking and defence. Others who stress the predatory nature of NNTEC extend these animal instincts.
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Our council could have brought all the successes to this area that the TEC claims it has . . . NNTEC has a tendency to move in and promote other organisations’ ideas in its publications . . . it is a bit like intellectual plagiarism . . . I think this is due to the TEC trying to show others in the area that they have a role. (Officer, county council) NNTEC tends to hire consultants to go running around. I am not sure that their territorial image is sufficiently strong, because it comes through the consultants’ patter . . . The TEC current consultant tends to just do a hatchet job and replicate parts of the district council’s local plans and charge the TEC ten grand or whatever. (Officer, district council) From these latter quotations, in addition to discourse being used to assert territory, NNTEC is perceived as being an organisation that feeds off the ideas of its ‘colleagues’. It is suggested by the more critical officer from the county council, that this amounts to ‘intellectual plagiarism’. While this is probably a bit too strong, the links to territory are apparent in the second quotation from the district council officer. This draws attention to a lack of ‘territorial image’ and how this is often constructed ‘through the consultant patter’ (see especially North Nottinghamshire TEC 1996). The consultant, hired to promote NNTEC by publicising its services and successes, is believed to draw heavily on the ideas of other institutions. The process of territorial assertion, in the case of NNTEC can, thus, be seen as a hegemonic struggle, exploiting discourse to achieve a form of spatial legitimation, which appears to be in crisis. Added to this friction, the wider legitimation of NNTEC was also questioned at this time, with accusations that the TEC’s coalfield action plan had awarded public money to one of its private directors (R.J. Budge) and more generally, TEC money had been used to fund ‘fat salaries and company cars’ (Dore 1994: 20). Following Labour’s review of the TECs, North Nottinghamshire TEC was abolished in April 2001 and replaced with the county-wide Nottinghamshire Learning and Skills Council. Interestingly, the formation of the East Midlands Regional Development Agency and its sub-regional partnerships is currently creating similar historical territorial tensions between an artificially created North Nottinghamshire territory and a, perhaps more coherent, East Derbyshire region.
Conclusions A few years ago the human geographer Henry Yeung suggested that recent philosophical debates in the social sciences were misappropriating critical realism as a method and critical realism was in danger of becoming a philosophy continually searching for a method (Yeung 1997). Yeung’s
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argument was that critical realism is intrinsically a philosophy and both realists and their opponents have not yet adequately resolved issues of method in critical realist research. In Yeung’s opinion, the latter issue was becoming particularly important because he saw a tendency within the social sciences whereby the ‘methodological cart’ was being placed before the ‘philosophical horse’ (1997: 51–52). Yeung’s solution to this called for a dialectical mediation between philosophy (concerning ontology and epistemology) and social science (concerning theory and methodology). This chapter has explored this concern by deploying CDA to analyse the mechanisms in and through which shifts within local economic governance occurred during the 1990s. Working within critical realist ontology, I have argued that language and discourse are connected to the reproduction of institutional and territorial hegemony, a mode of representation within local structural change, and the form this takes relates to the dialectical interactions between discursive practice and territory. This argument was explored through the example of North Nottinghamshire TEC, whose discursive practices and discursive events were argued to be connected to contingent and territorially determined institutional interrelations within the local state. CDA, however, is not restricted to the analysis of late-Thatcherism. Informed by the discussion in this chapter, similar studies can be undertaken with respect to economic development under the Labour Party (see Fairclough 2000). Take, for instance, Regional Development Agencies which, since 1998, have been trying to bring coherence to the previous frameworks for ensuring England’s economic competitiveness and social cohesion. Alongside the Learning and Skills Councils, RDAs are charged with raising the skills and employment agenda to increase regional GDP. And RDAs have been heavily involved in deploying discourse to territorially embed themselves within their regional policy and political communities. This has taken the form of regional economic strategies and glossy annual reports. Early research suggests these practices to be deeply problematic, with many of the same tensions being raised over the RDAs’ discursive practices (see Robson et al. 2000). This said, CDA is not without weakness; as Howarth argues, it plays down ‘the limiting conditions of discourses’ (Howarth 1995: 129). To address this, CDA needs to address ‘action and change’ (ibid.: 129), which empirically points to a need to take stock of semiosis deployed by other institutions operating at the same spatial scale, or over the same territorial concern. New Labour, new forms of counter discourse?
Notes 1
Overwording is a practice in linguistics where a single word, or many words with similar synonyms, is continually repeated. Fairclough stresses that this is linked to a ‘preoccupation with some aspect of reality . . . which may indicate that it is a focus of ideological struggle’ (Fairclough 1989: 115).
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2
Logical connectors are a practice deployed in linguistics, which expresses how sentences are linked together. Fairclough (1989: 131) claims that ‘causal or consequential relationships’ although appearing ‘commonsensical’, contain and reinforce ‘ideological common sense’.
Bibliography Archer, M. (1995) Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bailey, T. (1988) ‘Market forces and private sector processes in government policy: the job training partnership act’, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 7: 300–315. Bennett, R.J., Wicks, P. and McCoshan, A. (1994) Local Empowerment and Business Services: Britain’s Experiment with Training and Enterprise Councils, London: UCL Press. Bhaskar, R. (1993) Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, London: Verso. Brenner, N. and Theodore, N. (2002) ‘Cities and the geographies of “actually existing neoliberalism” ’, Antipode 34: 349–379. Coffield, F. (1992) ‘Training and Enterprise Councils: the last throw of voluntarism’, Policy Studies 13: 11–32. Collier, A. (1994) Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy, London: Verso. Department of Employment (1988) Employment for the 1990s, Cm 540, London: Department of Employment. Dixon, D. and Jones III, J.P. (forthcoming) Researching the World: Contemporary Approaches to Geographic Methodology, Harlow: Longman. Dore, A. (1994) ‘TEC the money and run?’, Times Educational Supplement 4 March 10–13. Employment Department (1991) Training and Enterprise Councils: The Challenges Facing Britain Now . . ., Sheffield: Employment Department. Employment Department (1994) TECs – Action 93, Sheffield: Employment Department. Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power, Harlow: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1991) ‘What might we mean by “enterprise discourse”?’, in R. Keat and N. Abercrombie (eds) Enterprise Culture, London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change, Cambridge: Polity. Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, Harlow: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2000) New Labour, New Language?, London: Routledge. Gaffney, J. (1991) The Language of Political Leadership in Contemporary Britain, London: Macmillan. Guy, R. and Howells, D. (1994) ‘Training and enterprise councils: are they costeffective?’, Policy Studies 15: 19–36. Haenggi, D., Kintsh, W. and Gernsbacher, M.A. (1995) ‘Spatial situation models and text comprehension’, Discourse Processes 19: 173–199. Hastings, A. (1998) ‘Connecting linguistic structures and social practices: a discursive approach to social policy analysis’, Journal of Social Policy 27: 191–211. Hastings, A. (1999) ‘Analysing power relations in partnerships: is there a role for discourse analysis?’, Urban Studies 36: 91–106. Haughton, G., Hart, T., Strange, I., Thomas, K. and Peck, J. (1995a) ‘TECs and their non-employer stakeholders’, Research Series No. 46, Sheffield: Employment Department.
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Haughton, G., Peck, J., Hart, T., Strange, I., Tickell, A. and Williams, C. (1995b) ‘TECs and their boards’, Research Series No. 64, Sheffield: Department for Education and Employment. Haughton, G., Peck, J. and Strange, I. (1997) ‘Turf wars: the battle for control over English economic development’, Local Government Studies 23: 88–106. Howarth, D. (1995) ‘Discourse theory’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science, London: Macmillan. Industry Department for Scotland (1988) Towards Scottish Enterprise, Edinburgh: Industry Department for Scotland Jones, M. (1999) New Institutional Spaces: Training and Enterprise Councils and the Remaking of Economic Governance, London: Jessica Kingsley/Regional Studies Association. King, D.S. (1995) Actively Seeking Work? The Politics of Unemployment and Welfare Policy in the United States and Great Britain, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Laclau, E. (1990) New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, London: Verso. Lovering, J. (1991) ‘Neither fundamentalism nor “new realism”: a critical realist perspective on current divisions in socialist theory’, Capital and Class 42: 30–54. North Nottinghamshire TEC (1994a) Focus on Growth: TECs and LECs of Great Britain, Edwinstowe: NNTEC. North Nottinghamshire TEC (1994b) A Year of Outstanding Achievement: Annual Report 1993–1994, Edwinstowe: NNTEC. North Nottinghamshire TEC (1994c) Focus on Growth in North Nottinghamshire: Corporate Plan 1995–1998, Edwinstowe: NNTEC. North Nottinghamshire TEC (1996) North Nottinghamshire: Local Economic Review, Edwinstowe: NNTEC/York Consulting. Pêcheux, M. (1982) Language, Semantics and Ideology, London: Macmillan. Peck, J.A. (1992) ‘TECs and the local politics of training’, Political Geography 11: 335–354. Peck, J.A. (1998) ‘Geographies of governance: TECs and the neo-liberalisation of “local interests” ’, Space and Polity 2: 5–31. Peck, J.A. (2001) Workfare States, New York: Guilford. Peck, J.A. and Jones, M. (1995) ‘Training and Enterprise Councils: Schumpeterian workfare state, or what?’, Environment and Planning A 27: 1361–1396. Pratt, A.C. (1991) ‘Discourses of locality’, Environment and Planning A 13: 257–266. Pratt, A.C. (1995) ‘Putting critical realism to work: the practical implications for geographical research’, Progress in Human Geography 19: 61–74. Pred, A. (1989) ‘The locally spoken word and local struggles’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 7: 211–233. Robson, B., Peck, J. and Holden, A. (2000) Regional Agencies and Area-Based Regeneration, Bristol: Policy Press. Sack, R. (1984) ‘The societal conception of space’, in D. Massey and J. Allen (eds) Geography Matters! A Reader, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sayer, A. (1992) Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach, London: Routledge. Sayer, A. (2000) Realism and Social Science, London: Sage. Stenson, K. and Watt, P. (1999) ‘Governmentality and “the death of the social”? A discourse analysis of local government texts in South-East England’, Urban Studies 36: 189–201. Stratton, C.N. (1990) ‘TECs and PICs: the key issues which lie ahead’, Regional Studies 24: 71–74. Swyngedouw, E.A. (1992) ‘Territorial organization and the space/technology nexus’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 17: 417–433.
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TEC Project Team (1988) A Marketing Strategy for Training and Enterprise Councils, Sheffield: Training Agency. Training Agency (1989a) Training and Enterprise Councils: A Prospectus for the 1990s, Sheffield: Training Agency. Training Agency (1989b) Guide to the Development of TECs, Sheffield: Training Agency. van Dijk, T.A. (1988) News as Discourse, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wolfson, B. (1989) ‘Moulding vision into reality’, TEC Director 2: 4–5. Yeung, W.C.H. (1997) ‘Critical realism and realist research in human geography: a method or a philosophy in search of a method?’, Progress in Human Geography 21: 51–74.
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4
How might the inclusion of discursive approaches enrich critical realist analysis? The case of environmentalisms1 Jenneth Parker
Introduction What exactly does a ‘discourse’ approach allow us to do? What can critical realism gain from a discourse approach? A key claim made by critical realists is that consideration of discourse by itself is innately relativistic (Norris 1993, Sayer 2000). I believe that this argument has been conclusively made, in this volume and elsewhere. Here, I want to extend the enquiry more reflexively to critical realism itself. For example, in the case of environmentalism, in what ways might the benefits of this more cultural approach be complementary to realist critique and understanding of environmentalisms? Could analysis of discursive practices around the environment be integrated with a more realist appreciation of the limits of the real global ecosystem on which we all depend? In what follows, my critique of others’ work should be seen in the context of my attempts to identify problems for this integrative project. I then argue for the importance of continuing and deepening the theoretical project which I believe could help to remedy the problems. I hope that my critique will be taken as a testament to the importance of their work and will encourage others to engage with it further. I will approach these questions by exploring John Dryzek’s use of a discourse analysis approach in classifying environmental positions. Dryzek is an interesting example; as I will demonstrate, his position is basically critical realist and thus his use of discourse analysis exemplifies many issues that may be relevant for critical realists. Dryzek’s analysis has been widely adopted as a student textbook, largely for its role in helping students to clarify environmental positions. However, Dryzek does not reflect very fully on his theoretical approach; in particular he does not consider questions of his own discourse. Is his model of discourse analysis the only one that could be used? In attempting to answer this question, I will examine Dryzek’s choice of dimensions of comparison between discourses. This will raise some key general questions for the ‘engagement’ (in both the military and romantic senses of the word) between critical realism and discursive approaches.
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I will draw on the work of Alberto Melucci to argue that one key feature that has been excluded is consideration of cultural action, to the detriment of the relevance of critical realism to contemporary forms of politics. For critical realism, ‘real’ social action has too often been solely that aimed at changing macro social structures. This has raised two key issues. First, a lack of an appreciation of creative and diverse and micro political agency due to seeing political agency as limited to collective action in the public (macro) sphere, with all its exclusionary implications in terms of class, ethnicity and gender.2 Second, a lack of theoretical tools with which to approach subjective (personal or micro)/cultural dimensions of change. The converse is also true: in some social movement theory, an over-reliance on cultural explanation has led to a neglect of more material issues. I will examine this, particularly in relation to southern movements and in relation to environmentalisms. Any assessment of the potential of discursive approaches will necessarily involve situating discourse within the wider social field. I will utilise the discussion in this volume by Norman Fairclough, Bob Jessop and Andrew Sayer to help me clarify some of these theoretical issues. In its analysis of ‘semiosis’, the Fairclough et al. chapter is extremely helpful in delineating some key issues arising from the theoretical conjuncture of critical realism and discursive approaches.3 In addition to illustrating some of these points made by Fairclough et al. with reference to issues arising from Dryzek’s work, I shall also raise some further issues to place on the agenda, referring to Jonathan Joseph’s article ‘Foucault and Reality’ (forthcoming). The overall focus here will be primarily on the dangers of a too ready appropriation of a discourse analytic approach by critical realists, without real engagement in its project and possibilities. In the same spirit Fairclough et al. propose that: Critical realism would benefit from sustained engagement with semiotic analysis. For critical realism has tended to operate with an insufficiently concrete and complex analysis of semiosis. It has tended to take symbol systems, language, orders of discourse, and so on for granted, thereby excluding central features of the social world from its analysis . . . (this volume pp. 38–9, my emphasis) My focus on movements’ cultural action helps to determine the contents of my discourse here. I seek to raise theoretical questions in the context of a wider project that responds to progressive movements’ important current role in transformatory politics: in this respect an aim of my discourse is to further the legitimation, but also the self-understandings of progressive movements to increase their effectiveness. In this respect, this chapter itself constitutes a contribution to the cultural action of movements. Further commitments underlying my approach are to the feminist public/private debate, a related interest in the relationship between subjective and wider
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social change, and value dimensions of progressive movements. If modernity has employed ‘a discourse of instrumentalism and mastery’ (Delanty 1999: 118), demonstrated by Stalinist and fascist attempts to forcibly reconstruct the social subject (in both cases involving the murder of subjects determined to ‘be in the way’), what are the alternatives being developed by contemporary politics? If it is true that, ‘postmodernist social theory has rediscovered the autonomy of the Subject but has not solved the problem of its political nature’ (Delanty 1999: 120), can an alliance of critical realist and more cultural approaches help to solve this problem? Further, could such an alliance make space for the moral dimensions of this subject? I would argue that this enquiry is particularly important to help situate recent critical realist work in moral theory in a social theoretic context.
Environmental movements With respect to these debates environmental movements are a particularly interesting example, as they typically combine a range of claims about material practices with an extensive cultural intervention. How do movement forms of cultural action link to their more traditional political and material aims and campaigns? The discussion in this chapter is necessarily somewhat abstract, but I seek to demonstrate that these theoretical concerns are of real importance to movements, their self-understandings and development. Accordingly, I present below a schematic analysis of theoretical issues raised and their relevance for environmental movements, including brief examples.4
Issues arising in Dryzek’s model of discourse analysis Dryzek states his reasons for employing a discursive approach as follows: ‘This inquiry rests on the contention that language matters, that the way we construct, interpret, discuss and analyse environmental problems has all kinds of consequences’ (1997: 9). He considers a wide range of ‘environmental discourses’, of which some are ‘environmentalist’ but others are hostile to environmentalism. ‘A discourse is a shared way of apprehending the world. Embedded in language, it enables those who subscribe to it to interpret bits of information and put them together into coherent stories or accounts’ (1997: 8). Dryzek’s account of discourse does not overtly abandon realist conceptions of the environment. Indeed, he is careful to state that he does not agree with (some) postmodernists that there is only discourse, his view is that, ‘just because something is socially interpreted does not mean it is unreal’ (1997: 10). As he rightly claims, people can interpret the reasons underlying environmental realities in very different ways, the connections that people make between social and physical realities are very varied.
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Table 4.1 Realist theory and environmental movements Theoretical issue
Relevance for environmental movements
Realism
Claims that action needs to be taken are based on assertions about the state of the physical natural world (and its effects on human societies), supported by scientific and other knowledge claims, e.g. claims about the need for action on climate change Sceptical attacks on knowledge and discourses produced by those with clear vested interests, e.g. counter-claims about climate change produced by researchers funded by oil producers; more generally critique of consumer ideologies of capitalism Modes of action often include symbolic forms of action, cultural intervention (arts, drama, aesthetic and emotive representations) e.g. environmental arts groups working in conjunction with movements protests Movement groupings explore and emphasise certain forms of subjective self-representation and identification, e.g. concern with embodies subjectivity and commonalities with other animals Re-conceptualising (or re-emphasising) self as in-relationship with the rest of life, exploring and asserting moral implications for social action and practices of the self, e.g. ‘ecological footprint’ concept asserting degree of moral responsibility for the wider impacts of living practices Discourses of local and global – more accurately, consideration of nested levels, from the personal to the global and debates about the appropriate kinds of agency at each level, constraining relations between structures at different levels, and the possible symbiosis of action at different levels, e.g. relation of Local Agenda 21 to global Rio commitments, to national and regional strategies and politics
Discourse and ideology
Cultural action
Subjectivity
Subjectivity linked to moral claims and investigation
Concern with levels of political agency
Dryzek asserts the reality, not just of the environment, but also of power in social relations (1997: 11) and in these key respects he displays critical realist commitments. Dryzek’s interpretation of discourse approaches allows him to summarise from his considerable experience and knowledge of the field of environmental politics and this has advantages, particularly as a starting point for students of this area. However, it is important to ask whether this account has a theoretical basis that also encourages critical development and further enquiry by students and readers. There are some disappointing features of this approach that I believe can be traced to the limited and unreflexive way in which Dryzek uses discourse analysis. Although he recognises that there are different approaches to discourse analysis, he does not sufficiently explore and justify his own approach, nor clearly discuss its limitations.
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From the point of view of the theorist, this discourse review approach involves taking a view that is in some way ‘beyond’ discourse – perhaps the assumption is that we can all step outside of discourse in order to examine our own and others’ discourses (Norris 1993). Dryzek does not explicitly situate his own position as the author that is studying discourse and this omission affects the viability and transparency of his methodological approach. In his assessments of environmental discourses Dryzek does necessarily employ his own political discourse, which can be traced throughout this work. For example, Dryzek’s own discourse takes industrialism as a given, therefore this discourse tends to be limited to environmental perspectives from the industrialised world. Consistent with this, Dryzek does not assess discourses on the grounds of their global relevance and ability to make global connections, closing off the question of environmentalism as a possible global movement with different local manifestations. Dryzek identifies a basic range of environmental discourses, determined by their approach to the major context of industrialism (1997: 14): in this context Dryzek distinguishes between those discourses that are Reformist in respect of industrialism and those that are Radical. This demonstrates a key way in which Dryzek’s own discourse structures his enquiry. Within these two main categories he makes a further distinction between more Prosaic and more Imaginative approaches, thus generating four basic discourse types. The specific discourses identified by Dryzek are the following: survivalism; prometheanism; administrative rationalism; democratic pragmatism; economic rationalism; sustainable development; ecological modernisation; green romanticism; and green rationalism. It is not the purpose of this chapter to review claims about specific discourses in depth, but rather to consider the ways they are analysed and evaluated by Dryzek. Dryzek states that each of the discourses which he identifies constructs its ‘story’ from certain key elements: Basic entities or ‘ontology’ of the discourse. This does not cover all the entities that subscribers to the discourse might admit to recognising, it is limited to the key entities that are stressed in this discourse, without which the discourse could not get going. Assumptions about natural relationships, for example competition or cooperation between animals, human beings or markets. Dryzek argues that certain hierarchies are regarded as natural by some and that equal relations are regarded as natural by others. Agents and their motives, again relates to the key actors without which the discourse ‘story’ could not get going. Key metaphors and other rhetorical devices. This element provides the most direct link to cultural forms of discourse analysis in its recognition of the power of metaphors. This includes key dramatic representations of good and evil through the medium of stories etc. For realists the inclusion of this element represents the challenge of incorporating the cultural and emotive aspects of social and political positions into analysis.
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But is this kind of approach too ad hoc to do these elements justice? Are there other ways of incorporating the benefits of a cultural approach into a fuller social and political analysis? Dryzek’s criteria for assessment of discourses are not stated, but can be derived from the assessments sections which conclude the discussion of each position: Factual adequacy: they have to recognise at least some environmental facts. Pragmatic adequacy: they have to link effectively with dominant discourses. Contextual adequacy: they have to work in the context of industrial society. Reflexivity: they have to be able to recognise and work to transcend their own limitations. These assessment criteria reflect the marginalisation of the rhetorical and cultural elements in Dryzek’s analysis: they revert to the rather dry mono-dimensional kind of view of politics and social action that discursive approaches appear to challenge. The operation of these criteria in the text emphasises the need for the writer to overtly include a reflexive sense of the status and effects of his own discourse. For example, I would argue that an effect of Dryzek’s discourse has been to define and strengthen ‘ecological modernisation’ as a discourse taken seriously by academics. A further important point for my concern with cultural action and the public/private debate is that Dryzek’s dismissal of ‘Green Romanticism’ (and indeed the fact that he employs this designation in the first place) is based on the alleged ineffectiveness of personal change. In fact, most of the positions that Dryzek groups under this term, would want to couple change in personal (micro) practices and subjectivity with change in wider social and material practices. I would argue that in this way Dryzek’s analysis reproduces gendered (and other) splits between public and private. By way of comparison, I want to point to a different use of a discourse approach in environmental matters. Kate Burningham (1995) employed a discourse approach in studying environmental values as ‘discursive resources’. The model she employed for this purpose stressed the ways in which people use discursive resources in order to do certain things: ‘For instance they might be making complaints, justifying their position, blaming others, seeking sympathy or approval. All of these are actions’ (1995: 97). Dryzek’s approach seems to miss out on this perspective and to overlook the ways in which certain discourses enable people and groups of people to do certain things. This raises the question whether and in what ways people tell stories with a purpose. Dryzek tends to construct the initiators and users of discourse as disinterestedly attempting to provide the best possible description of the social and physical worlds and the ways in which they interact. However, the obvious relation between some material and social interests and environmental discourses indicates the need to retain at least some aspects of ideology analysis. In fact, Dryzek himself wants to claim
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(1997: 11) that powerful interests will attempt to intervene at the discursive level to combat environmental discourses that are perceived as threatening to that power. A further related question raised by Dryzek’s assessment criteria is whether elements of a discourse must be logically related or whether discourses can actually contain radically disjunctive elements? It may be that disjunctive elements allow a discourse’s proponents to achieve certain things in relation to other discourses. Dryzek does seem to assume that the relations between different discursive elements will necessarily be logically consistent. However, to assume this may be to exclude some of the most important elements of cultural analysis, namely the emotive and the psychological.5 Arguably, the ‘key metaphors’ element merely gestures in this direction without opening up the possibility of real engagement with work in this area. The assumption of logical coherence may also understate the extent to which discourses may express movement ‘research programs’ in progress: the effort may be under way to harmonise a landscape of concerns and commitments without that achievement being finalised. One needs to subject movements to cultural critique and some elements of discourse may undermine intentions. Overall, there are various consequences of Dryzek’s lack of methodological critique which manifest in the content of this book. The overall effect is to achieve a mystification of academic legitimacy, representing an authoritative voice ‘from nowhere’. The author’s discourse is implicitly beyond analysis. As I am writing here from my own social movements’ perspective, there are many elements I would highlight. First, there is very little sense of the unity in diversity of environmental movements – in fact the concept Table 4.2 Discourse analysis of Dryzek (using his own model) Basic entities
Assumptions about natural relationships
Agents and their motives
Key metaphors and other rhetorical devices
Real environment Real social power relations Industrial society Competition Decisive influence of dominant discourses (discourse power hierarchy) Public (macro) sphere of politics effective Private (micro) sphere ineffective Traditional political actors – seek advantage Non-traditional political actors have idealistic motives Motive also to ‘truth’ of situation – discourses attempt to achieve practical adequacy Opposition of ‘romantic’ and ‘practical’ politics Oppositional placing and definition of discourses (academic norms) ‘Backgrounding’ of academic authorship – a rhetoric of academic authority
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of the ‘movement’ is not used in the book, the picture is one of competing discourses. In a second, related point, the oppositional placing of discourses obscures the ways in which a diversity of readings and discourses around the environment might contribute to the richness, but also to the pervasiveness of a wider movement. Although Dryzek includes in his analysis the kinds of metaphors and rhetorical devices used in discourses (see above), there is no sense of the special ways in which these elements might achieve their effects or be related to other, more material elements or forms of action. Last, although one might hope that an engagement with discourse analysis on the part of realists might lead to a more interdisciplinary approach, there is no sense in this work of the need to use insights from cultural studies, for example.
The analysis of cultural action This section will be informed by work from social movement theorists, in particular that of Alberto Melucci. He provides an excellent analysis of cultural action, but fails to link this thoroughly with more traditional forms of power manifested through macro social structures. His work throughout is motivated and informed by an awareness of the ways in which traditional political categories and methods of analysis misrepresent the kind of social action in which movements are engaged. Traditional political theory is identified with conditions of modernity, where politics is seen primarily in relation to the state. By way of contrast, Melucci wants to claim that postmodern politics needs to be seen primarily in relation to meaning and culture. He points to the ways in which traditional political analysis tends to concentrate only on those aspects of movements which ‘register’ in terms of traditional categories of political action (Melucci 1996: 6). He emphasises ‘hidden’ aspects of political action, centrally the everyday networks, practices and cultural identifications that support and generate more traditionally visible forms of action. Melucci’s approach directs attention to the continual necessity for the negotiated formation of the collective actor. In these respects, Melucci’s work is informed by the recognition of the importance of the discursive realm, although he does not employ a specifically discourse analytic approach to movements. A key question raised by Melucci’s analysis is in what ways everyday networks, practices and cultural identifications help to generate more ‘visible’ kinds of action. An important emphasis in his work are the ways in which new social movements are allegedly responding to new forms of power in complex societies – especially media-related forms (1996: 179). According to Melucci, movements respond with a variety of cultural challenges, from symbolic forms of protest to cultural representations. Melucci claims that movements respond to forms of power by ‘making them visible’ (Melucci 1996: 77). He does raise the question of how ‘new’ forms of power interact with other forms of power but does not really provide any answers:
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Jenneth Parker The access to these primary codes is not distributed randomly and it corresponds to a distribution of social positions and power. But this is a new way of thinking about power and inequality, which . . . are still ‘structural’ in many ways but more temporary than in the past and more related to the production of non-material resources. (Melucci 1996: 179)
Why is it that attention to cultural forms of power particularly encourages the development of movements with a strong subjective dimension? Melucci is convinced of the importance of meaning to identity – shared meanings are seen as the foundation of collective identity, ‘. . . collective action is nourished by the daily production of alternative frameworks of meaning, on which the networks themselves are founded and live from day to day’ (1996: 70). I would argue that these meanings must, importantly, include shared conceptions of self. The analysis of expressive action must link to the dialectic between expression of ethical commitment/emotion and practices of self-critique and collective reinvention/reconstitution of the self. For example, ecofeminist practices of caring may be expressive of women’s ‘natures’, but they can also be expressive of moral commitments which have a strong learned social dimension and may also be held by men (Cuomo 1998; Parker 2002). The project of re-thinking subjectivity in relation to nature is a part of the environmentalist project encouraging the re-assessment and revaluation of embodied identity and biological subjectivity. This project, importantly, includes re-assessment of human identity in relation to animals, stressing aspects of commonality rather than human difference. Change and challenging of the self-identity of humans is also a consequence of coming to see humans as participants in the evolution of life and ecosystemic perspectives have suggested new models of the ecological self (Matthews 1991). This change has involved a challenge to exclusively rationalistic models of human identity (Benton 1993). Melucci claims that the difference between deviance and conflictual action is that whereas deviance reacts against the control of norms without challenging their legitimacy it is of the essence of conflictual action that it should openly and explicitly contest norms (1996: 24). I would argue that contestation of norms must involve moral critique. Melucci states that the ‘symbolic resources’ produced by movements include value statements and value theories, which are deployed to support forms of ‘communicative action’ (1996: 79). A crucial part of Melucci’s discussion of values in movements is his account of the ways in which movements attempt to embody values in their practices: The organisational forms of movements are not just ‘instrumental’ to their goals, they are a goal in themselves. Since collective action is focussed on cultural codes the form of the movement is itself a message, a symbolic challenge to the dominant codes. (1996: 60)
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In some respects, then, he describes a pre-figurative politics which attempts to explore and embody new forms of relationships both as inspirational models and as expressions of the desired ways of being of the participants. The suggestion that this challenges dominant codes invites questions as to what these dominant codes are and why they are dominant. Possibly, part of ‘making power visible’ is the clarification and identification of these dominant codes through cultural critique as a form of action. This kind of analysis requires a theory of ideology which can describe dominant codes as in some way submerged in social life and hence in need of challenge to bring them to light.
Why does the analysis of cultural action need to be linked to realism? I argue here that realist perspectives in thinking about social movements are essential in addition to cultural perspectives. Social movement theory has arisen concurrently with postmodern emphases upon culture, interpretation and difference and a continuing reaction against the totalitarian analyses supposedly supported by realist claims (Lyotard 1984). This has contributed to the neglect of realist analyses and demands of movements. This has been a particular problem for the environmental movement which, I have argued, necessarily involves realist claims about the world. Further, an over-cultural, western social movement theory often seems restricted to ‘complex’ western societies. This raises questions of the applicability of these theories to collective action in other kinds of society. Movements in other parts of the world may focus more directly on ‘old forms’ of power and issues of survival. An over-emphasis on new forms of cultural power, therefore, renders western social movement theory more ethnocentric. However, southern social movements also have their cultural dimensions, though perhaps these are not recognised as such. For example, in discussing the theorists of movements, Brazilian theorist Leila Ladim asks: Where is carnival, whose preparations in some cities mobilize some of the poorest sectors for the better part of a year, for which they weave a complex network of informal economy, loyalties and costumes, and in which the suggestion of wealth and luxury makes up a key part of the grand popular theatre that is carried onto the streets? (1998: 227) In western social movement theory there is, rather, little attention paid to the ways in which these ‘new’ forms of cultural power are in addition to, or are developments of, ‘old’ forms of power. It is also questionable to what extent cultural power should be seen as a new form of power. Cultural and knowledge battles have always been a part of resistance to colonisation (Esteva 1993; Braidotti et al. 1994; Cunningham and Andrews 1997; Parker 2001).
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Theorists from southern movements are quite clear that southern movements are also reconstructing the nature of politics. For example, Rajni Kothari (1993: 70): ‘It is an effort to redefine the scope and range of politics. It is an effort to open up new spaces in both the arena of the state and in several other spheres of civil society outside it.’ While perspectives from writers on southern social movements have stressed that many of these movements are, of necessity, ‘movements for development’ (Wignaraja 1993) they also consider questions of the ‘moral economy’ (Sethi 1993: 143; Prakash 1998: 173–5). These movements are working in contexts of extreme dispossession and also at the hard edge of the impacts of globalisation (Amin 1993; Goldman 1998). However, southern commentators also refer to the ‘ethicisation of movements’ and link this to the espousal of democratic values by movements (Wignaraja 1993: 37). Recognising these value dimensions of movements is necessary to help understand the nature of the shift from Marxist-Leninist (and Stalinist) revolutionary movements (often of liberation from colonialism) to new forms of movement, particularly marked in the Latin American context (Wignaraja 1993: 39). These theorists interpret the new forms of movements as partly a reaction against the authoritarian forms of Marxism-Leninism. I argue that neglect of movement historical continuities is related to neglect of material demands of movements and the association between these demands and cultural forms of action. For example, Melucci claims: ‘Today, acting on things means acting on symbolic codes; effectively operating on things depends on the cultural models which organize our day-to-day social relations, political systems and forms of production and consumption’ (Melucci 1996: 163). The view that cultural models organise social life is in opposition to realist views of social structures with causal properties and tends to support criticisms of ‘cultural reductionism’. However, to present the issue in this oppositional way can overlook the necessity for forging a relationship between material explanation and cultural explanation. Melucci’s proposition that movements react to ‘new forms of power’ crucially downplays the extent to which movements’ ‘new’ tactics and strategies might represent learning from the past history of struggles for human liberation. I argue that to some extent new movement forms could be seen as resulting from an awareness of, and/or a reaction to, failures and problems of previous forms of action. To fail to consider this possibility renders movements not only apparently less creative (because primarily reactive to power) but also less grounded in historical consciousness. There is a neglect of southern subsistence movements (and western community movements), plus a down-playing of historical continuity with previous movements (such as the labour or suffrage movements). This is consistent with lack of attention to the realist dimensions of the ways in which movements challenge power, and of the realities of oppression and destitution. Some movement challenges and campaigns can be seen as ‘realist’ in that they specifically aim to change and reform social structures.
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Arguably, western social movement theory presents a very one-sided view of movement activity which understates the actual material demands and concerns of movements in the west itself, demonstrating the need for more realist interpretation of movements. For example, Melucci stresses the cultural dimension even when speaking of environmental movements which, I have argued, centrally affirm the reality of the world and of the material consequences of our actions. Again, Melucci’s lack of interest in the material reproduction of society, causes him to neglect aspects of movement analysis which are indeed new symbolic resources, but which also have explicit practical implications for the ability of movements to generate new communities of material practice.
Theoretical examination of issues of discourse and realism This section will outline some issues that are central to the assessment of the potential of discursive approaches in a critical realist context. The work of Michel Foucault has been the starting point for much consideration of the implications of, and issues raised by, discourse approaches to social reality. Foucault was influential in stressing the performative aspect of discourse, that discourses constituted subjects as well as talking about them. As Jonathan Joseph states (forthcoming), Foucault’s demonstration of his thesis used a historically concrete and specific form of analysis that is, in some ways, harmonious with critical realist commitments. In addition, Joseph points out that the ways in which Foucault examines discursive and material practices, particularly practices of the body, can be harmonious with a realist understanding. However, one problem with Foucault’s approach lies in his inability to relate real powers in the social world to the performativity of discourse. As Andrew Sayer states: Since what can be constructed depends on the properties of the ‘materials’ (including people, institutions and ideas) used in the construction, there is still a sense in which performativity depends upon practical adequacy. . . . one that may ignore or suppress the activation of some of our powers in order to activate and construct others. (2000: 44) Sayer is, here, pointing out that the subjects that discourse can construct are constrained in real ways which Foucault does not fully recognise. For critical realists, there are also issues to do with the ways in which Foucault sees social power as involved in discourse. As Joseph argues, Foucault is concerned with the exercise of power and its effects through discourses and material practices, to the detriment of any enquiry as to the origins and sources of power. One question this immediately raises is whether a discourse approach can usefully add to, or replace, the concept
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of ideology in the sense of identifying connections between people’s interests and the discourses they use, defend and attack. As Joseph suggests, from a Foucauldian perspective, discourse includes a wider range of material practices and institutions than does the concept of ideology, but fails to capture the connection between underlying relations of power and falsity characteristic of ideology. In this case, critical realists need to consider more fully how the concept of ideology might be extended or enriched by a wider notion of discourse. For example, ideology has typically only considered the material interests of those promoting certain discourses.6 Perhaps a discourse approach can also help to indicate the ways in which one might have a cognitive interest in construing issues in certain ways, given certain already existing commitments to certain subjectivities and social and/or political attitudes and values. This would need to take account of the fact that people invest time, effort and identities in their construals and that changing these takes much time and effort. Fairclough et al. provide a broad statement of the breadth of explanation which should be sought: because texts are both socially-structuring and socially-structured, we must examine not only how texts generate meaning and thereby help to generate social structure but also how the production of meaning is itself constrained by emergent, non-semiotic features of social structure. (this volume: 27) Fairclough et al. argue cogently that in order to discover how texts (in the broadest sense) achieve their effects we must go beyond the narrow discussion of reasons as causes. A large part of the influence of texts lies in expressive and affective elements not identifiable in the logicist language of ‘reasons’ (this volume: 26). Consideration of cultural action demonstrates that we need to extend this point to consider texts also in terms of subject positions that they can help enable or suggest, including possibilities of empathy and identification. These elements account for the power of dramatic narratives and their contribution to cultural action for subjective change. They deserve to be accorded their central importance in the social production and interpretation of meaning (Sandel 1982). This appreciation would also need to acknowledge the crucial point that subjective change is constrained by one’s abilities to deploy certain discourses, linked to class, ethnicity and gender, etc. A further crucial element in this analysis, recognised by feminist theorists is that the ‘ability’ to use discourses is not simply constrained by unfamiliarity but by constraints embedded in social practice and response. For example, feminists have pointed to the inability of women to manifest anger in situations of injustice as (partly at least) resulting from the lack of social ‘up-take’ of their emotion (Scheman 1980; Campbell 1994).
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While Fairclough et al. argue that issues of ‘truth, truthfulness and appropriateness’ will always be an issue in the interpretation of texts, they do not discuss whether discourses (or texts) require minimal logical consistency. I would argue that part of the strength of a discourse analytic approach is the recognition that people do not necessarily work with a logically consistent social and political philosophy (as theorists tend to assume) but put together world views, subjectivities and relations from their available resources, which may be in conflict. There is a key debate to be had here about critical realist and postmodern notions of the ‘free subject’ – the nature of freedom and the kind of self that accompanies that freedom (Bhaskar 1991). The postmodern notion that the ‘bricolage’ self represents the freedom of choice of the individual overlooks some key psychological/ existential evidence. We apparently do need to have some consistency of meaning in our lives, as evidenced in our suffering from our internal conflicts and our constant struggle to bring different aspects of our lives into meaningful relation with one another. One key aim of movements working in the cultural sphere could thus be seen as making available alternative discursive resources including, importantly, narratives which suggest new, perhaps less conflicted, subject spaces. In this context one could assume that progressive social movements do aim to produce more consistent discourses. This question also involves attention to the inescapably moral nature of construal.7 I would argue that all interpretation is radically evaluative. In relation to discourse, this means that discourses have moral implications and hence implications for subjectivity regarded as (constrained and limited) moral agency. Further, there is an inescapable necessity for moral evaluation to be concerned with some degree of logical consistency. While consistency in morality is not straightforward ( Johnston 1989), this consideration places in further doubt the plausibility (or desirability) of the happy, free bricolage subject, who has no consistent way to make the choices that are so celebrated as evidence of her freedom. To summarise the points from this section, critical realist discourse analysis should pay attention to: the ontology of the elements necessary for the discourse; values and links to validated subject spaces; subject position as author; performativity of discourse; actors’ validated/constructed and related subject spaces; forms of consistency; and ways in which the above are reflected/implicated in methodology.
Some implications for Dryzek’s analysis Dryzek assumes that what a discourse needs in order to hang together are enough elements to tell a story: entities, relations, actors and metaphors, however, he then wants to judge whether the story can be seen as a plausible one, given certain key assumptions (outlined above). However, if we do not assume that discourses must be internally logically coherent and
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that they are all attempting to achieve the same thing (i.e. a disinterested description of the world and prescriptions based on this), then the methodological assumption of a field of ‘competing’ discourses is destabilised. Different discourses could be seen as attempting to achieve different things, or express different aspects of a broader movement. To quote Fairclough et al.: The relationship between . . . actors, language, texts, social relations, practical contexts – is one of dialectical internal relations. . . . the relative weight of these different elements within the overall configuration of a social action is bound to vary from case to case. . . . Indeed one might be able to construct a continuum ranging from technological systems through to religion in terms of the relative weight of semiosis and materiality. (this volume: 29) In this way the social action represented by ‘Green Romanticism’ is of a more semiotic nature than is the social action represented by ‘Administrative Rationalism’ which has more immediate concrete outcomes in terms of policies and material practices. These discourses may actually be complementary when seen from the perspective of a diverse and wideranging movement, which seeks to raise issues and effect social change in a variety of different ways. One key consideration is the time-frame in which discourses seek to operate. If you seek to gain short-term results, you will need a discourse that is clearly related to dominant discourses; less so for medium-term results; and long-term results may require the subversion of the dominant discourse itself in conjunction with changing certain key social structures and material practices. I would argue that effective movements typically work with all these time-scales in addition to working at different scales – from micro to macro politics.8 Does Dryzek recognise the performativity of discourse? Although Dryzek does not explicitly consider the performativity of environmental discourses in constructing subjects, perhaps the list of actors that are validated in the discourse goes some way towards this: arguably the discourse could be seen as helping to construct these subjects as valid actors. I would argue that Dryzek’s own discourse helps to bolster the validity of traditional political and economic actors at the expense of movements. More subtly, Dryzek’s own lack of reflexive attention to his discourse tends to support the validity of academics as agents of an impartial truth and as over-arching authorities (Agger 2000). Consistent with his stated commitments (which I have argued are realist), Dryzek recognises the operation of constraints on the effectiveness of discourses. In this respect Dryzek’s criteria for assessment of environmental discourses could be seen as recognising some of these constraints – those which he recognises and validates as being central in industrial society.
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Theoretical cultural action does have effects on the self-understanding of people. For example, typologising of movement positions can disrupt movements’ strategic use of discourses and can actually contribute to movement fragmentation (Sturgeon 1997). In this context, rather than seeking to identify ranges of positions in ever more detail, it may be more to the point to see movements as engaged in processes of social learning (Princen and Finger 1994) as Fairclough et al. suggest: If we assume a social theory of learning as active participation in the innovative meaning-making practices of a community . . ., such examples can be seen as instances in cumulative processes of organisational learning which can produce changes in knowledge, social relations, and social identities (semiotically: in discourses, genres and styles). (this volume: 6)
Conclusion Critical realism has developed very effective ways to critique others’ discourses in terms of ontology and its implications. The overall theoretical question for critical realists raised here is how we can combine a fuller recognition of the social and cultural situatedness of our discourse with realist arguments supporting some key aspects of that discourse. I have argued that critical realists should acknowledge our own perspectives, but still strive to demonstrate that our positions are informed by social, ecological and physical reality. In this way, for example I would argue that my assessment of Dryzek is informed by a recognition of the importance of movements in contemporary politics, while also acknowledging my commitment to further their effectiveness. Some key questions and tasks for critical realist social theory have emerged in the course of this analysis. First, the degree and model of materialism implied by critical realist concepts of the ‘real’ and its relation to cultural powers and performativity of texts. Second, the need for a model of ideology that can draw on a wider model of human interests than the merely economic. This volume should help to provide impetus for the further consideration of these and other related questions.
Notes 1
2
This paper has been the subject of discussion at the International Conference for Critical Realism at Bradford 2002 and I thank discussants for their help and attention. I must also thank those who have read and commented on this text: Peter Dickens, Jonathan Joseph and Phil Walden. Their comments have improved its arguments but they must not be taken as agreeing with them. This has been the substance of the attack on critical realism by Rom Harré. While agreeing that this is a failing I would not locate this in the concept of social structure but in the failure of critical realism to engage with the cultural and to consider the validity and kinds of cultural structures and powers.
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Fairclough et al. use the term ‘discourse analysis’ to refer to a particular subsection of semiotic orders. My usage here is more general. I will refer to ‘environmental movements’ in the plural as, arguably, there are some discernible differences, perhaps primarily between movements North and South. However, there are also similarities. It is not the purpose of this paper to go into the specific nature of environmental movements in great depth. See for example, Andrew Samuels’ The Political Psyche (1993) which has an interesting section on the symbolic dimensions of environmentalism from a Jungian perspective. The question of the degree of commitment to ‘materialism’ and its specific interpretation is in need of further discussion by critical realists. This arises particularly with regard to the performativity of discourse. Are ‘real’ outcomes of discourse necessarily ‘material’ outcomes? My view is that critical realist recognition of emergent properties allows for real outcomes of discourses which are non-material. However, this is not to say that they will be unrelated to material outcomes. For example, if earlier in the text I had referred to ‘physical elimination’ of subjects ‘in the way’, this could be objected to on the moral grounds that when talking about human subjects the appropriate terms must be in some way moral – attempted neutral language is deemed offensive. In my view this leaves open the question of gradualist versus revolutionary change – movements are capable of deciding which approach is appropriate at a certain time in a certain context.
Bibliography Agger, B. (2000) Public Sociology: From Social Facts to Literary Acts, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Amin, S. (1993) ‘Social Movements at the Periphery’, in P. Wignaraja (ed.) New Social Movements in the South: Empowering the People, London: Zed Books. Benton, T. (1993) Natural Relations, London: Verso. Bhaskar, R. (1991) Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom, Oxford: Blackwell. Braidotti, R., Charkiewicz, E., Hausler, S. and Wieringa, S. (1994) Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development: Towards a Theoretical Synthesis, London: Zed Books. Burningham, K. (1995) ‘Environmental Values as Discursive Resources’, in Y. Guerrier, N. Alexander, J. Chase and M. O’Brien (eds) Values and the Environment: A Social Science Perspective, Chichester: Wiley and Sons. Campbell, S. (1994) ‘Being dismissed: the politics of emotional expression’, Hypatia 9(3) (Summer 1994): 46–65. Cunningham, A. and Andrews, B. (1997) Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge, New York: Manchester University Press. Cuomo, C. (1998) Feminism and Ecological Communities, London: Routledge. Delanty, G. (1999) Social Theory in a Changing World: Conceptions of Modernity, Oxford: Polity Press. Dryzek, J. (1997) The Politics of the Earth, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Esteva, G. (1993) ‘Development’, in W. Sachs (ed.) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Books. Fairclough, N., Jessop, B. and Sayer, A. ‘Critical realism and semiosis’, in this volume. Goldman, M. (1998) ‘Inventing the commons: theories and practice of the commons’ professional’, in M. Goldman (ed.) Privatizing Nature: Political Struggles for the Global Commons, London: Pluto Press.
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Johnston, P. (1989) Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, London: Routledge. Joseph, J. (forthcoming) ‘Foucault and Reality’ in Capital & Class. Kothari, R. (1993) ‘Masses, Classes and the State’, in P. Wignaraja New Social Movements in the South: Empowering the People, London: Zed Books. Ladim, L. (1998) ‘Brazilian crossroads: people’s groups, walls and bridges’, in M. Goldman (ed.) Privatizing Nature: Political Struggles for the Global Commons, London: Pluto Press. Lyotard, J.F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mathews, F. (1991) The Ecological Self, London: Routledge. Melucci, A. (1996) Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, C. (1993) The Truth about Postmodernism,Oxford: Blackwell. Parker, J. (2001) ‘Social movements and science: the question of plural knowledge systems’, in After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism, London: Athlone Press. Parker, J. (2002) Towards an Ecofeminist Ethics: a critical realist and social movements approach, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sussex. Prakash, S. (1998) ‘Fairness, social capital and the commons: the societal foundations of collective action in the Himalayas’, in M. Goldman (ed.) Privatizing Nature: Political Struggles for the Global Commons, London: Pluto Press. Princen, T. and Finger, M. (1994) (eds) Environmental NGOs in World Politics, London: Routledge. Samuels, A. (1993) The Political Psyche, London: Routledge. Sandel, M. (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sayer, A. (2000) Realism and Social Science, London: Sage. Scheman, N. (1980) ‘Anger and the politics of naming’, in S. McConnell Ginet, R. Borker and N. Foreman (eds) Women and Language in Literature and Society, New York: Praeger. Sethi, H. (1993) ‘Survival and democracy: ecological struggles in India’, in P. Wignaraja (ed.) New Social Movements in the South: Empowering the People, London: Zed Books. Sturgeon, N. (1997) Ecofeminist Natures, London: Routledge. Wignaraja, P. (1993), New Social Movements in the South: Empowering the People, London: Zed Books.
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Part II
Voloshinov and Bakhtin
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5
Will the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle please stand up?1 John Michael Roberts
Introduction The discourse theory of Mikhail Bakhtin and his colleagues, most notably P. N. Medvedev and V. N. Voloshinov, has made a substantial impact upon contemporary social theory. Known collectively as the Bakhtin Circle, and emerging in the Soviet Union of the 1920s, their insights have been used to explore feminist literature (Cosslett 1996), the body (Holquist 1989), theories of utopia (Gardiner 1993), democracy (Hirschkop 1986, 1999), social history (Burke 1988; Roberts 2001a), cultural studies (Bell 1998; Hirschkop 1989), sociology (Gardiner 1992), free speech (Roberts 2003, 2004), local economic development (Collins 1999), cyborgs (Hitchcock 1998) and even car-boot sales (Gregson and Crewe 1997). Part of the reason for this attraction lies with the Circle’s fascination in issues surrounding the philosophy of social science. Indeed, it is frequently noted by Bakhtinian scholars that the Circle’s output corresponds to distinct philosophical interests. And so the early-period work of the Bakhtin Circle is often seen to be preoccupied with Kantian idealism, while the middleand late-period work is seen to be preoccupied with Marxist materialism and what might conceivably be termed as (critical) realism. At the same time there has been some controversy over the relationship between the authorship of several works by the Bakhtin Circle. Some, for example, have argued that the Marxist work on language by Voloshinov was, in fact, penned by Bakhtin and that the Marxism was introduced at a later stage to get his work past the Stalinist censor (Clark and Holquist 1985). Others argue that the Marxism of Voloshinov and Medvedev was too much of a departure for Bakhtin and that it is reasonable to separate the work of Medvedev and Volsohinov from Bakhtin on these grounds (Matejka and Titunik 1973; Shukman 1988). Such are the disagreements involved around these issues that there may never be a satisfactory conclusion to the questions surrounding the Bakhtin Circle’s theoretical stance or questions about the authorship of particular books. In saying this, however, it might be possible nevertheless to salvage some sort of positive outcome from these controversies. We can begin to
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see how this is the case if we momentarily consider one of the Bakhtin Circle’s key concepts, namely that of dialogism. Developed as a means to encourage reflexive dialogue about the different and often conflicting ‘utterances’ embedded in a single word or chain of utterances, dialogism suggests that perhaps the most suitable starting point in assessing the theoretical contribution of the Bakhtin Circle would be one which refused to drown their work into a quagmire of ‘uniaccentual’ authorial correctness. Rather, to be reflexive of the different ‘accents’ in the Bakhtin Circle would be to read their work as a ‘whole’ in such a way that their texts are in a continual dialogue with one another. By working dialogically we avoid a static and linear reading in favour of highlighting the overlaps, tensions, continuities as well as the breaks and differences between texts written by the Bakhtin Circle. In this chapter I want to highlight a more dynamic and dialogic account of the Bakhtin Circle. I want to play the accents within the texts written by the Bakhtin Circle off one another. I do this by constructing what I consider to be three legitimate underlying theoretical perspectives followed by the Bakhtin Circle. These three perspectives, namely weak social constructionism, critical realism and Marxist materialism, are constructed from the whole corpus of the Bakhtin Circle’s work. In other words, I have transformed the dialogue between the utterances of the Bakhtin Circle into dialogism. By reading the Bakhtin Circle’s work dialogically I believe that it is possible to draw out the legitimate ‘personality’ of each theoretical perspective while, at the same time, favouring one perspective over the others. Indeed, the concept of dialogism demands that our dialogue is reflexive about the normative judgements we make on a daily basis as we act in the world. By doing this I will be able to show why I believe that Marxist materialism, encompassing a form of realism, is a more satisfactory way of exploring the discourse theory developed by the Bakhtin Circle. I begin first by listening to the weak social constructionist accents in the Bakhtin Circle.
Weak social constructionist accents in the Bakhtin Circle Social constructionism is often divided into ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions. In the strong version the world is seen to be constructed by humans through meanings attached to objects. A tree is meaningful to the extent that it is classified as such by people in their daily life. In the weak version a caveat is inserted. While the world is seen as being socially constructed, some definitions are believed to be more robust ways of looking at the world than others. Some social constructions are, therefore, not perceived as being as equally contestable as others (see Dickens 1996; Dittmar 1992; Sayer 2000; Shotter 1993; Stones 1996). Shotter (1993: 14) usefully elaborates upon the weak version through four interrelated points. First, he argues that human action should be based within an argumentative
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framework that seeks to render explicit those everyday criticisms and justifications that individuals make as they interact with one another and with the world. For, according to Shotter, beliefs and opinions are necessarily a response to previous argumentative contexts. Second, he suggests that discursive interaction has a persuasive form to the extent that it can ‘move’ others to make responses and can therefore ‘affect’ a whole plethora of beliefs and opinions. Third, Shotter maintains that each discursive topic is ‘two-sided’ insofar that it raises certain dilemmas that can be used as resources to think through and act upon everyday life. Finally, Shotter argues that discursive interaction is predicated upon a ‘first form’ of ‘vaguely or partially ordered feelings and activities’ of common understandings which exist before they become an object for criticism. Hence, everyday life is not merely structured by a multitude of competing social constructions but is, in fact, structured by already formed ‘appropriate’ ways of talking about the world (see also Billig 1991). Many commentators have noted what could plausibly be termed as the Bakhtin Circle’s weak social constructionism (see Bernard-Donals 1994; Clark and Holquist 1985; Gardiner 1992; Hirschkop 1999; Shotter 1993). For example, in an early essay, ‘Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity’, Bakhtin argues that people gain a sense of individuality to the extent that they ‘consummate’ objects in the world around them and make these objects their own by ‘authoring’ them. Bakhtin makes this claim by discussing the literary processes involved when an author gives form to a hero. According to Bakhtin, an author shares a two-fold relationship with a hero. First, an author ‘sees his own creating only in the object to which he is giving form’. That is to say, at the moment of creating a hero an author experiences his or her own self through a relationship with the hero. Second, when an author ‘begins to speak about his heroes in an “author’s confession” . . . he voices his present relationship to them as already created and determined’ (Bakhtin 1990: 6–7). In other words, when explicitly talking about a hero in narrative form the author views the hero as an already taken-for-granted social object. This two-fold relationship demonstrates that, for Bakhtin, an author’s self is in a process of becoming by consummating an aspect of the hero’s self. At the same time, the act of consummation is premised upon the positioning of the self by the author in order to sustain a sense of control over the discursive encounter. By defining a hero the author always knows and sees more than the hero ever can. However, any act of consummation is unique to a particular space and time. Thus, the act of consummation, by which an author defines their self in relation to the hero, can only represent the aesthetic construction of a moment of the author’s self. At another time and in another space a different form of consummation will arise. Yet, Bakhtin insists that this momentary reflection pieces together the fragments of the entire, or whole, life of the hero and thereby enables an author to define their own life in a meaningful way.
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Consummation by an author of a hero can, in many ways, be seen as a precursor to one of the Bakhtin Circle’s most well-known concepts, that of ‘dialogism’. Often confused with dialogue, dialogism signifies the Bakhtin Circle’s attempt to show how everyday dialogue can be pieced together in a manner that renders precise its social and historical nature. Accordingly, Hirschkop (1992: 109) claims that dialogism ‘provides an insight into language which is not immediately available’ (see also Vice 1998: chapter 2). Dostoevsky, for Bakhtin, represents an example of an author employing the techniques of dialogism. As Bakhtin says of the Russian author: In every voice he could hear two contending voices, in every expression a crack, and a readiness to go over immediately to another contradictory expression; in every gesture he detected confidence and lack of confidence simultaneously; he perceived the profound ambiguity, even multiple ambiguity, of every phenomenon. (Bakhtin 1984: 30) Bakhtin applauds the writing style of Dostoevsky because he typifies an author who refuses to distinguish between the sentence as a unit of language and the utterance as a unit of speech communication. As Bakhtin (1987) notes elsewhere, those who construct a theory of language by taking the sentence as their starting point of analysis implicitly downplay the importance of the rhetorical context in which language actually comes alive. If ‘the sentence is a relatively complete thought, directly correlated with the other thoughts of a single speaker within the utterance as a whole’ (Bakhtin 1987: 73) then a simple linguistic dissection of grammatical elements would fall short of a social investigation. Linguistic analysis of the latter variety would not be able to explore language as it is used dialogically in everyday life. Instead, language would be comprehended as discrete units waiting to be explored. Language is conceptualised as possessing objective meaning which can simply be appropriated by individual speakers. As a result, the social nature of language based within dialogic contexts is demoted in analytical significance. This is part and parcel of the wider remit of a positivistic social science that refuses to consider the semiotic nature of inner experience. By way of contrast, Dostoevsky highlights that the same utterance could be situated with different social and historical contexts and thus come to be embedded with different forms of accents and social evaluation. This enabled Dostoevsky to piece together the ‘whole utterance’ of dialogue by linking the contradictory accents embedded within single utterance into a ‘chain of communication’. The idea that dialogue is historically and socially situated, ensuring that some speech forms are more stable than others, can be appreciated at greater depth through another of the Bakhtin Circle’s key concepts, that of ‘speech genres’. In an essay entitled ‘The Problem of Speech Genres’,
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Bakhtin (1987) argues the generic form of an utterance is the main protagonist in the social evaluation of words. As he says: each individual utterance is a link in the chain of speech communication. It has clear-cut boundaries that are determined by the change of speech subjects (speakers), but within these boundaries the utterance, like Leibniz’s monad, reflects the speech process, others’ utterances, and, above all, the preceding links in the chain (sometimes close and sometimes – in areas of cultural communication – very distant). (Bakhtin 1987: 93) What Bakhtin seems to be suggesting here is that utterances become solidified within speech genres, the latter of which go to construct ‘definite and relatively stable typical forms of constructions of the whole’ (Bakhtin 1987: 78). Bakhtin believes that speech genres enjoy this power because they are ‘doubly orientated’ in the sense that they exist in both wider social relations and within specific social forms. Importantly, speech genres are seen by Bakhtin to mediate individual styles of utterance ensuring that a strong social constructionism (anything goes) is an impossible feat (for alternative discussions of a Bakhtinian concept of ‘genre’ see Hodge and Kress 1988; Kress 1989; Kress and Threadgold 1988). The weak social constructionist reading of Bakhtin’s work is extremely useful because it effectively highlights the complex discursive practices of agents. In particular, it draws attention to the way in which agents construct relatively stable speech genres in their day-to-day interaction with one another. Yet, there is also a sense in which it fails to do justice to the complexity of discursive interaction. In the first instance, social constructionists reduce the causal efficacy of ‘structures’ to that of human interaction. Structures are thereby conceptualised as being the outcome of concrete interaction. However, the more materialist and realist accents in the Bakhtin Circle stress that dialogue also operates within a complexly structured and layered world. Many of the characteristics involved in this structuring may not be readily observable and may also hinge on the effects of non-human social processes. As Bakhtin argues in respect to utterances: ‘Oppositions between individuals are only surface upheavals . . . of those elements that play on such individual oppositions, make them contradictory, saturate their consciousness and discourses with more a more fundamental speech diversity’ (Bakhtin 1981: 326). Utterances, on this understanding, exist within a structured reality and thereby obtain a specific identity at different levels of abstraction, or levels of ‘stratification’ as Bakhtin terms it (see Bakhtin 1981: 288–292). For example: ‘Actual social life and historical becoming create within an abstractly unified national language a multitude of concrete worlds, a multitude of bounded verbal-ideological and social belief systems’ (Bakhtin 1981: 288).
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Thus, for the more realist and materialist accents in the Bakhtin Circle, discourse theory should not be preoccupied with perpetuating a rather static and artificial dualism between intersubjective discursive interaction and relatively stable discursive forms characteristic of many social constructionist accounts. Indeed, Voloshinov (1973) takes to task those theorists who make this sort of separation exactly because they neglect the complex and stratified interplay between both. In the next two sections I develop this observation by outlining the position adopted by realist and materialist accents in the Bakhtin Circle respectively.
Critical realist accents in the Bakhtin Circle While it is not in doubt that the Bakhtin Circle develop a social constructionist discourse theory, many have highlighted other philosophical strands in the Circle’s work. Bernald-Donals (1994), for example, insists that the Bakhtin Circle later abandoned their affiliation with what might be construed as weak social constructionism in favour of what might be construed as a critical realist standpoint. In order to consider this claim I briefly explore the main tenets of critical realism and then assess the extent to which the insights of the Bakhtin Circle fit comfortably within its theoretical framework. Emerging in 1975 with Roy Bhaskar’s path-breaking book, A Realist Theory of Science, critical realism was principally defined for many years through three interrelated strands: transcendental realism; critical naturalism; and emancipatory critique. Transcendental realism suggests that the world is complexly layered. Implicitly and explicitly, scientists aim to uncover the ontological depth of these layers of the world beyond that which is immediately presented to the senses. Bhaskar terms the ontological depth of the world as the intransitive domain. But Bhaskar also qualifies this statement by saying that knowledge of the objective world can only be arrived at through those social means by which humans come to understand the structure of the world around them. This social basis of scientific knowledge is termed by Bhaskar as the transitive domain. Critical naturalism suggests that social structures are the precondition of human action but are, in turn, reproduced by such human action. However, because human action is often unpredictable, individuals can never be examined in experimental conditions, or ‘closed systems’, wherein typologies of human action are applied to the social world. Rather, human behaviour must always be analysed in ‘open systems’ in order to fully take into consideration the contingent nature of the social world. Thus, there is no natural link between a type of action and a particular social function (Outhwaite 1987: 105–106). An emancipatory critique is entailed by critical naturalism because it suggests, contra social constructionism, the values we hold about society are always bound up with structures operating (sometimes) beyond how we
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directly perceived them. There is, thus, a strong impulse within critical realism to explore how the ideas we might hold about society are in fact contradicted by underlying structures. That is to say, there is a strong impulse within critical realism to understand how our everyday ideas might be false. All three strands enable critical realists to incorporate high level social theory within their general framework. This high level social theory convincingly demonstrates that how we ‘abstract’ objects for analysis is a crucial component of thinking about the world in order to research aspects of it (Sayer 2000). Indeed, critical realists argue that abstraction is an important methodological tool for both the natural and social sciences. This involves the logical and theoretical construction of a ‘causal power’ of an object which is itself seen as necessary for the operation of an object of investigation. ‘Causal power’ in this instance refers to those intrinsic powers of an object that allow it to function in a particular manner. Thus, we can say that object ‘A’ has the ‘power to’ act in a particular manner. Whether or not this power will be actualised in empirical conditions depends upon its contingent interaction with one or more objects (see Bhaskar 1989: 19–20; Sayer 2000: 87). There are many instances in which the Bakhtin Circle can be said to fit a critical realist reading. For example, in his article, ‘Discourse in Life and Discourse in Poetry’, Voloshinov (1988) ponders over the relationship between a speaker and hearer in everyday conversation. According to Voloshinov, discourse in life is internally connected with those non-verbal, ‘intransitive’, domains of life such as the ethical, cognitive, political and legal domains. These non-verbal domains are complexly structured and exist relatively autonomously of the relationship between speaker and hearer. This leads Voloshinov to posit an initial three-fold non-verbal determination of whatever is spoken about: 1) a spatial purview common to the speakers (the unity of what is visible – the room, the window and so on), 2) the couple’s common knowledge and understanding of the circumstances, and finally 3) their common evaluation of these circumstances. (Voloshinov 1988: 11) Arguably, Voloshinov provides an illustration here of the critical realist observation that what is visible (point 1 above) is overdetermined by a non-observable and non-verbal social context (points 2 and 3 above). And what is non-verbal is structured through wider social relations (see also Voloshinov 1973). As such, Voloshinov would no doubt agree with the critical realist attack upon social constructionism insofar that he likewise suggests that discourse is more than a ‘fruitless conflict of opinions and points of view’ (Voloshinov 1988: 6). But Voloshinov is at pains to suggest that discourse between speaker and hearer does not merely reflect a
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non-verbal situation. Rather, the discursive interaction between both ‘sums up the value’ of the non-verbal context by projecting a future plan of action and thus setting about the task of organising the mediated nature of those wider underlying structures that help to define the non-verbal aspect of the context in question. Thus, the verbal and the non-verbal, the ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’, are part and parcel of the same utterance. The relationship between the verbal and non-verbal can be seen more clearly by the intonation of an utterance. For it is also part of Voloshinov’s argument that intonation provides a link between the verbal and non-verbal domains: In intonation the word comes directly into contact with life. And it is above all in intonation that the speaker comes into contact with its listeners: intonation is social par excellence. It is particularly sensitive to all the variations in the social atmosphere which surrounds the speaker. (Voloshinov 1988: 14) The tone of an utterance is thereby said by Voloshinov to provide a social evaluation of both a social context and the conceived response a speaker will try to elicit from a listener. This is the active construction of a topic of address. Voloshinov terms this ‘third participant’ of discourse as ‘the hero of the verbal act’ (Voloshinov 1988: 15). Unlike the literary meaning of ‘hero’ in the weak social constructionist accents, Voloshinov is suggesting that the heroic moment establishes a dialogic relationship with an intransitive object of an utterance. The hearer, or listener, subsequently becomes both a witness and an ally to the speaker’s ‘heroic’ construction of an object. A speaker is thereby orientated in two directions – ‘towards the listener as ally or witness, and towards the topic of the utterance, as if to a third active participant’ (Voloshinov 1988: 16). Voloshinov goes on to argue that his observations about discourse are also applicable to aesthetic creations such as a work of art, poetry or a statue. He defends this claim by noting, first, that all aesthetic creations are powerful condensers of unspoken evaluations. ‘So the poet selects his words, not from the dictionary, but from the point of the context of real life where they are fixed and steeped with evaluations’ (Voloshinov 1988: 19). If this is the case then the materials involved in aesthetic creations are not merely technical devices. It would be truer to say that aesthetic creations obtain distinct forms whose significance exceeds the boundaries of materials. What Voloshinov means here is that material takes on a particular form in relation to its meaning or content. Thus, we could say that the form of a statue is not the form of the marble, but the form of a human body; moreover, form ‘makes a hero’
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of the depicted person, either ‘flatters’, or perhaps ‘humiliates’ him . . . that is, the form expresses a specific evaluation of what is depicted. (Voloshinov 1988: 20) The author of an aesthetic form, therefore, organises material in relation to content. At the same time, the choice of content is determined by the construction of what will be deemed to be heroic about the aesthetic form. What is deemed as heroic will be embedded both within the causal efficacy of the non-verbal context in which the aesthetic form is created as well as the causal efficacy of a number of non-verbal contexts that come to be ‘internalised’ within the context of aesthetic creativity (see also Bakhtin and Medvedev 1991). Because aesthetic creativity refracts and internalises these different social contexts it will simultaneously refract and internalise the social evaluation and hierarchies evident in those social contexts. As a result, a hierarchical relationship between author and listener is created in the sense that the artistic form is ‘elevated’ to a particular social position where certain values are expressed. In this respect, it is crucial to explore the ‘valuational rank’ between author and listener as well as the ‘hierarchical specific gravity’ (levels of abstraction and stratification) of the hero. From this short discussion we can begin to appreciate how the Bakhtin Circle went beyond providing an exclusive weak social constructionist theory of discourse by developing what might be understood as a critical realist perspective on discourse. However, there are limitations to this approach; limitations which are expressed by the Marxist accents in the Bakhtin Circle. In ‘Sociologism without Sociology’, for example, Medvedev (1988) takes to task those literary theorists who apply ‘scientific realism’ to the study of discourse. Medvedev begins by identifying two methodological strands in literary scientific realism. First there is a ‘formal method’ for the immanent study of literature (what critical realists would term as the abstraction of causal powers, i.e. the intransitive dimension of analysis). Second, there is a ‘causal method’ for situating immanent analysis within historical processes (situating ‘causal powers’ within the contingent and open nature of the world, i.e. the transitive dimension of analysis). Medvedev argues against these prescriptive methods for two main reasons. In the first instance, both are brought together to elevate methodology into a ‘world-view’ based upon general guiding principles. Moreover, methodology is characterised by its eclectic nature because it is developed through different theoretical strands – a ‘many-faceted theoretical thought’ as Medvedev terms it. In the second instance, this approach constructs general social theory about how the world and human behaviour operate. The critical realist argument that theory and method should operate upon transcendental foundations by combining (e.g.) elements of Kantianism and Marxism (see Bhaskar 1975; Keat and Urry 1982; Outhwaite 1990), and that the world is structured by causal powers operating at both a ‘structural’ and ‘individual’ level, would provide an example of Medvedev’s
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thinking here. However, Medvedev goes on to criticise this viewpoint for fetishising method. According to Medvedev, scientific realism disconnects method from the specific ideological and concrete forms of the world. Scientific realism implies that method and social theory can be constructed before we investigate the world and then simply imposed upon the historical processes underlying concrete social forms. Accordingly, method is transformed into a study of methodology rather than a dialectical synthesis between method and the historical specificity of social forms. Thus, as Collins (1999: 91) points out, by failing to give due credit to the complex mediations of language-use, and by operating with a method that imposes its analytical framework upon these mediations, the critical realist analyst tends to privilege his or her interpretation of discursive events. The methodological danger of this is the endorsement of a rather Kantian outlook in which the analyst interprets the world from within their own consciousness (see also Roberts 1999). Second, Medvedev criticises scientific realism because, like weak social constructionism, it operates with a dualist understanding of the world. According to Medvedev, those who apply scientific realism never comprehensively demonstrate how their formal and causal methods can be successfully united as an ‘organic unity’. Instead, scientific realists leave us with tentative suggestions about such a link which, at best, is ‘purely mechanical’. Medvedev illustrates this point by looking at how scientific realists explore ‘the unbroken flow of historical life’. In a manner reminiscent of their methodological insights, Medvedev suggests that scientific realists view history as operating along two principles. First, that there is a ‘natural evolution’ to historical development to the particular properties of the object under investigation. Second, these evolutionary qualities interact within an external and contingent environment. Medvedev replies that this treads treacherously close to defending a trivial conception of history insofar that it simply says that an object develops its historical capacity (causal powers) within ‘an intricate complex of diverse causes of a historical nature’ (Medvedev 1988: 71). For Medvedev, such a view of history ‘decontextualises’ an object of study to the extent that it has no base through which to think about the historical limits of a specific set of social relations. In The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, Bakhtin and Medvedev (1991) argue for an alternative method of abstraction. They say: It is necessary to be able to isolate the object of study and correctly establish its boundaries in such a way that these boundaries do not sever the object from vital connections with other objects, connections without which it becomes unintelligible. The setting of boundaries must be dialectical and flexible. It cannot be based on the crude external data of the isolated object. (Bakhtin and Medvedev 1991: 77)
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By this statement I take the Bakhtin Circle to mean that method cannot be defined in granite as a set of pre-established points to follow. The starting point of analysis can only be based upon detailed examination of the object in question within a ‘historical and concrete totality’. We cannot therefore prejudge how the social world is structured (e.g. that ‘agency’ is combined with ‘structure’ through invariant connections) by the sort of transcendental method developed by scientific, or critical, realists. Rather, the Bakhtin Circle caution us to explore how each object is a historically unique social form that internalises through historically social relations at different levels of abstraction. Hence, the reason why method must be ‘flexible’. In saying all of this, the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle would not reject out of hand all of the insights developed by critical realists. Indeed, they would no doubt agree with the ‘early Bhaskar’ of A Realist Theory of Science that the natural and social world exists independently of human thought. However, where the materialist accents in the Bakhtin Circle would differ from the ‘later Bhaskar’, and indeed would no doubt differ from most present day critical realists, is in the belief that any explanation of the social world should, of necessity, give equal explanatory weight to the ‘structures’ evident in the intransitive domain and the ‘agency’ evident in the transitive domain. Such a view would entail developing a ‘symmetrical’ view of the social world in which social structures are seen as being ontologically distinct to human agency while, at the same time, believing both interact with one another in ‘open systems’. From a materialist perspective this is a self-contradictory and self-defeating position because it would entail viewing and not viewing social structures within the remit of social life in general (Woodiwiss 2001: 18). This is not to deny the relevance of human agency in affecting the world in complex ways. But it is to suggest that human agency is a specific form of the material world and is therefore in no way a distinct ontological entity to that of the material world. In the next section I develop this argument. I argue that the materialist accents in the Bakhtin Circle construct a discourse theory that can help us understand the inner systematic logic of the historical materiality of specific social relations. However, it should also be borne in mind that the materialists really only ever make tentative suggestions as to how this dialectical method might be operationalised within a specific system such as capitalism. In many respects their insights stayed at the more metatheoretical level of historical materialism. Thus, to make their discourse theory applicable for a critique of the social relations that are today globally dominant would imply embedding their insights more firmly with a Marxist critique of capitalist social forms. Even though I have tried to undertake this task elsewhere (Roberts 2003), I do not have the space to pursue this here. Rather, my discussion below should be read as providing signs as to how such a task might proceed.
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Materialist accents in the Bakhtin Circle In The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship Bakhtin and Medvedev maintain that dualist ways of thinking about the world are indebted to a bourgeois outlook. They say: Bourgeois scholarship sets ideological meaning which has been abstracted from concrete material against the individual consciousness of the creator or perceiver. The complex social connections of the material environment are replaced by an invented connection between the individual consciousness and the opposing meaning. (Bakhtin and Medvedev 1991: 7) According to this view, ‘bourgeois scholarship’ disconnects concrete, ideological material from human interaction. In place of interconnections and mediations between the two, bourgeois scholars explore ‘structures’ and ‘agents’ as distinct entities in their own right. The foundation for this form of bourgeois ideology is, Bakhtin and Medvedev rightly argue following Marx, the fetishism of commodities (Bakhtin and Medvedev 1991: 151). In Capital, Vol. 1, Marx (1988) insists that the uniqueness of capitalism is based within ‘metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties’. Under capitalism, continues Marx, human relationships are defined through ‘things’. There exists a compulsion within capitalism whereby all concrete human labour gains value only if it conforms to the socially necessary labour time (SNLT) it takes to produce a commodity. If commodity exchange is to proceed, labour must thereby alienate its very own existence by reducing itself to an abstract, ‘atomised’ entity. Alienation is accentuated with the development of money acting as the universal equivalent of exchange. For money, as universal exchange, appears as the main beneficiary of value and as thus the appearance of an abstract universal law. Commodities now appear as a concrete ‘thing’ and seem to lose the ability to obtain value in their own right. The commodity fetish therefore encourages us to view the world through a division based upon the exchange of concrete materials between individuals (agency) which is mediated through abstract ‘things’ like money (structures). Following Marx, Voloshinov observes that discourse objectified within this fetishistic process is ‘alien’ to those who use it. It is alien in the sense that it is abstracted away from the specific ideological totality of capitalism and is thus seen to obtain ‘an isolated, historical existence of its own’ (Voloshinov 1973: 79). In place of understanding the complex historical mediations between a ‘concrete whole’, alienated approaches to discourse and language explore words and utterances as ‘a ready-made and handed-down body of authoritative thought’ (Voloshinov 1973: 78). As a result, words are detached from a living language determined within a historical whole (see also Collins 1999: 38; McNally 2001: 111–112).
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But what advice do the materialist members of the Bakhtin Circle give about how to overcome the fetish of language? At a meta-theoretical level they recommend that we pursue a ‘monist’ approach to the social world (see Medvedev 1988: 69). Now, a monist theory can obviously be either (1) idealist (e.g. the world assumes various forms of God’s image) or (2) materialist (e.g. the world assumes various forms of matter). But a monist theory can also be either (3) reductionist (e.g. forms of the world can be reduced unproblematically to a determining point of reference) or (4) nonreductionist (e.g. forms of the world have their own unique properties which are certainly determined by a point of reference though not reducible to it). A monist theory can also endorse either (5) a reflection theory (the form and content of an object reflects the determining point of reference in such a way that the risk of reductionism is a strong possibility) or (6) a refraction theory (the form and content of an object refracts the form and content of a determining point of reference in such a way that the risk of reductionism is a weak possibility). Finally, it could be said that a monist theory is (7) non-historical (the connections between objects resides at a trans-historical level of abstraction) or (8) historical (the connections between objects reside within the historical and logical limits of a specific set of social relations). Even though this list is not exhaustive it does open up a space through which to explore the monist discourse theory of the Bakhtin Circle. I argue that this monism can be said to be situated within points (2), (4), (6) and (8) and that this perspective enables the materialists within the Bakhtin Circle to develop a sophisticated Marxist discourse theory. To begin the discussion of point (2), I start, first, with Marx. This is because the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle follow Marx’s belief that reality, including consciousness, is material in nature. Marx, with Engels, makes this clear when he writes: From the start the ‘spirit’ is afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists personally for me personally as well . . . Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of nature . . . On the other hand, man’s consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all. (Marx and Engels 1994: 50–51) Through labour we apprehend the world and transform this apprehension into forms of consciousness and language. This provides us with
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a basis to establish further co-operative relationships with others. Consciousness thus obtains a material form and, in turn, impacts upon the objective world, i.e. consciousness is a form of the material world. Seen in this way the relationship between thought and reality is a dynamic, ever changing, one. The Marxists in the Bakhtin Circle defend, I would argue, this dynamic type of materialist monism, but do so by adding an important discursive element which is undeveloped in Marx. Voloshinov makes the point, for example, that: Consciousness cannot be derived directly from nature, as has been and still is being attempted by naïve mechanistic materialism and contemporary objective psychology . . . Consciousness takes shape and being in the material of signs created by an organized group in the process of its social intercourse. The individual consciousness is nurtured on signs; it derives its growth from them; it reflects their logic and law. (Voloshinov 1973: 13) Consciousness, for Voloshinov, is embedded within a multitude of objective material signs that mediate consciousness in concrete life. But Voloshinov also maintains that signs are determined by forms of labouring activity (socio-economic relations) which, in turn, react upon other social forms of life and vice versa. And it is here that we come to the endorsement of points (4) and (6) by the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle. For it is in no way part of their argument to say that the social world can be reduced to socio-economic relations. Rejecting a ‘mechanical causality’ that reduces social life to the dictates of the socio-economic base, the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle insist, to the contrary, that each ideological domain is a historical and unified whole in its own right that nevertheless refracts the determinations of socio-economic relations. Thus, changes in an ideological form may prove problematic for the reproduction of socio-economic relations. ‘Therefore any explanation must preserve all the qualitative differences between interacting domains and must trace all the various stages through which change travels’ (Voloshinov 1973: 18). In saying all of this it could be the case that a type of reductionism creeps in to the extent that changes in the form and content of different ideological domains are only explored insofar that they are conceived as reflections of socio-economic conditions. Yet, as I have emphasised, changes within socio-economic relations and changes in the form and content of an object is a mediated process that involves many ideological domains. As such it would be truer to say along with Bakhtin and Medvedev (1991: 16 ff.) and Voloshinov (1973: 23), and to a lesser extent Bakhtin (1981: 326), that each ideological domain obtains the status of a refracted social form of socio-economic relations (see also Roberts 2002).
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Bakhtin and Medvedev usefully develop the notion of refraction by outlining several moments through which we should abstract an object. • •
•
•
Isolate a material object as a ‘refraction’ (internalisation) of a concrete totality (Bakhtin and Medvedev 1991: 7). Abstract the mediations of the form and content of this refraction at various levels through the determining contradiction(s) evident within socio-economic relations. Thus the ideological specificity of contradictions and determinations of a particular object can begin to be grasped through determining contradictions and determinations embedded within socio-economic relations (Bakhtin and Medvedev 1991: 3). Understand how an object exists in a wider social field within which it shares a number of common elements with other concrete objects. Each social field necessarily provides a means of ideologically mediating an object in respect to 1) the characteristic form and content of organised ideological material and 2) the characteristic form and content of social discourse by which this meaning is realised (Bakhtin and Medvedev 1991: 9). For example, a novel is mediated through the social field of literature. Analyse how different forms of ‘social relations’ interact with the object in question and its related social field. Here we discover a constant process of dialectical regeneration, contradiction and conflict between different ideological forms (see Bakhtin and Medvedev 1991: 14). For example literature is mediated through the print media, the public sphere, ‘literary taste’, and so on.
By outlining a refraction theory, the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle thereby lessen the possibility of reductionism and dualism because they demand that we trace the internal, contradictory and historical mediations unique to a particular concrete form. In this respect, the materialist accents in the Bakhtin Circle suggest that discursive method must isolate a ‘contradictory unit’ of analysis that contains an interconnected contradictory ‘developed whole’ within itself. Two points need to be made here. First, the Bakhtin Circle are using the word ‘contradiction’ in a systematic dialectical sense to the extent that they believe that a particular system like capitalism is structured by essential and internal oppositions that must necessarily be resolved into higher more complex contradictory forms. Second, systematic dialectical method encourages us to situate analysis within the specific and internal mediations of a particular system. Unlike similar methods of abstraction, such as that developed within critical realism, systematic dialectical method always seeks to explore and understand the interconnected contradictions of a particular system existing at various levels of abstraction within the limits of the system itself (see Roberts 2001b; see also Collins 1999: 38–40).
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But the Bakhtin Circle also highlight an important dimension to this systematic dialectical method which is often overlooked by Marxists. While it is possible to systematically abstract a determining contradiction unique to an object (a contradictory unit of analysis), we must also be sensitive to the multitude of historical and social processes that either encourage or inhibit the qualitative transformation of an object into a new social form. These historical and social processes are not the outcome of a singular contradictory logic but represent the coexistence and interaction of a number of concrete objects, all of which bestow a specific form of existence upon an object (Bakhtin 1984: 31). Each ‘contradictory unit of analysis’ is, therefore, overdetermined by qualitative diversity at various levels. This being the case, the determining contradiction of an object can never be as abstract and as ‘pure’ as that of the commodity form. Rather, it is more ‘historical’ and ‘social’ (i.e. ‘concrete’) in appearance exactly because it is determined by a vast number of other objects and their associated contradictions. And because an object is overdetermined in this manner it is also ‘unfinalised’ in the sense that it gains identity through the constant shifting interaction with other objects (Bakhtin 1984: 167). Voloshinov extends this dialectical method to language in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language and thereby endorses point (8) of the monist theory outlined above. In order to achieve this Voloshinov must first locate the ‘contradictory unit of analysis’ associated with discourse which will represent the developed whole of historical forms of discourse. Voloshinov discovers this contradictory unit of analysis in the word. As a Marxist, Voloshinov notes that the word is the most suitable starting point for a discursive analysis of the internal relationship between ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ because it is present in each and every act of understanding. Standing as ‘the purest and most sensitive medium of social intercourse’, the word is a ‘neutral’ sign to the extent that it can transform its ideological allegiance across a whole spectrum of ideological fields such as science, art, religion, politics and so forth. A word, therefore, is a crucial medium for the ideological organisation of social life. ‘On the one side, it links up directly with the processes of production; on the other, it is tangent to the spheres of the various specialised and fully fledged ideologies’ (Voloshinov 1973: 14). This makes the word the essential ingredient for all ideological forms. ‘The word is the ideological phenomenon par excellence’ (Voloshinov 1973: 13). Part of the ideological status of a word for Voloshinov is its relationship to time. A word is the most ‘sensitive index of social changes’. A word represents: the medium in which occur the slow quantitative accretions of those changes which have not yet achieved the status of a new ideological quality, not yet produced a new and fully-fledged ideological form. The word has the capacity to register all the transitory, delicate, momentary phases of social change. (Voloshinov 1973: 19)
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Thus, for Voloshinov, each word contains an ‘inner dialectical quality’. This dialectical quality relates to the manner in which a word refracts the contradictory and conflict-ridden nature of the world. This can be appreciated on two levels. First, a word is the property of a community of speakers and so refracts any conflicts evident within that community. Second, a word stands as relatively autonomous units of life that can be appropriated by a wide variety of social groups in different contexts. After all, ‘class does not coincide with the sign community . . . The various different classes will use one and the same language’ (Voloshinov 1973: 23). The word thereby delineates the simplest expression of both concrete and abstract discourse. This refracted inner dialectical quality implies that the word is also an utterance composed of particular ‘accents’. Accents carry with them evaluative expressions which establish hierarchical relationships between speaker and listener in particular contexts. The potential for specific ideological conflict is therefore embedded within the very form of the word. Consequently, the utterance represents the ‘generative’ moment of speech because it denotes the ‘real units that make up the stream of languagespeech’ (Voloshinov 1973: 96). That is to say, utterances render explicit the dialogic relationship between speaker and listener as well as the evaluational rank in which dialogue between participants is embedded. Yet, this special property of utterances is already contained within a single word. But the Bakhtin Circle also makes it clear that utterances must contain meanings and themes if dialogue is to ensue between participants. The theme of an utterance refers to the unitary significance of an utterance. Theme is ‘the concrete, historical situation that engendered the utterance’ (Voloshinov 1973: 99). To understand the theme of an utterance is to also understand something about the historical instant to which the utterance belongs. Theme cannot, therefore, be reproduced to other contexts. Meaning, on the other hand, refers to reproduction of a theme within a variety of dialogic contexts. One word can, therefore, have a number of meanings but only one theme. The bourgeois idea that meaning enjoys a relatively stable existence – that meaning is, in effect, encapsulated within ‘a dictionary word’ – effectively mystifies the historically unique theme through which it is embedded. Thus theme and meaning are dialectically related. And by understanding this dialectical relationship we begin to gain an insight into the unique forms of specific speech performance and speech genre (Voloshinov 1973: 20). Speech performance refers to everyday interaction of ‘unofficial discussions, exchanges of opinion at the theatre or a concert or at various types of social gatherings, etc.’. Speech genre, on the other hand, is ‘a typical form of utterance’ that is embedded within ‘a certain typical kind of expression’ (Bakhtin 1987: 87; see also Voloshinov 1973: 20). What Bakhtin means here is that there are characteristic themes which emerge in similar social contexts ‘and, consequently, also to particular contacts between the meanings of words and actual concrete reality under certain typical circumstances’ (Bakhtin 1987: 87; see also Voloshinov 1973: 97). Importantly, the
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materialist accents in the Bakhtin Circle argue that the themes and meanings mediated through speech performances and speech genres internalise factors like ‘the title, class, rank, wealth, social importance, and age of the addressee and the relative position of the speaker’ (Bakhtin 1986: 96). In other words, the contradictory claims encapsulated within a single word become embedded within wider power relations evident both in society and within a specific social context. Even though Voloshinov highlights the plural meanings associated with utterances, he goes beyond a weak constructionism by developing a normative standpoint with which to assess these meanings. For Voloshinov, the most insidious ideas are those linked with ruling-class ideas. In particular, he is critical of those who develop an ‘abstract objectivist’ approach to the study of language. This approach views language as comprising the ‘isolated, finished, monologic utterance, divorced from its verbal and actual context and standing open not to any sort of active response but to passive understanding on the part of a philologist’ (Voloshinov 1973: 73). Just as commodity fetishism for Marx represented the dominance of abstract, alienated and dead labour over living labour, so the monologic utterance represents the dominance of abstract, alienated and dead language over the inner dialectical quality of utterances. The use of the word ‘monologic’ is similar in this respect to Bakhtin’s use of the term monoglossia in ‘Discourse in the Novel’. Monoglossia refers to a dominant group’s attempt to impart a unified meaning upon the lived experience of subordinate groups. The world is to be viewed through the dominant group’s own prism and language must be rendered uni-accentual. Thus, monoglossia refers to the imposition of linguistic unification against centrifugal forces or heteroglossia. The latter strives to cement together heteroglossic socio-ideological locations which might otherwise be alive to the sound of conflict. Dialogically related speech practices collide in a tapestry of linguistic artistry whereby different groups struggle to assert their relative positions. Unitary language constitutes the theoretical expression of the historical processes of linguistic unification and centralisation, an expression of the centripetal forces of language. A unitary language is not something which is given (dan) but is always in essence posited (zadam). (Bakhtin 1981: 270) Heteroglossia is achieved through constant negotiation during a distinct historical period. The reason for this requirement is clear. Language enables self-reflection and the formation of a self-critical consciousness. Utterances imply evaluation and evaluation denotes the potential for dialogism about the fetishistic and alienated world of capitalism. Heteroglossia is, thus, the constant discursive means under capitalism of rendering visible the mediated totality of monologic fetishism:
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(A)t any given moment of its historical existence, language is heteroglot from top to bottom: it represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present . . . all given bodily form. These ‘languages’ of heteroglossia intersect each other in a variety of ways, forming new socially typifying ‘languages’. (Bakhtin 1981: 291) In order to quell the thirst for antagonism, monoglossia must penetrate the ‘languages’ of heteroglossia and resonate an internally persuasive agenda. By linking Bakhtin’s observations here with those of Voloshinov we can say that monoglossia is at its most powerful when it articulates ‘alienated’ discourse. This is the moment when: The ruling-class strives to impart a supraclass, eternal character to the ideological sign, to extinguish or drive inward the struggle between social value judgements which occurs in it, to make the sign uniaccentual. (Voloshinov 1973: 23) For the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle, therefore, monologic discourse is discourse founded upon an ‘unmediated seriousness’ (Bakhtin 1981: 312). This is a form of discourse that seeks to order dialogue about alien language through what might be termed as the bourgeois predilection for ‘disinterested’ utterances. These utterances mystify underlying contradictory mediations rooted within struggles around the determining power of the heteroglossia of alienated labour. Thus, just as for Marx alienated labour power represents the determining moment of capitalist social relations, we might say that for the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle heteroglossia represents the determining moment of discourse of capitalist social relations. By dialectically unfolding the utterance still further into monoglossia and heteroglossia we retain a critical theory of ideology that overcomes some of the more trenchant criticisms of Bakhtin. For example, it is frequently said that Bakhtin works with a simplistic opposition between heteroglossia and monoglossia, with the former signifying a liberatory pluralism, the latter signifying a stultifying ideological unity (Crowley 1996: 41). On the materialist account developed here, however, dominant ideology is restricted to alien language (the dominance of dead language over living language) that serves to mystify determining contradictions of capitalist social relations. As such, not every ruling-class discourse constitutes ideology. Moreover, the relationship between heteroglossia and monoglossia is a dialectical one rather than a dualist one. The conflict between both is ‘a constant struggle of accents’ (Voloshinov 1973: 106) found at various levels of abstraction. This being the case the unmediated seriousness of monoglossia comes up against its own limits through the constant interruption of ‘carnivalesque’ heteroglossic accents seeking to turn monoglossia the right way round
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(Bakhtin 1984; see also Stam 1988; Wall and Thomson 1993). Occasionally a qualitative rupture evolves in this constant struggle whereby ruling class utterances are publicly challenged and subverted by heteroglossia at a higher social level (e.g. by a number of social groups within a geographical region or number of regions). During relatively more stable moments, however, a dominant ideology tries to stabilise heteroglossia – ‘so accentuating yesterday’s truth as to make it appear today’s’ (Voloshinov 1973: 24).
Conclusion In this chapter I have tried to demonstrate that there is no one ‘true’ theoretical reading of Bakhtin Circle members. Weak social constructionist, critical realist and Marxist materialist readings are all legitimate ones to make. Moreover, I have rejected a rather simplistic and contrived separation between an early ‘constructionist’ Bakhtin Circle and a later more materialist and realist one. From my reading of the Bakhtin Circle, weak social constructionism, critical realism and Marxist materialism could be applied to most of their essays or books (albeit in some cases with a bit more effort than in others). Those who attempt to derive one ‘true’ Bakhtin Circle operate in a very non-Bakhtinian manner. This chapter has, therefore, been less concerned about whether Bakhtin authored a book that in fact has Voloshinov’s name on the front cover. Instead, the chapter has been guided by the question: which school of thought adhered to by the different accents in the Bakhtin Circle can provide the best means of developing a critical reflection upon the world demanded by dialogism? By ensuring that the three groups identified remain in dialogue with one another, I have tried to open up a space in Bakhtinian studies for dialogism to emerge around the limitations of particular accents in the Bakhtin Circle. Such a standpoint has also enabled me to develop one particular reading, a Marxist one, that draws upon distinct accents in the Bakhtin Circle’s output. The advantage of a Marxist position is that it forces us to focus upon ‘the whole of the utterance’ of everyday discourse. When speaking of ‘the whole utterance’ the Bakhtin Circle is alluding to the methodological task of tracing this process of mediation within an interconnecting totality and through a determining moment. In this respect they are more careful than other approaches in defining the specific properties of a particular methodological system. Whereas other discourse approaches start by describing the ‘parts’ that make up their respective methodological approach, and then go on to describe how these parts can be directly applied to specific contexts, the materialists in the Bakhtin Circle stay at a relatively high level of abstraction and insist that an analysis of the refracted ideological peculiarities of a specific context would require further empirical and theoretical work.
Note 1
I would like to thank Chik Collins, Jonathan Joseph and Kevin Yelvington for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Thanks also to Howard
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Engelskirchen for email correspondence on many of the issues touched upon here. As much as I would like to avoid blame, any errors and mistakes are of my own doing.
Bibliography Bakhtin, M. M. (1984) Rabelais and His World, trans. by H. Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —— (1981) ‘Discourse in the Novel’ in M. M. Bakhtin The Dialogic Imagination, trans. by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. —— (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. —— (1987) ‘The Problem of Speech Genres’ in M. M. Bakhtin Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. by V. W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press. —— (1990) ‘Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity’ in M. M. Bakhtin, Art and Answerability, trans. by V. Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press. —— and Medvedev, P. N. (1991) The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. by A. J. Wehrle. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bell, M. M. (1998) ‘Culture as Dialogue’ in M. M. Bell and M. Gardiner (eds), Bakhtin and the Human Sciences, London: Sage. Bernard-Donals, M. F. (1994) Mikhail Bakhtin: Between Phenomenology and Marxism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bhaskar, R. (1975) A Realist Theory of Science. London: Verso. —— (1989) Reclaiming Reality, London: Verso. Billig, M. (1991) Ideology and Opinions. London: Sage. Burke, P. (1988) ‘Bakhtin for Historians’. Social History 13 (1): 85–90. Collins, C. (1999) Language, Ideology and Consciousness: Developing a Sociohistorical Approach. Aldershot: Ashgate. Clark, K. and Holquist, M. (1985) Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Cosslett, T. (1996) ‘Feminism, Matrilinealism, and the “House of Women” in Contemporary Women’s Fiction’. Journal of Gender Studies 5 (1): 7–17. Crowley, T. (1996) Language in History: Theories and Texts. London: Routledge. Dickens, P. (1996) Reconstructing Nature: Alienation, Emancipation and the Division of Labour. London: Routledge. Dittmar, H. (1992) The Social Psychology of Material Possession. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Gardiner, M. (1992) The Dialogics of Critique: M. M. Bakhtin and the Theory of Ideology. London: Routledge. —— (1993) ‘Bakhtin’s Carnival: Utopia as Critique’. Critical Studies 3 (2–4): 1–2, 20–47. Gregson, N. and Crewe, L. (1997) ‘The Bargain, the Knowledge, and the Spectacle: Making Sense of Consumption in the Space of the Car-Boot Sale’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15: 87–112. Hirschkop, K. (1986) ‘Bakhtin, Discourse, Democracy’. New Left Review 160: 92–113. —— (1992) ‘Is Dialogue for Real?’ Social Text 30: 102–113. —— (1999) Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— and Shepard, D. (eds) (1989) Bakhtin and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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Hitchcock, P. (1998) ‘The Grostesque of the Body Electric’ in M. Mayerfeld and M. Gardiner (eds) Bakhtin and the Human Sciences. London: Sage. Hodge, R. and Kress, G. (1988) Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity. Holquist, M. (1989) ‘Bakhtin and the Body’. Critical Studies 1, 2: 19–42. Keat, R. and Urry, J. (1982) Social Theory as Science, 2nd edition. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Kress, G. (1989) Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural Practices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kress, G. and Threadgold, T. (1988) ‘Towards a Social Theory of Genre’. Southern Review 21 (3): 215–329. Marx, K. (1988) Capital, Vol. 1. London: Penguin. —— and Engels, F. (1994) The German Ideology, ed. by C. J. Arthur. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Matejka, L. and Titunik, I. R. (1973) ‘Translators Preface’ in V. N. Voloshinov Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar Press. McNally, D. (2001) Bodies of Meaning: Studies on Language, Labor and Liberation. New York: SUNY. Medvedev, P. N. (1988) ‘Sociologism Without Sociology (On the Methodological Works of P. N. Sakulin)’ in A. Shukman (ed.) Bakhtin School Papers. Oxford: RPT Publications. Outhwaite, W. (1987) New Philosophies of Social Science. New Jersey: Humanities Press International. Roberts, J. M. (1999) ‘Marxism and Critical Realism: The Same, Similar or Just Plain Different?’ Capital and Class No. 68: 21–49. —— (2001a) ‘Spatial Governance and Working Class Public Spheres: The Case of a Chartist Demonstration at Hyde Park’. Journal of Historical Sociology 14 (3): 308–336. —— (2001b) ‘Critical Realism and the Dialectic’, British Journal of Sociology 52 (4): 667–685. —— (2002) ‘From Reflection to Refraction: Opening Up Open Marxism’. Capital and Class No. 78 Autumn: 87–116. —— (2003) The Aesthetics of Free Speech. London: Palgrave. —— (2004) ‘John Stuart Mill, Free Speech and the Public Sphere: A Bakhtinian Critique’ in N. Crossley and J. M. Roberts (eds) After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere. Oxford: Blackwell. Sayer, A. (2000) Realism and Social Science. London: Sage. Shotter, J. (1993) Cultural Politics of Everyday Life. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Shukman, A. (1988) ‘Introduction’ in A. Shukman (ed.) Bakhtin School Papers. Oxford: RPT Publications. Stam, R. (1988) ‘Mikhail Bakhtin and Left Cultural Critique’ in E. A. Kaplan (ed.) Postmodernism and its Discontents. London: Verso. Stones, R. (1996) Sociological Reasoning: Towards a Post-Modern Sociology, London: Macmillan. Vice, S. (1997) Introducing Bakhtin. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Voloshinov, V. N. (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. L. Matejka and I. R. Titunik. New York: Seminar Press. —— (1988) ‘Discourse in Life and Discourse in Poetry’ in A. Shukman (ed.) Bakhtin School Papers. Oxford: RPT Publications. Wall, A. and Thomson, C. (1993) ‘Cleaning Up Bakhtin’s Carnival Act’. Diacritics 23 (2): 47–99. Woodiwiss, A. (2001) The Visual in Social Theory. London: Athlone Press.
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6
Value and contract formation Howard Engelskirchen
Introduction This chapter explores the relationship between value and contract formation – in effect it is an extended reflection on the first paragraph of ‘Exchange’ in Book 1 of Capital (Marx 1887/1967: 84–5). The investigation shows that a textbook rule of contract formation in Anglo-American law may be derived from Marx’s analysis of value. If the result is significant, this is for two reasons. First, the nature of what is explained is important. Remarkably, within the Marxist tradition there are few examples analysing specific rules of law. Those examples that do exist rarely go beyond considerations of policy or interest, the immediate or surface forms in which competing classes struggle over legislation and judicial opinions. But there has been little effort to show the way the inner structure of a mode of production shapes decisive forms of legal life. Grasp of Marx’s proposal that the economic base is the key to understanding the legal superstructure has suffered accordingly. Second, the method used to generate explanation may claim attention. On the one hand, I draw on the work of Voloshinov to show that communications forming contractual bargains, and the forms of consciousness presupposed by them, are generated by identifiable conditions of social life: these communicative performances derive from the imperatives of the social reproduction of the product in the commodity form. Also I show that the long standing puzzle of enforceable promise depends for its resolution not only on understanding the cycle of commodity reproduction, but also on understanding how the behaviour required functions semiotically – consideration, the technical requirement for an enforceable promise, is a sign. In addition, I read Marx as a realist doing social science. For too long, too many Marxisms have assumed that if Marx was doing science it must be positivist and employ a Humean concept of cause. Instead, recent advances in the philosophy of science have restored attention to the realist tradition to which Marx belonged (for example, Bhaskar 1978/1997; Harré 1988; Harré and Madden 1975; Keat and Urry 1975). Rather than
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understanding cause as a conjunction of atomistic events whereby an antecedent event is regularly associated with its consequent, Marx understood cause as generative and drew an ontological distinction between structures of nature or society with causal powers and the patterns of events they generated. Against this background, the value relation may be studied as a causally efficacious social structure capable of generating significant phenomena of social life.
The method of political economy Thus, it is from a perspective of what may be called depth realism that I read Marx’s notes on method in the Introduction to the first draft of Capital, the well-known ‘Method of Political Economy’. I cannot rehearse here a full exposition of this text or the corresponding justification of my understanding of Marx’s method, but a brief overview is necessary for orientation. Here is the familiar passage: It seems to be correct to begin with the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to begin, in economics, with e.g. the population, which is the foundation and the subject of the entire social act of production. However, on closer examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest. E.g. wage labour, capital, etc. These latter in turn presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is nothing without wage labour, without value, money, price etc. Thus, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception [Vorstellung] of the whole, and I would then, by means of further determination, move analytically towards ever more simple concepts [Begriff], from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations. . . . The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought. (Marx 1858/1973: 100–01)
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The text proposes a move from observed reality as a point of departure to the same phenomenal reality as a result – we travel a roundtrip ticket ending back where we started. But there is a difference. Like many a journey, we are transformed and do not see things as before on our return. On our return, the concrete is concrete not only in the sense that we can see or hear or taste or touch or smell; it is concrete also because we understand, fallibly, how it works and how it behaves. Reality is now not only subject to observation, but also to explanation. And because the world is now a world we understand, it is also one that we can consciously change. Our understanding is transformed because we have made a journey in depth from a level of surface appearances to an underlying reality of social structures with generative powers. These structures, which we arrive at by thinner and thinner abstractions, are the ‘simplest determinations’ of social life. Social knowing turns on our analysis of them. Beginning with these categories we are able to trace how social phenomena come into being. In so doing we reconstruct the concrete in thought as a complex of determinations we can explain. Because of the importance of such categories of simple determination I do want to devote some time to explaining what I understand their essential features to be. But first let me make explicit my point of departure.
‘Consideration’ – a point of departure The world of phenomena with which I start is the world of law – judicial decisions, behaviours shaped by law, rules, legal regulations and so on. In this particular instance I take the rules by which contracts are formed in Anglo-American law. Although the core of contract formation, a legal doctrine called ‘consideration’ has existed in pretty much the same form for about 400 years – a late sixteenth-century London lawyer transported to a first year contracts classroom in New York today would recognise the rule without strain – the doctrine has never received satisfactory theoretical explanation. A century ago the legal historian Sir Frederick Pollock called the problem posed by consideration ‘a secret paradox of the common law’ (Pollock 1914: 129). Within recent years an American legal scholar said the problem remains ‘an unsolved mystery’ (Gordon 1990: 1002). The consequences for contemporary legal scholarship have been interesting. For the most part academic lawyers would like to see the problem go away. Because they can’t explain the puzzle, much energy has been devoted to showing the doctrine is senseless and unnecessary and ought to be abandoned (Ashley 1913; Gordon 1991; Pound 1945). The difficulty is, judges continue to apply it (Wessman 1993). The rule and its mystery may be pretty simply stated. People enter contracts by promising one another. Enforcing contracts then means enforcing promises. The fundamental question for contract formation is to know what promises the law will enforce. In Anglo-American law a
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promise becomes enforceable when consideration is given for it. Traditionally, consideration has been understood as something given in exchange for a promise (Williston 1894: 33). Recall Adam Smith’s explanation of bargain: ‘Give me that which I want, and you shall have that which you want’ (Smith 1776/1994: 15). In order to enforce my promise to give you that which you want, you have to show that you gave or promised to give me that which I want. The act or promise committing you to give what I’m after is consideration. Now this seems simple enough, but there is a problem. By the end of the sixteenth century it was acknowledged that courts would enforce an exchange of promises (Barton 1969: 889). Actually this step represents a not so well known world historic advance in human culture. Roman law would enforce particular categories of promises, say, sale, or it would enforce promises using particular verbal formulas, but Roman jurisprudence never developed a general theory for the enforcement of promises (Watson 1991: 53–68). That is, in Rome it was never the case that promises could be enforced simply because they had been exchanged. But this happened in England in the sixteenth century. Regardless of form or subject matter (assuming the subject of the contract was not illegal) if two persons exchanged promises, this justified enforcement. The reason English common lawyers were able to accomplish what Roman jurisprudes never could depends on the analysis on which we are embarked. If in fact rules of contract formation depend on the value relation, then the flowering of commodity production in the early modern period provides the answer. For now the point I want to fix is that from an early period lawyers and judges understood that one promise could be consideration for another. This was fine as a practical matter, but a theoretical problem was posed: giving consideration is a way we decide which promises are enforceable. Courts will enforce a promise you made to me if I gave consideration for it. If I sought to enforce a promise you made, a court would ask whether I gave or promised to give the thing you wanted of me. Well, I might say, I delivered to her the chairs she promised to pay me for, but she hasn’t paid. Giving the chairs would constitute consideration and the promise of payment would be enforced. But what if I said, I promised to give her the chairs and she promised to pay me for them, but she won’t pay as agreed. What have I actually given now? If one were tempted to say that I’ve in effect given the chairs because I’ve promised to give them and my promise can be enforced, we have just reasoned in a circle. We are trying to decide whether the promise of another is enforceable. In order to establish this we’ve assumed my promise is enforceable. But why do we make that assumption? My promise must be enforceable because the other has given consideration for it. But the other has given a promise as well. So we would have to assume that the other’s promise is enforceable if it is to count as consideration in order to establish that my promise was enforceable. And there we are. Where
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promises are exchanged we assume the enforceability of one promise to establish the enforceability of another. Hence the secret paradox of the common law. The explanation of no less fundamental a problem than the theory of contract formation turns on question begging. In fact Corbin, the foremost English-speaking scholar of contracts in the twentieth century, gave up trying to explain. He concluded: Is it shocking to put a definition or rule of law in such a naked form as to show that it completely begs the question? It should not be so; for what often seems to be our favorite method of legal argument is to beg the question in complicated and repetitious terms. It should console us for our frailty that a conclusion is not necessarily wrong because it was arrived at by merely assuming or asserting it – by begging the question. (Corbin 1963: 492) Consoling, perhaps, but not a recipe for science. I am going to show that the social relation of value, considered as a category of simple determination, can resolve this puzzle. Why start with value? Briefly, we can ask, retroductively, what is presupposed by the existence of the doctrine of consideration. Plainly the state of affairs presupposed includes promises because consideration is a way of distinguishing between enforceable and unenforceable promises. But as we have seen, promises have not always played the same role in social life. Rome never developed a general theory of promises; in fact the kind of practical and philosophical reflection on promising that so readily engages us today effectively begins with Hobbes and Hume. Legal rules for the general enforcement of promises develop at roughly the same period. That is, the phenomenon of a general obligation to enforce promises emerged only in conjunction with a market economy developed to the point where the general circulation of goods and services in the commodity form was becoming the basis for production. No doubt promising has existed throughout history, but the promises presupposed by the doctrine of consideration are of a historically specific character. The world of promises to which they correspond is one that presupposes private production for market exchange. Understanding consideration, therefore, may plausibly start with the analysis of value.
The nature of the categories of simple determination I want to analyse the value relation as a category of ‘simple determination’ of the sort suggested by the Method of Political Economy, and show, starting from that foundation, how it generates the rules of consideration. What features, then, characterise categories of simple determination?
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The method sketched in Marx’s text proposes to arrive at simpler and simpler determinations by means of progressively ‘thinner’ abstractions. Importantly, the word ‘abstraction’ is not meant here in the sense that the concept of ‘steel’ is concrete because you can touch the thing it refers to but the concept of ‘hard’ is abstract because taken alone the word brings nothing specific to mind. Instead, abstraction is used as a means to identify different generative mechanisms of social life taken in isolation from others. A natural scientist can often isolate different causal mechanisms by effective experimental design. I watch a snowflake fall. It meanders, influenced by gravity, wind, its shape, moisture content and so forth. But a physicist can isolate the influence of gravity on falling things by allowing a feather, for example, to fall in a vacuum. Comparably, in social life we use abstraction to ignore distracting elements and in order to focus on less complicated features, features that play an ever more decisive role in accounting for social phenomena. Marx’s objective is to discover the economic laws of motion of modern society (Marx 1887/1967: 10). Ultimately, in the hurly burly of everyday life these intersect in a complicated jumble of events. By means of thinner and thinner abstractions we reduce this jumble to fewer and fewer structures of determination. Consider the following from a draft of Capital: ‘. . . in its totality (wholeness) (or considered completely) (or in its completeness) the movement of capital is a unity of the process of production and the process of circulation’ (Marx 1992: 69). It is not possible to grasp capital’s motion if we look for connection in the undigested and chaotic way the unity of production and circulation first presents itself to us. Instead, we abstract from their unity to consider the thinner abstraction of production alone. From there (and with a multitude of intermediate steps omitted) we abstract from production considered as a whole to the process of simple reproduction. From simple reproduction (again omitting intermediate steps) we abstract to the division of the working day. From the division of the working day we abstract to capital’s simplest determination – the separation of the worker from the means of production. With each move we abstract to a more and more slender complex of determinations. Plainly, we must select more decisive, rather than more frivolous, determinations. If we do, as we move to simpler levels, fewer and fewer forces determining events operate and fewer features of the world present themselves for analysis. We have a better chance of understanding how the structure of powers we study tends to behave. Some of the things abstracted from, of course, are pure distractions. But we abstract also from structures of determination important in their own right, but whose study we reserve for a later stage of analysis. Marx studies the process of accumulation, for example, after first coming to understand the complex of forces determining simple reproduction. Once we abstract to the separation of the worker from the means of production, however, no thinner abstractions are possible. This is capital’s simplest determination, its decisive feature. In other words a limit is implicit
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in the process, one Marx makes explicit in the first pages of the Grundrisse ‘Introduction’. We cannot abstract from the historically specific form under which social relations appear to ‘production in general’. ‘There is no production in general’, Marx insists (1986: 23). Production always appears in a historically specific form. We can abstract to features common to all forms of production – production, for example, is always a relation of the labouring individual to nature and to others – but we can study these features only in their historical specificity. Nonetheless, the abstraction ‘production in general’ is not to be ignored. Because it identifies features shared by all modes of production it is a way in which we can identify the specificity of the object of study. Thus, production is always the appropriation of nature by labour, and any particular form of social production, any economic category, will always be a form of this. The value relation, for example, is one such form. This fixes its scientific content. But if we know only that the value relation is a form for the appropriation of nature by labour, we know nothing of how the value relation actually appears. For this we need to begin with an understanding of value as a relation of producers to nature and to each other. We can generalise these conclusions. Just as we could not understand the simple category of value without specifying its content, we can assume we will require similar precision with other such categories. In other words, we need to specify what any simple category we study is a simple category of. The value relation is a category of production. Consideration is a category of law. There is a difference. Plainly, science would be impossible unless we were able to make such distinctions. If we could not isolate gravity and identify it as such, we could not give an account of the behaviours specific to it. So this is the first point: the categories of simple determination on which social explanation turns always have a specific scientific content that must be identified. I have specified that content with respect to categories of production – it is the appropriation of nature by labour. I have not done this yet with respect to law. Second, in the letter to his friend Kugelmann discussing the method of presentation of value in Capital (Marx 1868/1965: 209), Marx emphasised that the phenomena of the world have inner structure or connection. Moreover, from the development of his presentation, we know these to be structures of contradiction. So, in specifying a category of simple determination, we want to identify the contradictions that characterise and propel the development of a thing. As we have just seen, any form of production involves a specific relation of a labouring subject to nature and to others. Thus, in characterising the value relation as a specific form of social production we want to identify the contradictions that characterise a commodity owner’s relation to nature and to others. This is the second thing. Third, Marx takes society to be an ensemble of social relations; it follows that we may expect categories of simple determination to give expression
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theoretically to particular structures of social relations. But his persistent polemics against Proudhon among others teach that our task is not simply to identify the concept of a social relation and then manipulate logically ideas of its development. In Notes on Wagner (Marx 1975) he gives an example of this. It is not a matter of taking the word value, considering use value on the one hand and exchange value on the other (because they are both labelled ‘value’), locating a contradiction in the way we think of these concepts and then proposing a logical resolution. Marx wants to investigate actual material relations and how they behave. The labouring subject is related to nature as raw material, as instrument and product. She is related to others who labour as material beings who also possess causal powers capable of transforming the world. She is related to both nature and to others through her own practical activity which is itself a material thing of energy and muscle. So, the social relations given theoretical expression in categories of simple determination are grasped in their materiality. Fourth, it is a fact about the world that material things are causally active. Thus, if we want to give an account of material social relations, it must be a causal account. The structures of social relations that are the object of inquiry are causal ensembles capable of generating the phenomenal forms of social life. It is important to recognise that tracing causal connections between the inner structure of things and the modes of their appearance is distinct from studying the historical evolution of the categories of social life. Some have suggested that the development of categories in Capital must be studied either as a matter of conceptual necessity or else as a question of quasicausal historical necessity (Arthur 1998). But this is a false dichotomy. The circulation of blood is related causally to the processes of respiration in a thousand ways. To show these causal relationships is quite different from showing the historical evolution of the heart or lungs in mammals. To show the causal tendencies that drive a mode of production is one thing, to show its historical evolution is quite a different causal inquiry. Fifth, if we distinguish between causal structures and the patterns of events they generate, we make an ontological distinction. Our categories of simple determination function at a different level of social being than the phenomenal forms under which they appear. They are at a different level of ontological depth. This does not mean we retreat to fictions. We continue to insist on the materiality of social relations. But unless we make a distinction between the appearances of things and the internal structures that account for the way they appear, science, Marx reminds us, is unnecessary. Unless we are able to grasp the value relation, for example, as a causally efficacious category at a level of ontological depth different from the category of price then, as Joan Robinson claims, value is just a word (Robinson 1962: 47). Sixth, in the Kugelmann letter just referred to, Marx observes that unless production continues society cannot. Every child knows this, he says. It
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follows that any specific social form of production, like the production of value, functions as a means of social reproduction. Thus, categories of simple determination, like value, play a role in social reproduction and are driven by the necessities of that process. This means that our study of categories of simple determination should trace these connections as connections of necessity. (Of course, the processes of social reproduction are mutable and the causal ensembles studied generate not only tendencies to reproduce social life in the same form, but also tendencies of change and transformation.)
Value as a category of simple determination What characterises value as a category of simple determination? Reviewing Capital’s presentation of value in Notes on Wagner, Marx summarised the steps in his analysis as follows: (1) He starts with a concrete fact of social life, what he characterises as the simplest economic fact given by the economy of a commodity-producing society: the product in the commodity form. (2) He analyses this form and finds it to be at once a use value and an exchange value. (3) Pushing the analysis further, he notices that exchange value is only the phenomenal form of value, that is, it is only a form under which value appears. (4) Thus, he is driven to the analysis of value and finds value as such to have its source in a specific social relation of production. Actually, where and whenever the production of value is found, the value relation can never itself give us a full picture of the form of production within which it is embedded. Because it exists in slave, feudal, capitalist or socialist societies – all characterised by very different modes of joining the direct producer to the means of production – it stands to reason that the value relationship itself will not fully explain these different social forms. The value relation does, however, tell us two things about the mode of production to which it attaches. First, it tells us that the processes of production joined by the value relation take place in isolation from one another. Each process is autonomous. Second, it tells us that the production process has produced use values that are, at least in part, useful only to others (Marx 1887/1967: 42, 72–4). That is, producers who produce commodities are autonomous from one another but, at the same time, dependent. They are reciprocally bound by the social division of labour. Notice the structure of contradiction implicit here: each producer produces a use value useless to her; though autonomous, each is completely dependent on others for the totality of her needs. This structure of contradiction, which I have called elsewhere a relation of ‘interdependent autonomy’ (Engelskirchen 1997), drives the causal ensemble that generates the phenomenal forms of value. We can only distil these essential characteristics of the value relation by considering its fully developed or ‘pure’ form (Marx 1986: 183). That is,
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we must assume that everybody produces in this way – the product of labour must always take the form of a commodity and commodity production must be the universal form of social production. This, however, occurs only when labour power is sold as a commodity; that is, we presuppose the capitalist mode of production. Summarising, the value relation may be characterised as follows: 1 2
Every unit of production produces use values independently; Every unit of production produces goods for others rather than for itself.
These are the essential elements of the simple determination of value. And to consider this social form in its full development we assume all production occurs in this way. Given this distribution of the agents of production to nature and to each other, exchange emerges necessarily. Very briefly, this occurs as follows: I am driven to market to meet my needs – it is a condition of my circumstance that I obtain what I need from others. If I don’t, I starve. The explanation for the resort to exchange, in other words, is a matter of cause as well as logic – unless I go to market I cannot reproduce the conditions of my existence. But when I go I face a problem. What is the proportion in which I should exchange the product of my labour in order to obtain products produced by others? We solve the problem practically rather than theoretically: we exchange one thing for another. In so doing we find we use the natural form of one thing to express the value of another – so and so many boxes of shoe strings will exchange for so and so many bushels of wheat. Products themselves give expression to the social form we use to distribute labour to need. This is an abbreviated account. What I want to target is the generative connection between the basic structure of the social relation that characterises value and the emergence of exchange. Also, by providing commodity owners with the things they need to reproduce the conditions of their existence, exchange reproduces the original social relation of autonomy and interdependence determining the category of value.
Generating law Now I want to show how legal relations are generated by this causal ensemble. Recall our presuppositions: everyone produces commodities independently, but they produce use values for others. Now suppose I make arrangements in London to deliver coal to you in Newcastle for so and so many pounds sterling. I can get paid in London or I can get paid in Newcastle, but in the nature of the case someone has to rely on a promise. Promises are a commitment to act in such and such a way in the future. The problem is that your self-interest tomorrow might not be what it is
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today. So I deliver the coal and you decide you’d prefer to do without it. You have other coal available to you. Because our relationship is ultimately one of mutual indifference, the trajectories of our self-interest may be different. Yesterday they were coincident, today they’re not. So you decide not to keep your promise. But now I am left with my coal and cannot reproduce the conditions of my own existence. Social reproduction under these conditions is not possible. These are all matters of material determination. Without a solution to this problem, social reproduction cannot proceed in this form. Otherwise stated, as a strictly economic relation value is unstable and could only actually exist in a very cramped and narrow form. In order to support the exchange of performance for a promise of performance, there must be a means of enforcing promises. The value relation does not of its own generate a solution here. Institutions of force used with enough regularity to become official, and to become law, are the result of the division of society into classes. For itself, the commodity relation is unstable because commodity owners relate to one another on terms of mutual indifference. But for the location of commodity owners in a structure of class division we have to look behind the commodity relation to the social form by means of which the direct producer is joined to the means of production. Once labour power is sold as a commodity, as it must if commodity production is to be the universal form of social production, then a division of society into classes is presupposed, but this is a result of capital, not the commodity relation as such. In general, in any social formation whether force will be used to develop commodity production depends on the degree to which the interests of the dominant class depend on its extension. But the significant thing for our purposes is narrower than this, namely, that as a particular historical form for the distribution of labour, the value relation, wherever it appears, generates a material need for relations of coercion, that is, law. How legal relations corresponding to it come about historically is a separate theoretical question, but it is worth noting that the emergence of the rules of contract formation in England occurred during the sixteenth century, a time when, as Ellen Meskins Wood (1998) has observed, England was more effectively centralised politically than other European regimes.
Generating consciousness Relations of consciousness are directly generated by the value form. I do not pretend to be exhaustive here, but this occurs in the following way. We have seen that under the commodity form, exchange is an integral part of the appropriation of nature to use. Now if I produce independently and self-sufficiently, I can labour without communicating with anyone. But I cannot engage in private exchange without communication. I need to
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cooperate with others. Social reproduction and the appropriation of nature in this form involve the other as co-participant. It is Voloshinov, in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, who insisted on understanding language, and, more broadly, relations of consciousness, as resulting from generative processes rooted in actual conditions of material existence: This is the order that the actual generative process of language follows: social intercourse is generated (stemming from the basis); in it verbal communication and interaction are generated; and in the latter, forms of speech performance are generated; finally, this generative process is reflected in the change of language forms. (Voloshinov 1929/1986: 96 [emphasis in original]) Understanding this process must begin with understanding how actual existence determines communication and how consciousness generated by the process reflects actual existence. Exchange provides a sharply drawn example. If the commodity form is to be reproduced, the autonomy of commodity possessors must be reproduced. A person cannot obtain what she needs by just taking it – plunder is inconsistent with the reproduction of relations of autonomy. Reproduction of value, therefore, generates relations of consciousness corresponding to the underlying material reality that characterises the value relation. Non-interference with the activities and products of another, forms in the other a consciousness that these belong to her. Further, commodity owners confront the economic fact that the goods they possess are useless to them. This forms a consciousness of the desire to obtain things they need from others. Taken together, the desire to obtain from others and the injunction on interfering with others generate consciousness of the need to appeal to the reasons of others, that is, to induce them and to cooperate with them. Each commodity owner seeks the other as a co-participant. With regard to the above, perhaps the following point should be spelled out. Of course history teaches that a world stable enough to exclude plunder requires institutions of common defence, law, etc. Should our analysis, then, start with those institutions rather than with forms of production? There are two answers to this. First, in this or that circumstance plunder or some other factor may work so that the autonomy of independent producers is not a feature of social life. Fine. Then we study some other category of social determination, not the value relation. Again, we are not for the present concerned with how value came to be. Instead, given that it does exist we want to trace how it works. As for starting with institutions of force, there is a problem. Suppose, borrowing an example suggested by Marx in Notes on Wagner (Marx 1975: 188), we are on a ship at sea. The ship’s stores are available to us. The distribution of these may be changed by force so that in this sense force can be an economic factor.
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But no matter how we rearrange deck chairs, force itself doesn’t produce anything. This takes the actual appropriation of nature by labour. It is for this reason that we start with production as the foundation of social analysis. Voloshinov argued two things: first, we must recognise how actual existence is the basis of the generative processes of communication and consciousness; second, we must recognise how forms of communication and consciousness reflect and refract actual existence. Both these are apparent in exchange. On the one hand, we see how the actual conditions of material existence create a consciousness of belonging, a consciousness of the autonomy of the other, and a consciousness of a need to cooperate with the other. At the same time, we see how these forms of consciousness not only reflect but also are essential to the reproduction of the conditions of existence that account for them. Without a consciousness of the need to induce cooperation in another, the social reproduction of value could not occur. A qualification is important. Value is obviously not the only social relation shaping consciousness. Instead, consciousness is like a playing field where many determinations interact. We may say that the dollar of a pauper is worth the same as the dollar of a king, but a king can use force to imprison the pauper. Inevitably, a consciousness of equality is at war with a consciousness of subjugation. In brief compass we have seen how both the legal and ideological superstructure are determined by the value relation. But if these are to be scientific objects in their own right, their content must be specified. We can take a cue from the example of production. Production is the appropriation of nature by labour. Nature is transformed and labour is the agent of transformation. Law often facilitates the transformation of nature by labour, but it is not immediately about this. Instead, law concerns the transformation or appropriation of behaviour and the agent of transformation is force. Thus, we may characterise law as the appropriation of behaviour by force. This is a rational abstraction of ‘law in general’ comparable to the abstraction we form of ‘production in general’. But, just as in the case of production, law only ever occurs in determined historical forms. So the study of law is the study of specific historically determined forms of legal relations regarding the appropriation of behaviour by force. Marx refers also to legal relations as relations of will (Marx 1865/1965: 151), and in this sense law necessarily includes the ideological superstructure as a component part of its being. The specificity of the ideological superstructure, Voloshinov shows, is representation or semiosis, the action of signs. By means of signs, we represent the world for ourselves and thus, he argues, consciousness is formed through our use of signs. On this analysis ideology concerns the transformation of consciousness and the agent of transformation is semiosis. This is the specificity of the ideological superstructure. But, as with the examples of law and production, we would err to suppose to study consciousness in general. We study the appropriation of consciousness by
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representation only through the study of specific historically determined social forms of it. The significance of the study of consciousness for law is as follows: powers may exist unexercised (Bhaskar 1978/1997: 229–238). That is, in consequence of the action of signs, force does not need to be exercised to be causally efficacious. Given a threat, the victim interprets the threat as a sign of what is threatened. The consequence is that persons will act under duress without actual force ever being used. Thus, behaviour can be appropriated either by relations of force or by relations of ideological representation. Suppose you want persons on the other side of a boundary. You can physically carry them and place them over the boundary, or they can interpret the communicative signs you make and move over the boundary themselves. In either case there is an appropriation of behaviour. The upshot is this. Although a threat can be efficacious without the powers on which it rests being exercised, except in the case of misunderstanding, those powers must exist if the sign is to be effective. That is, without fire there is no smoke and for that reason smoke is a sign of fire. Without the actual ability to exercise force, there is no threat. Therefore, assuming the appropriation of behaviour is not going to rest on simple persuasion, then in the last analysis there must be an ability to exercise force. In this sense law rests upon the exercise of force and it is the exercise of force that makes law law. Legal relations are coercive forms for the appropriation of behaviour. That is their specificity as objects of social science. But behaviour can be appropriated either by force being exercised directly or by representation. In either event we can speak of the appropriation of will. Whether I threaten or carry someone across a boundary, in either case I have appropriated his or her will. In ‘The Method of Political Economy’ Marx says that Hegel is right to begin the philosophy of law with ‘possession’ because this is the subject’s simplest legal relation (1986: 39). Marx begins his own philosophy of law in the introductory paragraph to the chapter on ‘Exchange’ by saying that the guardians of commodities relate to one another as persons whose will resides in their objects: ‘In order that these objects may enter into relation with each other as commodities, the guardians must place themselves in relation to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects’ (1887/1967: 84). This is the commodity possessor’s simplest legal relation – her relation to an object as one of belonging, as a thing embodying her will. But this simplest legal relation is a contradictory one. The will is a label we attach to the moment of consciousness that mediates between activity and purpose. Will disciplines activity to purpose. But the commodity owner has embodied her activity in a thing that for her has no purpose. As such the guardian of a commodity finds her will impotent to serve her own interests; instead, she needs the cooperation of another to obtain what she needs. This need is expressed in the proposal of a bargain. The other, reciprocally dependent, communicates responsively in return and
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by accepting the proposal seals their shared commitment. By mutual consent they agree to an exchange. But in the end each looks to exchange only as a means to satisfy her own ends (Marx 1986: 175). Thus, although they enter a relation of reciprocal inducement, in the last analysis they are also reciprocally indifferent to one another (Marx 1986: 94). The contradiction between cooperation and indifference expressed in this relation of wills is, in fact, the driving force of contract as a form of law. It is resolved by obligating the one to the other. By means of state power each, by entering a contract, appropriates another’s will. By law each has a right to the activity of the other, and this right is given expression in the other’s obligation in return. Each enters the contract voluntarily and in the exercise of autonomy, but finds as a consequence she is bound regardless of her will. Given legal expression, private autonomy and exchange take the form of the appropriation by force of the will of others; their legal counterpart is the puzzling world of ‘voluntary obligation’.
From value to bargain First, an important terminological clarification. By ‘exchange’ I mean the actual transfer of goods or services from one person to another that constitutes the economic content of a contract. By contrast I want to limit the meaning of ‘bargain’ to the reciprocal communicative performances, usually verbal, that establish the cooperative understanding required for exchange. Where commodities are produced, exchange is essential to complete the appropriation of nature to use and to reproduce the conditions for production in this social form. Bargain is the reciprocal communication that introduces, and makes possible, exchange. The essential thing to grasp is that bargain will reflect and refract, in the words of Voloshinov, the social relation of value that generates it. As an expression of the value relationship, bargain must reflect the autonomy of commodity owners and their integration within the social division of labour. To explain bargain is to show how it refers to these characteristics of the relationship from which it derives. First, bargain takes a volitional act by both parties to an exchange. This feature reflects the material autonomy of commodity possessors. Each process of production is isolated from others. To take herself to market, each must engage in an act of communication. But this act not only reflects the autonomy of each producer, it reflects also her willingness to relinquish that autonomy. Because it reflects an intention to embrace exchange, bargain shows her integration in the social division of labour. Additionally, each party to a bargain forms an intent to obtain what she needs from the other. Recall Adam Smith: give me that which I want and you shall have that which you want. But the obtaining is grounded in a recognition of the autonomy of the other. Neither can obtain what she wants simply by taking it. As a consequence, each party to a bargain
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induces the other by appealing to the other’s reasons for action. Because bargain is a relationship of reciprocal inducement, therefore, each party to the bargain constitutes the autonomy of the other. As parties to a bargain act to relinquish autonomy in order to enter exchange, at the same time each meets a counterpart who constitutes her autonomy through the recognition accorded. Just as a king is not a king unless there is a subject who recognises majesty in his person, neither is a commodity owner autonomous without the recognition accorded by the other. An essential difference underscores the distinction between the value relation and the bargain it generates. As a category of simple determination, the value relation expresses material relationships with respect to the appropriation of nature. From an economic perspective, autonomy is a material condition characterising separate productive processes. Dependence on the social division of labour is the same. As a matter of economic fact each process of production is dependent on exchange for the reproduction of its own conditions of existence and reproduction. By contrast bargain reflects the value relation as a relationship of consciousness. Free volition, a state of mind, expresses autonomy; the intent to obtain, also a state of mind, expresses dependence on exchange and the social division of labour. An awareness of belonging and of the need to appeal to another’s reasons for action are equally forms of consciousness that express the contradictory relations of autonomy and interdependence given material expression in the value relation. In other words, the actual processes of existence have turned a material relationship with respect to the appropriation of nature into a corresponding relation of consciousness.
From bargain to legal obligation Bargain may be characterised as a form of mediation between the economic relation of value and legal obligation. The reciprocal communication established by bargain is a semiotic interaction that lays the foundation for an exercise of coercion. But because invoking the official machinery of coercion is a significant event, not just any communication will do. Legal rules emerge that specify exactly the communicative performance needed to lay the basis for the use of force. A promise will be enforced when the legal rules attaching to bargain are met. A communication between commodity owners becomes enforceable if it meets the rules for an enforceable bargain. If those rules are met, whether a person intends it or not, contractual obligation is triggered.
Consideration in Anglo-American law The doctrine that expresses the rules required for enforceable bargains in Anglo-American law is called consideration. The doctrine gives expression to a set of somewhat formal and technical rules that correspond to the
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requirements of bargain explained above. When these rules are met, the bargain is enforceable. A characteristic statement of the rule of consideration is given in Section 71 of the American Restatement (Second) of Contracts (1981): 1 2
To constitute consideration, a performance or a return promise must be bargained for. A performance or return promise is bargained for if it is sought by the promisor in exchange for his promise and is given by the promisee in exchange for that promise.
These rules define the behaviours that must occur to establish the foundation of an enforceable promise. First, consideration requires an act of commitment from the promisee. Before legal obligation will be triggered, there must be a manifestation by both participants in an exchange that each has surrendered her autonomy and embraced exchange; otherwise, neither incurs contractual obligation. Unless there is a consensual embrace of exchange, obligation does not attach. An act of commitment is the form in which the willingness to surrender autonomy and embrace exchange is manifested. It is important to see that any act involves at once both the expression of autonomy and its surrender. This goes to the nature of action. For a person to have acted means, in its most rudimentary sense, that she acted materially in some way to transform nature. This is an exercise of autonomy. At the same time, something different could have been done than was in fact done. This shows a surrender of autonomy. That is, if a person lacks the ability to choose among alternatives, then whatever occurs is something that happens to her, not something that person did. Just as motion can be characterised as being and not being in the same place at the same time, action can be characterised as the simultaneous exercise and surrender of autonomy. Importantly, this analysis extends to acts of commitment. Even though a commitment may never be fulfilled, the making of it is nonetheless an act. It involves sign formation – a material process – and choice among alternatives. One need not have manifested a commitment at all. Because of the nature of action, then, an act of commitment can serve to establish the autonomy of the actor and her willingness to relinquish autonomy. But if an act of commitment is to trigger contractual obligation its content must reflect the value relation as well: its content must reflect autonomy and the social division of labour. The commitment must show a willingness to surrender autonomy, to embrace exchange, and not only to recognise, but also to constitute and reproduce the autonomy of the other. In the language of the Restatement, this occurs when a commitment is bargained for. Recognising the autonomy of the other, the promisor makes
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a commitment to exchange by making an offer: if you do this thing X (repair my garage), then I will do that thing Y (pay $3500). The content of the reciprocal commitment given by the promise must be responsive to that which the promisor seeks – the promisee promises to do X (promises to repair the garage). Further, the commitment of the promisee must be given for the purpose of obtaining that which the promisor offers – the promisee promises to do X because she wants Y (the $3500). That is, a commitment is bargained for when: 1 2
the promisor seeks a performance or return promise in exchange for his promise, and the performance or return promise is given by the promisee in exchange for that promise.
The commitment given by the promisee is, on the one hand, responsive to what the promisor seeks from exchange and, on the other hand, given in order that the promisee may obtain by means of exchange. In sum: both promisor and promisee commit to surrender that which each has in order to obtain that which the other offers (Farnsworth 1999: 52–54). In this way the content of each promise reflects both autonomy and the social division of labour. Together, the promisor and promisee enter a relation of reciprocal inducement (Holmes 1881/1963: 230). Numerous technical rules spell out these requirements in detail. Taken as a whole they reflect the surrender of autonomy, the intent to obtain and the reproduction of autonomy. Here are some examples: 1 Each party must commit to surrender autonomy. The promisor does this by making the proposal sought to be enforced; the other does this by agreeing to give that which is sought by the promisor. In either case, the commitment given must be real and not illusory. A promise is illusory if it does not actually commit to anything because it leaves the one promising a way out: ‘I’ll mow the lawn Saturday if I feel like it’, is an example. ‘I won’t ask for my money until I want it’, is another. Where an illusory promise is given, the bargain is not enforceable (American Law Institute 1981, section 77; Farnsworth 1999: 75). For the same reason – the lack of a commitment to surrender autonomy – a bargain cannot be enforced if a party promises something conditioned on an event that cannot occur (American Law Institute 1981, section 76). 2 Each party must manifest an intent to obtain. If the promisor does not seek to obtain anything by means of her promise, then the promise she gave is not enforceable. For example, where a grandfather promised his granddaughter a large sum of money – a sum large enough to enable her to quit her job – and she did quit her job, this was not consideration because he did not seek this action from her as a condition of his promise. Under
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traditional rules his promise was not enforceable; he had no intent to obtain anything by means of exchange. Promises of gift fail for this reason – the promisor seeks nothing in return (compare Farnsworth 1999: 50–52). This is true even where the promisor says something like ‘I’ll give you this painting if you agree to accept’, and the other says, ‘I accept’. The person who says ‘I accept’ has manifested commitment, but the promisor does not seek to obtain anything in exchange (Williston 1936: v. 1, 380). If she did – for example, she wanted the other to take the painting in order to keep an heirloom in the family – then the acceptance would be consideration and would bind the promise. Much ink has been spilled as to why the rules of consideration should distinguish between gifts and bargains. Promises of gifts, for example, often involve large monetary sums and seem of greater apparent personal and social consequence than everyday bargains readily enforced (Wessman 1996: 826). Yet, under traditional principles, gift promises are not enforced. Confusion here, however, is not difficult to resolve: bargains are essential to reproduce the value form of the product of labour; gifts are not. Arguments offered to show the gift–bargain distinction analytically incoherent never consider the matter in light of the social reproduction of value. Because there can be no intent to obtain, neither does so-called ‘past consideration’ bind a promise. Suppose I save your life by pushing you out of the path of a car and in return you promise me a stipend for the rest of my life. On traditional contract principles your promise is unenforceable because what I did was not something you sought to obtain by means of your promise (Farnsworth 1999: 54). (I should emphasise that in this and other cases where promises cannot be enforced because they do not satisfy the rules of consideration, they may be enforced on other grounds. But this does not defeat the underlying argument any more than the fact of an airplane’s flight disproves the law of gravity. These other instances must be separately explained.) As a last example, and again according to traditional contract principles, if you find a dog or capture a criminal without knowledge of the reward previously offered for the discovery or capture, you cannot enforce the promise made for the purpose of producing such results. You did not act in order to obtain something by means of exchange (Farnsworth 1999: 67). 3 Each party must induce the other. Each party to a bargain must reproduce the autonomy of the other by appealing to his or her reasons for action. For example, on traditional contract principles if someone makes an offer to another by mail and the other at the same time makes an identical offer but these cross in the mail, then there is no enforceable bargain because neither has been induced by the proposal of the other (Farnsworth 1999: 67). Their conduct does not manifest reciprocal inducement.
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Consideration and social reproduction The key to the puzzle consideration has posed for over a century is to be found in the role bargain plays in social reproduction. Because commodity owners need each other in order to reproduce the conditions of their existence, they are driven to exchange. Because they are driven to exchange, they embrace commitment. But because in the last analysis they are indifferent to one another, force is necessary to bind their relationship. In consequence bargain mediates between contractual obligation and the underlying economic relation in which commodity owners find themselves. The formal rules of bargain lay the predicate for the exercise of force necessary to sustain relationships of reciprocal commitment. Traditional explanations of contract attempt to explain the use of force either as a means to honour the decision of the promisor in committing herself (Raz 1977) – a strange honouring now that she has changed her mind – or as a means to protect a promisee who has relied (MacCormick 1972) – though unless promises are known to be enforceable, a promisee has no expectations that justify reliance. In other words, the justification for coercively enforcing simple contractual obligation has never been well explained by looking to either one party or the other. It can be explained only in terms quite independent of either person – as a necessary means to secure the distribution of the product of social labour in the value form. Without a relationship of force to secure the commitments of bargain, the reproduction of the product of labour in the commodity form could not be sustained. Once we view the problem from the perspective of social reproduction, the so-called ‘secret paradox of the common law’ dissolves. Promises are enforced when there has been a reciprocal commitment to relinquish autonomy and embrace exchange. Instead of hiding a logical circle, bargains reveal a cycle of social reproduction. Promises give evidence of reciprocal commitment. This was all that was needed – a sign of commitment that by its content reflected and signalled the reproduction of the social relation of value. Why the paradox then? We need to explore the ways in which commodity fetishism generates confusion. Marx argues that in a society where the product of labour takes the commodity form, labouring producers attribute to labour’s products powers that in fact are a consequence of their own social relations with one another. Specifically, social relations distributing aggregate social labour to need appear in the ‘fantastic form’ of the natural attributes of things, and these properties then seem to determine the quantities in which things are exchanged (Marx 1887/1967: 71–83). Briefly, this occurs in the following way. Commodity production is social production, but it is private in form. Compare the self-sufficient production of isolated producers. Where producers are self-sufficient, the question of distributing social labour does not arise. But because each commodity producer produces for others as part of the social division of labour, there
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must be a form for the distribution of labour to need. This form is value, and social labour takes the form of the value of the product of labour. Yet, because production is private in form, producers of commodities are not conscious of the social character of their production until they enter exchange. Exchange appears to them as their original social relation (and all contractarian social theories follow in tow). They don’t see that their social relation as producers, their reciprocal dependence on one another as producers, appears under the form of the proportion in which one product will exchange for another. As a result, the social character of their labour is transformed for them into a natural quality of their products. This is the sense in which social relations are between things. According to the unreflected explanations of the vulgar economist, if a bushel of wheat will exchange for two bushels of corn, it is not because wheat has absorbed a greater amount of aggregate social labour. Since the labour devoted to producing the wheat is private in form it does not appear as social labour at all. Instead, this argument assumes there must be something in the natural properties of the wheat that make it twice as valuable. Now one enters exchange in order to exchange the products of labour as values. But here is the problem: if value is reduced to a natural property of things, promises, since they are not things, are without value. How can valueless bare commitment count as something given in exchange? And if it does not, how can it lay the predicate for legal obligation? Yet if, as I have argued, consideration is a legal relation established by reciprocal commitment reflecting a surrender of autonomy and an embrace of exchange, then traditional doctrine treating consideration as a thing given in exchange was in effect treating ‘a definite social relation between men . . . (in) the fantastic form of a relation between things’ (Marx 1887/1967: 72). Instead of puzzling over how a promise could be a thing given in exchange, the real puzzle was how a performance given in exchange, say the delivery of a book, could constitute a commitment to exchange when it was the very thing sought. Here we need Voloshinov. A sign is a material thing that reflects or refers to some other thing (Voloshinov 1929/1986: 10) (the thing referred to need not be material). Smoke is a sign of fire. Like a promise that is given material expression in words, actual performance given in exchange can also reflect a commitment to relinquish autonomy and to embrace exchange. Performance can be a sign of commitment just as effectively as written or spoken words of promise. For example, any delivery of a thing includes at least the commitment that it is what it purports to be. If performance can serve as a sign of commitment as readily as promise itself, then the puzzle of consideration disappears. There is no paradox or confusion in saying a commitment of an identifiable kind engages legal obligation. This is manifestly so where the commitment identified is indispensable to social reproduction. Instead, it becomes clear that the puzzle stems from a failure to consider the way contract formation functions.
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Final remarks A first point: consideration shows connections of necessity between the legal relation of force to which the doctrine refers and the social reproduction of value. As I explained above, the cooperation established by exchange is inherently unstable. While it reflects a coincidence of interests, it does not reflect a shared common interest. And because the perception of self-interest by different persons in different circumstances necessarily changes, a coincidence of interest achieved today may no longer hold tomorrow. Thus, if social intercourse is to be based on the autonomy of private producers; if these producers are to produce for private exchange as part of the social division of labour; and if the distribution of the products of social labour in this form is to be reliably reproduced; then coercive mechanisms for ensuring the performance of obligation are inevitable. Requirements of the doctrine of consideration mandate specific forms of communicative performance required to trigger the use of these mechanisms. Such performances are generated by the underlying structure of the value relation: reciprocally, they function causally to secure the reproduction of social intercourse in the commodity form A second point is necessary to avoid confusion. Just as we use the word ‘law’ in science to refer both to the causal mechanism that generates effects in the world and to the way scientists formulate the behaviour of that mechanism in words (Bhaskar 1978/1997: 251), so too in law we use ‘rule’ ambiguously to refer both to the underlying ensemble of legal relations that is causally efficacious and the verbal rules that give expression to those relations. Speaking precisely, however, the rules of consideration are verbal forms referring to a particular structure of underlying relations of force. Judicial or executive orders directing the exercise of force, or other individual behaviours shaped by law, cannot be reduced to verbal forms. These behaviours distribute goods and determine conduct. As such, they are the forms of appearance under which legal relations, such as those expressed by the doctrine of consideration, appear. And just as a product may sell in the market at a price that diverges from its value, so too, a judicial order may only approximately correspond to the underlying legal relation applicable to a given circumstance – confronted always with a confusing welter of social forces, a judge may fail to grasp what is decisive in a particular case and ideology may cause her to misperceive. For the same reasons, official statements of rules, or scholarly expressions of them, may express such underlying relations well or badly. Thus, knowing the rule of consideration in any jurisdiction does not enable anyone to predict the outcome of any actual instance litigating application of the rule. Too many other factors are in play, including, famously, what the judge had for breakfast. Nonetheless, results which correspond to social reproduction have a staying power those that do not lack, and understanding a rule like consideration does make it possible to explain why the category has persisted and been expressed in pretty much the same form for 400 years.
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A third point: the necessary relation established between the value relation, bargain and consideration, corresponds to the hierarchy of base and superstructure in this sense: the social relations within which nature is appropriated by labour generate corresponding relations of consciousness and force. Nonetheless, production never appears in a commodityproducing society except as production defined by law and determined by consciousness. If we look to the events of the day we see only a one-dimensional mixture of law, economics and ideology. It is only by abstracting to the processes of the appropriation of nature by labour, the appropriation of behaviour by force, and the appropriation of consciousness by representation that we can discern simpler determinations in the generative processes of social life. But if we want to present any such relation as it actually exists historically, then it must be shown to be embedded in a complex of determinations. It is for this reason that we can say at once that the base determines the superstructure and, at the same time, that the base cannot exist without presupposing the superstructure. Finally, a last point: if the argument just given explains a legal category not previously given coherent theoretical explanation, this in itself constitutes independent evidence for the scientific correctness of Marx’s analysis of value.
Bibliography American Law Institute (1981) Restatement (Second) of Contracts. St. Paul: American Law Institute. Arthur, C.J. (1998) ‘Systematic Dialectic’. Science and Society 62 (Fall 1998): 447–459. Ashley, C.D. (1913) ‘The Doctrine of Consideration’. Harvard Law Review 26: 429. Barton, J.L. (1969) ‘The Early History of Consideration’. Law Quarterly Review 85: 872. Bhaskar, R. (1978/1997) A Realist Theory of Science. London: Verso. Corbin, A.L. (1963) Corbin on Contracts, Vol. 1. St. Paul: West Publishing. Engelskirchen, H. (1997) ‘Consideration as the Commitment to Relinquish Autonomy’. Seton Hall Law Review 27: 490. Farnsworth, E.A. (1999) Contracts, 3rd edition. New York: Aspen. Farnsworth, E.A and Young, W.F. (1995) Contracts, Cases and Materials, 5th edition. Westbury, NY: Foundation. Fried, C. (1981) Contract as Promise. Cambridge: Harvard. Gordon, J.D. III (1990) ‘A Dialogue About the Doctrine of Consideration’. Cornell Law Review 75: 987. Gordon, J.D. III (1991) ‘Consideration and the Commercial-Gift Dichotomy’. Vanderbilt Law Review 44: 283. Harré, R. (1988) ‘Modes of Explanation’ in D.J. Hilton (ed.), Contemporary Science and Explanation: Common Sense Conceptions of Causality. New York: New York University Press. Harré, R. and Madden, E.H. (1975) Causal Powers. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Holmes, O.W. (1881/1963) The Common Law, ed. by Mark DeWolfe Howe. Boston: Little Brown.
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Keat, R. and Urry, J. (1975) Social Theory as Science, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Keat, R. and Urry, J. (1982) Social Theory as Science, 2nd edition. London: Routledge. MacCormick, N. (1972) ‘Voluntary Obligations and Normative Powers I’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 46: 59 (supp. vol.). Marx, K. (1858/1973) Grundrisse. London: Pelican. Marx, K. (1865/1965) ‘Marx to J.B. Schweitzer ( January 24, 1865)’ in K. Marx and F. Engels Selected Correspondence. Moscow: Progress Publishers Marx, K. (1868/1965) ‘Marx to L. Kugelmann in Hanover ( July 11, 1868)’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Marx, K. (1887/1967) Capital Vol. 1. New York: International Publishers. Marx, K. (1975) ‘Notes on Wagner’ in Texts on Method, ed. by T. Carver. Oxford: Blackwell. Marx, K. (1986) ‘Economic Manuscripts of 1857–58 (Grundrisse)’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works Vol. 28. New York: International Publishers. Marx, K. (1992) ‘Economic Manuscript of 1861–63’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works Vol. 33. New York: International Publishers. Pollock, Sir F. (1914) Law Quarterly Review 30: 128 (unsigned review). Pound, R. (1945) ‘Individual Interests of Substance – Promised Advantages’. Harvard Law Review 59: 1. Raz, J. (1977) ‘Promises and Obligations’ in P. Hacker and J. Raz (eds), Law, Morality and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robinson, J. (1962) Economic Philosophy. Middlesex: Penguin. Smith, A. (1776/1994) The Wealth of Nations. New York: Random House Voloshinov, V.N. (1929/1986) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. by L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik. Cambridge: Harvard. Watson, A. (1991) Roman Law and Comparative Law. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Wessman, M.B. (1993) ‘Should We Fire the Gatekeeper? An Examination of the Doctrine of Consideration. University of Miami Law Review 48: 45. Wessman, M.B. (1996) ‘Retraining the Gatekeeper: Further Reflections on the Doctrine of Consideration’. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 29: 713. Williston, S. (1894) ‘Successive Promises of the Same Performance’. Harvard Law Review 8: 27. Williston, S. (1936) Treatise on the Law of Contracts, Vol. 1. New York: Baker, Voorhis. Wood, E.M. (1998) ‘The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism’. Monthly Review 50 ( July/ August): 14.
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Part III
Realism and post-Marxism
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7
Lost in transit Reconceptualising the real Neil Curry
Louis Althusser opened up a door and presented a space from which to escape a Marxism operating with an essentialist logic. Discourse theory today functions within this spatial configuration and has firmly closed the door that Althusser had opened up for Marxism, so that today the extradiscursive is merely one more discourse that emerges to block the space where the door once stood ajar. However, critical realism rather than directly following on from Althusser’s contribution, has sought a corrective. The concomitant project of critical realism has, instead, sought to extend what has traditionally operated implicitly within the work of Marx – realism. An integral part of the process of reconstituting Marxism is, therefore, concerned with extricating this implicit realism within Marx. In this chapter I will locate this project around how the real is conceptualised within Marxist theory as espoused through Althusser, Laclau and Bhaskar. For in Althusser we find the strongest formulations of an attack on the real conceptualised within an essentialist logic. This critique was taken further by Laclau via poststructuralism and subsequently the real disappeared in any meaningful way. The work of Bhaskar, on the other hand, has been primarily aimed at the retrieval of a meaningful conception of the real and this marks out his contribution to Marxist theory. Within critical realism however there exists a tendency to overemphasise the intransitive dimension of the real at the expense of the concrete political conjuncture that the transitive statements about the intransitive dimension take place within. What Marxism is in serious need of today is a politics formulated around the concrete struggles in Late-Capitalism – returning Marxism to its politicised origins. What difference then does a retrieval of the real bring to bear on political struggles in Late-Capitalism?
Reconfiguring the real – something and nothing? Idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out. (Wittgenstein 1969: 85)
In the Grundrisse, Marx refers to a jolt from the outside which individuals occasionally receive when they confuse the ‘movement of the categories’
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with the movement of reality. Jean Baudrillard recently suggested that whereas the old philosophical question used to be ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ today the postmodern question is conversely ‘why is there nothing rather than something?’ (Baudrillard 1996: 105). I wish to suggest however, contrary to Baudrillard’s assertions, that today the debate no longer takes the form of the traditional dispute between a naive realism and traditional nominalism, but has been reconceived around the dispute surrounding the irreducible real. The argument has moved on to the extent that we might now be able to think through the Marxism/post-Marxism divide encapsulated in the Laclau and Mouffe/Geras debate in less confrontational terms in order to develop a Marxism fitting for the purposes of politics under Late-Capitalism (Geras 1987, 1988; Laclau and Mouffe 1987). In this chapter I will locate the ensuing dispute in the work of Louis Althusser’s contribution to Marxist theory. Althusser allows us to take Wittgenstein’s assertion that idealism leads to realism seriously without giving up the real. I will identify Althusser as a precursor to Laclau’s conception of the impossible real, and go on to discuss Bhaskar’s arguments for a return of the real. The debate consequently hinges not on realism versus anti-realism, but, rather, centres on Roy Bhaskar’s dictum that: Failure to be explicit in one’s ontology merely results in the passive secretion of an implicit one . . . Ontology – and – realism are inexorable. The crucial questions in philosophy are not whether, but which. (Bhaskar 1993: 205) If ontology is inevitable, and ontology and the real are inexorable then the debate concerning the status of the real centres around whether the notion of the real needs to be developed explicitly instead of being left to operate implicitly. In this preliminary discussion I will chart the changing status of the real in developments in Marxist theory, with specific reference to Althusser’s contribution.
Althusser’s impossible real I call a thing impossible when its existence would imply a contradiction; necessary, when its non-existence would imply a contradiction; possible, when neither its existence nor its non-existence imply a contradiction, but when the necessity or impossibility of its nature depends upon causes unknown to us, while we feign that it exists. (Spinoza 1955: 19) In order to refute the dominant Hegelian teleological and metaphysical versions of Marxism, Althusser looked to Spinoza. This enabled Althusser to replace the central Hegelian category of contradiction with the category of antagonism, which has been the cornerstone of many subsequent
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developments in Marxist theorising. It allowed him to operate within the Marxist tradition and address crucial problems unique to Marxism by drawing from outside the tradition. Althusser emphasised in the strongest possible way Marx’s rejection of Hegelian Idealism that confused the real object with the object of knowledge. Marx defends the distinction between the real object which always remains ‘after as before outside the head’ irreducible. Althusser states: When Marx tells us that the production process of knowledge, and hence that of its object, as distinct from the real object which is in its precise aim to appropriate in the mode of knowledge, takes place entirely in knowledge, in the ‘head’ or in thought, he is not for one second falling into an idealism of consciousness, mind or thought, for the ‘thought’ we are discussing here is not a faculty of a transcendental subject or absolute consciousness confronted by the real world as matter; nor is this thought a faculty of a psychological subject, although human individuals are its agents. This thought is the historically constituted system of an apparatus of thought, founded on and articulated to natural and social reality. It is defined by the system of real conditions which make of it, if I dare use the phrase, a determinate mode of production of knowledges. (Althusser and Balibar 1970: 41) It is precisely this distinction between the real object and knowledge of it, to which Althusser will return in order to redefine his opposition to the Hegelianism against which most of his earlier elaborations were directed. The problematic relationship between Hegel and Marx is the target of Althusser’s essay, ‘Contradiction and Overdetermination’, in which he argues that Marx does not merely invert Hegel’s dialectic, but rather demystifies it, and in doing so proceeds through ‘an operation which transforms what it extracts’ (Althusser 1969: 93). The inversion does not therefore refer to the nature of the object, replacing the world of the idea with the real world, for this would merely leave that to which the dialectic applies untouched. For Althusser, what changes in the appropriation is the dialectic itself, especially the determinations and structures. It is precisely because Althusser thinks the theories of causality available to Marx were inadequate that he is forced to introduce the psychoanalytic concept of overdetermination in order to move away from the Hegelian notion of interiority. He is not content to think of causality as linear, since effects are more than the expression of causes. ‘A decentred structure, the Marxist totality was inseparable from the structures that constituted it, and correspondingly characterised by irreducible states of overdetermination’ (Elliott 1998: 544). The ‘contradiction’ is inseparable from the total structure of the social body in which it is found, inseparable from its formal conditions of
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existence, and even from the instances it governs; it is radically affected by them, determining, but also determined in one and the same movement, and determined by the various levels and instances of the social formation it animates; it might be called overdetermined in its principle. (Althusser 1969: 101) What we are left with, then, is a ‘process without a subject’ in which human agents are merely the bearers of these structures. ‘Human agents were not the constitutive subjects of history, but constituted subjects in history; and they were thus constituted by and in ideology’ (Elliott 1998: 544). Thus, according to Althusser, human nature does not exist in the form of some human essence as a pregiven and transcendent fixity, but in the complex of social relations as an overdetermined process. Any social formation therefore, cannot be traced back to a single cause. Althusser’s dilemma is that any reversal merely leaves the problematic in place as before. The notion of the real in Althusser allows him to displace the central concern in Marxism – the notion of contradiction – and usher in the concept of antagonism. For Marx was instrumental in displacing economic determinism by means of a breakthrough into overdetermination. However, in attempting to rid Marxism of any remnants of essentialism has Althusser unnecessarily eliminated all traces of an external referent? And what are the consequences for Marxist modes of theorising of Laclau’s subsequent displacing of the notion of antagonism with one of dislocation?
Laclau’s empty real If the real were transparent to the concept, then there would be no possible distinction between the objectivity of the conceptual and the objectivity of the real, and the discursive would be the neutral medium of presentation of that objectivity to consciousness. But if objectivity is discursive, if an object qua object constitutes itself as an object of discourse, in that case there will always be an ‘outside’, an ungraspable margin that limits and distorts the ‘objective’, and which is, precisely, the real. (Laclau 1990: 185) It is certainly the case that Laclau’s earlier theoretical interventions fell within the theoretical disputes among contemporary Marxists. This is especially true of Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, and it is in this work that I shall locate Laclau’s initial foray into the issue of mechanical causality, or the base/superstructure model in Marxism. For it is within this discussion that we find Laclau’s derision of the real taking shape. In the ensuing debate we can discern the reduction of the real to the actual and the subsequent movement into post-Marxism seems rather inevitable. Rather than attempting to reconfigure the real, Laclau reduces it to an impossibility.
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In an interview Laclau stated that, ‘in the case of Althusser I think a good deal of my later works can be seen as a radicalisation of many themes already hinted at in For Marx (much more than in Reading Capital )’ (Laclau 1990: 178). Laclau here is indicating once again the importance of the concept of overdetermination for Marxist theory, rather than reconstructing it as objective science. Laclau’s contribution centres around what he deems to be the inadequate conceptualisation of the mode of production within Structural Marxism. According to Laclau: This conception tries to take account of two facts which are apparently contradictory: The primacy of the mode of production in material life as a determinant factor of all social life, and the difficulty in assigning to strictly economic factors a directly determinant role in the regulation of historical processes other than the capitalist one. It is as we know, an old problem. Althusserianism thinks however, it can solve it with its characteristic method: the combination of taxonomy and formalism. It begins by identifying three basic characters: the economic, political and ideological instances, which are present in all modes of production and whose articulation constitutes the specificity of that mode. (Laclau 1977: 74) Laclau identifies two different meanings of the term economic operating in this debate. The debate hinges on the Structural Marxist’s concept of mode of production. This is defined in terms of the economic, political and ideological instances structured into an overdetermined whole. What specifies a mode of production is the particular form of articulation maintained by its levels: the matrix of a mode of production. The relative weight of the instances is determined in the last instance by the economic, but this does not mean that the economic holds the dominant role in the structure. Precapitalist production needs extra-economic coercion because labour power has not yet been transformed into a commodity. What marks capitalist modes of production as distinct from pre-capitalist is precisely the exchange of these commodities within a market economy. It is only under the capitalist mode of production that labour and surplus-labour unite, hence there is no need for extra-economic coercion at the level of production, and this allows the separation of the political from the economic, and thereby constitutes them as relatively autonomous spheres. The first notion of the economic refers to abstract production, and the second to specifically capitalist commodity production. But the Structural Marxist attempts to include within the notion of the economic, non-economic coercion. In order to substantiate such a move however, one would be forced ‘to project onto a previous mode of production a type of social rationality existing under capitalism’ (Laclau: 1977: 72). In this case the notion of the economic would be equivocal and not a real concept according to Laclau.
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The thrust of Laclau’s argument suggests there is always something other than the purely economic at work. While Laclau thinks that this is acknowledged by the Althusserians, (especially by Balibar) it has, in his view, been left undertheorised, because the second notion of the economic is incompatible with the first. As Laclau states: For it is obvious that if the extra-economic coercion (i.e. different from the economic) constitutes the central element in the relations of production and appropriation of surplus-value, the concept of production and the concept of ‘the economic’ cannot be synonymous. (Laclau 1977: 75) But how can Structural Marxism account for this? If it considers the notion of production in pre-capitalist societies with the emphasis on noneconomic coercion as different from the capitalist mode of production, in which the economic also operates in a matrix of a mode of production that includes the political and ideological, then the economic with noneconomic coercion would become eternalised and beyond theoretical comprehension. Laclau has attempted to demonstrate the limitations of Structural Marxism, in dealing with this theoretical dilemma. Theory that attempts to combine relative contingency with an ultimate necessity simply reproduces the logic of necessity in a different form. Laclau’s earlier contribution is an attack upon Marxism embedded within an essentialist paradigm. It is anti-essentialism that is at the heart of the Laclau project, and this leads us directly to the issue of causality in Althusser and mechanical causality within Marxism, which resurfaces in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Laclau and Mouffe return to the issue of the status of the economic and consider in detail what they see as the optimistic emergence in Marxist theory via Althusser, of the concept of overdetermination. Laclau and Mouffe indicate their agreement with Althusser’s attempt to differentiate his conception of society as a complex structured whole, from the Hegelian notion of expressive totality. They state: This conception, which reduces the real to the concept by identifying differences with necessary mediations in the self-unfolding of an essence, is of a very different order from the Althusserian complexity, which is the one inherent in a process of overdetermination. (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 97) The potential of this notion for Marxism, however, fails to live up to expectations. Althusser could have insisted on overdetermination implying an assertion that the social constitutes itself as a symbolic order. The character of which implies a lack of any determinate aspect, which would reduce them to necessary moments in an immanent process. The debate moves away from an essentialist logic inscribing levels of essence and
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appearance. According to Laclau and Mouffe, ‘Society and social agents lack any essence, and their regularities merely consist of the relative and precarious forms of fixation which accompany the establishment of a certain order’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 98). The more sobering reality of the situation was, in fact, that it leads to an opposite outcome. The concept of overdetermination was, instead, to disappear from Althusserian discourse, leading to the reinstallation of a new variant of essentialism. This was principally because the concept of overdetermination was incompatible with the determination of the economic in the last instance. Coupled with this, Althusser began to hypostatise the abstract: Althusser lapses into the very defect he criticizes: there is an abstract universal object, the ‘economy’, which produces concrete effects (determination in the last instance here and now); and there is another equally abstract object (conditions of existence) whose forms vary historically, but which are unified by the pre-established essential role of assuring the reproduction of the economy; finally, as the economy and its centrality are invariables of any possible social arrangement, the possibility opens up of providing a definition of society. (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 99) Therefore, if the economy is an object, which can determine any type of society in the last instance, we have returned to simple one-directional determination rather than overdetermination. According to Laclau and Mouffe: We can deduce from this that the field of overdetermination is extremely limited: it is the field of contingent variation as opposed to essential determination. And, if society does have a last and essential determination, the difference is not constitutive and the social is unified in the sutured space of a rationalist paradigm. Thus, we are confronted with exactly the same dualism that we found reproduced since the end of the nineteenth century in the field of Marxist discursiveness. (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 99) In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, the emphasis has shifted and we are left with a series of internal frontiers with no external determinants whatsoever. How does Laclau end up with such a conclusion? On this issue I would like to put forward a series of theoretical observations concerning Laclau’s conception of the real. Laclau adopts the Lacanian conception of the impossible real, but in his adoption of this concept, something is lost. In Lacanian terms the real exists because reality is never directly itself, it is always incomplete. What we experience as reality is not the thing itself, it is always already symbolised, constituted and structured by symbolic mechanisms.
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But, whereas for Lacanians this real maintains something of a transcendental status, an always something already there, something inescapable, for Laclau this takes on the role of an empty signifier. Such that if the real can never achieve a fullness then the debate becomes about whatever stands in for this absent fullness politically. Laclau follows this logic because of the notion of the object he adopts. For Laclau, ‘every object is constituted as an object of discourse’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 107). Thus, the object prior to its discursive constitution has no meaning whatsoever and is, therefore, indeterminate. There is a stringent unwillingness to even begin to consider that there might be a meaningful real of the real, something other, unknowable yet still there. Laclau has emptied the real of all content. But what if the objects which are coterminous with the discursive aren’t all that they appear to be, or perhaps never show themselves fully substantiated. Because of Laclau’s notion of the object he ends up with an ‘empty realism’, which is trapped in the logic of either/or. Either the object has to be fully substantiated or empty, but because Laclau can’t allow himself to conceive of an object in motion, changing outside of discursive configurations, he has forced his hand into the latter position. In his attempt to escape any remnants of essentialism, he has unnecessarily derided the real. He remains trapped in an empty real, to the extent that he cannot adequately conceptualise any outside, other than an internal dislocation and seems unable to suggest how we might begin to cope with a minimal trace of something other than discourse. For Laclau the real has been lost in transit. But is the move into the terrain of post-Marxism the only available option to emerge from the Althusserian contribution? What if, rather than accepting the terms of the debate as put forward by Althusser’s structural Marxism, the notion of the real was reconceptualised rather than derided? Roy Bhaskar has attempted to overcome this realist dilemma pointing out the recalcitrance of the real.
Bhaskar’s return of the real Discourse, it is important to stress, must be about something other than itself or else it cannot talk about itself at all. For this presupposes an act of referential detachment. (Bhaskar 1993: 230) According to Roy Bhaskar the dominance of irrealism is responsible for philosophy taking a turn for the worse, such that ‘today, philosophy, for the most part, only reflects the superficial sheen of reality’ (Bhaskar 1993: x). The relationship between Bhaskar and Althusser or, for that matter, Bhaskar and Marxism is not always as straightforward as it may appear. Bhaskar himself acknowledges that ‘Louis Althusser made a contribution of decisive importance. The Althusserian legacy demands nothing
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less than the most thorough-going critical reappropriation’ (Bhaskar 1991: 183). Bhaskar identifies the single most important Althusserian contribution in terms of his attempt ‘within the concept of overdetermination to capture the multiple determination of events and phenomena generally in what are open systems’ (Bhaskar 1989: 187). Both Althusser and Bhaskar agree on the refusal to reduce the real object to the object of thought. A dispute emerges however in their differing conception of the real. In the production of knowledge the real objects (for Althusser, Generalities I) are the raw materials which theory works upon (Althusser’s Generalities II) and knowledge is the outcome of this process (Generalities III for Althusser). For Althusser, ‘the work whereby Generality I becomes Generality III . . . whereby the “abstract” becomes the “concrete” only involves the process of theoretical practice, that is, it takes place within knowledge’ (Althusser 1969: 185). The dispute, therefore, concerns the status of the real object and its relation to other levels of generality. The movement between these Generalities does not take the form of a linear development but an overdetermined one. However, according to Bhaskar it would seem that in doing so, Althusser collapses the intransitive dimension into a transitive one (Generalities I into II and III). Bhaskar states: Let us sharpen this by turning to Althusser’s celebrated metaepistemological distinction between the real object and the object of knowledge. This does not correspond to the realist distinction between the intransitive and transitive objects of knowledge. For while, for the realist viewing knowledge in the transitive dimension as a process of production, the transitive object may be said to correspond to Althusser’s Generalities I, the intransitive object of knowledge – what is known in and via this production process – is precisely the real object. (Bhaskar 1989: 188) I will now consider their differing conceptions of ‘the real’ object of knowledge. For Althusser, the real is an excluded other, it is knowledge of a void, but his is never knowledge of nothing. Althusser’s nominalism is not traditional nominalism, but rather a way into materialism. According to Montag, Althusser’s nominalism: assumes the character of a chamber through which we must pass in order to find materialism. What then is this materialism, if it cannot be reached directly but only indirectly, by means of another philosophy that inescapably interposes itself between us and materialism? (Montag 1998: 66) There is no originary foundation of meaning or truth. For Althusser, this is the only conceivable materialism in the world. It also marks a shift away from the notion of deep structures as somehow behind or determining
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what exists encapsulated in the notion of ‘latent structure’ of his earlier work. Althusser’s conception of structure is an absent exteriority, as present only in its effects, the principle of the diverse without reduction or unification. The result of this is not that the only knowledge possible is knowledge of nothing (the fate of traditional nominalism) but, rather, if the real object is irreducible to thought and knowledge is produced in a void, then the real must maintain a void. But why can’t objects be conceived of as absences? This is Bhaskar’s moment and links him with the theoretical innovations of Althusser. As we have already noted, for Althusser there is no outside. This doesn’t mean that nothing exists but rather that to posit something outside is precisely to give intentionality to something other, to locate in the external an intention to bring about some internal effects. This, for Althusser would be to lapse into a sort of spirituality, for the only plausible explanation would entail something Godlike, going on behind the backs of people, directing intentionality. Bhaskar offers an alternative by developing the notion of absence within presence. For Bhaskar, these innate voids and absences which Althusser locates in ‘absent exteriors’ also take place in matter. According to Bhaskar, Althusser has effectively neutralised the intransitive dimension. Getting rid of intentionality, because of the supposed spiritual consequences, has also led to a lack of agency on the part of becoming. Bhaskar therefore attempts to reintroduce emergence in matter so as to reactivate the role of the intransitive dimension. Realism always presupposes a world of objects, but in order not to reduce this to an external obstacle, the possibility of being actively changed by agentive agencies, it must not be merely external but also internal in some minimal respect. For Althusser this external does not bring with it any guarantees that it cannot be reduced to internal components, for to do so would be to posit something out there as absolutely exterior (a Godlike creature). For Bhaskar however, this is problematic and in attempting to reactivate this realm (intransitive dimension) he develops a new conception of the object. Bhaskar wants to disaggregate the notion of the object containing within it innate voids and absences, something like absence within presence. He attempts to extend the notion of the object, to become a real object rather than to merely conceptualise it as a physical object. This is Bhaskar’s chief criticism of Althusser, and where the ensuing problems associated with Althusser (idealism, theoreticism) occur. Althusser has failed to grasp the complexity of the multiple determinations at work when Marx appropriates the concrete in thought. He introduces a distinction at this point to account for the irreducible real object and the thought object, although according to Althusser, only the thought object can be reproduced as the concrete in thought. Hence, the real object has been reduced to a physical object. The world, then, has been split into two distinct realms of the concrete: the concrete in thought and concrete reality. This distinction
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between the object of knowledge and the real object can be traced back to Althusser’s notion of an epistemological break in Marx’s work. For in Althusser the movement from Generality I into Generality III is only ever theoretical and takes place within knowledge. As Nancy Harstock correctly points out: While Althusser was correct to stress the production of knowledge as real activity, as production in thought, he failed to grasp the fact that we come to know the world . . . by appropriating it and in that appropriation we cannot help but recognize our involvement and participation. (Harstock 1991: 30) For Marx, reproduction by way of thought is a real act of production, rather than merely a theoretical one. So when Marx talks about grasping ‘the unity of the diverse’ (Marx 1973: 101), Althusser prefers the diverse without unity and Bhaskar the unity and the diverse. Bhaskar attempts to develop the notion of keeping presence and absence together without reducing one to the other. This allows Bhaskar to conceptualise power, movement and change in ‘synchronic emergent powers materialism’, and by extension freedom. The problem for Althusser is that he cannot account for change and falls into an illusion of the parity of diverse elements. For Althusser, there is no real of the real. The exterior (absence) cannot be posited as anterior (present) for to do so would imply something rather than nothing coming from somewhere. This would be deemed spiritual or metaphysical by Althusser and, therefore, would be rejected. Bhaskar, however, attempts to deal with this by developing and extending reality to include both absence and presence without the reduction of each to the other. There exists in Bhaskar’s formulation a co-presence between the two aspects and this enables a process of becoming without being teleological, and also a presence without repressing absence. For Bhaskar, the realm of the actual is only ever one aspect of the real. The real is irreducible to the actual. As such it always remains subversive and only ever tendentially and indirectly accessible. Knowledge is relative, the world is not, and our knowledge of the world is never exhausted by the world or vice versa. Change and freedom occur when something is identified as a constraint and absented. The absenting of absence becomes the cornerstone of the ‘pulse of freedom’. However, there is always the possibility of the return of that which has been removed. In reiterating the relation of absence and presence one would have to conclude, that since every presence/absence always includes an intransitive and transitive dimension, it is always partially transitive. Perhaps, therefore, the relationship of Bhaskar’s intransitive/transitive dimensions is more tendentious than many critical realists have hitherto acknowledged, and not so dissimilar to Althussers’s absent exterior (or
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Lacan’s impossible real), which is impossible to access directly and is somehow irreducible. Accordingly, the role of Bhaskar’s notion of the transitive dimension is comparable to the Althusserian interior without positivity.
Concluding remarks: real alternatives Althusser placed Marxist philosophy firmly back on the agenda, and this continues to be the case. In acknowledging the ongoing influence of Althusser, Bhaskar and Laclau have, at the same time, developed their own projects from inside and outside the Marxist tradition. They have attempted to undermine ‘essentialism’ in its crudest form. Yet, they have never claimed to have transcended Marxism or rejected it in its entirety. In different ways they have attempted to reformulate Marxism and continue to draw on the tradition. A line in the film The Usual Suspects states that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing the world that he didn’t exist (Biro and Hayward 1999). The greatest trick capitalism continues to play is in convincing the world that there is no other way to exist, no real alternative. Laclau is not in a position to question the existence of anything. For he argues that ‘it is not possible to threaten the existence of something without simultaneously affirming it’ (Laclau 1990: 27). For Bhaskar, however, existential intransitivity is more complex. He is, therefore, in a stronger position to challenge what he terms TINA formations. The recovery of the real from irrealist philosophical systems is part of this process. In this chapter, I have charted the decline and rise of the real, locating this movement within Marxist theory. Laclau radicalised Althusser’s ideas and moved from the terrain of antagonism into dislocation. Bhaskar, on the other hand, taking his leave from Althusser, reconfigured the real. Whereas the old debate between Marxism/post-Marxism was centred around essentialism/antiessentialism, the current debates have moved onto the terrain of the real. Not either/or but, rather, which. This affords the opportunity for moving beyond the Marxism/post-Marxism divide embedded in the Left. It opens up the possibility of thinking about alternatives within concrete political struggles, a concrete utopianism. It also rules out a return to a naïve realism that as Wittgenstein points out merely ushers in precisely that which it opposes – Idealism.
Bibliography Althusser, L. (1969) For Marx. Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— and Balibar, E. (1970) Reading Capital. London: New Left Books. Baudrillard, J. (1996) The Perfect Crime. London: Verso. Bhaskar, R. (1989) Reclaiming Reality. London: Verso. —— (1991) Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom. Oxford: Blackwell. —— (1993) Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. London: Verso.
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—— (1994) Plato etc. London: Verso. Biro, A. and Hayward, S. (1999) ‘The Usual Subjects: Labour Justice and Postmodernity in The Usual Suspects’. Rethinking MARXISM, Vol. 11: 90–104. Elliott, G. (1998) ‘The Cunning of Concepts: Althusser’s Structural Marxism’ in S. Glendenning (ed.), The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Geras, N. (1987) ‘Post-Marxism’. New Left Review Vol. 163: 40–82. —— (1988) ‘Ex-Marxism Without Substance: Being a Real Reply to Laclau and Mouffe’. New Left Review Vol. 169: 34–61. Harstock, N. (1991) ‘Louis Althusser’s Structural Marxism: Political Clarity and Theoretical Distortions’. Rethinking MARXISM Vol. 4: 10–40. Laclau, E. (1977) Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory. London: New Left Books. —— (1990) New Reflections on the Revolutions of our Time. London: Verso. —— and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso. —— and —— (1987) ‘Post-Marxism without Apologies’. New Left Review Vol. 166: 79–106. Marx, K. (1973) Grundrisse. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Montag, W. (1998) ‘Althusser’s Nominalism: Structure and Singularity’. Rethinking MARXISM Vol. 10 no. 3: 64–73. Spinoza, B. (1955) On the Improvement of the Understanding. New York: Dover Publications. Wittgenstein, L. (1969) Notebooks 1914–1916. Oxford: Blackwell. Zˇizˇek, S. (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
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8
Laclau and Mouffe and the discursive turn The gains and the losses Kathryn Dean
Introduction Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is a landmark socialist text which was intended to demonstrate conclusively the theoretical irrelevance and political undesirability of monolithic and economistic Marxism. Describing their theoretical project as its scaling down, rather than abandonment, Laclau and Mouffe set out to recover and nurture a plural Marxism supportive of, and compatible with, the inherent and desirable plurality of the ‘social’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 5). This project is laudable in principle, but it has, in practice, been less than satisfactory, for two kinds of reasons. First, in evaluating what is living and what is dead in ‘classical Marxism’, the authors decided, rather oddly, not to return to the source of the tradition, and, second, having retrieved what conceptual resources they deemed valuable, they proceeded to articulate these to discourse analysis. In deciding to leave Marx out of their account,1 the authors did a disservice to their own argument which contains the kernel of a very interesting and timely elaboration of Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism. That kernel is the concept of overdetermination, an Althusserian usage which Laclau and Mouffe considered worthy of rescue from its supposedly monolithic Marxist framework. While Althusser’s appropriation of the Freudian concept was intended for the development of a non-reductive theory of causality at the level of social formations or totalities (Althusser 1990a), Laclau and Mouffe reactivated the concept’s psychic dimension which he had left in abeyance.2 In doing so, they intended to emphasize the undetermined nature of both ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’, and to find in this undetermined nature the potential (or even the actuality – it is not always clear which) for human freedom. However, for reasons to be explored below, it is far from clear that overdetermination is either freedom’s actualization or its unproblematic prelude. In fact, this postmarxist account of over-determination vacillates between two readings: one which connotes by the term a mature understanding of the necessary limits to all human strivings for perfection and/or happiness; the other which becomes an endorsement of incorrigible human immaturity consisting in infantile yearnings for jouissance. The
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latter interpretation is encouraged by postmarxism’s discursive turn which, as Zˇizˇek points out, is also a Lacanian turn (Zˇizˇek 1990). At the same time, this discursive turn is not merely cognitively vacuous, as is suggested by Norman Geras (1990: 102). To the contrary, it will prove capable of providing insights on the peculiar character of contemporary manifestations of commodity fetishism; insights which can be appropriated, through critique, by a non-reductive historical materialism.3 Roy Bhaskar provides a useful account of the way in which Marx appropriates, through critique, what is ‘living’ in the work of existing theorists (1989). This is what this chapter attempts to do in relation to the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe. The gain secured through the discursive turn taken by Laclau and Mouffe is that it provides them with the means of theoretical attentiveness to the subject effects of commodity fetishism (Lukács 1971; Marx 1976a: 163–77).4 The losses follow from their neglect of Marx’s critique of capitalism and of Freud’s conception of overdetermination, a neglect which leads them to both celebrate and naturalize a condition which is, in fact, debilitating rather than emancipatory. In short, by drawing on the Lacanian discursive rewriting of Freud (through the discursive interpretation of over-determination) Laclau and Mouffe suppress the critical content of the concept. They write as if unaware that, for Freud, overdetermination is a manifestation of individual mal-functioning or immaturity (1984a). In naturalizing this condition, as they are bound to do in rendering it in discursive mode, they write on the assumption that overdetermination is an inescapable human condition rather than, as it is for Freud, a specific and (potentially at least) avoidable set of dispositions and tendencies. Lacanian naturalization of what is an historico-cultural subjective condition is effected through the reconceptualization of overdetermination as a property of language, rather than of immature psychic functioning (Lacan 1980a, 1980b). Since language (the signifier or the symbolic) is taken to be co-extensive with the human world, this Lacanian move serves, in effect, to infantilize the world itself, and, in the process, to ‘normalize capitalist damage’, as Andrew Collier puts it (1998: 41). In this way, Lacanian theory, and therefore postmarxism itself, come to take on an ideological, rather than critical, character.5 At the same time, when interpreted historico-culturally, the theory does alert critical realist historical materialists to the unprecedented condition of psychic immiseration being constituted by contemporary capitalism.6 In doing so, it provides some of the conceptual resources for developing a truly critical political theory. The purpose of this chapter is to appropriate for a critical realist historical materialism, through critique, the insights derivable from Laclau’s and Mouffe’s conception of overdetermination. Here, critique will involve three steps; first, an explication of postmarxism’s discursive analysis of subject-constitution, second, the return of overdetermination to its original
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Freudian usage, and, third, through a return to Marx, the elaboration of overdetermination as a condition engendered by commodity fetishism.7 An exploration of the logic of overdetermination beyond the discursive limits set by postmarxism allows us to understand the psychically immiserating effects of the relations and practices it connotes, as the necessary attribute not of subjectivity tout court, but of subjects who are constituted by a specific discourse, namely capitalism’s law of value. In effect, and following theorists such as Jean-Jacques Goux (1991) and Fredric Jameson (1991), I am interpreting the discursive (particularly in its postmodern guise) as expressive of the ‘cultural logic’ of contemporary capitalism; a logic which privileges as never before the ‘indifference’ which Marx conceived of as the necessary property of social relations which have been successfully reduced to production relations (relations subsumed under value’s law).
I The world according to Laclau and Mouffe is a decentred (groundless) world in which individuals are constituted as specific kinds of subjects through their location in a nexus of relations. In accordance with the rubrics of discourse theory, these relations are conceived of by Laclau and Mouffe as wholly formal in character. They are conceptualized as relations between signifiers strung out along a constantly moving signifying chain (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 105–22; Stavrakakis 1999; Torfing 1999). The identity of the signifiers in question inheres in nothing but their difference from other signifiers. Expressed otherwise, relations are necessary but have no necessary substance, therefore, bearers of relations have no necessary substance. The individual bearer of necessary relations is a bearer of ‘subject positions’, which, unlike the roles theorized by old-fashioned sociology, have no necessary content. The concept of role embodies a notion of functionality and of necessity from which that of subject position is free.8 Subject positions being, apparently, unfreighted with the functionality of the role (which may require, or at least strongly encourage, individual acceptance of long-term and arduous responsibilities of care for others and which must be filled by somebody if the social formation is to reproduce itself) can, and will, be changed quite frequently. This is the logic of postmarxism’s discourse analysis which requires that we conceptualize individual subjects as temporary, fragile and contingent nodal points of relations which are in a constant state of flux. Everything is relationality (conceptualized formally) and relationality is flux. Another way of expressing this is to say that each apparent subject is necessarily shot through with ‘otherness’. Not only that, but otherness is constantly changing. This notion of otherness introduces us to an additional dimension of the decentred experience in that it connotes individual frustration or suffering. Otherness is experienced as wholly malign, a necessary experience in a necessarily relational world. It is necessary because humans apparently seek,
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indeed long for, the experience of ‘fullness’ that would follow from fixity (meaning here, presumably, a strong sense of self undiluted by the presence of ‘otherness’).9 This is what the discursive view requires us to believe. Antagonism is the concept used by postmarxism to explore this painful and unavoidable (although also, for postmarxism, potentially emancipatory) human condition. Antagonism, then, by this account, is a universal human rather than class-specific condition which arises from the conviction that ‘the presence of the “Other” prevents me from being totally myself’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 122–7, esp. 125).10 The concept of antagonism is cast in purely discursive terms in Hegemony. Following a suggestion of Zˇizˇek’s, Laclau, in a subsequent piece, adopts the Lacanian concept of lack to provide some elaboration of the claim about antagonism (Laclau 1990; Zˇizˇek 1990).11 This adoption enables us to think of lack as expressive of the contradiction between Imaginary (illusory sense of self-mastery and coherence) and Symbolic (actual subsumption under the Law of the Father), or, between the promise of autonomy and the experience of heteronomy (Lacan 1980c).12 Since, given the logic of discourse theory (as adopted by Laclau and Mouffe), we must assume that this illusory sense of self-mastery is discursively constituted, we are justified in saying at this point that discourse makes promises that discourse cannot keep. It promises freedom (from ‘otherness’, we must assume) and it necessarily delivers subjection (‘otherness’ is inescapable). Subjects are chronically frustrated because they are constituted as simultaneously unsatisfiable and as incapable of accommodating themselves to this fact. They are subjects whose needs are necessarily experienced as desires (Agamben 1993: 26–8; Stavrakakis 1999: 42–5).13 However, these subjects are bound to ‘kick against the pricks’. That is to say, they will be ready to reject their places in the signifying chain in response to new interpellations promising fullness. Another way of making this point is to say that subjects of lack are subjects who are disposed to resist the social bond, which is experienced by them as nothing but a source of suffering and frustration. Such subjects are always seeking something more satisfying than they presently experience but they are doomed never to find the total satisfaction which they crave. Lack appears to be a human constant because of the necessary character of discourse. If lack is a human constant, then so too, we must conclude, is resistance to ‘fixity’. However, lack translates into radical cultural volatility only in the modern world. Laclau and Mouffe note that while premodern subjects apparently experienced antagonism (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 125; Stavrakakis 1999: 36–9), they did not have the discursive means of acting on this experience in a politically significant way. Such means emerge with the advent of modernity, i.e. with the birth of capitalism and democracy, plus the death of God. Both births and death generate a novel kind of instability or undecidability which is characterized by postmarxism in terms of a ‘surplus of meaning’ and of ‘destructuration’. They also generate new
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kinds of (necessarily hubristic) expectations of fullness. They do so by dissolving natural and supernatural limits on meaning and therefore the ontological grounds for the experience of fixity. The death of God dissolves limitations on the number and durability of interpellative commitments by dissolving supernatural sources of authority. Capitalism reveals the plasticity of nature and requires myriad new subject positions. It initiates the apparent randomness of the world which postmodernism both expresses and celebrates. Democracy brings the promise of fullness. It enables the conceptualization of ‘lack’ as condition at once disgraceful and remediable (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: ch. 4). Now, neither God the Father nor His earthly representative can dictate and ensure fixity, continuity, intelligibility. Note the oddly realist form of this argument which, in some respects, reflects the universalism which Laclau and Mouffe are intent on debunking. The thrust of the analysis here is that discourse has real properties which become fully actualized only in the modern world through the combined activities of two specific discourses: capitalism and democracy. Only now, we are being told, do we experience the ‘reality’ of our necessarily discursive condition which, in the past, was concealed from us by illusory ‘appearances’. However, in contrast to the universalism which postmarxism is seeking to displace (the universalism of ‘essentialism’) this is a peculiar kind of universalism which Jacob Torfing describes as ‘essential accidentalism’ (1999: 51).14 Here, rather than ‘accident’ being a departure from what is to be expected, it is precisely what is to be expected. That is to say, from this point of view, the world is necessarily indeterminate or unpredictable. In effect, Laclau and Mouffe are replacing one form of necessity by another. In place of a determinate necessity which enables precise prediction of future outcomes and therefore eliminates the possibility of human freedom, we are offered its apparently superior ‘other’, namely an indeterminate necessity which precludes, not only precise prediction, but any kind of regularity of occurrence. We are being told as well that this indeterminate necessity is the necessary, unavoidable manifestation of the unintelligible, undecidable movement of discourse. What I wish to show is that this supposedly universal movement is, in fact, the movement of value’s law and that, as such, it is antithetical to, rather than the condition of possibility of, human freedom. Essential accidentalism can be understood as the causal power of a phenomenon (capitalism or ‘discourse’) whose needs (the actualization of value’s law; the unceasing movement of signifiers), when satisfied, impose on humans the experience of unyielding indifference and unintelligibility. Postmarxism vacillates between two readings of experience: the universalist reading summarized above, and a more historico-culturally sensitive account which is developed by Laclau in New Reflections on the Revolution in our Time (1990). The universalist reading seems to offer strong assurances about the likelihood of future resistance to authoritarian or totalitarian political forms.15 In the historico-cultural account, the emergence of freedom is seen
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as the (apparently) necessary accompaniment of the structural ‘dislocation’ which accompanies the advent of ‘disorganized’ capitalism. Capitalism, dislocation and flux In their jointly-written work, Laclau and Mouffe stress the great power of capitalism to penetrate all areas of human life: Today it is not only as a seller of labour-power that the individual is subordinated to capital, but also through his or her incorporation into a multitude of other social relations: culture, free time, illness, education, sex and even death. There is practically no domain of individual or collective life which escapes capitalist relations. (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 161) Here we have a clear expression and recognition of the totalizing power of capitalism. For postmarxism, subversion of this totalizing power is effected through the logic of capitalism itself, as well as through the power of capitalism’s ‘outside’, namely democracy. Regarding the former, consumerism embodies a universal and equal right to the delights of consumption which, in addition to a ‘media-based culture . . . contains powerful elements for the subversion of inequalities’. Consumerism, mass culture and democracy should between them serve to compel rejection of the ‘real inequalities’ generated by capitalism. This optimism is strengthened in Laclau’s later work in which the concept of ‘disorganized’ capitalism is used to depict contemporary capitalism as a kind of colonizer whose ambitions are bound to exceed its grasp. In this depiction we are beginning to move towards a theoretical (historico-cultural) rather than merely ideological (naturalizing), theory of overdetermination. The theory retains ideological dimensions, however, in that it is blind to the debilitating effects of capitalist practices and, for this reason, can be prematurely optimistic about the advent of freedom. Yes, says Laclau, capitalism seeks ‘totality’, or ‘systematicity’, but it is bound to fail in its attainment and, moreover, in failing it forces individuals into freedom. Capitalism’s failure is described by Laclau as an inadequacy of ‘structural objectivity’, or, dislocation. Dislocation, which is the ‘primary ontological level of the constitution of the social’ now arises from the ‘accelerated tempo of social transformation and the continual rearticulatory interventions’ required by capitalism. Capitalism’s peculiar structural character renders it incapable of locating individuals in a relatively permanent way in a system of social relations. That structural character involves a kind of ‘collapse of objectivity’ which opens a space for the apparently free action of subjects, therefore for radical democracy. With the advent of disorganized capitalism, individuals begin to experience themselves as decentred or dislocated, rather than as centred and located
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(Laclau 1990: 39–51).16 For Laclau, this is a progressive development (potentially or actually, it is not clear which) that widens ‘the space of the subject . . . at the expense of structural objectivity’ (Laclau 1990: 67).17 Here, radical openness is conceptualized as ‘relative structuration’ which is taken to be, somehow, a source of freedom and democracy. From this follows the thesis: ‘the possibility of a radical democracy is directly linked to the level and extension of structural dislocations operating in contemporary capitalism’ (Laclau 1990: 45). In effect, the radical, directly experienced groundlessness instantiated by disorganized capitalism affords the opportunity for a radical new sense of individually self-affirmed, selfmotivated human purpose and responsibility derived from the realization that we are on our own now and, therefore, must make and remake our own grounds through hegemonic political projects. However, it is not clear that experiences of dislocation and groundlessness will, in themselves, be sufficient to constitute the maturity needed to enact this desirable state of affairs. If the subjects constituted by dislocation are the subjects of lack, are not these precisely the kinds of subjects who will be incapable of such maturity? Subjects of lack long for independence (fullness) in the sense of freedom from engagement with others. They long, apparently, for a relation-free world. Since the human world is necessarily relational, this longing is hubristic, based presumably on a lack of knowledge of the real character of the world, and stimulated by the frustrating experience constituted by that world. When considered in this way, the celebration of dislocation as either potential or actualization of freedom seems premature, or even wrong.18 The theoretical leap from dislocation to radical democracy should not be made; it should not be assumed that the indeterminacy connoted by dislocation and the ‘collapse of objectivity’ is emancipatory. The collapse of objectivity – if that is what is in question – may constitute the collapse, also, of subjectivity, rather than the opportunity for subjectivity’s self-transformation. We might also consider the possibility that what is in question is not the collapse of objectivity but the successful institution of a new kind of subjectively disorganizing objectivity; one which leaves subjects in a condition of cognitive-affective deprivation as connoted by the concept of commodity fetishism. We can begin to think about this possibility with the help of Freud.
II So far, I am arguing that the ‘essential accidentalism’ espoused (and usually naturalized) by Laclau and Mouffe in the interests of advancing human freedom is true to the movement of value, particularly as capitalism moves into its ‘disorganized’ phase. I now need to show that this essential accidentalism is not necessarily either the prelude to, or enjoyment of, freedom. Let us begin with the concept of overdetermination which for Laclau and Mouffe is the principle of movement of the signifying chain which
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constitutes human subjects. It is important to note that Laclau and Mouffe follow Lacan rather than Freud in their understanding of overdetermination. In doing so, they depart from Freud in two ways: first, they assume the causal power of an abstraction (discourse) rather than of embodied relations; second, they naturalize a condition which Freud took to be either temporary (the condition of the human infant) or exceptional (acute adult immaturity) and, where exceptional, potentially rectifiable.19 These departures diminish the critical importance of postmarxism and impoverish its understanding of the real character of contemporary capitalism. Decentredness and overdetermination Had postmarxism worked through the full implications of Freud’s usage, it would, perhaps, have less readily viewed overdetermination as either the actualization of, or relatively unproblematic prelude to, freedom. For Freud, the concept of overdetermination is grounded in the distinction between primary and secondary process functioning and connotes relations between ‘discourse’ (in the form of embodied and personally authoritative parents) and emergent subject; relations in which the emergent subject is by no means merely the passive recipient of discourse’s ‘messages’. However, the emergent subject is wholly dependent on these parental messengers, with whose help he or she will move – more or less successfully – from primary to secondary process functioning.20 Very briefly, Freud’s concept of overdetermination is intended to convey a condition of immaturity characterized by an uneducated seeking after instant gratification. Overdetermination refers to the principle of primary process functioning which involves the unstable and undiscriminating investment of psychic energy, by the individual, in rapidly changing ‘objects’, either human or non-human (Freud 1976: chs 6, 7; 1984a). In this sense, overdetermination connotes the inability to engage effectively with reality so as to attain satisfaction of needs or wants. In fact, the subject in the grip of primary process functioning has either yet to attain a sense of reality (Freud 1984b) or has temporarily lost touch with it due to the experience of acute loss or frustration (Freud 1984c). For such subjects, the absence or loss of reality is compensated for through very brief encounters with rapidly-changing and fantasized objects from which the immature subject is seeking satisfaction. Such objects are engaged with only momentarily and wholly from the point of view of a needy subject who lacks the resources necessary for the attainment of real as opposed to hallucinatory or fantasized satisfaction of needs. Among these resources is the ability to make judgements about objects brought to the subject’s attention (Brennan 1992: ch. 3; Freud 1984b). Are these objects fantasized or actual? Will the gratification they provide be real or illusory? Sustained or transient? These questions are meaningful in a Freudian context because he is offering an account of psychic processes which brings together the cultural,
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biological and psychological (Marcuse 1987; Ricoeur 1970). So, overdetermination refers to a complex causal process involving the deployment of psychic energy, meaning (biological) energy which has been shaped and directed (in the first instance) through parental social relations which are necessarily cultural or discursive. It is this deployment of psychic energy, in relation to needs which, while anchored in our biology, are necessarily shaped according to ‘discursive’ requirements in the form of internalized cultural ‘force’. It is through this interactive experience that meanings are rendered active or significant for individual subjects.21 Having returned to Freud’s original usage of the concept, we should note two points before moving on. First, we can agree with Laclau and Mouffe that: ‘The concept of overdetermination is constituted in the field of the symbolic, and has no meaning whatsoever outside it’ (2001: 97). However, we can also see that this claim is potentially misleading in that it encourages inattentiveness to the material-energetic (embodied) dimension of the symbolic.22 This emphasis is necessitated by the discursive approach which requires that overdetermination be conceptualized in terms which reduce activity to an abstract logic of ‘signifiers’ in movement; a logic which renders invisible the necessary biological-libidinal-cultural or human relational activity which bears the relations and processes to which the concept refers.23 The second point is that the processes in question are indicative of immaturity, or, the urge to escape from rather than engage with the world. While Freud posits this as the original condition of human beings, he expects its (partial and fragile) transcendence through appropriate forms of parental care. But it remains, for him, a human tendency, in the shape of secondary narcissism, which may be activated by the experience of loss, frustration, and/or indifference (1984c).24 The first point warns us of the idealizing and naturalizing temptations involved in the untheorized adoption of discourse analysis for the purpose of developing social or political theory.25 Idealism here involves suppression, not only of the biological nature of humans which would ground a conception of human need against which desires could be evaluated, but of the embodied historico-cultural social relations which constitute the biological as human, and, in this case, the specific experience of lack. This experience of lack is not an unavoidable human condition dictated by the necessarily discursive character of human life but, rather, the intensification, rather than correction, of that ‘lack of essence’ which is the mark of humanity (Chaitin 1996: 196).26 The second point raises questions about the purported emancipatory character of a condition judged by Freud to leave the individual at the mercy of a self-destructive wishfulness involving the ‘loss of reality’ which this intensification of natural human lack imposes on individual subjects. This loss of reality is what is involved in the emergence of that disorganizing objectivity conceptualized by Laclau as ‘dislocation’.27 The subject
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effects of this disorganizing objectivity are indeed as described by Laclau and Mouffe in Hegemony. In naturalizing overdetermination as the necessary property of discourse, postmarxism is negating the importance of embodiment and, indeed, implying that the distinction between reality and fantasy is meaningless. However, in providing an historico-cultural interpretation of overdetermination as dislocation, it is, in effect, recognizing that contemporary capitalism is failing to provide its subjects with the resources needed to attain a mature sense of reality; that what is in question is a (partly) designed rather than accidental loss of reality, one which capitalism has today deemed necessary for healthy capital accumulation. Postmarxism’s analysis of the ‘social’ in terms of overdetermination enables us to understand that an adult version of what Freud depicts as infantile functioning is becoming normal under contemporary capitalism. As actualized through the ‘flexible’ institutions of ‘disorganized’ or ‘networking’ capitalism, commodity fetishism involves a more relentless and ferocious ‘loss of reality’ (sense of lack) than any of its earlier manifestations (Castells 1996). This is the loss of reality incurred by the speeding up of the dialectic of exchange and use. Having argued, through a return to Freud, that overdetermination is a debilitating rather than emancipatory condition, let me now fill out my account of overdetermination in terms of Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism.
III To return to Marx is not, pace Laclau and Mouffe, to plunge back into a reductive, deterministic scientism. Far from this being the case, the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ announces an anti-reductive research project which insists upon the need to transcend both idealism and materialism by taking as our object of study sensuous human activity rather than ‘matter in motion’ (Marx 1976b).28 As Marx knows, sensuous human activity involves the imposition of form on matter, or, it involves both ideal (discursive) and material elements. It also involves, necessarily, social relations and it can involve an individually active intentional stance towards the world.29 Postmarxist discourse theory renders sensuous human activity invisible by conceptualizing relations abstractly or formally and reduces individuals to hapless bearers of ‘subject positions’. In doing so, it expresses the character of a world which has been successfully subsumed under the law of value. That is to say, overdetermination is a property of social formations once the law of value successfully advances the kinds of overweening claims for itself that we have been hearing since the 1980s. The concept refers to the volatile, unintelligible and unsociable character of social relations and practices once commodity fetishism has been successfully instituted beyond, as well as within, the sphere of production.
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Capitalism, commodity fetishism and the loss of reality Following Lukács, I understand the concept of commodity fetishism as a cultural rather than economic category. As a cultural category, it connotes, not merely specialized ‘economic’ practices, but the total way of life of peoples for whom capitalism is the sole mode of production. As such, commodity fetishism is a critical-explanatory concept which serves to explore capitalist-specific constraints on social relations and on human agential powers.30 The condition to which it draws our attention is one of cognitive-affective impoverishment whereby individuals are required to act without knowing and to relate without feeling. Another way of making this point is to say that commodity fetishism renders the sensuous unintelligent or irrational by draining the everyday world of the cognitive transparency and affective immediacy which characterized pre-capitalist cultures.31 Social relations become fetishized through the division of labour which capitalist commodification requires; a division of labour which renders the world cognitively opaque at the level of everyday experience. Where commodification has become universal (i.e. a matter of necessity rather than of possibility) what Postone describes as the ‘treadmill effect’ or ‘a dialectic of transformation and reconstitution’ comes into force (1993: 289). This dialectic is a matter of instituting substitutability and obsolescence and, therefore, a matter of intensifying the intangible, processual character of the world. All subjects and objects become subjected to value’s gaze. They become open to the calculations and fragmentations of the capitalist division of labour; they become means to ends which in turn become means. ‘Use’ as a realm of durability and predictability becomes the servant of ‘value’ as the realm of exchangeability and volatility. Expressed otherwise, particular modalities of matter become subsumed under a form which wishes to remain blind to particular characteristics, or, value views particularities only from its own point of view. It ignores as far as possible any aspects of particularities which might conflict with its interests. It is this capitalist-specific indifference to the particularity of different modes of materiality which discourse theory expresses and naturalizes. The attempted subordination of ‘use’ to ‘value’ began in earnest with the transition from workshop to factory which rendered everyday life cognitively opaque and necessary human interdependence experientially inconsequential (Marx 1976a: chs 13–16, Appendix).32 In this way humans tended to become forgetful of their potential for praxis, of the necessity of human interdependence and, beyond that, of the ways in which acknowledgement and acceptance of such interdependence can help to nurture praxis. Here commodity fetishism is a matter of rendering the subjective objective and the objective subjective, as it were (Lukács 1971: 83). Or, more accurately, it institutes practically, for the first time, the split between subjectivity and objectivity and attributes agency to the objectified result of human action rather than to human action itself. In a very real sense, as
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the division of labour comes to cut the link between individual activity and object produced, as it comes to rob individual activity of its intelligibility and sociability, human beings do become bearers of structures (of ‘signifiers’ or ‘subject positions’) whose principle of movement is incomprehensible to them (Althusser 1990b). Abstract labour The actualization of commodity fetishism (therefore of the subject–object split) involves the transition from workshop to factory. We can understand this actualization as the transformation of work into abstract labour. Abstract labour is ‘one-sided’ labour, or, it is labour whose unity is fragmented into institutionally-separated components (the physical, the conceptual-imaginative-rational, the communal interdependent).33 In the most extreme case, unskilled labour performs ‘as if’ purely ‘biologically’ or energetically in the sense that unskilled labourers play no part in working out the ‘form’ of their activity, or, they become mere appendages of machines (Gorz 1989; Kosik 1976). As the conception of work is abstracted and allocated to highly trained specialists, the communal-interdependent becomes transmuted into monetized or bureaucratized relations between buyers and sellers, or between experts and their clients or patients (Marx 1977: 32). Hence the perception on the part of individual labourers that ‘society’ is an independent, active, producing entity which rules over them. This perception is not an illusion but is the correct perception of the appearances of commodity fetishism which does, in fact, dissolve consequential individual agency into the fragmented division of labour which commodification requires. Once this division of labour has been successfully instituted, the activity of any one individual becomes negligible in relation to the totality of systemic requirements, and ‘collective labour’ does indeed become an alien, indifferent power over individuals as individuals (Marx 1973: 242–3). Thus, capitalism’s reduction of social relations to production relations effects both cognitive and affective impoverishment of subjects. In particular, it engenders amnesia regarding the necessity of human interdependence, as noted before. The amnesiac subject, as Marx puts it in ‘On the Jewish question’, ‘views other people as means, debases himself to the status of a means, and becomes the plaything of alien forces’ (1994: 36).34 This amnesiac subject suffers from the illusion of (or desire for) absolute individual autonomy combined with the experience of total dependence on an impersonal and unknowable world. I suggest that it is this debilitating status that is expressed in the remarkable preoccupation with lack in Lacanian psychoanalysis, and in Lacan’s conception of the contradiction between experiences connoted by, on the one hand, the Imaginary (illusion or expectation of individual autonomy or ‘fullness’) and, on the other, the Symbolic (negation of the illusion or expectation). As noted by Samuel
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Weber, the Imaginary ‘denies its debt to the other’ (1991: 106), or, is unaware that such a debt exists. At the same time, ‘otherness’ is experienced in the mode of the Symbolic, which is to say, as alien or fetishized (opaque, impersonal, indifferent). This unavoidable encounter between a subject under the Imaginary illusion and a discourse only too ready to trample over this illusion is what engenders ‘lack’ (Stavrakakis 1999: ch. 1). Indeed, we could say that the subject of lack has no reason to feel indebted. In any case, the conceptualization of social relations in terms of the Symbolic makes sense where social relations have been reduced to production relations. The Symbolic now becomes an historico-culturally specific ‘law’ which imposes on the individual subject whatever subject-positions the Law of Value may deem necessary at any particular time. Arguably then, it is this experience which produces the subjective response naturalized by Laclau and Mouffe in the claim that: ‘the presence of the “Other” prevents me from being totally myself’. Expressed in Marxian terms, this is a human response to the abstract and indifferent fetishized relations needed to advance the law of value. Here, as Marx notes, abstraction is not: merely the mental product of a concrete totality of labours. Indifference towards specific labours corresponds to a form of society in which individuals can with ease transfer from one labour to another, and where the specific kind is a matter of chance for them, hence of indifference. Not only the category, labour, but labour in reality has here become the means of creating wealth in general, and has ceased to be organically linked with particular individuals in any specific form. (Marx 1973: 104–5) In effect, the Lacanian categories which ground much of postmarxism’s analysis can be rendered critical if they are read historico-culturally rather than naturalistically.35 Indeed, as I am suggesting, we can use these categories to elaborate on Marx’s account (in ‘On the Jewish question’) of capitalist-induced psychic immiseration. Postmarxism’s use of the discursive approach – its reduction of social relations to relations between signifiers, the insistence on conceptualizing identity as ‘nothing but’ difference and the subject as occupant of ‘subject positions’ – contributes to this theoretically and politically important activity by enabling an understanding of the specific psychic ‘unfixity’ induced by capitalism now. Here we have a Marxian analysis of the logic of overdetermination as a logic of indifference, fluidity and unintelligibility.
Conclusion The kind of indifference with which Marx was concerned in the passage cited above was a potential in nineteenth-century capitalism which is being fully actualized in new forms and with renewed intensity and vigour today
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when capitalism is seeking to make such indifference a taken-for-granted fact of everyday life. The gains which the discursive turn secures is that it provides us with the raw materials for theorizing the debilitating subject effects of such indifference, subject effects which I am understanding in terms of overdetermination as the ‘loss of reality’ or flight from sociability which Freud analysed in his work on narcissism. A radical theory of politics must acknowledge the psychically debilitating effects of contemporary capitalism if it is to grasp the conditions of possibility for the advancement of socialism or radical democracy, neither of which will be attained in the absence of demanding collective action. It must grasp that subjects of ‘lack’ are decentred in a particular and peculiarly debilitating way, as conveyed by the Imaginary/Symbolic distinction. That is to say, they are subjects who have been promised freedom, and who have been delivered instead subsumption under the ‘alien power’ of the impersonal, abstract, and indifferent Symbolic. This subsumption is what is involved in commodity fetishism which constitutes a ‘reality’ which is unknowable at the level of appearances and which (the moralistic exhortations of politicans apart) is bereft of the resources needed to nurture sociability and an active and enabling sense of human interdependence. Such subjects are at once psychologized and depsychologized; they are self-absorbed (narcissistic) subjects who are required to be self-reliant while at the same time lacking a sense both of self, and of a reality with which that self can engage effectively (Eagleton 1986: 145).36 This is the experience conceptualized in the signifying chain. The signifying chain is a metaphor for a culture whose principle of movement (systemness) has become unintelligible to individual members of the culture, and whose ‘law’ institutes indifference to actual, embodied, individual subjects. This is so insofar as the law of value has assumed primacy in every sphere of life. It is in this situation (one which normalizes, or even valorizes, speedy and unpredictable change) that the individual experience of life is an experience of unintelligibility and of ‘accidentalness’; or, that life is experienced in the mode of ‘lack’. The return to Freud facilitates an understanding of the character of lack as a condition marked by the strong tendency towards primary process functioning. This tendency, which Freud sees as the manifestation of unrealizable infantile longings for bliss or ‘fullness’, has become normalized under the virtual reality principle instituted by contemporary capitalism in the AngloAmerican world. Insatiable wishfulness (desire) and the flight from sociability in adults are interconnected responses to fetishized social relations which constitute an indifferent and unpredictable everyday world. It is this historico-culturally specific human experience which is analysed (however incompletely and unsatisfactorily) in Laclau’s and Mouffe’s political theory. While a Lacanian celebration of overdetermination (lack as resistance to ‘fixity’) may have appeared emancipatory in the standardizing, bureaucratizing 1950s, it is now no more than a reflection of capitalist needs.
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Lack is what normalization is about now, and lack, as we have seen, is bound to bring frustration and suffering, beyond that necessitated by the fact of being human, to human individuals. To valorize lack as marking the potential for radical democracy; to insist on the emancipatory character of ‘identities without positivity’ – is to be unwittingly collusive with such normalization. Laclau’s concept of dislocation, and the general discursive insistence on the ‘difference’ conception of identity, express very well the particular kind of ‘loss of reality’ induced by contemporary capitalism. Identity as relational difference and nothing but relational difference only makes sense if (a) we think away those practices which constitute a sense of positive identity for individuals or (b) the culture is such as to eliminate such constitutive practices. The latter is the strange achievement of contemporary capitalism.
Notes My thanks are due to Mark Laffey, Mark Neocleous, Charles Tripp and Jutta Weldes, who read and commented on earlier drafts of this paper. 1 Marx’s work is dealt with by postmarxism ‘only marginally’, as Laclau himself notes (1990: 182–3). Unfortunately, Laclau takes the Marxism of Plekhanov and Kautsky to be an accurate reading of Marx. For a discussion of this point, see Best and Kellner (1991: 201–2). 2 Ricoeur (1984) provides an interesting discussion of Althusser’s use of overdetermination. See also Resnick and Woolf (1987); Strawbridge (1984). 3 For an excellent non-reductive presentation of Marx’s theory of capital, see Postone (1993). 4 Carol Johnson (1980) discusses the problem (unexamined by Marx) which fetishism constitutes in relation to the Marxist hope of proletarian revolutionary action. This is the import also of Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1986). 5 Yet Lacan (as well as Laclau and Mouffe) is aware of the historicity and cultural specificity of forms of life, and therefore of subjectivity. See, for example, his ‘Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis’ (1980d). On the differences between Freud and Lacan, which postmarxism ignores, see Flax (1990). 6 It is worth noting too that postmarxism retains important historical-materialist elements. Indeed, they have been criticized for this by, for example, Michelle Barrett (1991). 7 In view of the space available to me, I must here take it for granted that a synthesis of Marxian and Freudian theories is both theoretically coherent and politically desirable. The important work of the early critical theorists such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, should be noted. For an account of these, as well as a justification of the Marx–Freud synthesis (one which characterizes both as both dialectical and realist), see Wolfenstein 1993. Given Habermas’s abandonment of critical theory, postmarxism’s development of the Althusserian version of psychoanalytic Marxism is to be welcomed. 8 Jameson (1991:349) notes the ‘lack of functionality’ in postmodernism’s analyses of social groups. 9 So: ‘The subject is the metaphor of an absent fullness . . . for whom any frustration or unsatisfied demand will be compensated for or offset by the myth of an achieved fullness’ Laclau (1990: 63). 10 On this point see also Laclau (1990: 3–27).
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11 For more recent exchanges between Zˇizˇek and Laclau, see Butler, Laclau and Zˇizˇek (2000). 12 For more on this see Dews (1987: ch. 2). 13 Agamben (referring in passing to the Lacanian theorization of the Hegelian concept as objet à and désir de l’Autre) notes the difference between insatiable desire and satisfiable need. For more on the concept of need in Hegel (and Marx), see Fraser 1998. On Marx, Heller (1976) remains essential reading. 14 See Fuss (1989) for more on essentialism and its vicissitudes. 15 It answers the ‘impossibility of society’, meaning the impossibility of fixed connections and durable relations (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 96, 112; Laclau 1990: 89–92). 16 The account of ‘disorganized’ capitalism is taken from Lash and Urry (1987). 17 There appears to be here an assumption of the structure/agency dichotomy which is at odds with the logic of discourse theory and which is nowhere theorized by postmarxism. Torfing (1999: 81–2) attempts to clarify this matter. 18 It could be considered as premature in the sense that dislocation may be an irrational condition imposed by capitalism against which humans, as creatures having the potential for learning and self-transformation, might, not only rebel, as is to be expected from creatures of ‘lack’, but engage in radical collective action intended to restore rationality to the world. Indeed, this is the logic of The Communist Manifesto. 19 On the condition of the infant, see Freud (1984b). Freud discusses the adult condition in ‘On narcissism’ (1984c). 20 Freud expects the transition from the former to the latter as the normal course of human maturation. However, the distinction, and the conditions to which it refers, are to be understood historico-culturally rather than universalistically. See Baudrillard (1993: ch. 5); Kakar (1981) for more on this point. 21 I have given a more detailed account of this process in Dean (2000). It is worth noting here that talk of psychic energy is anathema to some Freudians. See, for example Lear (1998). Brennan (1992) is an enthusiastic advocate of the energy concept. 22 Louis Althusser (1996: 159) notes the inadequacy of a dematerialized Freudian theory. See also the comments in Elliott (1998: 23). 23 In this sense, discourse analysis is a continuation of that dehumanization of the world effected practically by capitalism (with the real subsumption of ‘labour’ under ‘capital’) and theoretically by philosophers from the time of Hobbes onward. See Goux (1991); Marx (1976a: Appendix). 24 See Kovel (1989) for a culturally inflected discussion of narcissism. 25 For postmarxism’s response to charges of idealism, see Laclau and Mouffe (1990). 26 I have set out this argument in detail in Capitalism and Citizenship: the impossible partnership (2003). 27 Loss of reality is a theme with which much of contemporary social theory is preoccupied. It is referred to by Jameson (1991) as the ‘death of the world of appearance’ and by Baudrillard in terms of the proliferation of simulacra (1994). Axel Honneth (1995: 223) talks about the ‘fictionalization of reality’. See also Bauman (2000). 28 See also Balibar (1995); Postone (1993). 29 The much-cited passage on the architect and the bee is expressive of these points. See Marx (1976a: 284). 30 For a discussion of commodity fetishism that emphasizes its subject-constitutive dimensions, see Amariglio and Callari (1993). 31 While the cognitive effects of commodity fetishism are well covered in the literature, as in Geras (1971), the affective impoverishment which it induces is less so. The work of William Pietz (1993) is an exception here.
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32 It is worth noting that Baudrillard (1975: ch. 1) misses the tremendous theoretical significance of Marx’s distinction between use and exchange. His book is otherwise a useful and timely rebuke to economistic Marxists. The final chapter makes interesting reading in relation to the themes discussed here. 33 For more on abstract labour, see Murray (2000a, 2000b); Postone (1993). 34 Paul Piccone (1980) characterizes this early piece as the first account of narcissism. 35 See MacCannell (1986) for an historicizing account of Lacan’s work. 36 See Richard Sennett (1998), for an excellent phenomenological account of the subject effects of contemporary capitalism’s work practices.
Bibliography Agamben, G. (1993) Infancy and History: essays on the destruction of experience, trans. L. Heron, London: Verso. Althusser, L. (1990a) ‘Contradiction and overdetermination’, in For Marx, trans. B. Brewster, London: Verso. —— (1990b) ‘Is it simple to be a Marxist in philosophy?’, in Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists and Other Essays, ed. G. Elliott, London: Verso. —— (1996) Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan, trans. J. Mehlman, New York: Columbia University Press. Amariglio, J. and Callari, A. (1993) ‘Marxian value theory and the problem of the subject: the role of commodity fetishism’, in Apter and Pietz. Apter, E. and Pietz, W. (eds) (1993) Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Balibar, E. (1995) The Philosophy of Marx, trans. C. Turner, London: Verso. Barrett, M. (1991) The Politics of Truth: from Marx to Foucault, Cambridge: Polity Press. Baudrillard, J. (1975) The Mirror of Production, trans. M. Poster, St. Louis: Telos Press. —— (1993) Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans. I. H. Grant, London: Sage Publications. —— (1994) Simulacra and Simulation, trans. S. F. Glaser, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Bauman, Z. (2000) Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Best, S. and Kellner, D. (1991) Postmodern Theory: critical interrogations, London: Macmillan. Bhaskar, R. (1989) ‘Dialectics, materialism and theory of knowledge’, in Reclaiming Reality, London: Verso. Brennan, T. (1992) The Interpretation of the Flesh: Freud and femininity, London: Routledge. Butler, J., Laclau, E. and Zˇizˇek, S. (2000) Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: contemporary dialogues on the Left, London: Verso. Castells, M. (1996) The Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Chaitin, G. D. (1996) Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collier, A. (1998) ‘Mind, reality and politics’, Radical Philosophy, 88: 38–43. Dean, K. (2000) ‘Capitalism, psychic immiseration and decentered subjectivity’, Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, 5, 1: 41–56. —— (2003) Capitalism and Citizenship: the impossible partnership, London: Routledge. Dews, P. (1987) Logics of Disintegration: post-structuralist thought and the claims of critical theory, London: Verso. Eagleton, T. (1986) ‘Capitalism, modernism and postmodernism’, in Against the Grain: essays 1975–1985, London: Verso.
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Elliott, A. (1998) (ed.) Freud 2000, Cambridge: Polity Press. Flax, J. (1990) Thinking Fragments: psychoanalysis, feminism, and postmodernism in the contemporary West, Oxford: University of California Press. Fraser, I. (1998) Hegel and Marx: the concept of need, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Freud, S. (1976) The Interpretation of Dreams. The Penguin Freud library, Vol. 4, trans. and ed. J. Strachey, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. —— (1984) On Metapsychology: The theory of psychoanalysis, The Penguin Freud library, Vol. 11, trans. J. Strachey, ed. A. Richards, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. —— (1984a) ‘Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning’, in Freud. —— (1984b) ‘Negation’, in Freud. —— (1984c) ‘On narcissism’, in Freud. Fuss, D. (1989) Essentially Speaking: feminism, nature and difference, London: Macmillan. Geras, N. (1971) ‘Essence and appearance: aspects of fetishism in Marx’s Capital’, New Left Review, 65: 69–86. —— (1990) Discourses of Extremity: radical ethics and post-Marxist extravagances, London: Verso. Gorz, A. (1989) Critique of Economic Reason, trans. G. Hendyside and C. Turner, London: Verso. Goux, J.-J. (1991) The Coiners of Language, trans. J. C. Gage, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Heller, A. (1976) The Theory of Need in Marx, London: Allison and Busby. Honneth, A. (1995) The Fragmented World of the Social, New York: State University of New York Press. Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London: Verso. Johnson, C. (1980) ‘The problem of reformism and Marx’s theory of fetishism’, New Left Review, 119: 70–96. Kakar, S. (1981) The Inner World: a psychoanalytic study of childhood and society in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kosik, K. (1976) Dialectics of the Concrete: a study on problems of man and world, Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Kovel, J. (1988) ‘Narcissism and the family’, in The Radical Spirit: essays on psychoanalysis and society, London: Free Association Books. Lacan, J. (1980) Ecrits: A Selection, trans. A. Sheridan, London: Routledge. —— (1980a) ‘The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis’, in Lacan. —— (1980b) ‘The Freudian thing’, in Lacan. —— (1980c) ‘The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I’, in Lacan. —— (1980d) ‘Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis’, in Lacan. Laclau, E. (1990) New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, London: Verso. —— and Mouffe, C. (2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 2nd edn, London: Verso. —— and —— (1990) ‘Post-Marxism without apologies’, in Laclau. Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1987) The End of Organized Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Lear, J. (1998) Open Minded: working out the logic of the soul, London: Harvard University Press. Lukács, G. (1971) ‘Reification and the consciousness of the proletariat’, in History and Class consciousness: studies in Marxist dialectics, trans. R. Livingstone, London: Merlin Press.
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MacCannell, J. F. (1986) Figuring Lacan: criticism and the cultural unconscious, London: Croom Helm. Marcuse, H. (1986) One-Dimensional Man: studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society, London: Ark Paperbacks. —— (1987) Eros and Civilisation: a philosophical inquiry into Freud, London: Ark Paperbacks. Marx, K. (1973) Grundrisse: foundations of the critique of political economy, trans. M. Nicolaus, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. —— (1976a) Capital: a critique of political economy, Vol. 1, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. —— (1976b) ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, in K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, Collected Works, Vol. 5, London: Lawrence and Wishart. —— (1977) The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, 5th edn, London: Lawrence and Wishart. —— (1994) ‘On the Jewish question’ in Early Political Writings, ed. J. O’Malley, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murray, P. (2000a) ‘Marx’s “truly social” labour theory of value: Part I, Abstract labour in Marxian value theory’, Historical Materialism, 6: 27–65. —— (2000b) ‘Marx’s “truly social” labour theory of value: Part II, How is labour that is under the sway of capital actually abstract?’, Historical Materialism, 7: 99–136. Piccone, P. (1980) ‘Narcissism after the Fall: what’s on the bottom of the pool?’, Symposium on Narcissism, Telos, 44: 112–21. Pietz, W. (1993) ‘Fetishism and materialism: the limits of theory in Marx’, in Apter and Pietz. Postone, M. (1993) Time, Labor and Social Domination: a reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Resnick, S. A. and Woolf, R. D. (1987) Knowledge and Class: a Marxian critique of political economy, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (1970) Freud and Philosophy: an essay on interpretation, London: Yale University Press. —— (1984) Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, New York: Columbia University Press. Sennett, R. (1998) The Corrosion of Character: the personal consequences of work in the new capitalism, New York: Norton. Stavrakakis, Y. (1999) Lacan and the Political, London: Routledge. Strawbridge, S. (1984) ‘From “overdetermination” to “structural causality”: some unresolved problems in Althusser’s treatment of causality’, Radical Philosophy, 38: 9–16. Torfing, J. (1999) New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe, Zˇ izˇek, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Weber, S. (1991) Return to Freud: Jacques Lacan’s dislocation of psychoanalysis, trans. M. Levine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolfenstein, E. V. (1993) Psychoanalytic-Marxism: Groundwork, London: Free Association Books, The Guilford Press. Zˇizˇek, S. (1990) ‘Beyond discourse analysis’, in Laclau.
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Part IV
Realism and Eurocentric discourse
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9
Eurocentrism, realism, and the anthropic cartography of emancipation Rajani Kanth
Of all Enlightenment based philosophies, critical realism captures – but only within the bounds of its own quite definable and definite epistemic blinkers – the simple truth, commonplace to Vedic (and other pre-modernist traditions) philosophy of seven thousand years ago (it is thus that modern Europe reinvents, under the guise of discovery, the truths of a strictly non-modernist provenance) that reality is differentiated, stratified and changing. In itself this would be trivial, were it not the fact that Enlightenment philosophies, en generale, were largely unaware, given their generally positivist stance, of the implications of this basic ontic truth for the practice of their own various sub-disciplines in the relevant arenas of inquiry.1 The Enlightenment itself, sudden and staggering as it is given the intellectual torpor of Europeans until then, was itself owed to the Great Colonial Encounter where Europe, with much surprise, learnt exactly how ‘primitive’ they were (Michel de Montaigne’s famous query: ‘What do I know? ’, which embodied a critical moment in the evolution of European self-perceptions, for its radical relativist implications against Catholic dogma, was inspired, for example, by the ‘discovery’, in Brazil, that cultures other than ‘Christian Europe’ could actually be, howsoever grudgingly acknowledged, ‘civilized’) in comparison with the ‘barbarian’ world that they were to overrun with such earthshaking consequence for the remainder of modern times (regrettably, of course, the radical self doubt inspired by this contact was soon to be replaced by a – still extant – exalted sense of scientific certainty2 by the time the period – and the self-doubting – ended). And, as a separate but instructive issue, one has only to compare the ‘enlightenment’ of the noble Siddhartha, millennia prior, with its late modernist equivalent to glean the full import of the qualitative differences in what was being sought, and why, in each case. A few centuries prior to this, Europeans had already, like Aquinas, pirated the philosophical discoveries of Mediterranean civilizations (which can only be assimilated into ‘European’ evolutionary cartography at peril) – Greece and Rome, and hence, indirectly Egypt (itself fertilized by the ideational systems of India and China) – in order to establish their ideologies (including medieval Christianity) on a sound philosophical footing. At a later stage, the specific discoveries of Vedic philosophies, part of a rich,
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colonial harvest, were to shake the Germans into becoming the philosophical mentors of modern Europe, from Hegel to Schlegel.3 Again, this would be a trivial species of truth were it not for the fact that Eurocentric ideology, of the imperial bent, was to carefully cloak this colossal debt which even now remains shrouded in the darkness of popular ignorance (history, was, after all, his story; then, with feminist intuitions, came the prodromes of her story; still under construction. I am trying, here, to tell their story; perhaps, some day, our story, in all its wholeness, will be told, though, preferably, story-telling itself, as a necessary pastime, will become gratuitous by then). In effect, modernism learnt to think on the basis of pre-modernist ideas; in the exquisite language of Marx (himself a distinguished Europhile) they were the appropriators of knowledge, not its producers. The stadial supports of this newly crafted weltanschaaung were simple enough to have easily passed into the popular geist of the modernist era regardless of political or philosophical orientations, radical, liberal or conservative. Modernism, in effect, rests on three foundations alone: a fairly blind faith in ‘science’ (defined as European in origin); an equally firm belief in some or other (usually self-justifying) notion of ‘progress’; and a shared metaphysic of materialism.4 All modernist currents genuflected readily and unreflectively to this classic modernist triad – a sort of unholy trinity – which was to become forever after the new religion supplanting the prior vision of Catholicism. It took the European some two centuries – and the process is, necessarily, far from having been completed, – to first transform European society, and then other non-European social formations, on the basis of this nouvelle philosophy. Phenomena as far apart as the proletarianization of the peasantry, the housewifization of women, the pacification of the ‘savage’ nature of the naturvolk (i.e. the very peoples they had learnt their ideas from!), and the near irreversible destruction of natural resources, that lay within and without their frontiers, were rife with such notions; as such, the ‘taming’ of the ‘shrew’, the peasant, nature, and the non-European, were all informed by the same zealous credo as drove the cool but calculating passions of these newly furbished civilization mongers.5 No vandal in history, no fabled Ghengis Khan, no Attila – mythical or real – has ever been more possessed of a more passionate ideology of restless expansionism, transformation, and despoliation. Compared with their superordinating zeal, the premodernist forms of destructive barbarism – Viking or Crusader, Goth or Visigoth – pales into but effete shadowplay, the masculinist misadventures of mere, lumbering, amateur adolescence. Modernist terrorists, equipped with the ideologies named earlier, and armed with a force hitherto unimaginable, wreaked their Stalinist, Hitlerian, and Reaganite, horrors upon the weak, the hapless and the unprepared, across a larger social universe than had ever existed with the full unscalable fury of righteousness. The modernist was the savior of the world: and the blood atonement of the millions was the way forward to the promised land: from Luther to Napoleon, Cornwallis to Churchill, and Stalin to the CIA – radical violence, and the blood of the impuissant, paved the primrose path
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to salvation: nominally whether of the soul, socialism or civil society. Accordingly, wildly improbable, but wholly modernist fantasies such as ‘socialism’ or the ‘free market’ were to become, irresistibly, the defining scourge of this benighted planet: so yes, the long road to the modernist Valhalla as is visited upon the world today, was paved, for the large part, with intentions that were virtuous. Given that, the mind can only boggle at the thought of what more might have been achieved, by these selfsame ‘emancipators’ had the intent been, God forbid, vicious.6 Modernism is, therefore, none other than Eurocentrism,7 and serving as its characteristic foundation. Today, to be modernist is to follow this very specific Late European Way (this specific path to perdition could take either of the two dominant forms of unceasing capital accumulation, as the very summum bonum, whether in its capitalist setting or in the even more desperate, and erstwhile, ‘socialist’ environs). The hegemony of this ideology is near total, in this current period of neo-liberal globalization of modernism, if yet only within its own ontic limits. These limits, right from the inception of the great paradigm of modernism, have always been coterminous with its hegemonic sway: in varying extents, and to varying degrees, determined by the intersects of time, place, culture and history: workers, women and minorities (both within and without modernist confines), as the forces embodying these limits, have found manifold ways to evade, resist and/or roll back its depredations. They constituted then, as they do now, its ever present, real, ontic enemies, even if not always rising to the level of epistemic challenge. The ‘traditional’ mind-set of these socially and historically delineated groups and groupings has been the subject of proprietary investigations by modernist science (thus nineteenth-century ‘anthropology’, for example; or twentiethcentury ‘managerial science’) as much as it has also been the select object of ridicule in the unceasing modernist project of debunking its rivals, enemies and alternates (yesterday, it was all ‘mumbo-jumbo’ or ‘old wives’ tales’; today, it is the far more fulsome ‘ethno-science’).8 In opposition to the modernist way, these traditionalists – putative ‘reactionaries’ in both modernist and Marxian parlance – have always, again in varying degrees, embraced the gentler norms of needs-based social life as opposed to the insatiable, satyr-like, greed-based worship of Mammon. They did not fetishize the ‘economy’, nor did they reduce social life to the cumulative passions, nor did they ravage the ecological web of nature to the point of near extinction, nor did they – emulating the feats of the ‘progressivists’ – destroy all the benignities of the life convivial and familial in favor of creating a cold, bare impersonal, competitive, and ‘equalizing’, civil society to be held up as the great template of the arrival of modernist society. Without recourse to the charade of abstract, spurious, and wholly empty, but grandiose ‘declarations’ ( freedom, equality, liberty, etc.) of universal humanity (which could only be honored in the breach), and without finding it necessary to set off grand world conflagrations, or to land ‘a man on the moon’ as the pinnacle of human achievement(!), they nonetheless lived
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– and let live – a diverse culture of life such as still survives in the nonmodernist pockets of this embattled world. It is their largely unselfconscious, and highly differentiated, ways of life, modes of thinking, and cumulations of knowledge and wisdom, material and non-material, that we have come to know and understand as civilization; we are here because of them; and they are what we know – even though, in typical, if tragic, irony modernism has been diligently at work not merely to epistemically erase their social economy of affections (as against our political economy of interests), but ontically to destroy even the memory of such civil, and convivial, forms of social existence. They are the reason that one, ordinarily, prefers to vacation in Bali, rather than Manchester. It is their way that stands, howsoever clumsily, like a hapless and wretched bull about to be slain by a murderous matador, between us and the total triumph of modernist technofascism. The near universal triumph of Eurocentric modes of thought and practice necessarily clashes now with the resistance of these hoary cultural institutions, as it did indeed at its very inception in the times of the great modernist revolutions. Force and fraud, violence, bribery and chicanery were the classical means that delivered dutiful workers, docile women, and submissive minority cultures as fodder to the lusts of the modernist avatar, but not all – then as now – succumbed to such forces. Peasants revolted, workers organized, women fought back and colonies secured at least nominal independence, gaining howsoever partial a release from the Iron Cage of all-total commodification of all things, and non-things, through the long history of the modernist period. Today, the lines are being drawn even tighter with religions, cultures and tribal societies learning (howsoever separately) of their joint commonalities as against the advancing armies of a neo-liberalist globalization. As with any global movement, there are some more, and better, organized than others; today the single greatest check to the pretensions of modernism comes from the political and cultural force of Islam. Historians will remember that, in the making of a European world, this latter was one of the earliest foes to be vanquished: to that extent, the Crusades were the early premonitory adventures of the prehistory of Euromodernism (somewhat later, in the so-called Reformation, Europe would ‘modernize’ – thereby rendering it virtually unrecognizable – Christianity itself, a West Asian faith, into its Calvinist travesty). But, unlike military ones, cultural battles are never won or lost once and for all: culture endures because it resides, as with stray seeds ready to sprout, wherein even modernism cannot wholly penetrate: deep within the inner psyches of humans. The Crusades, of a kind, are being fought again today: neoliberal modernism to one side – and the myriad cultures of this living planet to the other. Today, it is Islam: tomorrow, others will follow; or maybe, even, lead. Culture, in this high modernist era, is resistance. At the risk of hyperbole, it might be suggested that never before in the known history of the human world has such a clear and unmistakable choice been presented to us; no ‘star wars’ movie of Hollywood inspiration
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could be more loaded, than the real world struggles of today, with the biblical antithetics of good and evil, these latter terms being definable now in extraordinarily simple ways. Good is what preserves human society and a safe habitat on this planet for any and all forms of life: evil is what threatens either or both. It is not the Buddhist, or the bushman, or the aboriginal, or even the obligingly terrible Taleban (who, incidentally, are far more faithful to their Mosaic codes than the modernist is to his) that bids fair to destroy all life (convivial or otherwise) on earth: and if the modernist has not entirely succeeded in this wretched mission, despite having tried his (gender intended) best for over two hundred years, it could only be because he is not quite as efficient as he imagines himself to be. How a conquistadorean mind-set, that gave us the carnage of the First and Second World Wars, the madness of Hitler and Stalin (in the twentieth century, mind, and not in some tendentiously hypothesized ‘dark ages’), and the rabid insanity of Reaganite Star Wars Initiatives (or its current, worthy, Bushian successor) can set itself up as the very acme of human civilization is something the Eurocentred might yet – in a rare moment of self-critical lucidity – be convinced to ponder. Certainly, this chapter is addressed to such a sorely needed rethinking of fundamentals on the part of these claret-sipping masters of the universe. Critical Realism, for all its dazzling brilliance (or is it because of it?) shares, in abundantly generous measure, most all of the ingrown orientations of modernism: as such, it is quintessentially Eurocentric in both inspiration and ambition. It glorifies (its version of) ‘science’ as a near ideal, and takes (its version of) ‘truth’ to be a universal value, and a precondition of all serious discourse; and its insistence on what is plainly judgmental absolutism quite overrides any pretense of acknowledging the reality of epistemic relativism. Nor does it sever us from the clasp of our old inquisitor, the notion of ‘progress’, (in both ontic and epistemic dimensions) since, presumably, it sees itself (again, in its own terms) as an indisputable ‘scientific’ improvement on pre-existing philosophy.9 Thanks to the subtle genius of Bhaskar, however, it does manage to evade a more reductionist materialism, such as characterized anterior schools of realism, and it is in that small and spare window that it offers, but unwittingly, slender opportunity for the inflow of non- or anti-Eurocentered ideas (such as this chapter offers). I can say with all assurance that the real world effectiveness of this still fringe movement (and realists must face up to reality) will depend entirely on how large this window is permitted to get and how much fresh air, thereby, is allowed to enter (on the other hand, it is quite possible that critical realism, like the Moonies, may be content to live a narcissistic sublife as a sub-culture, underlaboring for its own kind, from now to eternity; in which case nothing need be said). This is a world endowed with very little patience for ‘know-it-alls’ in general, even less for (mainly) European, male know-it-alls; that era, possibly due to the grace of some unknowable, but solicitous, providence has, surely, come – and gone.
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As I have written elsewhere,10 the safeguard for the continued existence of this planet in a secure habitat for all life is the sincere (not politic) recognition of both ontic and epistemic pluralism, diversity and variety, in all matters big and small, material and ideal. No human tradition has (or should have) a monopoly on the ‘truth’, nor can it claim (even if it did) on that basis, a monopoly of power over the lives of others (human or non-human). Such fantasies are, inherently, self congratulatory (and, in the modern period, entirely European in provenance), and wholly disregardable, on that account alone, did they not pose, given the grim pedagogy of history, such horrific dangers for ordinary peoples the world over, as we have already witnessed; for these are ambitions suited only to the inclement likes of a latter-day Hitler or a Stalin, not to people who presumably truly care about a human emancipation. Indeed, it may well be true that real emancipation can only begin when we are rid of such would-be emancipators. The modernist world is in sore, desperate, even crying need of more so-called ‘feminine’ values of caring, charity, love and compassion than are allowed to subsist within it; about the last thing it needs today is yet another genre of autistic philosophes, no matter how gifted or bright; for science, even critical realism itself, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a human emancipation. It is not the supernal insights of ‘science’ that moved Jesus, Spartacus, or Gandhi to serve; for truth is that, in human history, it has never been true that it is the ‘truth’ that sets us free. The ‘word ’ that sets us free is not a word at all, but rather an undefinable, but very real, set of passionate, and compassionate, affections and actions called, simply: love. In a separate book devoted to the idea,11 I have tried to explain that the entire enlightenment driven search for ‘utopia’ from More to Marx has been a chimerical search for what has always lay hidden from the modernist view, on account of its archetypically ‘masculinist’, epistemic blinkers (which is why so many of these utopia-hunters were, not surprisingly, white males): the domain of affective values already given us within the healing matrix of familial relations where it has been putatively feminine traits of warmth, caring and affection that have held at bay, as far as humanly possible, the ravages of both nature and society. As such, the promise of a real utopia, as opposed to its mystified fantasy version, has always been immanent in human society though the modernist has gone farthest in trying to extinguish its very possibility through his sponsored proliferation of the solvent exactions of state and market relations (treated, ironically, as ‘progressive’ interventions in their escalator models of history and societal evolution). In effect, emancipation has little, indeed nothing, to do with the manifestos scribed by the wild-eyed few, and eventually to be dictated to the many by dint of brute force, which has been the dismal European way: it can only be rediscovered in the ever-extant creations, and recreations, of our own indefeasibly mammalian, tribalist, heritage.12 It is far from fortuitous that women have customarily represented the simple values of felicity that inform that embalming domestic domain (after
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all, patriarchy had viciously seen to their involuntary imprisonment within that haven) whereas men have sought, instead, gold and/or glory outside of it in the masculinist, external, ‘public’ domain where their naturalist, predatory instincts could exercise, to the detriment of all!, full play of all their propensities. The set of values of nurturance enshrined in human ‘families’ (itself a part of the genus of mammalian groupings of a similar nature), regardless of how that unit is itself constituted, or composed of, is as close as we can expect to get to heaven on earth: even the most wretched slave, if allowed one of his/her own, may be expected to find some peace within its sanctuary, howsoever transient his/her stay in it. From More to Marx, then, the search for ‘utopia’, was little other than an unselfconscious hearkening (Durkheim, not incorrectly, described ‘socialism’ as a ‘cry of pain’), and lament, for what was being rudely destroyed by the very forces of modernism that the enlightenment legatees – liberal or Marxian – celebrated as the delivering agencies of the ‘higher’ social order. As the lived experience of capitalism and socialism, those two terrible gifts of the modernist era, has amply shown, this ‘higher social order’ promised – and, unavoidably delivered – nothing but more wretchedness, alienation, angst and despair, as epistemic corollaries of a real destruction of social ties, ecological webs, and natural habitats, not to mention time-honored autonomies. In his celebration of putatively ‘primitive’ communism, Marx came tantalizingly close to fathoming the hidden nucleus of such convivial modes of social existence; he might have stopped there! – and spared the world the now almost unimaginable, but ever so real, catastrophes of Stalin and Pol Pot, but his own heroically modernist epistemics had him seek it elsewhere (his ‘advanced’ communism placed that otherwise exoteric vision on a ‘higher’ technological and productivist setting). To his credit, in his final years he did start to rethink issues, but regrettably far too late for his epigones who were already in full flight. In this new millennium, and hence within a new set of social and political reckonings, we may yet rediscover this immanent promise (concretely lived by millions even now in tribal and traditional societies, outside the pale of modernist ideologies and practices) but only given the epistemic prelude of a very real breaking with the enlightenment, and its many pathetic delusions, whether in the economic, political or social sphere. This would involve shrugging off as patently absurd, in a sense, all the vanities of Eurocentric modernism: its productivist ethics, its factory fetishism, its consumptive hedonism, its abstract humanism, its wholly tendentious and apocryphal universalism, its sternly masculinist ‘law and order’ preoccupations, its speciously vacuous ‘egalitarianism’, and its spurious and offensive oppositions between nature– culture, mind–body, man–woman, occident–orient, reason–emotion, etc. Away, and apart from etatiste and neoliberal modes of macrosocial reengineering, we (within the modernist fold ) can, in our separate, variegated, personal, and independent ways, still seek and find the means – yet again! – of
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actualizing the benignities of self-direction, self-provisioning, and self-determination, breaking (but only in the process of so seeking and finding) with the perverse logics of market and state – the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of modernist discourse – that have dogged our lives in this the late epoch of modernism.13 It is in that creative process of regeneration that Eurocentrism, like modernism, will bury itself; and all of humankind will rediscover once again the bliss of particularistic difference, not standardized commonality, with living (not becoming, achieving, or doing) as the only anthropically comprehensible ‘meaning of life’ given us. Of course, if we do endeavor and succeed in this return to normalcy, let it be a salutary reminder to the modernist tribe (including critical realists) that we would then have only caught up to where the bushmen began their evolution, eons ago. So much (obviously can be said) for – the grand delusions of – ‘progress’.
Notes 1 Bhaskar’s first book still remains his most important work: A Realist Theory of Science (1997, Second Edition). 2 The smugness of modernist science finds its fittingly implacable nemesis in the (many) works of Paul Feyerabend, especially Against Method, and Science in a Free Society. 3 For some very preliminary information here refer to Martin Bernal, Black Athena (1987). 4 This ‘realist’ definition, identifying what might be termed the ‘generative traits’ of Eurocentric modernism (but spelt out in far greater detail) is available in my Breaking With the Enlightenment (1997), and deviates from received and extant definitions of the phenomenon as given in the arts and sciences. 5 Feminist critiques are to the twentieth century as Marxist insights were to the nineteenth; and it is in their revelatory discoveries that we may glean the real elisions implicit in classical enlightenment based visions of science, nature and society. 6 The late eighteenth century, fearful of revolutions, fed to surfeit on Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees where it is private vices that result in public benefits (an important idea in Smith, for example, where the unintended ‘rationality of greed’ is similarly situated); indeed such misanthropic visions are quite definitive of the principal thrust of the Enlightenment from Hobbes, Mandeville to Malthus. At any rate, virtuous or not, modernism inflicted virtually irreparable damage to the prospect of the continuity of all things, animate and inanimate, on this planet. 7 Eurocentrism is, given its definition in this chapter, not to be confused therefore with the many traits of ‘Caucasian’ (a term inappropriately appropriated to themselves by Europeans) ethnocentrism, inclusive of racism and chauvinism; it is the very soul, however, of modernism, which is exclusively a European phenomenon in origin, regardless of its multihued clones the world over today. 8 Non-modernist accounts of science are only slowly being ‘produced’, albeit with great difficulty today. An outstanding precursor to that avalanche of scholarship still to come is the work of G.G. Joseph, The Crest of the Peacock (2000), which highlights, in all unselfconscious modesty, the mathematical genius of civilizations other than Europe. 9 Bhaskar’s weakest work to date is his Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation (1986) where a ‘liberationist’ paradigm is casually tagged on, as if it derived from critical realist discourse, to the prior philosophical critique. Interpreted strictly, critical
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10 11 12
13
realism has nothing (meaningful) to say about emancipation that is, or can be, critical realism in origin. Emancipatory dialogs are not its province, given that it aspires, and proudly at that, to the status only of ‘underlaboring for science’. To amend a hoary aphorism: (modernist) philosophers have only interpreted the world and Marxians (and others) have ‘only’ changed it – the point now may be, in defiance of all the Eurocentered, to simply save it (from the depredations of all of the above). In my Against Eurocentrism currently awaiting publication. See above. Contrary to European ideologies of anthropocentrism, nature does, perforce, extrude into ‘culture’. We are, as ‘humans’, animals; and, as animals, part of nature, ‘red in tooth and claw’, but not incapable of corespective ties. Tribalism is an extension of the familial principle of affective relations, infinitely superior to the cut and dry, ‘social contract’, and ‘balance-of-interests’ form of ‘civil society’ that modernism creates by force. The real social form is, in effect, a ‘balance of affections’, a pre-modernist notion all but extirpated in the abstracting misanthropy of modernism. The revival of that very non-abstract societal norm is our only hope left of surviving the barbarism of our times. It is in the repressive reification of what are but commonplace dimensions to the social life – e.g. exchange, regulation, etc. (which are the sites within which it erects hypertrophic constructions like ‘market’ and ‘state’, before counterposing each to each, as in the neoliberal era, as if they were life and death ‘alternates’ ) – that modernism destroys the very organon of the social form. To ‘reclaim reality’, i.e. to preserve the planet, is to both epistemically and ontically deny the legitimacy, or even relevance, of modernist economy, society and polity: they are what must be undone.
Bibliography Bernal, M. (1987) Black Athena: The Afrosiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Bhaskar, R. (1986) Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, London: Verso. —— (1997) A Realist Theory of Science (2nd edition), London: Verso. Feyerabend, P. (1975) Against Method, London: New Left Books. —— (1978) Science in a Free Society, London: New Left Books. Joseph, G.G. (2000) The Crest of the Peacock: The Non-European Roots of Mathematics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kanth, R. (1997) Breaking with the Enlightenment: The Twilight of History and the Rediscovery of Utopia, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997.
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10 The dialectics of realist theory and the Eurocentric problematic of modern discourse Nick Hostettler
Introductory overview In the Grundrisse Marx says: The simplest abstraction, . . . which expresses an immeasurably ancient relation valid in all forms of society, nevertheless achieves practical truth as an abstraction only as a category of the most modern society. Even the most abstract categories . . . are, nevertheless, in the specific character of this abstraction, themselves likewise a product of historic relations, and possess their full validity only for and within those relations. (Marx 1973: 105) With these words, Marx presents us with the apparent paradox that the ‘simplest abstractions’ achieve a ‘practical truth’ as the lived categories of capitalist social relations. He lends abstraction a double meaning, giving it both discursive and non-discursive inflections, indicating the profound peculiarity of the process of social transformation known as modernity: abstractions are really brought to life. Deploying Roy Bhaskar’s dialectical critical realism, this chapter sketches out the need to understand the emergence of abstractions as lived relations in terms of ‘universals’ and the whole process as the uneven combination of multiple ‘dialectical universalisations’. It also shows how the cultural specificities of the origins and relations of domination of dialectical universalisation are thoroughly Europic, and how it is becoming anthropic.1 In this light, Capital is revealed as a profound critique of the structural dynamics of Europic dialectical universalisation. Modern discourse on the nature of society and history has developed as a constitutive moment of modern social relations. The discourse of modernity has struggled to achieve its desired degree of reflexivity or sufficient sense of historicity. This failure is marked and perpetuated by the centrality of universals, while it is registered by the term ‘Eurocentrism’. Generally, Eurocentrism is taken to refer to a kind of bias or distortion, intrinsic to the description, justification and reproduction of the privileged
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position of social forms originating from European societies. However, while the term is used to question claims to universality, it does little more than gesture towards the intrinsic characteristics and social conditions of the modern tradition which prevent it from arriving at an adequate selfunderstanding. Against the dominant flow of modern discourse, there are two modes of engagement with the essentially contradictory social relations of capitalist modernity: deconstruction, on the one hand, and Marxism and dialectical critical realism, on the other. The difference between the two hinges on the possibility of giving a more coherent account of these contradictions. Deconstruction remains content to disclose various kinds of contradictions, not least those between the rationalist-humanist claims for modernity and its substantive irrationalities. Marxism and realism engage in deeper and explanatory critiques, generating a conception of the dialectics of form and substance within which deconstruction can be critically incorporated.2 From within realist horizons, the two tendencies within deconstruction, represented by Derrida and Foucault, need to be understood as having engaged with the dialectical universalisation of modernity from their respective perspectives of its discursive and disciplinary moments.3 Deconstruction has given us ‘discourse’ and ‘discipline’ as historically specific, essentially modern, categories. Derrida, in Of Grammatology, developed the technique of writing under erasure to point up the internal contradictions and limits of modern discourse, and treats these contradictory discursive relations as inescapable entanglements, regarding attempts to rationally comprehend the world as necessary but impossible (Derrida: 1976). Deconstruction’s denial of the claims of modern discourse to be a medium of rational communication, connects communicative distortions to relations of power. Foucault’s work on modern disciplines contributes to the non-discursive aspect of these relations, sharing a concern with that sphere of modern life Althusser designated the ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’, those peculiarly modern relations of subjectification and agentification (Foucault 1991a, 1991b). These forms of power arose in a protracted movement away from pre-modern emphases on localised, concentrated, and spectacular uses of coercion over a relatively intractable social domain, developing novel capacities for rendering social (and natural) relations and processes amenable to their mediation and transformation. Deconstruction discloses the production and saturation of this terrain through the medium of the modern tradition of political and social discourse. Our experience and understanding of public and private life have been thoroughly mediated by ‘scientific’ discourses, our lived relations constituted by distorted and distorting forms. The major contribution dialectical critical realism makes to our understanding of these social categories derives from Bhaskar’s two-level systematisation of their internal contradictions. First, in terms of anthroporealism, Bhaskar reveals modern forms to be a complex condensation
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of contradictions, an ensemble of internally related ‘irrealist’ categorial errors (Bhaskar 1993: 394). Where anthroporealism is pitched at the level of transhistorical generality, the anthropic character of modern discourse and disciplines must be referred to as ‘Europic’ so as to capture the historical specificities of their European origins. Europic errors are exemplified by those Marx discusses in the Grundrisse, where he rejects the universalistic categories of European political economy, such as ‘production’, ‘value’, ‘labour’, ‘time’, etc. (Marx 1973). These categories absent the necessary distinction between abstract generalities, e.g. ‘production in general’ and historically specific categories, such as capital. Marx reveals how universals generate ‘chaotic conceptions’, but went on to show how they are also real features of the chaotic reality of capital and how their social function depends on their embodying these conflations. Second, Bhaskar grounds anthropic contradictions, and therefore dialectics, in constitutive absences of necessary characteristics (Bhaskar 1993). The contradictions of universals, for instance, are constituted by absences, and processes promulgating them are dialectical. These contradictions and absences, in both discursive and disciplinary dimensions of Europic dialectical universalisation, are being worked out through a dialectic of two processes. The dominant tendency is for the intensification of real contradiction and absence, the emergence of reified categories as social relations and their domination over substantive features of social existence, i.e. dereification. The subordinate tendency is towards a real structural transformation involving the resolution of these contradictions through the meeting of real needs. This dialectic is one of form and content through which Europic forms are disclosed and transformed, and one of ground and emergence, with realist forms developing through theoretical critique and practical struggle against irrealist modernity. Marx’s mature writings and Bhaskar’s dialectical critical realist ontology are the clearest theoretical instances of this anti-modern counter-tendency. From the perspective of this double dialectic, though, modernity appears more complex than deconstruction would acknowledge, for it is irreducible to discourse and discipline. The negative and positive dialectics are deeply entwined, with both intellectual production and other social practices embodying them both. Nevertheless, this chapter concentrates on the negative process of irrealist dialectical universalisations.
Capitalist modernity and the problematics of discourse–discipline dialectics As Rajani Kanth indicates, modern Europe is not peculiar in its capacity to generate sophisticated traditions of abstract conceptual analysis.4 Rather, its specificity is in the relations between what he refers to as the three foundations of Eurocentric Modernity: ‘science’, ‘materialism’ and ‘progress’. Under the imaginary significations of Autonomy and Mastery
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modern scientific discourse has been peculiarly ‘materialist’ in both the reductive philosophical sense as well as Rousseau’s concern with the technical domination of the outer world at the expense of its impact on the inner.5 ‘Progress’ is the name of this transformation through the mediation of social and natural processes by these one-sided, irrealist, sciences of Man and Nature: the domination of the world by reified forms of practical abstraction and the accompanying dynamics of disintegration. Political economy, along with other discourses, such as law, economics and politics, psychology etc., have all relied on Gramsci’s ‘common sense’ understandings of more or less institutionalised social relations for their conceptual raw materials (Gramsci 1991). The intellectual, institutional spaces occupied by the formal discourses provide them with a significant degree of relative autonomy, allowing for ‘independent’ elaboration of disciplinary categories. There are, however, deeply entrenched limits to relative autonomy within existing conceptual and historical horizons, due to the form which is common to the discursive and disciplinary dimensions of modern social relations. This form is embodied in the anthropic categories which join the two dimensions together, the clearest account of which is provided by Althusser’s ‘problematic’ and Bhaskar’s ‘irrealism’. The problematic points to the deep, internal form, or structure, of discourse and is a prime instance of the transfactuality a societal mechanism, i.e. the production of different knowledge effects by the form common to distinct intellectual inquiries. It is a typically critical realist concept, providing a structured and differentiated account of discursive practices. It thematises the differential temporalities of reproduction and transformation of the relatively enduring problematic and the more transient effects which emerge at the level of surface contents. The concept of the problematic also encompasses the insights of realist dialectics by identifying different levels and regions at which real absences exist and can be absented (Althusser 1970: 19–30), and these are best described by Bhaskar’s account of the logical contradictions of irrealism.6 The irrealist problematic is preserved within discourse by core irrealist categories, of which universals are just the prime example. Universals function in ways similar to Lakatos’ ‘hard core’ of research programmes, as relatively stable pivots around which modern social transformation takes place. These processes can be theorised as irrealist discourse–discipline dialectics (Lakatos 1970). The discursive and disciplinary dimensions of these dialectics are unified by Althusser’s concept of ‘lived relations’. Althusser uses Marx’s identification of the ambiguity of modern abstractions to give the categories of ideology a double status: they are both hermeneutic and practical. Categories, such as the commodity, clearly have this double meaning: ‘Commodity’ is a hard-core category of discourse, whose contradictions ground the ideological development of political economy; its practical counterpart, real commodity relations, provides the fetishistic core around which social relations develop. Crucially, these categories embody the irrealist
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categorial structure of universals in both discursive and disciplinary dimensions. It is because of this formal and substantive identification of this pair of internally contradictory dimensions that Marx’s critique of the discursive categories of political economy discloses the worldly contradictions of capital. The title of Moishe Postone’s Time, Labour and Social Domination: A reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory highlights two of these key ‘hard-core’ universalistic concepts and social relations (Postone 1996). While not approaching ‘time’ from an explicitly dialectical critical realist perspective, Postone is explicitly concerned with the real historical development and critical appropriation of irrealist categories. His insight is to interpret Capital as a sustained critique of political economy’s systemic conflation of transhistorical generalities and historically specific categories, a critique which can be extended to the entire range of categories of political economy, though Postone himself concentrates on ‘time’, ‘labour’ and their relation to ‘value’ (Postone 1996: 21–42). By indicating how both the discursive and disciplinary dimensions of such abstractions develop within the wider processes of capital, Postone suggests just how pervasive irrealist universals are within modern culture. He also suggests ways in which aspects of Marx’s work can be generalised to provide a broader account of modern social transformation. For instance, the valorisation process requires social mediation by the universal ‘time’, such that contemporary discourses and disciplines of universal ‘time’ share their origins with the other categories of capital. However, their extension and intensification have required a degree of relative autonomy, with ‘time’ becoming just one relatively autonomous moment of the modern totality, a social formation constituted by the combined and uneven multiplicity of internally related Europic dialectical universalisations. As a constitutive moment of modernity, universal ‘time’ shares many peculiarities with the commodity, being an irrealist universal within discourse and a concretised abstraction in practice. In both dimensions of its dialectical universalisation, the tendency is for ‘time’ to become abstracted from the durations of real things, events or processes. Contrasting these abstractions with the ‘concrete’ conceptions of time belonging to other cultures, Postone argues that, regardless of other differences, such as that between linearity and circularity, non-moderns apprehended temporality as embedded within natural processes, and frequently understood social processes in similar terms. Accentuating this distinction, Postone speaks of ‘time’ as an ‘independent variable’, as opposed to a dependent one, which organises temporalities in terms of external, rather than internal, relations.7 From the perspective of dialectical critical realism, ‘time’ is a characteristically irrealist universal, embodying categorial errors in two dimensions. First, it conflates levels of conceptual generality by collapsing the distinction between particularity and generality. ‘Time’ has emerged through the historical universalisation of mechanised time-keeping. The steady passing
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of the hands across the face of a clock has become the universal measure of a ‘time’ which is external to all concrete, particular, durations, to become an abstract measure of all actual durations (Postone 1996: 200–16). This appropriation of conceptions of duration by clock-time has been forgotten, as it were, leaving us with an uncritical sense of our social practices being quite natural. Second, then, ‘time’ is a reification: it is a practical truth generated by the distorted emergence of a simple abstract generality into an independent reality, an external medium through which things move. The abstraction and reification of ‘time’ renders all actual temporalities as essentially contingent to the nature of things, rendering their natures as hypostatised essences. Taken together, universalisation and reification reinforce the fundamental underpinnings of irrealist discourse: ontological monovalence, the conception of being as purely positive (Bhaskar 1993: 4–8, 38–49). The dominance of discourse by universals obscures the realities of absence and blocks off the possibility of historical reflexivity. The disciplinary dimension of the dialectical universalisation of time can be theorised using Marx’s conception of formal and real subsumption (Marx 1976: 1019–38). Modes of subsumption are best treated as degrees of articulation between social forms. At one extreme, the lowest levels of articulation imply a high degree of externality of one form from another and a low degree of conditioning or mediation of one by the other: the two forms exist independently from one another. At the other extreme, articulation implies the highest degree of internality, conditioning and mediation, i.e. one form has completely subsumed into the other and no longer possesses any independent existence. Simple articulation of capitalist relations to pre-capitalist labour processes is a necessary but insufficient condition of formal and real subsumption. Formal subsumption, however, implies a certain trajectory through degrees of articulation, such that further development of the pre-capitalist relations is conditioned by commodity production and wage labour, i.e. further development of existing productive processes is dominated by the emergence from within them of capital–labour relations. In this moment, individuals come to ‘meet as its [capital’s] components personified: the capitalist as “capital”, the immediate producer as “labour”, and their relations are determined by labour as a mere constituent of capital which is valorizing itself’, when the individual capitalist ‘intervenes in the labour process as its director, manager’ (Marx 1976: 1020). As the terms ‘director’ and ‘manager’ suggest, formal subsumption implies the emergence of novel, modern, power relations, in which ownership and control become externally related to the labour process. It also implies the positing of the labour process as the discreet object of this control. Formal subsumption, then, indicates the moment at which the discursive and disciplinary dimensions of these new social forms emerge. Real subsumption, by contrast, entails the deeper process of structural transformation effected through the development and exercise of these new
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power relations. Pre-capitalist relations and processes dissolve into capitalist ones, becoming reified labour processes and acquiring their peculiarly modern form in which universals become lived relations. It is now that, ‘for the first time . . . the abstraction of the category “labour”, labour as such, labour pure and simple, becomes true in practice’ (Marx 1973: 105). With real subsumption the discursive and disciplinary dimensions of dialectical universalisation have wrought real change in the world. The dialectic of formal and real subsumption is a process of differentiation and retotalisation in which ever simpler abstractions become practical truths in the emerging contradictory totality. In the moment of formal subsumption, the relatively complex abstraction ‘the labour process’ is the universal which constitutes objects of control. At this stage the isolation of production processes from their wider milieu, and the externalisation of control over them, does not affect their concrete form, leaving their many determinations firmly embedded within them. In the later moment of real subsumption those same determinations, including abstractions such as ‘labour’, have become posited as objects in their own right, objects of their own universalising discourse–discipline dialectic. Consequently, the determinations of the labour process are disembedded from their concrete forms to become the practical abstractions mediating capitalist social formation. It is a short step from Marx’s account of formal and real subsumption under the categories of capital to a more general account of modern social transformation. Formal subsumption by ‘pure and simple’ time occurs as features of the world become the objects of measurement and regulation, i.e. time management. Pure time, rather than natural durations or exemplary practices, becomes the standard of measurement. Historically, the discursive and disciplinary dimensions of the dialectical universalisation of time emerged as early as the twelfth century (Postone 1996: 200–16). It became a problem for textile producers that daily rates of pay were not related to seasonal variations in the length of the working day, i.e. to output and productivity. The introduction of the standard, fixed, hour as a universal measure resolved this problem, so that the duration and pace of previously incommensurable forms of labour could be measured and compared. However, the temporality of concrete pre-capitalist forms is welded into their very fabric, as it were. Formal subsumption can introduce the possibility of disputes over hourly pay and the length and intensity of the working day, but also limits them to these characteristics of given forms of labour (Postone 1996: 200–16). Abstract time remains an external relation. By contrast, the movement to real subsumption by ‘time’ entails its internalisation. With real subsumption, universal time becomes a constituent element of the capitalist labour processes for the first time. At one level, capitalist forms no longer possess an essential temporality, for labour processes are subject to indefinite transformations designed to speed them up. The tendencies of capital are for raising the level of intensity of work to its
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absolute maximum and for reducing the duration of production processes to an absolute minimum. Capital imposes an accelerating dynamic on the labour process which has the ultimate, if unrealisable, goal of sweeping away all constraints on instantaneous production, distribution and consumption. This novel temporality is essentially constituted by abstract universal time as an internal relation. More widely, the dialectical universalisation of time makes it possible to commensurate and co-ordinate social practices on a local, national and global scale thanks to its spatial mediation by various forms of technology, i.e. clocks, telegraph, broadcasting, satellites. Real subsumption extends well beyond the sphere of immediate production, to encompass social and political formation, such as the emergence of national identity as portrayed by Benedict Anderson (Anderson 1983). Highlighting the forms of the modern imaginary, Anderson draws attention to the subjective dimensions of dialectical universalisation. This imaginary develops in conjunction with the emergence of the categories of capital and related forms as lived relations in a panoply of new disciplines, of self-subjection to time keeping, punctuality and efficiency, etc. So effective have these dimensions of abstract ‘time’ been that, when Kant was writing, it seemed entirely natural that he should speak of abstract ‘time’ as a necessary form, rooted in the transhistorical nature of human subjectivity. Transcendental idealism is just one illustration of the disciplines of ‘time’ having their discursive counterparts in the reified ontologisation of abstract time (Kant 1998). That the categorial structure of modern discourse is embodied in its most basic and most general concepts creates a fundamental difficulty for any critical theory, including much of the Marxist tradition. A striking feature of the history of critique is its subordinate relation to modern discourse, its tendency to become either nullified or reabsorbed. The weakness of critical theory can be accounted for, in part, by its own failure to fully realise the break it needs to make from the categorial form of discourse and the categorial structure of dialectical universalisation. Postone pushes this forward by questioning the extent to which ‘traditional Marxism’ can be distinguished from discourse. Capital was not, as has been frequently thought, the elaboration of a subaltern perspective, a critique of capital from the standpoint of labour. Capital is, rather, a critique of the entire historical and conceptual development of both the objective and subjective aspects of ‘labour’ under capital. It is a critique of ‘labour’ as a lived relation, which, in common with all universals, embodies the contradictory categorial structures of discursive and disciplinary social relations. The tradition of Marxism Postone takes to task has been largely premised on a one-sided critique of these structures, concentrating its critique of the wage category on the disclosure of the conflation between labour-power and its exercise. Postone, however, forces us to add to this Marx’s stress on the second dimension along which conflation occurs, i.e. the collapse of this historically specific form of labour into ‘labour in general’. When
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these two dimensions of critique are developed together, a theory of the world is produced which simultaneously disambiguates levels of conceptual generality and distinguishes between strata of reality. Capital must be read as a radical historicisation of all of the universalisable categories of capital by disclosing the historical logic of modern categorial formation. It is a substantive account of the central, driving, discourse–discipline dialectic of modernity, and provides a general theory for the ‘natural history’ of all relatively autonomous discourse–discipline dialectics.
Anthroporealism and the Eurocentric structure of the problematics of discourse–discipline dialectics The essential Eurocentricity of the discursive and disciplinary dimensions of dialectical universalisation can be better understood through a more detailed examination of Roy Bhaskar’s work on anthroporealism (Bhaskar 1993, 1994). What this reveals is that the epistemic dialectic of categorial differentiation and retotalisation embodied in Capital is nothing more than a root and branch critique of Eurocentrism of the discourse of both political economy and the disciplines of capital. The dominant distinction developed in Bhaskar’s Dialectic is that between irrealism and realism. Each of these terms has two inflections: deep causal structures and their effects. In keeping with ontological realism, the real object of philosophy is the formal dimension of discourse, their categorial generalities and internal relations. Philosophical realism and irrealism generalise about the deep, causal, structures of theory and discourse respectively. At this structural level of discourse, irrealism identifies the form of categorial errors, such as illicit fusions, e.g. reductionism, and illicit splits or fissions. The distinction between structures and their effects means that there are three dimensions in which the contradictions of irrealism can develop: at the level of contents; at the level of structure; and between the levels of contents and structure. Realism, by contrast, is an orientation towards consistency within and between the formal and substantive dimensions of theory. It transcends irrealism through the identification of absent distinctions and connections, and the generation of a more complete set of generalities or simple abstractions. Philosophical ontology and anthropology, the possible forms of being-in-general and social being, are then developed by approaching them from the multiple perspectives on them provided by these generalities and through the elaboration of their internal relations. The distinction between form and contents, between structures and the effects in which they are embodied, implies that the philosophical dimension of discourse or theory is irreducible to its contents. A discourse or theory with no explicit philosophical content still embodies a ‘philosophy’ in its categorial form. This makes it possible, even in the absence of any systematic philosophical pronouncements, to read a work like Capital for its philosophy. Although they are pitched at different levels of generality,
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the critiques of political economy and irrealism parallel one another by subjecting the structure of modern discourse to a similar process of diffraction and retotalisation along the two axes of ontic depth and categorial generality. Among the most important contributions Bhaskar makes is to develop the full structural significance of what was achieved in practice by Marx and made more explicit by Althusser: the importance of (conceptions of) real absences (Bhaskar 1993; Althusser 1970: 19–24). The essence of irrealism can be arrived at in two stages: first, it embodies the contradictory forms of ‘anthroporealism’ which, second, embodies ontological monovalence, the notion that being is essentially positive.8 Monovalence obscures ontological polyvalence, the recognition of the essentially dynamic character of the internally related formal and substantive dimensions of being. With polyvalence we arrive at the reality of both the positive and negative dimensions of being. Possibilities are realities, and reality is irreducible to the actualities realised at any moment. Existence is a double-sided movement uniting emergence and disemergence, processes of becoming and unbecoming, in which both its formal and substantive aspects migrate from the absent to the positive and vice versa. The essentially anthropic categorial structure of discourse denies polyvalence. Against this, the polyvalence of form and substance is the essential characteristic of Marx’s historical materialism. Anthroporealism, then, is the complex of categorial errors essential to modern, irrealist, discourse. It works to absent polyvalence by collapsing the distinctions between nature and society and between the general and the particular. It illicitly ontologises the categories of historically specific social forms, simultaneously naturalising, hypostatising and universalising them. At the most general level there are two modes of anthropic conflation, relating to the two axes of conflation: anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. While familiar in some ways, these terms have been systematically elaborated by Bhaskar to encompass the most deep-seated contradictions of the categories of modern discourses and disciplines. Anthropocentrism is familiar as a description of cosmologies which put humanity at the centre of nature, where humanity is either causally responsible for nature or nature is functionally reducible to humanity. Anthropocentric conflations collapse the distinctions between the realms of social and natural being. They illicitly substitute causal and/or functional reductions for real causal connections, giving rise to explanations of the existence, character, activity, etc. of features of the natural world in terms of the existence, character, needs or purposes of social being. The emergence of modern ‘secular’ cosmologies associated with scientific promulgation of natural law is profoundly anthropocentric, demanding their radical decentring. Within philosophy, this decentring encompasses the critiques of the ontic fallacy of causally reducing knowing to being, as in empiricism, and its converse, the epistemic fallacy of reducing being to knowing, as in idealism (Bhaskar 1997).
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Anthropomorphism, by contrast, illicitly identifies the form and/or substance of nature with that of social being. Familiar ways of doing this range from attributing speech and language to non-human animals or, conversely, applying the characteristics of machines (socially transformed nature) to people, e.g. modelling intelligence on computers. At the level of philosophy this entails the illicit conflation of the generalities applicable to ‘being-ingeneral’ (the realm of ontology) with those relating to specifically social being (philosophical anthropology) Where anthropocentrism entails illicit causal reductions between modes of being, anthropomorphism means the dissolution of necessary categorial distinctions, along with the connections between them, collapsing the levels of categorial generality and particularity. This generates universal categories in which the qualities of social being are projected onto all forms of being. Such universals constitute a less obvious instance of anthropomorphism: Kant’s account of the a priori categories of human consciousness. Where spatio-temporality is a general quality of all forms of being, Kant’s transcendental idealist rendition of the categories used the naturalised categories of ‘space’ and ‘time’, but regarded them as features of mind, i.e. attributes of human being (Kant 1998). The most prominent critique of anthropomorphism within critical realism has been that of law (Bhaskar 1997). Laws can only be projected onto nature at the expense of both ontological depth and the social production of constant conjunctions by scientific disciplines and technologies. These examples illustrate the deep connections between the anthropocentric and anthropomorphic axes of discourse In Kant’s case, the qualities of being are rendered as categories which only exist as qualities of mind (anthropomorphism) and their existence is accounted in terms of a naturalistic reduction (anthropocentrism).9 In the case of law the social category of law is attributed to nature (anthropomorphism) opening the way for illicit causal explanations of social relations in terms of nature (anthropocentrism). The example of law illustrates how anthroporealism is a generalisable abstraction of the form of culturally specific categories. To get closer to the concrete world we need to introduce the terms ‘ethnorealism’ and ‘Europorealism’ as distinctions which are internally related to one another. Anthroporealism is not a reified category as it only exists when embodied in the discursive dimension of a particular culture. The anthropism of culturally specific categories is always-already ethnorealist. The form that anthropism takes in European modernity is embodied in the categories of its discourse–discipline dialectics, which are Europorealist. The ethnorealist ensemble encompasses two modes of conflation: ethnocentrism and ethnomorphism. However, unlike their anthropic counterparts, ethnocentrism and ethnomorphism displace humanity-in-general with a specific group or culture. Reworking this distinction allows for the meaning of ethnocentrism to be refined so that it refers to any account of the world that causally and/or functionally reduces any and all regions
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of being, including other cultures, to a particular culture or group; it means accounting for the existence, character, or activities or qualities, such as status, of any aspect of the world, including its own social arrangements, or those of some other, in terms which causally and/or functionally reduce it to a given culture. Ethnomorphism, on the other hand, illicitly generalises the categories of a determinate culture, making them appear adequate for describing others as well as nature. An ethnomorphic philosophical anthropology, for instance, conflates the specificities of its own form of life with the general characteristics of social being. The Europic complex is more specific still. Refined in the same way as ‘ethnocentrism’, ‘Eurocentrism’ covers categories which embody causal and/or functional reductions of any aspect of social or natural existence to some facet of European modernity, or which treat historically specific attributes of European society in terms of a naturalistic causal and/or functional reduction. ‘Euromorphism’ illicitly conflates modern European categories with the generalities of social being: the categories specific to this form of being social are illicitly rendered as universals. With this understanding of the structure of Europism it becomes possible to see how both Marxism and dialectical realism are closely related critiques of the Europic structure of discourse. What Bhaskar’s critique discloses, by working on a concept of categorial structure abstracted from its historical conditions of existence, is the nature of the categorial structural transformation of discourse which is brought about by critique and embodied in the emergence of realist, Marxist, theory.
The common structure of Marxist and realist critique Althusser conveyed the scandalous implications of Marx’s realism for modern discourse by describing it as ‘anti-theoretical humanism’, or as what could now be called realist humanism. He showed that Marx’s break from the derogatorily dubbed ‘theoretical humanism’, i.e. irrealist humanist discourse constituted by universals, entailed the transformatory critique of irrealist conceptions of causal relations, embodied in notions of linear and expressive causality.10 This can now be seen as an effective critique of both ‘centric’ and ‘morphic’ categorial structures. Against the ‘centrism’ of modern discourse, Marx disclosed the causally efficacious social relations of capital in a recognisably realist idiom. In making this explicit, Althusser theorised the peculiarity of the social formation generated by modern discourse–discipline dialectics in terms of structural causality. Bhaskar’s parallel theory of the causal efficacy of the categorial structure of discourse exemplifies the development of this concept within social theory. Although it appears to apply primarily to the discursive dimension of dialectical universalisation, Marx’s Capital demonstrates its applicability to its non-discursive dimension.
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Against ‘Euromorphic’ categorial errors Marx’s work discloses the systemic failure of irrealist theoretical humanism to make or sustain the necessary distinctions between levels of generality in its concepts.11 Euromorphic ahistorical conflations embodied in the terms of political economy were among the starting points of Marx’s deep and extensive critique of modern discourse–discipline dialectics. He disclosed the systematic naturalisation of modern relations and practices, and showed how this depended on the discursive obliteration of distinctions between different levels of historical generality. Marx’s Capital draws attention to the systematic absences embodied in discourse and to the contradictions they generated. Marx resolved these discursive contradictions by absenting the absence of necessary categories, distinctions and connections at and between the level of transhistorical generality and historical specificity.12 The result of this critique was that his work generated new substantive concepts and, more significantly, worked these new conceptions into a theoretical ‘form’ distinct from that of modern discourse.13 It was through this critique of the form of discourse that Marx moved on to give an account of the real form of the disciplinary and relational form of capital. Marx’s transcendence of discourse is revealed by his keen sensitivity to the need to deploy terms in ways which convey differences between meanings related to changes in both theoretical and historical context. Attuned to making changes in categorial perspective, levels of abstraction, extensions in scope and scale, Marx ‘used words like bats’ so that meanings were not tied to the reified, analytical definitions of identity-thinking so characteristic of discourse, but were embedded within a series of tightly constructed theoretical contexts (Ollman 1971). In theorising the dynamics of the disciplinary dimension of dialectical universalisation, and the relational totality to which they give rise, Marx disclosed a social process possessing no enduring substantive identity, an absence he indicates with the phrase ‘all that is solid melts into air’. The logic of capital subordinates all substantive identities to a purely formal one, that of the contradictory value relation. The attendant discourse–discipline dialectics of capital develop similar logics of real subsumption, superimposing formal identities on their respective fields by expanding and intensifying real abstractions. The shocking instability of Marx’s meanings is a necessary part of communicating an understanding of a really changing reality whose categories are characterised by anthropic contradictions and real absences, and whose tendencies are towards ever greater levels of real abstraction.
The dialectics of Europism and anthropism Drawing the threads of this account still more closely together reveals the full extent to which Bhaskar’s conception of anthroporealism is related to the Europic processes of dialectical universalisation. It has so far been shown
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how dialectical universalisation entails the discursive objectivisation and disciplinary objectivation of universal categories; how the movement from formal to real subsumption entails these categories becoming increasingly abstract; how the contradictory structure of universal categories is given by inflecting Bhaskar’s account of anthroporealism in terms of Europorealism. Finally, however, while the structure of the totality produced by Europic dialectical universalisation is itself Europic, its own developmental tendencies are away from its ethnic specificities and towards ever greater levels of abstraction: Europic modernity is oriented towards anthropism. The above discussion of Europorealism dealt with the anthroporealism of the discursive dimension of dialectical universalisation. It was then shown how Marx’s critique of the political economy, e.g. ‘time’, ‘labour’, ‘value’, resolved their discursive contradictions along the two axes of Eurocentrism and Euromorphism, by displacing these contradictions onto the very process of universalisation. Capital, then, is the most developed and well known theory of Europic dialectical universalisation. Now, this process, through which these categories emerge to constitute capital as a social totality, produces a social formation whose internal structure is also Europic. That is to say, as the process develops, the form of these essential relations is displaced onto the totality itself. The structural dynamics of these dialectical universalisations, of the totality-in-formation, are themselves Europic. Euromorphic social transformation is the historical process through which the anthropic categories of capital and modernity are introjected into other cultures: real subsumption is Euromorphic. At one level this could be interpreted as Europeanisation, a consequence of European hegemony which, through coercion and demonstration effects, imposes institutions on the non-European world. It would be nonsensical to deny this. Rather, attention must be directed to the deeper level at which Euromorphism takes place, with a further reference to Moishe Postone’s work. Postone reaches the conclusion from the centrality of the value form to Capital, that there is a growing element of historical contingency in respect of the cultural and institutional forms in which capital can be embodied (Postone 1996: 3–7, 15–21). From a critical realist perspective, Postone discloses the transfactuality of capitalist social relations. In much the same way as the deep, anthropic, structure of discourse can be embodied in an almost infinite array of substantive discourses, so the deep, anthropic structure of capital gives rise to widely varying institutional and cultural ensembles. The purely formal identity of capitalist relations grounds the historically nuanced work of the many Marxist scholars who share Marx’s sensitivity to its historically specific manifestations. While it is the case at present that the institutional models developed in the United States have gained increasing global prominence during the last century, these institutions have served as bearers of anthropic social relations to the rest of the world.
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With this institutional proliferation, however, capitalist relations are becoming ever less culturally specific in the course of their dialectical universalisation. This is not to say that all cultural specificities have been swept away. It is only to point out that the historical significance of ethnic difference is transformed as it is articulated to, and subsumed under, the process of dialectical universalisation. In fact, the totality-in-formation is characterised by a double dissolution of ethnic significance, for the universalisation of purely formal identity is also a movement away from the specificities of Euromorphism to its general form, i.e. anthropomorphism. Externally related differences between social formations tend towards internal distinctions within the emergent, ethnically neutral, totality. The Eurocentrism of social formation by dialectical universalisation is also to be understood in terms of its substantive and formal dimensions. The most obviously Eurocentric feature of the world system is the longstanding hegemony of European and settler states. Here too, however, the shifting locus of political, economic and cultural hegemony reveals that this too is characterised by historical contingency. The evolution of the world capitalist system gave rise to a logic of competition which need not lead to domination by those of European origin. The future prospects of, say, Chinese hegemony, cannot be ruled out by any means. Once again, European cultural specificities are inessential to the logic of capital. Here, too, there is a deeper level at which this process is Eurocentric, at least initially. The term applies to the very structure of causal relations between the value form and the rest of the world. It will be recalled that discursive Eurocentrism establishes causal and/or functional relations between some part of the world and what is external to it. Eurocentric cosmology redetermines relations between externally related parts of the world as internally related aspects of a totality which is, in turn, re-identified with Europe as the dominating centre. In the case of the real totality mediated by capital there is a tendency for all aspects of the world to really become causally and/or functionally reducible to the value form. This causal dimension of real subsumption is most clearly evident in the subordination of people to things and their mutual subordination to value. This account of structurally causal social relations illustrates once again the movement of critique through the contradictions and absences of discursive and surface categories of capital to more coherent theories of its really contradictory relations, structures and dynamics. Marx’s analysis of the commodity form, for instance, moved from the internally contradictory discourse on the commodity of political economy, to the contradictions between its theoretical and real objects, and on to its real internal contradictions. Precisely the same movement from discursive to real contradictions is evident in relation to the form of causality, with Althusser’s critique of the discursive categories of causality leading to the theory of structural causality, whose real contradictions are Europic, tending towards becoming anthropic.
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Conclusions: Marxism, dialectical critical realism and deconstruction The dual movement just traced out is one in which the cultural specificities of European hegemony, its direction of development within the world system and its transforming the world in its own image, are increasingly inessential characteristics of the world system. Modernity is not best understood as the flowering of European supremacy. Rather, the political and cultural competitive dynamics of modernity are fought out through concrete institutions which serve as the vanishing mediators of domination by increasingly abstract capital. This movement away from the specificities of Europorealism is towards the realisation of the more abstract, anthroporealist, totality. Marxism and deconstruction, in tracing the dynamics and contradictions of this ‘modernisation’, have a great deal in common. They both seek to conceptualise the internally contradictory dialectical universalisations that constitute modernity, and they both disclose the internal contradictions of the social formation to which the multiplicity of combined and uneven dialectical universalisations give rise. Where Marxism parts company with deconstruction is on the possibility of giving greater coherence to all this by continually seeking to break with (ideological) discourse and producing theoretical accounts of the complex dynamics of this contradictory form. Marxism historicises the emergence of the categories and form of Europorealist discipline and discourse, without becoming an historicism (Althusser 1970: 119–45). The development of capital, while essentially Europorealist in origin, tends towards the diminishing significance of the specifically European in many ways. What remains essential to capital is the internal structure of the value form and the processes of real subsumption. The value form is realised through relations of oppression, but is indifferent to their specificities, seeking only to subsume them under its peculiar forms of alienation. This movement towards greater cultural indifference, then, is the displacement of Europic forms onto a higher level of abstraction, i.e. a tendential transition from an originary Europorealism towards an anthroporealist telos (albeit one which is, of course, ultimately unattainable). From this perspective, Bhaskar’s philosophical work appears as a generalisation from Capital in two senses. In one sense it is a philosophical generalisation: a movement within theory to a higher level of abstraction. The value of this to Marxism is that it allows for the generalisation from the structural dynamics of the discursive-disciplinary dialectical universalisation of capital to all the related dialectical universalisations of modernity. This provides us with a ‘framework’, an abstract conception of motion, for understanding the changing configurations of modern discoursediscipline dialectics and their relation to specific political, institutional and cultural configurations.
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In the second sense of generalisation, dialectical critical realism captures the movement of capital towards ever greater degrees of real abstraction. As it proceeds it moves towards the realisation of anthroporealist social relations. Bhaskar’s account of irrealism, by thematising the complex contradictory form of anthroporealism, is really an account of the tendency of capital to generalise its own contradictions in the course of the dialectics of its universalisation.
Notes 1 Europic is my term encompassing both Eurocentrism and Euromorphism, while anthropic is Roy Bhaskar’s cover for anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. 2 Fredric Jameson’s work exemplifies this. See 1991, 1998, 2002. 3 To distinguish between Foucault’s ‘disciplines’ and its more orthodox use in relation to intellectual disciplines, I shall refer to the latter as ‘discourse’ and retain Foucault’s usage. To reinforce the internal relations between the two I shall use ‘discursive dimension’ to refer to the common hermeneutic aspects of discourse and discipline. 4 See Rajani Kanth’s contribution to this volume. 5 ‘Imaginary signification’ comes from Cornelius Castoriadis (1987). 6 These dynamics contrast with those of the form-content dialectics of the ‘break’ or the emergence of realist theory. 7 For an account of ‘internal relations’ see Ollman (1971). 8 For a full discussion of absence see chapters 1 and 2 of Bhaskar (1993). 9 For a much fuller and satisfying account of structures of irrealism see Bhaskar (1994), appendix. 10 Althusser, (1970). Althusser uses the term ‘theory’ (in quotation marks) in much the same way as scientific discourse has been used throughout this chapter. Linear and expressive causality are the chief objects of critique in Bhaskar’s Realist Theory of Science. Broadly speaking, linear causality absents depth, while expressive causality absents causal mechanisms and misrepresents both the nature of depth and relations between levels of depth. Also, see Robert Resch (1992): 46–9. 11 Karl Marx (1973). The ‘Introduction’ to this work, written in 1857, is a sustained examination of Euromorphism, or what Derek Sayer calls ‘the historicity of concepts’ in the chapter by that name (Sayer 1987). 12 See examples in Capital such as the paired sections of chapter 7 on labour in general and under capital. 13 Althusser’s ‘The epistemological propositions of Capital (Marx, Engels)’ and ‘Marx’s Immense Theoretical Revolution’ (1970): 145–57, 182–93, respectively.
Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W. (1973) Negative Dialectics, E. B. Ashton (trans.), London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Althusser, Louis (1970) Reading Capital, London: New Left Books. —— (1990) For Marx, London: Verso. Anderson, Benedict (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Archer, M., Baskar, R., Collier, A., Lawson, T. and Norrie, A. (eds) (1998) Critical Realism: Essential Readings, London and New York: Routledge.
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Bhaskar, Roy (1989) Reclaiming Reality: a Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, London: Verso. —— (1993) Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, London: Verso. —— (1994) Plato Etc., London: Verso. —— (1997) A Realist Theory of Science, London: Verso. —— (2000) From East to West, London and New York: Routledge. Castoriadis, Cornelius (1987) The Imaginary Institution of Society, Kathleen Blamey (trans.), Cambridge: Polity. Derrida, Jacques (1976) Of Grammatology, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (trans.), Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press. Foucault, Michel (1991a) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Alan Sheridan (trans.), Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— (1991b) ‘Governmentality’, in The Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow (ed.), Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gallie, W. B. (1956) ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’, in The Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56: 167–220. Gramsci, Antonio (1991) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York: Columbia University Press. Harvey, David (1999) Limits to Capital, London: Verso. Hostettler, Nick and Alan Norrie (2000) ‘Do You Like Soul Music?’, in Alethia Vol. 3, No. 2 (November) and a considerably elaborated version Critical Realism: The Difference it Makes, Justin Cruickshank (ed.) London: Routledge (2003). Jameson, Fredric (1991) Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capital, London: Verso. —— (1998) The Cultural Turn, London: Verso. —— (2002) A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present, London: Verso. Kant, Immanuel (1998) Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kanth, Rajani (2003) ‘Eurocentrism, Realism and the Anthropic Cartography of Emancipation’, in this volume. Lakatos, Imre (1970) ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Lakatos and Musgrave (eds), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marx, Karl (1973) Grundrisse, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— (1976) Capital, Vol. 1, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ollman, Bertell (1971) Alienation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Postone, Moishe (1996) Time, Labour and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Resch, Robert (1992) Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Theory, Berkeley and Oxford: University of California Press. Sayer, Derek (1987) The Violence of Abstraction, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Thompson, E. P. (1968) The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Trotsky, Leon (1962) Results and Prospects, London: New Park.
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Part V
Critical realism and deconstruction
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11 Limited incorporation or sleeping with the enemy Reading Derrida as a critical realist Colin Wight If the contemporary theoretical imbroglio seems a little more fluid than it did a decade ago, there is still a sense in which an alliance between critical realism and deconstruction would be seen by many within both camps as nothing less than ‘sleeping with the enemy’. Deconstruction, at least as commonly understood, is typically thought to be against all ontologising discourses. For deconstruction, ontology is out (Eagleton 1995; Soper 1996). Critical realism, on the other hand, explicitly argues for the necessity of ontology, while taking seriously the epistemological problematics of coming to know it. If the deconstructionist distrust of ontology is often interpreted as implying a form of linguistic idealism, the critical realist insistence on ontology is often read as a form of naïve realism. Both understandings are wrong. Critical realists are explicit in their denial of naïve realism, which they view as a form of empiricism; itself an anti-realist position. But in the case of deconstruction and linguistic idealism the issue is not as clear. Derrida does not wish to be read as a linguistic idealist (Kearney 1995). Yet the characterisation of him in this manner is understandable given his penchant for striking one-liners and his dependence on metaphorical linguistic gymnastics. His oft-cited, and little understood, claim that ‘there is nothing outside of the text’ can quickly mutate into claims that there are no ‘objects outside of discourse’ (Campbell 2001), or that ‘reality is a social construct’ from the pens of those unwilling to grapple with the intricacies of what is being claimed. However, even if not a linguistic idealist, surely Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’ falls within a broadly defined postmodernism? A postmodernism, that is, that eschews all references to truth and reality and which views science as simply one more genre of discourse on a par with literature, fiction and fairy stories (Norris 1992, 1993). In a series of books and articles, Christopher Norris (Norris 1990, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997a, b, c, 2000a, b) has consistently argued that Derrida’s work is not part of this ‘wider postmodernist drift’ and is best understood as part of the tradition of Enlightenment critique (Norris 1996: xii). For Norris, there is ‘clearly no question of Derrida falling into that facile strain of postmodernist rhetoric that cheerfully pronounces an end to the regime of reality, truth and enlightenment critique’ (Norris 1992: 18). Norris claims
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Derrida can quite easily be ‘incorporated’ into a broadly conceived critical realist framework, even if the actual form of this incorporation is ‘limited’ in certain respects; ‘Limited Inc.’, as opposed to a dangerous liaison based on theoretical promiscuity. In short, Norris reads Derrida as a critical realist (Norris 2003). In this chapter I examine the extent to which Derridean deconstruction is susceptible to a critical realist reading. By critical realist, I should make clear, I do not refer only to the philosophical position derived from the work of Roy Bhaskar (1978, 1979, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1994). Certainly Bhaskar figures in my intellectual landscape, but then so do such disparate figures as Mario Bunge, Pierre Bourdieu and Slavoj Zˇizˇek.1 Critical realists are generally committed to three core philosophical principles. First is ontological realism. This is the subject of much confusion. As I understand it ontological realism denotes the belief that the objects of scientific discourse exist independently of that discourse. Put simply, if there were no science there would still be ‘stuff’ that could become objects of a nascent science. One could extend this even further and make the claim that if there were no humans there would still be a ‘world of stuff’, even though there would be no one around to know it.2 Putting it this way highlights the fact that critical realism decouples ontology from epistemology. Of course, in terms of social scientific objects, these cannot exist wholly independent of all discourses since all social objects are conceptdependent. Nonetheless, even in terms of social science discourses we can say that social objects can and do exist independently of their specification in social scientific theories; even if once such theories are articulated they may well causally affect the objects they attempt to describe and explain. The existential point, however, is that there were social objects long before there were departments of social science. Second is epistemological relativism. Critical realists accept the claim that all epistemological claims are temporally and spatially located. Hence epistemological relativism is unavoidable. But accepting epistemological relativism does not mean that all claims are equally valid. Epistemological relativism entails only the acceptance that all epistemological discourses emerge in particular times and locales. As such, there is no means of providing an a priori privileging of any particular epistemological claim. However, from this it does not follow that there is no way of judging between competing knowledge claims. This commitment to judgemental rationalism is the third element of critical realism. Judgemental rationalism is not dependent upon epistemological foundationalism or epistemological a priorism. Judgements can only be made in practice and differing epistemological supports will be required depending on the nature of the judgement under consideration and the nature of the object under study (ontology). In his practice Derrida adheres to ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgemental rationalism. His work assumes that language, and writing in particular, has a mode of operation that is independent of
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his presentation of it; this is his ontological realism. Likewise, Derrida can only articulate his account of deconstruction as Derrida; hence epistemological relativism is implied. Yet, Derrida also assumes that although there is no firm epistemological foundation on which knowledge claims can be based, judgemental rationalism is possible insofar as he argues that his account of X is superior to that of Y. But if his practice implies critical realism, what of his pronouncements? Does the theoretical architecture constructed by Derrida contain a structure within which he might be read as a critical realist? A major problem in attempting to assess the validity of reading Derrida as a critical realist lies in determining just what he means when articulating his own positions. Deconstruction supposedly stresses the indeterminacy of meaning and Derrida quite self-consciously writes in a manner that exploits this (Derrida 1988a: 114). Moreover, and much like Nietzsche in this respect, his work is not always internally consistent and can be read in a variety of ways. Quite what Derrida means is never clear. And if clarity were to be achieved then deconstruction would be falsified, hence there is a real incentive to be imprecise. In any event, any clarity that was achieved could only be illusory. However, in his essay ‘Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion’, published in Limited Inc., Derrida explicitly attempts to write in as direct and straightforward a way as possible (Derrida 1988a: 112, 113). Limited Inc. is a collection of rather heated and complicated exchanges between John Searle and Derrida and the ‘Afterword’, written by Derrida, attempts to put the record straight and reduce the confusions, ambiguities and misunderstanding about deconstruction that so frustrate him (Derrida 1988a: 113). This ‘return to a very classical “straightforward” form of discussion’ (Derrida 1988a: 114) is adopted not out of a naïve belief in the possibility of a pristine and transparent form of ideal language, but out of a desire to reduce the level of violence that occurred in his original exchange with Searle and to make as clear as possible just where he stands on crucial issues (Derrida 1988a: 111). That Derrida thinks such an exercise is both worthwhile and possible is interesting, because it makes clear that he considers the transmission of meaning, however problematic it may be, to be at least possible (Derrida 1988a: 120–122). This makes the Afterword to Limited Inc. a perfect vehicle for unpacking the relationship between Derridean deconstruction and critical realism. Rather than give a blow-by-blow account of the positions articulated by Derrida in the ‘Afterword’ I focus my attention on two key issues which he addresses at some length and which bear on issues related to critical realism. These are the real and the status of philosophical discourse. The first of these issues obviously relates to the now notorious phrase that ‘there is nothing outside of the text’ and Derrida goes to some lengths to distance himself from readings of the phrase that suggest a facile form of philosophical anti-realism. Ultimately, I find his formulations on this issue neither
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consistent nor convincing. The second issue is, in many respects, a more interesting and important concern since it goes to the heart of issues relating to philosophical meaning, indeterminacy, truth and rigour. The important issue in this respect is the distinction Derrida draws between ‘concepts’ and ‘aconceptual concepts’ (Derrida 1988a: 117–118), a distinction which Derrida argues marks the space between a traditional philosophical discourse and a deconstructive one.
Deconstruction, critical realism and what’s real(ly) out(in)side of the text! Given the anti-realist tenor of many poststructuralist readings of Derrida (see, for example, Meyer (2001)) it is perhaps surprising that I view deconstruction as primarily concerned with the revindication of ontology. However, as Jane Flax puts it, ‘Derrida has a special concern for ontological questions’ (Flax 1990: 188). Of course, how this concern with ontology is played out is the important question. But in many ways Derrida’s concern with ontology mirrors that of Bhaskar. Like Bhaskar (Bhaskar 1994), Derrida believes that the misrepresentation of Being is intrinsic to the founding of Western philosophy. The desire to represent the real in language (predominantly speech) – what Derrida calls the ‘metaphysics of presence’ – has structured Western philosophy since its early beginnings. Moreover, since Western philosophy abhorred absence the Real was always made present. Yet, any attempt at representation results in a reduction of the real to what can be represented and hence they become equivalent. This line of argument replicates, in many respects, Bhaskar’s critique of the epistemic fallacy; defined as the analysis or definition of statements about Being in terms of statements about our knowledge of Being (Bhaskar 1993: 397). Likewise, Derrida’s critique of the ‘metaphysics of presence’ and his concern with absence is in many ways paralleled in Bhaskar’s critique of ‘ontological monovalence’ (Bhaskar 1993); which for Bhaskar is the acceptance within Western philosophy of a purely positive notion of the real (Bhaskar 1993: 5). And, of course, this had led both to foreground absence as a key philosophical category (Bhaskar 1993; Derrida 1976). For Derrida, then, the real of philosophy is not the real of Being. Much like Bhaskar’s critique of empirical and linguistic realism, according to Derrida, the ontology of Western metaphysics permits and requires us, to turn our gaze away from the origin of the world – the Other – and focuses our attention instead on only a miniscule part of Being. But this does not mean that the critique of the ‘metaphysics of presence’ can be read as a denial of the real. In fact, if anything, it is an attempt to reinscribe a real beyond the fantasies of philosophical discourse. It is a critique of the attempt to reduce the real to that which can be made present; that is, a critique of the idea that literature, science or philosophy can find some full, rich meaning outside of, or prior to, language itself and which
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can stand in for, or represent, the real. For Derrida, the sheer alterity of the real cannot be reduced to that which can be represented or made present. This is why, in an interview with Richard Kearney (Kearney 1995) Derrida claims: It is totally false to suggest that deconstruction is a suspension of reference. Deconstruction is always deeply concerned with the ‘other’ of language. I never cease to be surprised by my critics who see my work as a declaration that there is nothing beyond language, that we are imprisoned in language; it is in fact, saying the exact opposite. The critique of logocentricism is above all else the search for the ‘other’ and the ‘other’ of language. (Derrida 1995: 172–173) Of course, it is tempting to remind Derrida that it is not only his critics who are at fault in this respect. The anti-realist readings of Derrida are inscribed most deeply in the words of his supporters (Boyne 1990; Campbell 1998; Collins et al. 1996; Culler 1981; Hartman 1981; Wolfreys 1998; Wood 1989) and many of his own equivocations on this issue. This is apparent in the citation provided by Norris in this volume where Norris suggests that, despite the claim that nothing is more realist than deconstruction (Norris 2003), Derrida’s real differs in many crucial respects from that of critical realism. Norris makes this distinction by contrasting Derrida’s real (the Other) with the form of realism Derrida rejects. According to Norris, Derrida rejects the idea of ‘the real as an attribute of the objective, present, perceptible or intelligible thing’ (Norris 2003: 29). And, because Derrida rejects this account of the real, Norris concludes that Derrida’s real differs fundamentally from the real of critical realism. This distinction, however, only works if the real of critical realism is interpreted in the manner the real Derrida rejects. Yet, critical realism need imply no such account of the real. The real of critical realism should not be understood: (i) as necessarily objective, for this would seem to imply the rejection of epistemological relativism; (ii) certainly not present, for this neglects Bhaskar’s deep concern with absence as well as his stratified ontology; (iii) is clearly not always perceptible, for this would imply only the perceivable is real; (iv) and, implies no necessary intelligibility, since this would imply that the real is always, potentially, intelligible. It seems to me that the real distinction between the Real of critical realism and that of deconstruction lies in the a priori manner (and very Kantian at that) deconstruction denies the possibility of coming to know the real. As such, Derrida is drawing ontological conclusions from epistemological arguments. As Norris notes, the real in deconstruction constitutes a radical alterity which transcends the conceptual resources of any discourse that would attempt to come to know it (Norris 2003: 29). This seems to suggest that, for Derrida, the real, insofar as it exists, is always beyond any
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attempt to represent it. This is a dualistic universe and does represent an important difference from the real within critical realism. Critical realism does not divorce the real from its conceptualisation in this manner. Critical realism does take seriously the epistemological problems of how we could know that we know the real. We may know the real, but the epistemological question of how much we know and we know we know remains. Moreover, and as we shall see, the Derridean real has one attribute (differential trace) whereas in critical realism the real refers to an infinite realm of possibility which structures the realms of the actual and the empirical, but is not reducible to the properties of either. All of Derrida’s key theoretical moves and concepts (différance, chance, deferral, spacing, writing, supplement, trace and Other) are bound up with the attempt to evoke a real without transforming it into the real of consciousness/experience/language/reason/logic; in other words, a real that is not a subset of the human; again a position that, in large part, replicates Bhaskar’s critique of anthropocentric philosophies. Yet, if there are good, although not complete, grounds for accepting some similarities between critical realism and deconstruction in relation to the realism issue there is still the vexed problem of Derrida’s claim that ‘there is nothing outside of the text’ (Derrida 1976: 158). Derrida suggest two ways in which he understands this phrase. First, he claims that it: Does not mean that all referents are suspended, denied, or enclosed in a book, as people have claimed, or have been naïve enough to believe and have accused me of believing. But it does mean that every referent, all reality has the structure of a differential trace, and that one cannot refer to this ‘real’ except in an interpretive experience. (Derrida 1988a: 148) This claim has two aspects. The first is epistemological and is one that critical realism would accept. This is the claim that one cannot refer to the ‘real’ except in an interpretive experience. On this account the claim that ‘there is nothing outside of the text’ seems to represent nothing other than the epistemological restatement of Bhaskar’s claim that we can only know the world through our descriptions of it (Bhaskar 1978: 250). The second aspect of this interpretation of the phrase, however, also includes an ontological claim; that ‘all reality has the structure of a differential trace’. This is problematic from a critical realist perspective and opens up the possibility of linguistic idealism irrespective of Derrida’s intention. According to Derrida, language functions by virtue of the fact that the signifying element (called signifier) relates to its signified by way of a perpetually undetermined aspect; an absent trace, which allows the fleeting and transient phenomenon called reference to take place. The difference between the word and the ‘thing’ necessarily involves a gap – this is play – which involves both differentiality and repeatability; although each time in a
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different context, hence implying a potentially infinite movement of signs and absences. A sign is always a substitution for another sign, with no anchoring point, except the ‘something missing’; the differentiality and infinite repeatability of the always-absent differential trace. And, as Derrida makes clear in his claim that all reality has the structure of a differential trace, this formulation does not only concern language. The total field (the world) is replaced by a signifying structure (signs) in the same way that one sign replaces another. The singular condition that allows us to represent the world to ourselves at all is the absent trace. Our experience of presence is mediated by an absence that we can never experience as such. In deconstruction, then, the principle of difference is located ontologically as well as semiotically: at the heart of Being there is difference – or différance (the coined word ‘différance’ refers to at once the differing and the deferring of signs). Only through différance is one thing not another, since in order to be the value of a something requires that it is not something else. It does this by differing, and that which it differs from remains as a trace, whose absence is necessary for any ‘thing’ to be present. In this way, différance comes before Being; and the differential trace before the presence of a thing. Taken to the ontological level, différance is the ultimate phenomenon in the universe. At the heart of existence is the differential trace. One way or another, the whole of Derrida’s oeuvre is an exploration of the nature of writing in the broadest sense as différance; a form of writing he called ‘arche writing’ (Derrida 1976).3 To the extent that writing always includes pictographic, ideographic and phonetic elements, it is not identical with itself. Writing is always impure and, as such, challenges the notion of identity, and ultimately the notion of the origin as ‘simple’. It is neither entirely present nor absent, but is the trace resulting from its own erasure in the drive towards transparency. More than this, writing is in a sense more ‘original’ than the phenomenal forms it supposedly evokes. Writing as trace, mark, grapheme becomes the precondition of all phenomenal forms. As he puts it: I would like to demonstrate that the traits that can be recognised in the classical, narrowly defined concept of writing, are generalisable. They are valid not only for all orders of ‘signs’ and for all languages in general but moreover, beyond semio-linguistic communication, for the entire field of what philosophy would call experience, even the experience of being. (Derrida 1988b: 9) This is the meaning implied in the chapter in Of Grammatology entitled ‘The end of the book and the beginning of writing’ (Derrida 1976). Writing in the strictest sense, as Derrida attempts to show in this chapter, is not what is produced, but what makes production possible.
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But even if, for the sake of argument, we accept that this is a valid account of the operation of language, why should Derrida assume that ‘all reality has the structure of a differential trace’? The answer, it would seem, is that since ‘one cannot refer to this ‘real’ except in an interpretive experience’, he concludes that the ‘differential trace’ structures all reality. For critical realists this represents an example of the epistemic fallacy.4 Because ‘this real’ can only be referred to in an interpretive experience and because this ‘interpretive experience’ is structured by the differential trace, Derrida concludes that all reality must also bear this trace. Once again, Derrida is drawing ontological conclusions from epistemological premises. Moreover, if by ‘all reality’ he means ‘referred to reality’ then he is guilty of reducing reality to that which passes through the ‘interpretive experience’ and as such his own position comes susceptible to his critique of the ‘metaphysics of presence’. Indeed, if we are to maintain a genuine account of alterity we need an account of Being that at least holds out the possibility of a real that is not structured by this ‘interpretive experience’. And this has ethical implications. For it is only if we can allow for the possibility of an ‘Other’ that is not structured by this ‘interpretive experience’ that the other can be truly ‘Other’. Derrida’s second attempt at elaborating the meaning of the phrase ‘there is nothing outside of the text’ attempts to both change the meaning of the word text to context and then to elaborate on what he means by context. So, for example, he argues, that ‘the phrase which for some has become a sort of slogan, in general so badly understood, of deconstruction (“there is nothing outside the text”) means nothing else: there is nothing outside context’ (Derrida 1988a: 136). ‘There is nothing outside of the text’ can now be understood as meaning nothing other than there is ‘nothing outside of a context’. Everything exists within a context; again an idea that is hardly contentious and one that critical realism would insist upon. However, how are we to understand the word ‘context’ in this instance? Derrida argues that by ‘context’ he means what he calls the ‘real-history-of-the-world’ (Derrida 1988a: 136). He uses the phrase ‘real-history-of-the-world’ to highlight the fact that the concept of a text or context does not exclude the world, reality and history (Derrida 1988a). Derrida’s exasperated exposition on this issue is worth quoting at length: The concept of text or of context which guides me embraces and does not exclude the world, reality, history. Once again (and this probably makes a thousand times I have had to repeat this, but when will it finally be heard, and why this resistance?): as I understand it . . . the text is not the book, it is not confined in a volume itself confined to the library. It does not suspend reference – to history, to the world, to reality, to being, and especially not to the other, since to say of history, of the world, of reality that they always appear in an experience, hence in a movement of interpretation which contextualizes according
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to a network of differences and hence of referral to the other, is surely to recall that alterity (difference) is irreducible. Différance is a reference and vice versa. (Derrida 1988a: 137) The admission that the concept of the text, and hence context, does not suspend reference – to history, of the world, to reality, to being, is welcomed. But there are problems, again related to the epistemic fallacy. Critical realism would insist on the possibility of a history, a world, a reality, which exists, but has not yet passed through interpretive experience. Hence, critical realism would reject the claim that history, world and reality ‘always appear in an experience’. Since to claim that reality always appears in an experience veers close to empiricism. Another problem, however, is that what Derrida seems to be suggesting is that by text and context, he means literally everything. Text or context ‘implies all the structures called “real”, economic, historical, socio-institutional, in short all possible referents’ (Derrida 1988a: 148). Irrespective of the epistemic fallacy this way of putting matters is vacuous. It is vacuous if we are to take ‘all possible referents’ literally. For what ‘there is nothing outside of the text’ now means, if the word ‘text = all possible referents’, is that there is nothing outside of all possible referents; literally nothing outside of everything; or, there is ‘nothing outside of existence’; which could be rephrased as an empty tautology; ‘everything that exists, exists’. In many respects if Derrida’s account of the real is the real of interpretive experience it is very close to a form of empiricism, even if it is phrased in linguistic terms. In which case, we can perhaps, now, provide an answer to Derrida’s question about resistance to deconstruction. An answer that would refer him back to some of his own formulations.
Concepts, ‘aconceptual concepts’ and another kind of context! Doubtless the above critique would leave many deconstructionists unmoved. After all, even if we accept the existence of Real beyond interpretive experience, knowledge of it can only take place in that realm. This would mean that, if the broad outlines of a deconstructive position were accepted, it might stand as an effective critique at the level of epistemology. This would turn our attention to another kind of context to which Derrida refers – an interpretive context; one in which issues of truth, reference and knowledge take priority. To my mind, this epistemological reading of deconstruction is the most charitable and potentially the most useful. Putting aside their ontological doubts, critical realists could perhaps have much to learn from deconstruction. And why not? If, as Jonathan Joseph suggests in this volume, Derrida might prove a ‘political’ friend is there any danger in refusing to define him as the enemy? Of course, there is a problem
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insofar as judgemental rationalism is dependent upon ontological realism and epistemological relativism; hence critical realists would insist on understanding ontology, epistemology and judgement in holistic and relational terms. Yet, there would seem to be no principled philosophical reason why Derrida’s epistemological insights could not be incorporated into a larger ontological framework, thus throwing some much needed light onto the limits, and possibility, of judgemental rationalism.5 Derrida certainly sees issues of judgement as important, particularly in relation to ethical and political responsibility. He raises this issue in terms of ‘undecidability’, which for Derrida, should not be taken to mean that decisions cannot be taken (Derrida 1988a: 116). If this were the case, ethics and politics would be impossible. For Derrida, the ‘undecidable’ stands as a motif for the fact that decisions cannot be avoided, in the sense of being necessary yet ungrounded in any set of principles that ‘determine’ the decision before its moment arrives. As he puts it: [A] decision can only come into being in a space that exceeds the calculable program that would destroy all responsibility by transforming it into a programmable effect of determinate causes. There can be no moral or political responsibility without this trial and this passage by way of the undecidable. (Derrida 1988a: 116) Yet, even in Derrida’s own terms this moment of decision must take place within a context. Moreover, this context cannot be entirely open or responsibility would, equally, be impossible. Full closure absents responsibility because the context would determine the decision; yet a fully open context would absent responsibility because there could be no grounds for making a decision (Derrida 1988a: 149). Without some grounding of a decision in a justificatory context the decision could not be held responsible; responsible to who, or what, and why? Derrida is emphatic on this issue; deconstruction ‘should never lead either to relativism or to any sort of indeterminism’ (Derrida 1988a: 148). Nor, he claims, does deconstruction contest or deny the value of truth (Derrida 1988a: 146). Indeed, he goes as far as to claim that interpretations (whether critical or favourable) that treat deconstruction as a sceptical-relativist-nihilist rejection of truth, stability, unity of meaning or intentionality, are simply wide of the mark. Such a ‘definition of the deconstructionist is false (that’s right: false not true) and feeble’ (Derrida 1988a: 146). The problem is that although he does not intend that deconstruction should lead to relativism, scepticism or nihilism (Derrida 1988a: 137), he must also, if he is to remain consistent, show why it does not. This problem arises because given the implication that contexts are never fixed due to their structuring by the always-absent differential trace, then meaning is always potentially unstable. And unless there is an element of stability to
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meaning then decisions can never be responsible decisions. Interestingly, the cover of Limited Inc. makes this potential confusion explicit and declares that in this book we can find the clearest exposition of Derrida’s most controversial idea ‘that linguistic meaning is fundamentally indeterminate because the contexts which fix meaning are never stable’ (Derrida 1988b). There is a deep and almost sublime irony here, and one has to feel some sympathy with the poor student who, having read this statement about a clear exposition of Derrida’s notion of indeterminacy, takes the book from the shelf and rushes off to find this clear exposition, in the hope perhaps of once and for all getting indeterminacy ‘right’. And the irony is not that the exposition is not clear, because it is. It is clear in its complete and utter rejection of the idea that deconstruction implies indeterminacy. ‘I do not believe’ Derrida argues, ‘I have ever spoken of “indeterminacy” whether in regard to “meaning” or anything else’ (Derrida 1988a: 148). Undecidability, as an ethico-political moment of responsibility, he argues, could not occur in indeterminate contexts. It is always ‘a determinate oscillation between possibilities (for example of meaning, but also of acts)’ (Derrida 1988a: 148). Possibilities that ‘are themselves highly determined in strictly defined situations’ (Derrida 1988a: 148). Hence, the analyses he has devoted to undecidability ‘concern just these determinations and these definitions, not at all some vague “indeterminacy”’ (Derrida 1988a). Equally, since he has already rejected the idea of some already existing set of determinate codes, rules, laws or principles that might make take the decision for us, he insists on a certain ‘play différance, nonidentity’, but insists that, ‘différance is not indeterminacy’ (Derrida 1988a: 149). So within any interpretive context, ‘play’ denotes both a certain level of relative, but not complete, determinacy, and a certain level of relative, but not complete, indeterminacy. Yet, he insists that the interpretive contexts that frame the moment of undecidability, are ‘relatively stable, sometimes apparently unshakable’, and hence it should be possible to ‘invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism and pedagogy’ (Derrida 1988a: 146). This implies a common context within which decisions can be made. Indeed, he argues that ‘no research is possible in a community (for example academic) without the prior search for this minimal consensus and without discussion around this minimal consensus’ (Derrida 1988a: 146). At this point it might be argued that it is exactly this ‘minimal consensus’ between critical realism and deconstruction that cannot be achieved. After all, surely critical realism represents just the kind of metaphysical, modernist, traditional form of philosophy that deconstruction attempts to go beyond? Again Derrida’s answer in respect of the question is an unequivocal NO! There are two aspects to his answer to any question concerning the relationship between deconstruction and traditional forms of philosophy. The first concerns his attitude to traditional philosophy; the second concerns the status of deconstruction and its relationship to traditional philosophy.
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The issue of traditional philosophy arises in the context of Derrida’s discussion of a ‘kind of all or nothing choice between pure realization of self-presence and complete freeplay’ (Derrida 1988a: 115). On this issue he argues, ‘I have never proposed “a kind of ‘all or nothing’ choice between pure realisation of self presence and complete freeplay or undecidability”. I never believed in this and I never spoke of complete freeplay or undecidability’ (Derrida 1988a: 115). However, while he rejects the idea that his position implies a kind of ‘all or nothing thinking’ he does insist that every ‘concept that lays claim to any rigor whatsoever implies the alternative of “all or nothing” ’ (Derrida 1988a: 116). Indeed, not only does he suggest that the commitment to such a rigorous demarcation of conceptual boundaries is a condition of possibility6 for all science, rational logic and philosophy (Derrida 1988a: 116), but he suggests that it is ‘impossible or illegitimate to form a philosophical concept outside this logic of all or nothing’ (Derrida 1988a: 117). Now, while he insists that although such a rigid distinction is implied in all conceptual analysis, he accepts that, in reality, no one believes such a rigid demarcation possible. Nonetheless, believed or not, ‘all or nothing’ logic is the condition of possibility for all concepts. And importantly, Derrida affirms his commitment to this logic, declaring, ‘when a concept is to be treated as a concept I believe that one has to accept the logic of all or nothing. I always try to do this and I believe that it always has to be done’ (Derrida 1988a: 117), and again ‘I confirm it: for me, from the point of view of theory and of the concept, unless a distinction can be made rigorous and precise it isn’t really a distinction at all’ (Derrida 1988a: 126). This undoubtedly marks his commitment to traditional philosophy and the logic that he claims underpins it; although I would challenge the extent to which traditional philosophy and science depend on this form of logic. It certainly seems to me that to attribute this position to all philosophical concepts not only wilfully misdescribes the practice of traditional (non-deconstructive) philosophy, but completely neglects dialectical logic (Bhaskar 1993). Yet, if Derrida accepts, indeed insists on, the necessity of traditional philosophy and the logic that underpins it, how are we to understand deconstruction? Accepting his claim that it is ‘impossible or illegitimate to form a philosophical concept outside this logic’ how are we to treat deconstruction? Can one, as he puts it, ‘think or deconstruct the concept of the concept otherwise, think a différance which would be neither of nature or degree’? Derrida claims that this is exactly what he is attempting to achieve: To this oppositional logic, which is necessarily, legitimately, a logic of ‘all or nothing’ and without which the distinction and the limits of the concept would have no chance, I oppose nothing, least of all a logic of approximation [à peu près], a simple empiricism of difference in degree; rather I add a supplementary complication that calls for other
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concepts, for other thoughts beyond the concept and another form of ‘general theory’, or rather another discourse, another logic that accounts for the impossibility of concluding such a ‘general theory’. (Derrida 1988a: 117) This ‘other’ discourse, this ‘general theory’ that paradoxically would demonstrate the impossibility of such a ‘general theory’ is, of course, deconstruction. And deconstruction will be the master ‘general theory’ more powerful than traditional logic; perhaps even able to ‘account for it [traditional logic] and reinscribe its possibility’ (Derrida 1988a: 117). Deconstructive concepts will be those concepts that deal with the marginal, the parasitic, the excluded, the outside, and the different. Yet, having already claimed that it is ‘impossible or illegitimate’ to form a philosophical concept outside traditional logic, Derrida is faced with a problem. Deconstructive concepts cannot be concepts as traditionally understood. Derrida gets around this by arguing that although his concepts suppose traditional logic, or what he calls ‘appeal to idealization’, they have a: strange status . . . différance and several others, [it] is an aconceptual concept or another kind of concept, heterogeneous to the philosophical concept of the concept, a ‘concept’ that marks both the possibility and limit of all idealization and hence of all conceptualisation. (Derrida 1988a: 117–118) From this Derrida concludes that deconstructive aconceptual concepts are prior to, constitutive of, and mark the possibility and limit of traditional concepts – hence traditional philosophy is parasitic on différance. However, the reverse is actually the case. To my mind, and despite his claims to the contrary, Derrida is a profoundly dualistic thinker. Nowhere is this more apparent than in this distinction between concepts and aconceptual concepts. The distinction between concepts and aconceptual concepts is a conceptual distinction. For Derrida it is all or nothing, not a matter of degree. Concepts either operate according to traditional rigorous logic or deconstructive logic. But as formulated, this very distinction, the distinction between the two kinds of logics, can only be a conceptual distinction, not an aconceptual distinction. In this way, the priority is reversed. Aconceptual concepts are not the conditions of possibility for concepts, but rather the distinction between concepts and aconceptual concepts is parasitic, and hence dependent, on conceptual, traditional logic. This means that the conditions of possibility for a deconstructive reading of anything require a prior commitment to just those standards (truth, rigour, reality, context) that function to allow a ‘minimal consensus’. Derrida’s aconceptual concepts are dependent upon, and derivative of, traditional concepts for their existence.
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Conclusion The Derrida of Limited Inc. is a far less radical figure than many accounts of deconstruction would have us believe. Reality, truth and rigour are not denied, even if critical realists might be unhappy with how they are concretely developed. Indeterminacy is never total, hence, meaning is always possible, although never complete. And the same goes for determinism. A position that all critical realists would accept; but then again, I suspect most positions would accept this. Judgements, despite the problems associated with epistemological relativism, are not only possible, but necessary; and a commitment to rigour and the ability to define clearly demarcated concepts is affirmed. Moreover, deconstruction is not postmetaphysical, post-philosophy or ‘post’ anything; at least in the sense of a complete denial of. Derrida’s deconstruction affirms the commitment to traditional forms of logic and is, as I have shown, itself parasitic on just those forms of logic ‘feeble’ readings of deconstruction often situate it in opposition to. This all means that, in many respects, deconstruction is less radical, less subversive and less critical of traditional modes of thinking than both critics and supporters might care to acknowledge. As an addition/supplement to traditional forms of philosophy I welcome the possibility deconstruction affords to expand our intellectual horizons. As an attempt to write off centuries of traditional modes of philosophic inquiry I reject it. Which Derrida we read depends partly on how we approach him. But it also, importantly, depends upon how he approaches us. Derrida may reject the charge that he thinks in terms of all or nothing, yet his all or nothing distinction between concepts and aconceptual concepts contradicts this denial. It also helps explain why Norris can read Derrida as a critical realist, and Derrida can deny it. Thinking conceptually (logically) he clearly must be read as a critical realist. Aconceptually, on the other hand, he may not be. Derrida slips easily from one camp to the other, yet fails to see that it is the very distinction itself that is the problem. Indeed, in this one very specific instance everything, yes everything, is inside the text.
Notes 1
2 3
Bourdieu’s most explicit statement on the issue can be found in his essays on Understanding and the Postscript in Bourdieu, P. (1999). Zˇizˇek’s most overt elaboration comes in the Burning Bridges preface to the Zˇizˇek reader, Zˇizˇek (1999a). In this he comprehensively burns the bridges between his theoretical outlook and any form of nihilist postmodernism; see also Zˇizˇek (1999b). Bunge’s position is clear and unequivocal, Bunge (1993; 1996). Bhaskar’s more recent work (2000) makes this claim problematic since he seems to suggest that ‘Being’ is contingent on some form of consciousness. ‘Arche’ was the pre-Socratic term for ‘fundamental principle’. It referred to an entity prior to existing entities, and yet in some way co-existing with them.
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4
5 6
For those not versed in Bhaskarian philosophy, another way of putting this might be that in attributing to all of reality the properties derived from his account of linguistics he is guilty of what Gilbert Ryle called a ‘category mistake’ (Ryle 1949). Whether deconstructions would be willing to extend the same hand of friendship to critical realism is uncertain, since critical realism stands as exactly the kind of metaphysical philosophy that Derrida is supposedly attempting to reject. This of course illuminates the fact that he is also a ‘transcendental’ philosopher in the sense Bhaskar deploys the term.
Bibliography Bhaskar, R. (1978) A Realist Theory of Science, Brighton: Harvester. —— (1979) The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, Brighton: Harvester. —— (1986) Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, London: Verso. —— (1989) Reclaiming Reality: A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, London: Verso. —— (1991) Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. —— (1993) Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, London: Verso. —— (1994) Plato Etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution, London: Verso. —— (2000) From East to West: Odyssey of a Soul, London and New York: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1999) The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Boyne, R. (1990) Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason, London: Unwin Hyman. Bunge, M. (1993) ‘Realism and Antirealism in Social Science’, Theory and Decision, 35, 207–233. —— (1996) Finding Philosophy in Social Science, London: Yale University Press. Campbell, D. (1998) National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press. —— (2001) ‘International Engagements – the Politics of North American International Relations Theory’, Political Theory 29: 432–448. Collins, J., Mayblin, B. and Appignanesi, R. (1996) Derrida for Beginners, Cambridge: Icon Books. Culler, J. (1981) The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Derrida, J. (1976) Of Grammatology, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. —— (1988a) ‘Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion’, in Limited Inc. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, pp. 111–160. —— (1988b) Limited Inc., Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. —— (1995) ‘Deconstruction and the Other’, in States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers ed., Kearney, R., New York: New York University Press, pp. 156–176. Eagleton, T. (1995) ‘Jacques Derrida: Specters of Marx’, Radical Philosophy, 73: 35–37. Flax, J. (1990) Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West, Berkeley: University of California Press. Hartman, G. H. (1981) Saving the Text: Literature, Derrida, Philosophy, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Kearney, R. (1995) States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers, New York: New York University Press. Meyer, M. (2001) Questioning Derrida: With His Replies on Philosophy, Aldershot: Ashgate. Norris, C. (1990) What’s Wrong with Postmodernism?: Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. —— (1992) Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals, and the Gulf War, London: Lawrence & Wishart. —— (1993) The Truth About Postmodernism, Oxford: Blackwell. —— (1996) Reclaiming the Truth: Contribution to a Critique of Cultural Relativism, London: Lawrence & Wishart. —— (1997a) Against Relativism: Philosophy of Science, Deconstruction, and Critical Theory, Oxford: Blackwell. —— (1997b) New Idols of the Cave: On the Limits of Anti-Realism, Manchester: Manchester University Press. —— (1997c) Resources of Realism: Prospects for ‘Post-Analytic’ Philosophy, London: Macmillan. —— (2000a) Deconstruction and the ‘Unfinished Project of Modernity’, New York: Routledge. —— (2000b) Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics, London and New York: Routledge. —— (2003) ‘Deconstructing Anti-Realism: Derrida’s “White Mythology” ’, in Realism Discourse and Deconstruction, eds, Joseph, J. and Roberts, R., London and New York: Routledge. Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson. Soper, K. (1996) ‘The Limits of Hauntology’, Radical Philosophy, 75: 26–31. Wolfreys, J. (1998) Deconstruction, Derrida, London: Macmillan. Wood, D. (1989) The Deconstruction of Time, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International. Zˇizˇek, S. (1999a) The Zˇ izˇek Reader, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. —— (1999b) The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, London: Verso.
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12 Dialectics, deconstruction and the legal subject* Alan Norrie
My argument, however, is that the most vigorous forms of Hegelianism in the twentieth century have been thoroughly unconscious of the fact. (Stuart Barnett 1998: 296) It is important to understand that when logical contradictions are committed, they are real constituents of the Lebenswelt. (Roy Bhaskar 1993: 58)
Ethical short-circuitry This chapter has both a broader and a narrower focus. The narrower aspect concerns an impasse in critical legal studies around the relationship between deconstructive method and socio-historical critique. The broader is to address that impasse by considering deconstruction as an important but limited form of dialectical critique in the light of Roy Bhaskar’s recent critical realist reworking of dialectics. The aim is to identify what is important in deconstruction, but to point to an important deficit, its tendency to marginalise social and historical issues in favour of a form of ethical short-circuiting. This chapter seeks to re-affirm the importance of the social and the historical by identifying deconstruction as a form of dialectics and relocating it on a dialectical terrain. It will not answer all the questions such a relocation involves. In particular, it will not resolve the ethical questions with which deconstruction battles. However, it will insist that any discussion of the ethical grounds of a social form (such as law) can only occur once its historical imbrication has been acknowledged. To explain what I mean by deconstruction’s ethical short-circuitry in the field of legal studies, consider Jacques Derrida’s influential essay ‘Force of Law’ (Derrida 1990). He describes a ‘critique of law’ that is ‘possible and always useful’, involving ‘a critique of juridical ideology, a desedimentation of the superstructures of law that both hide and reflect the economic and political interests of the dominant forms of society’ (Derrida 1990: 941). Useful it may be, but Derrida leaves this ‘sociological’ critique well alone in favour of his pursuit of a ‘more intrinsic structure’ which
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involves the ‘very emergence of justice and law’ in a ‘performative and therefore interpretive violence’ (1990: 941). This deeper critique is ethical rather than socio-historical in its form. The distinction between these two critiques represents a clear and, given the importance of its author, emblematic break for critical legal studies. This is not just because Derrida says so little about the first (sociological) critique, but because the elaboration of the second ethical critique proves perfectly possible without reference to it. As a consequence the ethical critique operates not with the ‘desedimentation of the superstructures of law’ but, whatever the underlying intention, against it: the sociological critique is marginalised in ‘Force of Law’. It could be that this is just a matter of the content of one essay, and certainly it is not the case that all those who have been influenced by deconstruction have, as a result, renounced the examination of the social and historical forces which inform the law. Still, it can neither be denied that deconstruction has licensed work of an abstract ethical kind, nor that Derrida’s work has been extremely influential in critical legal studies.1 I would suggest that there is a theoretical issue within the deconstructive enterprise that ought to be analysed so that we can better understand the gap between the ‘social’ and the ‘cultural’ or ‘ethical’ critique of law. This chapter, accordingly, reflects upon the bifurcation of critical routes in ‘Force of Law’ from the point of view of an interest in what deconstruction means and does and a concern as to where it leads. Why not simply discard Derrida? Here I should acknowledge my own ambivalence to the theory. For reasons that will become clear, Derrida’s ‘foundational act of violence’ leaves me unmoved, yet I believe that deconstruction remains extremely important for critical analysis. This leaves me with a paradox because foundational violence is at the core of his essay on law. If we could anatomise the different aspects of his essay, we could perhaps identify just what is of importance in deconstruction as well as what is problematic. We might thereby find a way of relating it more closely to the sociological themes ‘Force of Law’ marginalises and of addressing what is gained and lost in the ‘ethical turn’ in critical socio-legal studies. Perhaps we could then synthesise the critical power of deconstruction with the socio-political questions that are invoked by the ‘desedimentation’ of law and power. In short, my questions are these: can we relate more clearly deconstruction to the long-established commitment of critical socio-legal studies to understand law as a site of structured social power, conflict and struggle? Can we find a theoretical way of bridging the gap between critical and socio-legal theory? Deconstruction and dialectic I shall argue that the key to understanding Derrida’s ‘Force of Law’ lies in locating it in the dialectical tradition, and in particular in relation to Derrida’s ambivalent attitude to Hegel. But I will also argue that in order
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to unite what is important in deconstruction with issues of social structure and power, it is necessary to locate the Derrida/Hegel relationship within the further development of the dialectical tradition inaugurated by Roy Bhaskar (Bhaskar 1993, 1994). The chapter therefore has three main sections on the dialectics of, and relationships between, Hegel, Derrida and Bhaskar. It is an attempt to be theoretically innovative in three ways. First, it seeks to read Derrida’s work on law in the Hegelian tradition.2 So doing, it aligns itself with some of the most recent work in Derrida scholarship (Barnett 1998), while going beyond it. Second, it seeks to develop dialectical critical realism itself, a new theoretical programme, by opening it to an engagement with deconstruction. Third, it seeks to apply the theoretical analysis to law, more specifically, legal subjectivity. In comparing and contrasting Hegel, Derrida and Bhaskar, I will have recourse to their differing views of law throughout the chapter. In discussing Bhaskar, however, I will seek to show how dialectical critical realism can be developed to understand a key problem in legal theory. In previous work, I have addressed the issue of subjectivity in the law in particular in relation to criminal law and responsibility (Norrie 1996a, 1997a, 1998a, 1999, 2001). While this work has been informed by dialectical critical realist ideas, these have not been fully elaborated. In this chapter I seek to indicate more fully the theoretical nexus between dialectical critical realism and the analysis of legal subjectivity and criminal responsibility. In a moment, we will come to the three main sections of the chapter, on the relations between the three dialectics. Before we do, I identify common ground for relating Hegel, Derrida and Bhaskar to each other, and for understanding law within the dialectical tradition. The common ground is provided by the critique of ‘identity thinking’.
Some common ground: identity thinking At the core of modern western law is a nexus between (ontological) questions concerning being – about the nature of subjectivity and responsibility – and (epistemological) questions concerning the nature of legal thought. In the latter, a logical-analytical mode of reasoning possesses a virtually unassailable position. This analytical paradigm supposedly systematises law, but, as I have argued elsewhere, it keeps breaking down (Norrie 2001). Why does this happen? One answer is that it is destabilised – literally – by its subject matter: its conception of the responsible legal subject. It is conflicts within that conception that undermine the analytical paradigm, so that problems of law can be said to derive from a mutual complicity between the ontic theory of legal being and the epistemic theory of legal thought. The way of thinking in law prescribes (and proscribes) the nature of what is thought, and vice versa, in a process of mutual entailment. This legal nexus is but one localised version of a broad connection in western philosophy that Roy Bhaskar, borrowing the term from Adorno
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(1973, 1993; cf. Jarvis 1998: chs 6 and 7 and Barnett 1998: ch.1), calls ‘identity thinking’ (Bhaskar 1993: 191–192). Such thinking is central to modern analytical philosophy. Bertrand Russell, for example, wrote that there are a ‘certain number of self-evident logical principles’ which ‘must be granted before any argument or proof becomes possible’ (Russell 1973: 40). They include: 1 The law of identity: ‘Whatever is, is’ 2 The law of contradiction: ‘Nothing can be and not be’ 3 The law of excluded middle: ‘Everything must either be or not be’ (Russell 1973: 40) If one considers these ‘self-evident’ laws, there is a clear connection between the epistemic principles of logic contained in (2) and (3) and the ontic principle of identity contained in (1). Logic, a characteristic of thought, depends on the possibility of a fixed identity or point of origin, a characteristic of being, such that ‘whatever is, is’ (law 1). Similarly, analytical logic requires that ‘whatever is not cannot at the same time be’ (law 2) and that ‘everything must either be or not be’ (law 3). Logic is tied to a certain view of the way things are, and this gives it its characteristics. An entity must in essence be, as John Lechte puts it, ‘ “simple” (i.e. free of contradiction), homogeneous (of the same substance, or order), present to, or the same as, itself (i.e. separate and distinct from any mediation)’. It must exclude certain features: ‘complexity, mediation, and difference – in short, features invoking “impurity” or complexity’ (Lechte 1994: 106). Yet, such features constantly return to disrupt analytical thought. Lechte’s comments are in line with the critique of identity thinking, but, significantly, they form part of an exposition of the work of Derrida rather than Adorno or Bhaskar. In Derrida’s essay on law, a critique of identity thinking – though not by that name – is a key element. Law is a natural home for deconstruction because of the pervasiveness of ‘logico-formal paradox’ (1990: 959) which can be demonstrated around ideas of ‘the proper and of property’, and, most significantly for my focus, ‘of the subject, . . . of the responsible subject, of the subject of law (droit) and the subject of morality, of the juridical or moral person, of intentionality . . ., and of all that follows from these’ (1990: 931). Such ideas about the legal subject are the source of ‘complexity, mediation and difference’ in Lechte’s phrase, for they generate ‘logico-formal paradox’ in law. I return to this passage below, for it is at the nub of my interest in Derrida. For the moment, however, it is only important to see that the perspective it embraces reveals common ground with the dialectical tradition of which Adorno and Bhaskar are a part. As with deconstruction, from a dialectical point of view, denial of the inherent complexity of basic entities is wrong. As Bhaskar puts it, analytical reason involves exclusion, an illicit ‘contra-position of the logical norms of identity and non-contradiction’ and a false ‘presupposition of
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fixed subjects’ (Bhaskar 1993: 394). Dialectical thought by contrast is ‘the art of thinking the coincidence of distinctions and connections’. The socalled law of identity at the heart of analytical reason is challenged because ‘identity presupposes non-identity, and non-contradiction [implies] incompleteness and change’, so that ‘identity is always an abstraction from a process or set of processes of formation’ (Bhaskar 1993: 190). For Bhaskar, questions of non-identity, incompleteness and change are encapsulated in his concept of ‘entity relationism’, a concept which offers a direct challenge to identity thinking and which shares important common ground with deconstruction. These different but overlapping critiques of identity thinking lie at the heart of this chapter. The critique of identity thinking brings together the deconstructive and dialectical approaches, while being, as Derrida makes clear, central to the critique of law. My aim is to develop a dialectical critique of identity thinking as it relates to the concept of the legal subject. So doing, I consider and develop the innovative treatment of modern classical dialectics by Bhaskar and locate Derrida’s deconstruction within it. Thus, the chapter reveals in consecutive sections ‘three dialectics in search of a subject’. These are, in progressive order, those of Hegel, Derrida and Bhaskar. The subject in question is that of the law.
Beyond identity thinking? Hegel’s non-dialectical logic dialectic To understand Derrida’s views on the deconstruction of law, I argue it is necessary to start with Hegel and, briefly, his reaction to Kant’s dialectical derivation of the antinomies (Hegel 1975: 76–79, 116–119; Kant 1993). These Kant failed to resolve, and Hegel sought to rationalise them within a progressively developing dialectical system of thought which at the same time conceived of thought as part of a real evolving totality. The seeming contradictions of system and totality could be recognised and ‘sublated’ – preserved and transcended – as both developed in thought and practice. Dialectic involved a twofold movement between three moments: from what Hegel called the Understanding (U), to negative (critical) Dialectical reason (D), and from there to positive speculative Reason (R). The movement is represented in Figure 12.1 where U = Understanding, D = negative Dialectical critique and R = positive speculative Reason.3 (failure of reason > return to D)
U
D
Figure 12.1 Hegel: the separate moments in the dialectical process
R
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The first of these moments, Understanding, is the place of analytical and identity thinking in Hegel’s schema. In Understanding, knowledge ‘begins by apprehending existing objects in their specific differences’ producing a ‘stereotype of each in [its] isolation’. Thought here acts ‘in its analytic capacity, where its canon is identity, a simple reference of each attribute to itself’ (Hegel 1975: 114), so that, as Michael Inwood (1992: 81) explains it, ‘concepts or categories are taken as fixed, sharply defined and distinct from each other’. In the second stage, of negative dialectical critique (D), fixity, definition and distinctiveness, the ‘finite characterisations’ of the object, ‘pass into their opposites’ (Hegel 1975: 116). Dialectic is ‘the indwelling tendency outwards by which the one-sidedness and limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen in its true light, and shown to be the negation of them’ (Hegel 1975: 117). More simply, Inwood (1992: 81) writes that when we reflect on the seemingly simple analytical categories of the Understanding, ‘one or more contradictions emerge in them’. These are not just contradictions in our subjective concepts or ideas, but also reflect conflict and change in the objective world which ideas reflect. Of this objective world, of which thought is a part, Hegel writes that: We are aware that everything finite, instead of being stable and ultimate, is rather changeable and transient; and this is exactly what we mean by that Dialectic of the finite, by which the finite, as implicitly other than what it is, is forced beyond its own immediate or natural being to turn suddenly into its opposite. (Hegel 1975: 118) Dialectic involves the ‘grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the negative’. Recalling Russell’s ‘self-evident’ laws of logic, Hegel’s view is that formal contradictions, expressed in split and fragmentation, antinomy and aporia, are to be expected within analytical thought. The mutual exclusion of opposites – the analytical watchword of the Understanding – must give way to the dialectical principle of the identity of exclusive opposites, as Bhaskar (1993: 20) puts it. Formal-logical or analytical reasoning is, accordingly, a necessary but limited knowledge form sufficient for the Understanding (knowledge at the level of common sense or empirical science), but it needs to be subjected to a negative moment of dialectical critique. This is the first moment of the Dialectic (the identification of split, contradiction and antinomy), before a further moment of sublation of the contradiction through the work of dialectical reason occurs. From the stage of negative dialectical critique (D), we move to positive speculative reason (R) which ‘apprehends the unity of terms (propositions) in their opposition’ (Hegel 1975: 119) in, to quote Inwood (1992: 82), ‘a new, higher category, which embraces the earlier categories and resolves the contradiction involved in them’. Dialectical critique identifies the ways
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in which analytical categories, when pressed, reveal that they presuppose their opposites, ‘radically develop[ing] the flaws that they contain and mak[ing] them “pass over” . . . into another concept or category’ (Inwood 1992: 82), while speculative reason repairs the contradiction by revealing how a new richer, more complete, unity can be forged out of seeming conflict. How does this theoretical structure operate in relation to a phenomenon like law? Hegel’s philosophy of law: a genuinely dialectical account? The movement from Understanding to negative Dialectical critique to positive speculative Reason is seen in Hegel’s account of law in the Philosophy of Right. As regards the Understanding, he writes that logical deduction ‘is certainly an essential characteristic of the study of positive law’, but such analytical reasoning ‘has nothing whatever to do with the satisfaction of the demands of reason or with philosophical science’ (Hegel 1952: 20). Logical categories, far from having the fixity that analytical legal reasoning presupposes, ‘pass over into their opposites as a result of their finitude and their dialectical character’, a process that is observed by negative dialectical reasoning (Hegel 1952: 32). Still, the Philosophy of Right will restore rationality to law through the positive work of speculative reason. Right and ethics, and ‘the actual world of justice and ethical life’ are comprehended in thought and thereby ‘invested with a rational form, i.e. with universality and determinacy’ (Hegel 1952: 7). That form depicts ‘the rich inward articulation of ethical life’ and ‘the architectonic of that life’s rationality’ (Hegel 1952: 6). Yet, there is a tension within Hegel between his negative dialectical critique of concepts and his subsequent employment of a positive speculative method. His insistence that philosophy is the ‘apprehension of the present and the actual, not the erection of a beyond’ does not necessarily sit comfortably with his equal insistence that ‘philosophy is the exploration of the rational’. The former statement is compatible with his negative dialectical method (D), the latter expresses the positive speculative method (R). The two only combine, however, if we are persuaded by the claim of positive speculative thought to have synthesised thought and reality: that indeed ‘what is rational is actual and what is actual is rational’ (Hegel 1952: 10). On the face of it, the negative dialectical method may pull us away from the positive speculative conclusion, or at least insist that an honest engagement with society and history is necessary in order to rationalise what is otherwise contradictory. In my study of Hegel’s philosophy of punishment, I argued that his speculative rationalism failed this test. It was used to reconcile social contradictions in the modern institution of punishment, but in fact it only did so by placing them outside of, and thereby excluding them from, the
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philosophical understanding of the institution (Norrie 1991: ch.4). As a result, issues of social conflict, which threatened to tear apart ideas of responsible subjectivity, the just measure of punishment, and the impartiality of the criminal justice system can be identified lurking unreconciled at the margins of his philosophy (Norrie 1991: 77–85). They occupy such a position not because they are marginal issues but because the speculative philosophical method makes them so. Thus, Hegel managed to unite theory (reason) and practice (actuality) by being highly selective in the actualities that he permitted his theory to reflect. He only united them on theory’s terms, shutting out those aspects that did not fit. This is a particular way of making a general point about Hegel. For all his insistence on the philosophical comprehension of the actual world, a realist demand, his practice was governed by an idealist philosophy in which thought was always in the driving seat. The price of Hegel’s failure to synthesise theory and practice was a theory which denies or ignores the conflicts it was supposed to rationalise. The effect of this is to return the analysis to the contradictions with which it started, and to reinstate them, for they have not been resolved. This leads, as Bhaskar puts it, to the ‘re-appearance of a Kant-like rift’ (Bhaskar 1993: 27) in Hegel’s representation of reality. Further, in effectively setting reason up as the arbiter of reality, one gives it a fixity and certitude it does not deserve and in so doing one is untrue to dialectical method. Reason is used to ‘fix’ reality, and is in the process itself fixed, undermining its dialectical character. Down this path, Hegel’s idealism is guilty of the very same crimes of which it accuses the Understanding. It sees things in a onesided, detotalised way, so that Hegel’s idealist dialectic is itself exposed to dialectical critique. One can see this in Hegel’s discussion of legal reasoning in his Logic. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel writes, as we have seen, that logical deduction is an ‘essential characteristic of the study of positive law’. However, this ‘deductive method of the Understanding . . . has nothing to do with . . . reason or with philosophical science’ (Hegel 1952: 20). The latter starts from the failure of such concepts, and their inherent tendency to ‘pass over into their opposites as a result of their finitude and their dialectical character’ (Hegel 1952: 32). For Hegel, however, this bold statement of the inadequacy of the Understanding ultimately seems hardly to matter for legal practitioners can, it transpires, carry on pretty much as before. Thus, in the Logic, Hegel presents the Understanding of law as ‘always an element in thorough training’ which consists in ‘grasp[ing] the objects in their fixed character’. Thus ‘the judge must stick to the law, and give his verdict in accordance with it, undeterred by one motive or another, allowing no excuses, and looking neither left or right’. He must, in other words, ‘fix his eye on the definite point in question’ (Hegel 1952: 114). But if the negative dialectical critique of law works, then how can things be so easy? When pressed dialectically, would not a verdict ‘in accordance with law’
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pass over into its opposite? How could one ‘stick to the point in question’ if it turns out that the point in question contains its own dialectical negation? Conclusion It is as if the speculative method of Reason can restore the disruption caused by Dialectic and reinstate the categories of the Understanding. For Hegel, as Bhaskar puts it, ‘Positivity and self(-identity), the very characteristics of the understanding, are always restored at the end of reason’ (Bhaskar 1993: 27), so that one might say that Hegelian dialectic ends up making the world safe for the Understanding, against the radical implications of its negative critical moment. Because of this (ultimately) undialectical character of Hegelian dialectic, it makes a bad starting-point for doing what Hegel said it should do: apprehend the present and the actual, comprehend what is. Always there is the rider that such apprehension is the exploration of the rational, because comprehension of what is ‘is reason’ (Hegel 1952: 10–11). This rationalisation of the real turns a critical analysis into a buttress for the Understanding, while surreptitiously recreating or failing to resolve the underlying contradictions contained within its categories. There is a failed engagement between reason and reality which undermines the U–D–R progression. Marked in Figure 12.1 above as the broken arrowed line back from R to D, it effectively delivers Hegel back to the ‘Kant-like rifts’ at D that R was supposed to transcend. As we shall now see, this U–D–R movement, with a fallback from R to D, is shadowed by Derrida, leading to a parallel impasse in his work.
Beyond identity thinking I: deconstruction as dialectic The previous section has set out Hegel’s critique of identity thinking, explored its significance to law, and exposed the problematic character of its rational resolution (at R in Figure 12.1) of the dialectical conflicts (at D) that Hegel had himself established. In this section, I examine Derrida’s deconstruction of law in order to explore its significance in the light of the foregoing, but also to expose its limits as a critical, and dialectical, form of knowledge. I will do this by first outlining the relevance of deconstruction to the critique of law, before moving on to consider some of the problems with it. I will then argue that the limits of deconstruction stem from its location within the Hegelian tradition. Deconstruction is a limited form of dialectical critique that differs significantly from Hegel, but also has much in common with him. It can be seen to share a moment of negative dialectical critique (D) with Hegel, and also to possess a counterpart (by inversion) to Hegel’s rationalising strategy (R) in the shape of deconstruction’s ‘mad’, ‘mystical’ moment of what I have termed ‘unreason’ (uR). Derrida’s parallel movement is described in Figure 12.2
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(fallback to D, into antinomy)
U
D
uR
Figure 12.2 Derrida: the separate moments in the deconstructive process
where U = Understanding, D = negative (dialectical/deconstructive) critique (of logico-formal paradox) and uR = unreason: deconstruction as ethical ‘madness’. Note that, as with Hegel, there is a fallback into antinomy, a rediscovery of ‘Kant-like rifts’ in Derrida. I begin, however, by outlining from ‘Force of Law’ the two ‘styles’ of deconstruction which produce Derrida’s dialectical critique of law (D), followed by his two ‘critiques’ of law. From the latter there emerges Derrida’s inverted counterpart to Hegelian reason (uR). I then employ this analysis to compare and contrast these two dialecticians, and to show how Derrida’s location within the Hegelian tradition accounts for his failure to locate social issues of power in his critique of law. From deconstruction’s ‘styles’ to the dialectical critique of law In Derrida’s essay on law, he writes that deconstruction ‘is generally practised in two ways or styles, although it most often grafts one on to the other’. One way takes the ‘apparently ahistorical allure of logico-formal paradoxes’ while the other, ‘more historical or more anamnesic [recollective – AN], seems to proceed through readings of texts, meticulous interpretations and genealogies’ (Derrida 1990: 959). Historical genealogy and the demonstration of logico-formal paradox are eminently suited, Derrida (1990: 931) suggests, to legal analysis because law’s emphasis on formal logic, and therefore on its own ahistory, invite deconstruction. Deconstruction starts by ‘destabilising or complicating the opposition between . . . law, convention, the institution . . . and nature . . ., with all the oppositions that they condition’ (Derrida 1990: 929). A central concept in Derrida’s thought is that of différance, a term which signifies the constant slippage of meaning from sign to sign. Meaning is never complete, and the consequent identification of ‘differences’ within concepts is always ‘deferred’ within analytical thought (cf. Norris 1991: 32). Linked to différance is the idea of supplementarity, the idea of an additional element introduced to buttress an argument which proceeds to undermine its main premises. There is always surplus meaning, a supplement that is both necessary to the concept and too much, going beyond it (cf. Fitzpatrick 1991: 2).
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Deconstruction brings out, as we saw above, the paradoxes of values contained in the ideas of the proper and property, the subject, the responsible subject, the subject of law and morality, the juridical and moral person, and in mental states such as intentionality (Derrida 1990: 931). Derrida does not develop these ideas but they are clearly suggestive for legal analysis. I have argued in previous work that problems associated with the opposition between legal and moral responsibility engender a series of issues around the legal subject. These relate, for example, to the division between motive and intention, between direct and indirect intention, between different varieties of recklessness and different meanings of voluntariness (Norrie 2001). Legal categories, expressed in ‘technical’ juridical terms, exclude and repress broader moral and political meanings, and they do this through a conception of legal subjectivity. The general part of the criminal law, organised around actus reus and mens rea, justification and excuse can be presented as a series of paradoxes, conflicts, tensions and contradictions generated by the half-suppressed conflict between law, morality and politics (Norrie 1996a, 1997a, 1998a). Although deconstruction has not been my approach (but cf. Norrie 1992), I find common ground with Derrida. These problems can be related to the undecidability of categories, their invocation of supplementarity and différance. Such problems are indeed, as Derrida says, problems of the legal subject qua responsible subject and problems of the juridical individual. I mention these illustrations briefly because my aim is not to present a systematic account of legal contradiction in the criminal law in the manner of Derrida but merely to illustrate how deconstructive concepts such as différance and supplementarity can be profitably invoked. The important point is that such concepts clearly link into the critique of identity thinking with which we started, and which we pursued through Hegel. It is the nature of the legal subject and his4 ‘identity’ that generates the dialectical/deconstructive conflicts in legal thought. Thus, Derrida’s work can be seen to involve a negative (dialectical) critique (D in Figures 12.1 and 12.2 above) of the completeness of legal subjectivity and any logic based upon it. It therefore opens the door to a rapprochement between dialectical and deconstructive concepts. We should also bear in mind, however, what I said in the Introduction about the gap between the ethical and the sociological in Derrida’s thought. Consequently, we need to consider more fully the nature of deconstruction. If the ‘two styles’ of deconstruction relate Derrida to the negative critical side of Hegel, I shall now argue that there is another side to his thought which links him – in an inverse way – to Hegel’s ethical rationalism (R). Two critiques of law and deconstruction It is important to recall, as I mentioned in the introductory section, that Derrida identifies two critiques of law in addition to the two ‘styles’ of
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deconstruction. The first, which he immediately puts aside, is ‘a critique of juridical ideology, a desedimentation of the superstructures of law that both hide and reflect the economic and political interests of the dominant forms of society’ (Derrida 1990: 941). Such a critique is ‘possible and always useful’, but he is more interested in a second critique of a ‘more intrinsic structure’, which involves the ‘very emergence of justice and law’ and which consists in a ‘coup de force, . . . a performative and therefore interpretive violence. . . .’ Such violence is a foundational act and as such is ‘neither just nor unjust’, neither ‘legal nor illegal’, a foundation that is ‘mystical’ (Derrida 1990: 941–943). This fundamental coup de force gives rise to the main problematic of ‘Force of Law’. This problematic is founded on oppositions between law and legal justice as regular and calculable, and a deeper sense of justice that goes beyond law, that is singular and incalculable, and which ultimately evades description. This second critique entails a seemingly deeper sense of deconstruction than that which we have already discussed. It goes beyond exploring logical paradox or historical genealogy into a more complex ethical project that links deconstruction to a quest for the meaning of justice. At this deeper level, deconstruction of a present legal justice resorts to an ‘infinite “idea of justice”, infinite because it is irreducible, . . . owed to the other, . . . before any contract . . ., without calculation and without rules, without reason and . . . rationality’. This infinite justice involves a ‘madness’ and ‘perhaps another sort of mystique’, and deconstruction ‘is mad about this kind of justice’ which ‘isn’t law, [and] is the very movement of deconstruction at work in law and the history of law’ (Derrida 1990: 965). Justice in this sense is elusive and ineffable. On the one hand it appears to be an absolute and infinite moment that is uncapturable in language or form, on the other it seems to be the space of movement between the finite and the infinite, a restless and unsettled space of critique. Whichever reading is correct,5 it is important to see that in Derrida’s account, deconstruction stands for both a moment of critique, of history and of formal logical paradox, and for a broader ethical critique that invokes a move beyond history and paradox, to a moment of foundational ‘violence’. It is this second critique that seems to me fundamentally problematic both in its own terms and as a limit upon a critical project. Indeed it presents a metaphysical barrier to a serious critique of law. The reason it does so, I will now argue, is that in it, Derrida reveals the worst aspect of his allegiance to the Hegelian tradition. Derrida and Hegel At first sight, this linking of Derrida and Hegel may seem unlikely. For Christopher Norris, Derrida’s deconstructive critique exposes Hegel ‘to a dislocating movement beyond all grasp of dialectic’, while dialectic is seen as but ‘one chapter in the Western tradition of logo-centric discourse pushed
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up against its limits’ (Norris 1991: 76; cf. 87). Hegelian dialectic is, then, surely a part of the problem rather than the solution for deconstruction. Recent work, however, depicts a more ambiguous view of Hegel’s relationship to Derrida. Stuart Barnett sees Hegel as embodying ‘both the culmination of the Western philosophical tradition and the beginning of its dissolution’. Compared to deconstruction, Hegel represents not only the ‘most complete manifestation of that which deconstruction seeks to undo’ but also an opening up of ‘the possibility of the task of thinking difference’ (Barnett 1998: 26–27). The ambiguity is in Derrida himself, who can write both that a ‘definition of différance . . . would be precisely the limit, the interruption, the destruction of the Hegelian relève wherever it operates’ (Derrida, cited in Barnett 1998: 26) and that Hegel is himself ‘the thinker of irreducible différance’ (Derrida 1977: 26).6 Why does Hegel occupy so ambiguous a place in Derrida’s thought? The answer lies in recalling the distinction between the two movements of negative Dialectical critique (D) and positive speculative Reason (R) in Hegel (see Figure 12.1 above). The first (at D) is the intellectual labour of finding, as Bhaskar puts it, ‘the contradiction(s), anomalies or inadequacies in our conceptualisations or experiences’ by ‘stretching our concepts to the limit, forcing from and pressing contradictions on them, contradictions which are not immediately obvious to the understanding’ (Bhaskar 1993: 21). The second is the work of resolution (at R) of the conflict identified at D by the unifying power of reason. Compare this with Derrida. We identified two ‘styles’ of deconstruction and two critiques in ‘Force of Law’ and we have seen how the former reflects Hegel’s idea of pushing concepts to their limits, of displaying their différance and supplementarity. In terms of the U–D–R triad, deconstruction in this sense is a moment of dialectical negation. What of the latter, further, mode of deconstructive critique – as the movement between the finite and the infinite, or as the moment of a mystical infinitude (madness)? Here lies a significant difference between Hegel and Derrida, though ultimately it is insufficient to take Derrida beyond Hegel. Derrida refuses the second dialectical moment of reconciliative Reason (R in the U–D–R triad), declining to repair the dialectical contradiction that deconstruction has brought out. To the contrary, the aporias of the finite and the infinite are sustained so that the refusal to move from D to R holds onto a level of critical negativity in the deconstructive enterprise. At the same time, however, I argue that it sets deconstruction’s own critical limits. Derrida’s ‘Kant-like rifts’ and his limit In examining Hegel’s rationalistic sublation (preservation and transcendence) of the contradictions his negative dialectical critique has identified, I argued that the work of rational repair was unsuccessful, with the result that the contradictions remained unresolved. Ultimately, Hegel was no
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better placed than Kant to deal with the ‘Kant-like rifts’ (Bhaskar 1993: 27) in his work. This remaining at, falling back to, the level of pre-existing antinomy is also Derrida’s fate.7 The moment of ‘madness’, or unreason (uR in Figure 12.2), acts as a pseudo-free moment which only serves to return the philosophy to the antinomies identified at D. Thus, the significant discussion of law in ‘Force of Law’ is taken up with the recitation of a series of ‘aporias’ of justice and droit which remain the unresolved terrain of the law (Derrida 1990: 959–973). In fact, says Derrida, there is only one aporia that takes many forms, that between finite law and infinite justice (Derrida 1990: 959). His elaboration of the aporias which entrain this basic form is acute and subtle, but what exactly is he telling us about the nature of law that is not already known? The distinction between the finite and the infinite could be dutifully re-rendered as the opposition between the particular and the universal, while justice versus law invokes the tired opposition between natural and positive law. This representation of well-known oppositions in new language is accompanied by an indication that law should both be transcended – and not transcended (see Derrida 1990: 947, 971), which is just to repeat the aporia in Derrida’s own philosophy. Thus, his powerful insistence on negative dialectical critique ends up marching us back into the arms of the law and its antinomies. At the same time, and here lies the nub of the problem with Derrida, there is an enormous price to be paid in terms of the marginalisation of the social and the political in the first critique he sets aside. Derrida remains transfixed by Kantian antinomy, except that he calls it aporia. Comparing Derrida to Kant and Hegel, all three possess a negative dialectical critique with no further viable move beyond it. What Kant sought in his ethical thought to repair with the categorical imperative (Kant 1997), Hegel sought to resolve through speculative reason. Derrida refers to the messianic tradition associated with Levinas as a means of moving beyond the aporias, while at the same time keeping his distance from it (Derrida 1990: 959). Deconstruction in this ‘deeper’ metaphysical form is still playing the Kant–Hegel game and, as a result, it steers critical thought in an immediate ethical direction that obstructs a genuinely critical project. It will be recalled that Derrida mentions two critiques of law in ‘Force of Law’. One deals with metaphysical violence, the other with ‘juridical ideology’ and the ‘desedimentation of the superstructures of law that both hide and reflect the economic and political interests of the dominant forms of society’ (Derrida 1990: 941). The latter critique is never mentioned again by Derrida in ‘Force of Law’. It remains silent, at the margin of the essay, silenced by the seemingly deeper critique of violence associated with his ineffable ethics of law and justice. We should have learned enough from Derrida himself about centres and margins to remark upon the significance of this silent critique on the margins of ‘Force of Law’. Equally, if deconstruction, in its negative critical
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moment is concerned with revealing and recalling the forgotten history of concepts, is not this socio-political critique a necessary aspect of deconstruction? While Derrida may reject the work of positive speculative Reason after his negative Dialectical critique, it is nonetheless an ethical critique that mirrors Hegel – positive speculative Unreason, we might say – that is Derrida’s refuge. Such a critique takes us to a place of empty transcendence which in fact marginalises the recourse to history and politics that deconstruction in its negative Dialectical form had invited. With Derrida, the issues are short-circuited by a reference to a metaphysical violence which is ahistorical and can only tell us that every law in every time is derived from a justice that lies beyond its particularity. Conclusion In my introductory comments, I described deconstruction’s tendency to marginalise social and historical issues in favour of an ethical form of short circuiting. Its account of an ethical ‘violence’ operating under and through law by-passes the terrain of the social and the political. The question then is: is it possible to understand deconstructive critique in a way that avoids immediate and empty ethical conclusions and reconnects it with the social and the historical? To answer this question, I now turn to dialectical critical realism.
Beyond identity thinking II: dialectical critical realism and legal subjectivity Dialectical critical realism involves a wide-ranging and far-reaching theoretical project to which I cannot do full justice here (see Bhaskar and Norrie 1998 for a brief overview). My particular interest is the reinstatement of a level of socio-political critique within the dialectical process as a sine qua non of ethical judgment and practice. I propose to focus narrowly on the relevance of this level to the questions of identity and logical thought which were examined in the introduction. So doing, I want to preserve the negative Dialectical moment in both Hegel and Derrida, but to relocate it away from the direct ethical or metaphysical nexus that Derrida and Hegel give it. I do this by insisting on its social and historical contextualisation as the necessary prelude to ethical and practical questions. Dialectical critical realism enables this. Compared with Hegel and Derrida, the great merit of Bhaskar’s dialectic is that it conceives of four dialectical moments where Hegel and Derrida see three. Located between the world of social phenomena and their ethical judgment is the level of socio-political structure and history. Negative critical work at D is related to the critique Derrida mentions but sidelines, the ‘desedimentation of the superstructures . . . that both hide and reflect the economic and political interests of the dominant forms of society’. It
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is only on the basis of a critical realist informed social scientific mediation (S) of D, that a dialectical Ethics (E) is erected. Beyond that, a fourth level, the need for a genuinely dialectical Praxis (P), is then invoked. To the U–D–R movement of the Hegelian dialectic (and its Derridean counterpart, U–D–uR), Bhaskar establishes a much richer movement from U to D to (critical realist informed) Social Science (S) plus dialectical ethics (E) to praxis (P), as set out in Figure 12.3 (Here, U = Understanding, D = negative Dialectical critique, S = (critical realist informed) Social Science, E = dialectical Ethics and P = Praxis.) For the purposes of this paper, the essential concept I wish to develop is that of ‘entity relationism’ as the dialectical critical realist opponent of identity thinking. I will introduce the concept through a discussion of Bhaskar’s treatment of the relationship between structure and agency as a meta-problem in social science. This leads to a view of agency, subjectivity and identity in a relational field that is intrinsically social and historical. Such a view permits a dialectical treatment of subjectivity which in the field of law can relate Derrida’s ‘logico-formal paradoxes’ directly to the issues of the ‘desedimentation’ of power. This means that the focus of my argument is on the movement U–D–S in Figure 12.3, with S playing an importantly different role to either R or uR in the Hegelian and Derridean schemes. From the structure/agency problem to entity relationism To begin with some brief introductory comments, critical realism evolved out of an orientation to the natural sciences, in which it maintained a distinction between questions of ontology (what the world is like) and of epistemology (what we can know of the world). For science to be possible, it is necessary to posit a world that contains ontological depth, that is a view of the world as made up of natural kinds, emergent properties, and causal structures, all existing within a stratified whole (Bhaskar 1976/1997; Archer et al. 1998). From that starting-point, Bhaskar went on to develop a parallel account of the social sciences which acknowledged both the similarities and the intrinsic differences between the subject matters of natural and social science (cf. Benton 1977; Outhwaite 1987; Sayer 1992; Collier 1994; Archer et al. 1998). As with the natural sciences, the social sciences deal with emergent properties, causal structures and a stratified world, but unlike them, the ontological depth of the social world is mediated by human agency. While social structures are a social scientific analogue of causal structures
U
D
S+E
Figure 12.3 Bhaskar: moments in the dialectical critical realist process
P
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in nature, ‘unlike natural mechanisms, they exist only in virtue of the activities they govern and cannot be identified independently of them’ (Bhaskar 1979/1998: 48). Such activities are the product of human beings qua intentional agents, so that social structures do not exist independently of their intentional actions, or their conceptions of what they are doing when they act. This specific relationship between structure and intentional agency in the social sciences brings us quickly to the point at which critical realism addresses the agency-structure problem in social science. Here, Bhaskar seeks to overcome a longstanding dichotomy in sociology between the voluntaristic tendencies of the Weberian tradition and the reificatory tendencies of the Durkheimian. He develops a ‘Transformative Model of Social Action’ (TMSA) in which ‘social structure is a necessary condition for, and medium of, intentional agency’ but intentional agency is also ‘in turn a necessary condition for the reproduction or transformation of social forms’ (Bhaskar 1993: 154).8 In this context of the connectedness of social structure and individual identity and agency, there is a two-way relationship. From the viewpoint of agency, ‘intentional causality would be impossible without material causes which pre-existed it’ and, from the viewpoint of structure, ‘social material causes exist only in virtue of the embodied intentional agency which reproduces and/or transforms them’ (Bhaskar 1993: 155). This real duality of structure and agency involves both mediation of agency by structure and the reproduction and transformation of structure by agency. It entails ‘dual points of articulation’ of structure and agency which are the ‘differentiated and changing positioned-practices’ which human agents occupy but also act to reproduce or transform. It is these which constitute the system of social relations in which intentional human activity occurs. Under the TMSA, transformative activity ‘reproduces and/or more or less transforms, for the most part unwittingly, its conditions of possibility’, which include ‘social structures and their generative mechanisms . . . , the agent herself and, generally, what was given, the donné, . . . which has now been reproduced or transformed’ (Bhaskar 1993: 155). The TMSA was evolved in Bhaskar’s earlier pre-dialectical work, including in particular his Possibility of Naturalism (1979/1998). But his most recent work argues that this analysis provides a basis for, indeed necessitates, a further dialectical reinterpretation. The dialectical quality of being-instructure means that human life should be seen as a social and relational ‘flow, differentiated into analytically discrete moments’ with each moment seen as ‘subject to multiple and conflicting determinations and mediations’ (Bhaskar 1993: 160). The primary category in this social flow of individual being is that of dialectical connection. This describes a situation in which ‘entities or aspects of a totality . . . are in principle distinct but inseparable, in the sense that they are . . . internally related, i.e. both . . . existentially presuppose the other(s)’ (Bhaskar 1993: 58). The domain of dialectical connection
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is one in which there is the existential constitution, or permeation, of one social entity by another. This sociological idea of the distinctiveness and inseparability of social entities invokes the way in which concepts or identities are both expressed as complete and remain essentially incomplete. It invites comparison with a Derridean concept such as supplementarity or the limit. But, unlike Derrida, there is nothing mystical or metaphysical in this real dialectical relationship between different entities, for Bhaskar has relocated dialectic to a social terrain (S in Figure 12.3) – that of the structure/agency metaproblem in social science. He invites us to ponder the extent to which emergent social entities such as people, institutions, traditions not only presuppose their particular geo-histories, in the sense of being dependent on them for their meaning, but also ‘are existentially constituted by [them] as a crucial part of their essence’. For this reason, such entities ‘contain their relations, connections and interdependencies with other social (and natural) things’ (Bhaskar 1993: 54). Crucial to dialectical thought is to see identity in its connectedness with the totality of which it is a part, so that it is intrinsically relational: To grasp totality is to break with our ordinary notions of identity. . . . It is to see things existentially constituted, and permeated, by their relations with others; and to see our ordinary notion of identity as an abstraction not only from [its] existentially constitutive processes of formation (geo-histories), but also from [its] existentially constitutive inter-activity (internal relatedness). . . . When is a thing no longer a thing but something else? . . . [I]n the domain of totality we need to conceptualise entity relationism. (Bhaskar 1993: 125) This ‘entity relationism’ involves a radical development and correction of the ‘law of identity’ in identity thinking with which we began. Now ‘whatever is’ is intrinsically at the same time not itself, but something else. A fluid, dialectical sense of identity requires us to see ‘our ordinary notion of identity’ as an abstraction not only from geo- and socio-historical process, but also from the internal relationality of entities which initially appear separate and distinct. On an ‘entity relational’ understanding of identity, any posited identity will always entail an exclusion of some thing or things that seemingly lie behind or beyond it. Identity presupposes non-identity so that any sense of identity presupposes incompleteness and change. Identity is an abstraction from a process or set of processes of formation so that it is always ‘under threat’ from what appears as different, but is in fact part of it, and from change, which leads an entity to become something other than it is. Thus, to identity thinking, Bhaskar opposes entity relationism as a conceptual grounding for the existence of fluidity, supplementarity and the limit. But note that entity relationism is forged out of
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a meta-problem in the social sciences, not pace Derrida at an edge between what exists and what lies metaphysically ‘beyond’. Entity relationism and legal subjectivity In the remaining sections, I will consider briefly the implications of dialecticising the TMSA for law in the context of analytical reasoning – the episteme of both identity thinking and law – and the identity of the subject – law’s correlative ontology. I relate the main themes of my own recent work to the argument above. In that work, I have sought, often through forms of immanent critique, to work outwards from legal conceptions of the subject and to reveal their ‘residual’ relationality. Immanent critique is effective because it starts from existing practices and understandings, but it also limits the identification of the overall theoretical nexus. This chapter has taken the opposite tack in developing the theoretical context, but I now want to ‘cash out’ the theory by indicating its relationship to understanding legal subjectivity. Once one sees that questions of identity are fluid, and that that fluidity can be located directly within a social scientific framework, it becomes possible to explain the dynamics of a social institution like law dialectically and sociologically at the same time. The structure-agency meta-problem becomes the basis for seeing how legal subjectivity is both constructed and deconstructed historically and politically within existing social relations and structures. One must, however, examine subjectivity from the two intersecting standpoints donated by the structure-agency meta-problem. Having done so, I conclude by locating legal reasoning in an entity relational view. Legal subjectivity from the standpoint of structure From the standpoint of structure in the TMSA, conceptions of legal subjectivity (identity) are seen to act as modes of selection – of exclusion and inclusion – of the relations that inform entities. The seemingly universal legal subject is in fact a social and historical figure, whose abstract characteristics function to instantiate a political and moral order, and to exclude alternative and competing voices and claims (Norrie 1997a, 1998a, 2001). The legal categories that Derrida (1990: 131) identifies as ripe for deconstruction, such as the ‘responsible subject of law and morality’, the ‘juridical or moral person’, and the ‘intentional agent’, invite the identification of what prove to be their false limits, their contradictions and meaning-slides, and their necessary but disruptive supplements. This is not pace Derrida because they are formed on the site of an inaugural violence but because they instantiate a particular moral, social and political order, with its own violence. In excluding alternatives to this order, they deny or obscure the broader social relations through and in which moral and legal subjects live.
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From this standpoint, law is a structuring system which, with its individualistic emphasis, hypostasises the individual and thereby lays responsibility at her door. Invoking individual responsibility is a process of individualisation of social and relational problems, and a means of evacuating difficult moral problems and political conflicts by the claim of a realm of seeming consent as to the ‘basic principles of social life’ (Norrie 1998a: 106–114, 119–123). It is this sense of the structural effects of legal responsibility that is caught in Roland Barthes’s view (1973: 45, quoted in Norrie 2001: 222) that law’s universal language lends a ‘new strength to the psychology of the masters’ by taking ‘other men as objects, to describe and to condemn at one stroke’. But while the law may seek, as Barthes continues, to be ‘ignorant of everything about the actions themselves, save the guilty category into which they are forced to fit’, it cannot do so, for the real practicality of law’s categories assures their disruption at every turn. Such disruption, as I argue below in discussing legal reasoning, is the basis for law’s continued analytical failures. Identity thinking, as the constitution of an analytical logic based upon the existence of a responsible subject, is pulled ‘every which way’ – and loose. The problem is that individualist legal categories deny the relationality with which the subject is suffused, but this relationality forces itself back into the legal picture wherever possible. The subject is constructed through legal concepts which are understood in a ‘technical’, ‘formal’ or ‘factual’ way, which obscures their essential (‘substantive’) moral qualities. It is these moral qualities that embody the relational aspects of subjective experience, and lead to a set of ‘shadow’ concepts and theories which operate as oppositional doppelgänger. The result is a field of legal and philosophical theories in which antinomial views of the legal subject and legal responsibility abound. Some of these can be briefly mentioned here. On the one hand, there are ‘cognitivist’, and on the other, ‘normativist’ approaches to mental states of responsibility like intention and recklessness (compare Ashworth 1987 and Duff 1990; cf. Fletcher 1978: 397). Capacity and control accounts of the responsible subject, which treat responsibility as a ‘factual’ matter, are opposed by more ‘moralising’ character accounts (compare Moore 1997 with Lacey 1988). Individual retributive theories of punishment are contrasted with social communitarian accounts (compare Moore 1997 with Duff 1996). Ultimately, theories concerning the substantive normativity of legal terms threaten to undermine the law’s architectonic of mens rea, justification and excuse. These ‘conceptual shadows’ on the legal concepts of the responsible subject disrupt its analytics because they embody aspects of the relationality of the subject which law would exclude. While I have described certain conceptual conflicts at the theoretical core of law, no one should think that such issues are simply conceptual: on their practical usage depends the law’s resolution of a variety of significant moral, social and political issues.9
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Legal subjectivity from the standpoint of agency The Transformative Model of Social Action also insists that communities, structures and discourses (i.e. structural figures) are themselves produced and reproduced, varied and transformed, by agents. Agency is real and significant within critical realism, and not just an effect of structure (Archer 1995). Maintaining this duality entails the theorisation of a ‘perspectival shift’ (Bhaskar 1993: 115–116, 401) wherein causal explanations at the level of the structural have to be seen as at the same time necessitating accounts from the point of view of agents in terms of substantive reasons, intentions, motives and the like. Here, however, the presentation of Bhaskar’s argument has to be treated with care. The individual agent is, he says, a ‘powerful particular’, a psychic and physical source of significant agency. It is ‘embodied intentionality which earths social life’, and in turn ‘real reasons for action’, based upon ‘informed or misinformed desire’, ‘comprise the existential agent’s intentional causality’. Forms such as intentionality and the giving of reasons for action render agency accountable, according to Bhaskar, even where its forms are ‘routinised or habitual’ (Bhaskar 1993: 164). This sounds uncomfortably like a return at the level of agency to the integrated subject of the law and identity thought. We cannot simply reinstate the subject in her pristine agential form, or we are back to the basis for identity thinking – a more or less whole subject, responsible for her actions. These comments therefore need to be read and interpreted in the light of Bhaskar’s discussion of the dialecticised subject. From this standpoint, acts, intentions, reasons must be read in the context of considering the ‘centrification, fragmentation or alienation of the subject’, and of ‘conscious and unconscious’ aspects of subjectivity. More generally, they must be understood in terms of ‘the open systemic, multiply and conflictually determined nature of the aspects at play in our internal pluriverses’ (Bhaskar 1993: 167). This gives rise to a decentred conception of the agential subject, in which agency becomes a synthetic practice achieved out of difference. Such a conception can be linked with the most sophisticated work in social psychology which insists on the significance of agency as a real achievement, but one that always remains part of a process of construction of agential categories within and by social relations (Harré 1983, 1998; Norrie 1998a). What does this mean in terms of responsibility in, and beyond, law? Judgment in the law involves a systematic set of exclusions in constructing what it means to be a responsible subject. This means that the implications of entity relationism are closed down. Responsibility from the point of view of the agent coming to the law involves a potential recognition of and an opening out to the relational quality of human action. When people act, they act in a social and moral context, and in a community or set of communities, however these may be established or identified. Subjectivity involves being-in-relation, and therefore responsibility is shared with others
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in communities in a skein of mutual and structured complicities. Practically, one can witness this (partially) in the interest in ‘relational models of justice’ such as exist at the margins of western systems of criminal justice (Merry and Milner 1995; Norrie 1996a), or in systems of ‘popular justice’ (see e.g. Berman 1969; Scharf and Ngcokoto 1990; cf. Norrie 1996b). Such approaches can, within limits,10 reach out beyond the responsibility of the agent and share it within a historical and structural space that is the context within which wrong was done. Reconciliation between parties rather than the punishment of the individual is seen as the object and the norm. In a relational model of subjective responsibility, justice embraces the subject and her context, blurring the boundaries. Judgement is complex and ‘distributive’, rather than individual and retributive. This gives rise to an ambivalent sense of judgement in which it is recognised that responsibility extends beyond the subject to the community. This means that, where the judger and the judged are part of the same community, it becomes necessary to acknowledge the complicity of the judger in the wrongdoing of the judged (Norrie 1997a: 4–8, analysing the case of the two boys convicted for murdering James Bulger; 1998a: 143–146). Where, on the other hand, the judger and the judged come from different communities, it is still necessary to judge the wrongdoer and the context in which he acted (Norrie 1999, analysing the sense of guilt in Gitta Sereny’s account (1995) of Albert Speer). In these cases, I argue that understanding individual guilt and responsibility, and ultimately subjectivity and identity, entails examining a space between a person and a community, i.e. a relationality that is part of, and that may therefore lead to a sharing of, guilt. Entity relationism and legal reasoning Between the outreach of a relational conception of (moral) guilt and the suppression of that outreach in law lie the problems of legal analytics. As I argued above, identity thinking involves a deep interconnection between a conception of being and a conception of thinking about being. Thus an exclusionary sense of identity (Russell’s Law 1) licenses analytical reasoning (his Laws 2 and 3). One would therefore expect that placing entity relationism at the core of an alternative account of identity would also affect our understanding of reasoning. Thinking dialectically involves thinking the coincidence of distinctions and connections, while thinking analytically involves the thinking of distinctions separately from connections. Dialectic is ‘the great “loosener” of the hold of analytic thought, permitting ‘empirical “open-texture”, . . . structural fluidity and interconnectedness’ (Bhaskar 1993: 44) in place of the formal definitions and logic associated with identity theory. Dialectical thinking threatens analytical thought because in ‘thinking the constellational unity of identity . . . and change’, we are required to see it as ‘a case when we want to say that a thing both is and is not
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itself’. This challenges Russell’s ‘self-evident logical principles’ based on the ‘law of identity’. It is a ‘blow at the heart of analytic reason where . . . “everything is what it is and not another thing”’ (Bhaskar 1993: 183). The precise nature of this threat to categories of the criminal law stems from the ways in which categories of legal judgment reflect but mismatch broader moral categories. Legal categories are cut against the broader, shared, relational sense of responsibility outlined above. Considered in the round, moral judgments are often grey and blurred, so that black and white judgments about responsibility do not capture their complexity. Developing a structural conception of legal subjectivity as exclusionary and contrasting it with a relational conception of moral agency explains why this should be the case. Moral judgments, based on locating the individual within a broader context, jar with legal conceptions that deny that context. It must be remembered, however, that legal conceptions have been engineered socio-historically (Norrie 1997a: 8–12; 2001: ch.2) precisely to deny context. There is a dysphasia here, and judges who consider the moral issues before them in individual cases are faced with a tension between two standpoints of judgment. On the one hand, they are faced with the legal categories that have been elaborated on the basis of concepts that are understood as ‘factual’, ‘technical’ and ‘substantively amoral’. On the other hand, they must have regard for the position of real human agents and the social, moral and political dilemmas they face. Sometimes the political issues involved lead to an immediate closure of the legal issues, and the judges hold strongly to the juridical categories of responsibility. They use, indeed, the exclusionary structural conceptions of legal responsibility to shut out the political issues. On other occasions, however, the moral issues that lurk beyond the legal concepts provoke sympathy among judges, and they are forced into a dialogue between them and the pre-existing legal categories. In such situations, they are forced to recognise the limits of the legal concepts, and to push beyond them.11 Having accommodated the underlying moral issue, they must then find ways of controlling its impact on the legal concept that has now been developed. The innovation has to be controlled lest it admit too much. Legal judgment is often therefore on a dialectical edge between what legal concepts were designed to exclude, and what, in appropriate circumstances, they are desired to admit. In this play between two essentially connected yet conflicting orders of judgment and responsibility, morality-in-, and morality-beyond-, law, the primary victim is analytical legal reasoning. Two consequences should be noted of this analysis. First, because analytical modes of thought are power-invested, their ideological shape must be maintained and buttressed against the ravages of the conflicts and contradictions they traverse (cf. Bhaskar 1993: 116). If a power-invested analytic is to be maintained in the face of the disruption it itself invokes, it requires a variety of discursive and practical techniques to manage it. In criminal
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law, ideological ‘truth’ is maintained by a variety of meaning-slides and fictive constructions, by ‘fixes’ and ‘fudges’, exceptions and exemptions, and unrationalised inclusions and exclusions which supplement analytical reasoning, and which lawyers persistently seek to rationalise. These ‘techniques of legal reasoning’ (that are never named as such) stand alongside the basic legal architectonics of the general and special parts, mens rea, actus reus, justification and excuse mentioned above. These go to establish the identity of the legal subject, and need to be protected from their own incoherence in the face of the relationality law denies. Second, since analytical reasoning qua legal reasoning is a way of exercising social and political power and is informed by power relations, it is a means of crystallising and expressing those relations. Analytical reasoning is not in itself innocent.12 Analytics set up concepts and identities that embody, and legitimate by embodying, powerful social practices. Thus, in the recent extradition case involving General Pinochet, the brutal seizure of power by a fascist dictator could become a legal matter of ‘sovereign immunity’. In this way, the specifically social, political and historical problems of crime become a matter of establishing individual culpability according to set legal criteria. Social practices are interventions in the conflicts that power relations engender, but, as mediated by law, they seek to shake off the latter’s smell.
Conclusion There are those, both in and beyond the critical realist camp, who dismiss Derrida’s work and who consequently will see little of value in the above discussion. Perhaps it might be said that the problems with his ethical short-circuitry of the socio-historical critique of law justify dismissing him. But I believe that one of Derrida’s signal achievements has been to permit critical thinkers the use of a dialectical language that helps us to understand the nature of phenomena in a conflictual and contradictory social and political world. There are two paradoxes in this conclusion. First, many attracted to Derrida would not see deconstruction as falling within dialectics, but rather would see dialectics as part of the problem that deconstruction addresses. I believe this to be wrong because, as Barnett says, postmodern thought is itself ‘caught in a Hegelian labyrinth’. Therein one ‘need never mention the name of Hegel’ (Barnett 1998: 25), yet Hegel plays a significant part. Derrida, with the ambiguous orientation he himself declares, acknowledges as much. Second, the whole emphasis of Derrida’s essay on law is away from the ‘desedimentation’ of social and political power, as we have also seen. Hence, my aim has been to show how the forms of deconstruction can be located within a dialectical theory that can make them relevant to power and conflict. This involves holding onto what is valid in Derrida and making it available to a sociology of law interested in issues of social and political power, structure and history, a
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‘post-poststructuralist’ sociology of law.13 Such a sociology of law can be developed, I argue, on the basis of dialectical critical realism. It should however be noted that this chapter leaves many questions unanswered. Its focus has been on the common move from U to D in Hegel, Derrida and Bhaskar, and then on the distinct further move from D to R (Hegel), to uR (Derrida), and to S (Bhaskar). In the process, it has not finally addressed the ultimate position of ethics once the sociohistorical has been re-inserted as a separate moment at S (in Bhaskar). In Bhaskar’s work, as we have seen, he charts two further moves to include ethics (E) and praxis (P). These moves, in my view, raise important, as yet unresolved, further issues (see Hostettler and Norrie 2002) which have not been explored here. My conviction is, however, that it only makes sense to explore them once the socio-historical has been given its proper place in the dialectical-critical understanding of the modern social world.
Notes *
Originally published in different form as ‘From Critical to Socio-legal Studies: Three Dialectics in Search of a Subject’ in (2000) Social & Legal Studies 9, 85–114. 1 See, for example, Cornell 1992 or Douzinas and Warrington 1995. I should make it clear that my target is Derrida’s essay ‘Force of Law’, not his work as a whole, though I have sought to read it in the light of general commentaries (Norris 1991; Lechte 1994; Barnett 1998). Nor is my aim to address the range of responses in law to Derrida. Compare, for example, the work of Cornell and Douzinas and Warrington with that of Schlag (1990, 1991, 1997). The profound influence of Derrida and poststructuralism generally on feminist legal studies should also be noted. There is an important nexus here. What Ralph Sandland (1998) discusses as ‘double movement feminism’ describes in my view an approach that with its emphasis on ‘being and not-being’ can be understood (in the terms developed below) as dialectical. It is significant to recognise the Hegelian inheritance in the intellectual biographies of the theorists such as Drucilla Cornell et al. (1991) and Judith Butler (1987) that he discusses. Where there is a difference relates to the terms in which a Derrida-influenced philosophical programme deals with the problems it identifies. Thus, as Sandland points out, recent divergent work in double movement feminism by theorists like Cornell (1995) and Luce Irigaray (1993) seems ‘simply, as a pair, to repeat the liberalism/determinism (or radicalism) opposition . . . of much “modernist” feminism’ so that ‘we seem to be back where we started’ (Sandland 1998: 330). The resulting antinomy in feminist legal theory between legal equality and difference shadows Derrida’s own antinomial approach to law, as outlined below. Sandland suggests that ‘this is precisely where double movement feminism would expect us to be’ (ibid.) but he still feels the need to identify a ‘third way’. This seeks to achieve resolution of the problems he has identified either ‘in practice’, which is never a solution, or in ‘pointing, again, to the beyond’ (Sandland 1998: 334–335), Derrida’s own ineffable conclusion, discussed below. 2 I do not explore here the different approaches that can be taken to the work of Hegel, including the Marxist and phenomenological approaches which take their inspiration from Kojève and Hegel’s Phenomenology, and which seek to develop what they see as a more critical use of the early master (see e.g. Fine 1993; Salter and Shaw 1994; but cf. Marcuse 1941). Nor have I sought to compare
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3 4 5
6 7
8
9
10
Bhaskar’s dialectics with dialecticians like Adorno (1973, 1993, cf. Jarvis 1998), or contemporary ones like Ollmann (1993). These are important avenues for future enquiry. U–D–R designation of the three moments of the Hegelian system is drawn from Bhaskar, and will be used below to discuss deconstruction. This figure is a variant on Bhaskar 1993: 22. ‘His’ is the appropriate term given that certain categories of responsibility are constructed around a male standard. There is an ambiguity between justice and deconstruction as dynamic, restless and processual, that exists in an intermediate place, an ‘interval’ and a more static and absolute – if ineffable – conception of justice, caught in the idea of justice as undeconstructible: ‘Justice in itself, if such a thing exists, outside or beyond law, is not deconstructible. Deconstruction . . . takes place in the interval that separates the undeconstructability of justice from the deconstructibility of droit [law]’ (Derrida 1990: 945). For discussions of Hegel, see Derrida 1977, 1978, 1986. This ambiguity gives rise to a parallel ambivalence in Derrida’s understanding of his own position vis-à-vis the modern classical tradition in philosophy: see Derrida 1990: 966. At one level, but only one, Derrida would accept this. As Christopher Norris notes, mostly, Derrida acknowledges that he has to ‘bore from within’, so that his own work is ‘inseparably tied to Western philosophy’ (Norris 1991, p.49). But Norris also notes that there is what he describes as a ‘theme of Utopian longing for the textual “free play” which would finally break with the instituted wisdom of language’ which ‘emerges to anarchic effect in some of his later texts’, and which by implication is Derrida’s ‘way out’. Lurking behind these apparently simple statements lies a large debate in the social sciences between a variety of theories that have sought to understand the relationship between structure and agency. To the fore in this has been the work of Antony Giddens (1979), with which Bhaskar at one time found substantial agreement. However, Margaret Archer (1995) has shown, and developed, the important implicit differences between the two approaches. Describing Giddens’ structuration theory as conflating structure and agency, and as eliding their differences, she argues that the TMSA can sustain, as Bhaskar claims, a ‘genuine concept of change, and hence of history’, while the weakness in Giddens’s approach is seen in his inability to provide a theory that can account for ‘stability and change in social systems’ (both quotes in Archer 1995). To give a few examples, the seemingly ‘technical’ law of intention in mens rea has been the basis for dealing with a variety of moral and political issues including: the extent to which wartime collaborators should be held responsible for their collaboration (R v Steane [1947] 1All ER 813); whether anti-war demonstrators can challenge a nuclear defence strategy by direct protest methods (Chandler v DPP [1964] AC 763); whether the state can imprison those who offend Christians (R v Lemon [1979] 1All ER 898) (see Norrie 2001 for discussion of how the legal categories mediate the broader political and moral issues in these cases); and the criminal liability of doctors when their practice encourages the sexuality of underage girls (Gillick [1986] AC112; see Ashworth 1996). In general ‘technical’ legal terms like mens rea are gatekeepers for the most serious social, moral, political and legal labels such as that of ‘murder’. It is important to remember that popular justice is not simply an informal mirror to western formal justice. It is not the space of an ‘unbounded’ relationality, but rather a set of differential, structurally limited sites within which a more open approach to relationality may be possible (Norrie 1996b). Thus in the Cuban tribunals of the 1960s described by Berman (1969), it was not uncommon to hear judges criticise their own society for producing crime and prostitution as
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well as the offender. The same approach was taken in the early popular tribunals described by Scharf and Ngcokoto (1990) in South Africa in the 1980s. In both systems, later developments – the ‘institutionalisation’ of revolution in Cuba, the dynamic of the ‘ungovernability’ period in South Africa – tended to foreclose such relationality. They also set limits on the possibilities for reconciliation. 11 Compare, for example, the cases of R v Steane (admission of relational context leading to defence for man who broadcast for the Nazis detrimental to legal categories) and Chandler v DPP (denial of relational context by holding to legal categories leading to conviction of anti-nuclear protestors). 12 According to Bhaskar (1993: 176), it assumes ‘the shape of an unself-conscious ideology of the normalisation of past changes and freedoms, and the denegation of present and future ones’. Here it is necessary to develop Bhaskar’s point, and to recognise the double-sided nature of the analytical tradition with regard to power. It normalises past changes and freedoms, but also past repressions, as the history of criminal justice makes clear (Thompson 1975, 1991; Hay et al. 1977). 13 I would note alternative approaches to the critical philosophers from whom Derrida draws his ‘messianic’ conclusions. For example, it has been argued by autopoietic theorists that the work of Walter Benjamin on violence can be read in a more sociological vein (Rogowski 1994). There has not been the opportunity to comment on this argument, but it perhaps suggests another avenue of possible development and dialogue with the theory advanced here.
Bibliography Adorno, T. (1973) Negative Dialectics London: Routledge Adorno, T. (1993) Hegel: Three Studies Cambridge, Mass: MIT Archer, M. (1995) Realist Social Theory: the Morphogenetic Approach Cambridge: CUP Archer, M., R. Bhaskar, A.Collier, T. Lawson and A. Norrie (1998) Critical Realism: Essential Readings London: Routledge Ashworth, A. (1987) ‘Belief, Intent and Criminal Liability’ in J. Eekelaar and J. Bell (eds), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (third series) Oxford: OUP Ashworth, A. (1996) ‘Criminal Liability in a Medical Context’ in A. P. Simester and A. Smith, Harm and Culpability Oxford: OUP Barnett, S. (1998) Hegel After Derrida London: Routledge Barthes, R. (1973) Mythologies St Albans: Paladin Benton, T. (1977) Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies London: Routledge Berman, J. (1969) ‘Cuban Popular Tribunals’ Columbia Law Review 69, 1317 Bhaskar, R. (1976/1997) A Realist Theory of Science (1st edn) Leeds: Leeds Books; (3rd edn) London: Verso Bhaskar, R. (1979/1998) Possibility of Naturalism (1st edn) Brighton: Harvester; (3rd edn) London: Routledge Bhaskar, R. (1993) Dialectic: the Pulse of Freedom London: Verso Bhaskar, R. (1994) Plato Etc. London: Verso Bhaskar, R. and A. Norrie (1998) ‘Introduction: Dialectic and Dialectical Critical Realism’ in M. Archer et al., Critical Realism: Essential Readings London: Routledge Butler, J. (1987) Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France New York: Columbia UP Collier, A. (1994) Critical Realism London: Verso Cornell, D. (1992) The Philosophy of the Limit London: Routledge Cornell, D. (1995) The Imaginary Domain London: Routledge
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Cornell, D., M. Rosenfeld, D. G. Carlson (eds) (1991) Hegel and Legal Theory London: Routledge Derrida, J. (1977) Of Grammatology Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Derrida, J. (1978) Writing and Difference London: Routledge Derrida, J. (1986) Glas Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press Derrida, J. (1990) ‘Force of Law: the “Mystical Foundation of Authority” ’ Cardozo Law Review 11, 921–1045 Douzinas, C. and R. Warrington (1995) Justice Miscarried Brighton: Harvester Duff, A. (1990) Intention, Agency and Criminal Liability Oxford: Blackwell Duff, A. (1996) ‘Penal Communications: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Punishment’ in M Tonry (ed.), Crime and Justice: a Review of Research Chicago: University of Chicago Press Fine, R. (1993) ‘ “The Rose in the Cross of the Present”: Closure and Critique in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ in A. Norrie (ed.), Closure or Critique: New Directions in Legal Theory Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Fitzpatrick, P. (1991) Dangerous Supplements: Resistance and Renewal in Jurisprudence London: Pluto Fletcher, G. (1978) Rethinking Law Boston: Little Brown. Giddens, A. (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory London: Macmillan Goff, Lord (1988) ‘The Mental Element in Murder’ Law Quarterly Review 104, 30 Harré, R. (1983) Personal Being Oxford: Blackwell Harré, R. (1998) The Singular Self London: Sage Hay, D., P. Linebaugh, J. Rule, E. Thompson and C. Winslow (1977) Albion’s Fatal Tree Harmondsworth: Peregrine Hegel, G. (1952) Philosophy of Right (transl. T. M. Knox) Oxford: OUP Hegel, G. (1975) Logic (transl. W. Wallace) Oxford: OUP Hostettler, N. and A. Norrie (2003) ‘Are Critical Realist Ethics Foundational?’ in J. Cruickshank (ed.), Critical Realism: The Difference it Makes, London: Routledge Inwood, M. (1992) A Hegel Dictionary Oxford: Blackwell Irigaray, L. (1993) je, tu, nous: Towards a Culture of Difference London: Routledge Jarvis, S. (1998) Adorno: A Critical Introduction Cambridge: Polity Press Kant, I. (1993) Critique of Pure Reason London: Everyman Kant, I. (1997) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Cambridge: CUP Lacey, N. (1988) State Punishment London: Routledge Lechte, J. (1994) Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers London: Routledge Marcuse, H. (1941) Reason and Revolution London: Routledge McLellan, D. (1969) The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx London: Macmillan Merry, S. and N. Milner (1995) The Possibility of Popular Justice Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press Moore, M. (1997) Placing Blame Oxford: OUP Norrie, A. (1991) Law, Ideology and Punishment Dordrecht: Kluwer Norrie, A. (1992) ‘Subjectivism, Objectivism and the Limits of Criminal Recklessness’ Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 12, 45 Norrie, A. (1993) ‘Closure and Critique: Antinomy in Modern Theory’ in A. Norrie (ed.), Closure or Critique: New Directions in Legal Theory Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Norrie, A. (1996a) ‘The Limits of Justice: Finding Fault in the Criminal Law’ Modern Law Review 59, 540–556 Norrie, A. (1996b) ‘From Law to Popular Justice: Beyond Antinomialism’ Social and Legal Studies 5, 383–404
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Norrie, A. (1997a) ‘Legal and Moral Judgment in the General Part’ in P. Rush, S. McVeigh and A. Young, Criminal Legal Doctrine Dartmouth: Aldershot Norrie, A. (1997b) ‘Law’s Relationality’ in R. Bergalli and D. Melossi, The Emergence of Law Through Economy, Politics and Culture Onati: Onati Papers Norrie, A. (1998a) ‘ “Simulacra of Morality”? Beyond the Ideal/Actual Antinomies of Criminal Justice’ in A. Duff (ed.), Criminal Law: Principle and Critique New York: Cambridge University Press Norrie, A. (1998b) ‘Critical Legal Studies’ in D. N. MacCormick and B. Brown (eds), The Philosophy of Law, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy London: Routledge Norrie, A. (1999) ‘Albert Speer, Guilt and the Space Between’ in M. Matravers, Punishment and Political Theory Oxford: Hart Norrie, A. (2001) Crime, Reason and History London: Butterworth Norris, C. (1991) Deconstruction: Theory and Practice London: Routledge Ollmann, B. (1993) Dialectical Investigations London: Routledge Outhwaite, W. (1987) New Philosophies of Social Science: Realism, Hermaneutics and Critical Theory Basingstoke: Macmillan Rogowski, R. (1994) ‘Walter Benjamin in the Postmodern’ New Comparison 18, 131–151 Russell, B. (1973) The Problems of Philosophy Oxford: OUP Sandland, R. (1998) ‘Seeing Double? Or, Why “to be or not to be” is (not) the Question for Feminist Legal Studies’ Social & Legal Studies 7, 307 Salter, M. and J. Shaw (1994) ‘Hegel and Constitutional Law’ Journal of Law and Society 21, 464–486 Sayer, A. (1992) Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach London: Routledge Scharf, W. and B. Ngcokoto (1990) ‘Images of Punishment in the People’s Courts of Cape Town 1985–1987’ in C. Manganyi and A. du Toit, Political Violence and the Struggle in South Africa New York: St Martin’s Press Schlag, P. (1990) ‘ “Le Hors de Texte, C’est Moi”. The Politics of Form and the Domestication of Deconstruction’ Cardozo Law Review 11, 1631–1674 Schlag, P. (1991) ‘The Problem of the Subject’ Texas Law Review 69, 1627–1743 Schlag, P. (1997) ‘The Empty Circles of Liberal Justification’ Michigan Law Review 96, 1–46 Sereny, G. (1995) Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth London: Picador Thompson, E. (1975) Whigs and Hunters Harmondsworth: Peregrine Thompson, E. (1991) Customs in Common London: Penguin
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13 Learning to live (with Derrida) Jonathan Joseph
Someone, you or me, comes forward and says: I would like to learn to live finally. Finally but why? To learn to live: a strange watchword. Who would learn? From whom? To teach to live, but to whom? Will we ever know? Will we ever know how to live and first of all what ‘to learn to live’ means? And why finally? (Derrida 1994: xvii)
Jacques Derrida has written a book about spectres; those that are neither alive nor dead, but he begins the book with an appeal – he comes forward, perhaps we come forward too, and asks to learn to live finally. Derrida has also written a book about friends. As well as asking to learn to live we could also ask about learning to live with. Both you and I should come forward. This is about learning to live with Derrida and about how Derrida should live with us. But ‘living with’ entails a commitment. ‘To live’ is necessarily ‘to be’ and to ‘live with’ is therefore to ‘be with’ or to ‘be in’ or ‘be of ’. To be, to be in, to be of; to learn to live is finally to recognise ontology. What follows is about learning to live with Derrida and about learning from what he can teach us. But it is also about how he, too, should learn to live; and how he should recognise, finally, that to learn to live requires us to live with ontology.
Living with We want to live with someone who is prepared to invoke Marx’s spirit in opposition to the irrationalism of the ‘New World Order’ and those who defend it. It is worth living with someone who criticises both the spectrality of capitalist social relations and those who defend these relations in this particularly ‘out of joint’ moment. We wish to support our new friend in his stated opposition to the politics of the ‘New World Order’ – the creation of EU capitalism and the ruthless economic wars with Japan and the US, the unprotected free market, the pauperisation of parts of the world through foreign debt, the spectre of overproduction, the murderous
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arms industry, the curse of unemployment, the creation of refugees and the homeless, inter-ethnic wars and the activities of capitalist phantomStates (Derrida 1994: 63, 81–3). We would also like to applaud his attacks on the postmoderns like Fukuyama who triumphantly defend this state of affairs. In opposing them, Derrida writes that he wants to defend those who resisted reactionary, conservative, anti-scientific or obscurantist temptations, who did not renounce an ideal of democracy and emancipation, but who have proceeded in a ‘deconstructive fashion’ in the name of a new Enlightenment to come (Derrida 1994: 90). This is all very good. However, a doubt creeps in as to who these friends actually are. Are they the Marxists themselves? Despite his kind words for Marx, Derrida does not seem to have too much sympathy for Marx’s so-called followers. If not the Marxists, then who are those who act in a ‘deconstructive fashion’? But too many words have already been spent in pointing out that most of those who practise ‘deconstruction’ have not been at all friendly to us (see Ahmad 1999 and Lewis 1999). It is just worth making the point that, like it or not, Derrida has a lot of people living with him who, through deconstruction have done exactly what he criticises and embraced reactionary, conservative, anti-scientific and obscurantist temptations. Rather than being a radicalisation in the spirit of Marxism, deconstruction has more often been the driving spirit behind anti-Marxism. Derrida identifies himself as a ‘man of the left’ but can he distance himself from our enemies by proclaiming them unwanted friends? This, then, is our first point; it seems to be worth living with Derrida if only to listen to his critique of the ‘New World Order’ and its ideologues. However, we do not particularly want to have to live with some of his friends. But does he want to live with us? In any case, who are we? So far, we have posed this question of ‘living with’ at a superficial level of friendship (but one that is commonly stated) – that we do not like those who claim to be Derrida’s friends. However, it seems equally to be the case that Derrida (equally superficially) does not like many of those who claim to be friends of Marx. It seems right to call this enmity superficial, for what is striking about Derrida’s criticisms of the Marxists is that he fails to name them or to seriously engage with their work. As with our approach to the followers of deconstruction, to not bother with their names is the surest sign of not wanting their company. Instead, Derrida launches a general attack on the Marxists accusing them of possessiveness, solidity, certainty and other crimes of faith. Rather than pick on individuals, Derrida decides to attack the Marxist apparatus – the ‘dogma machines’ and ‘ideological apparatuses’ of states, parties, cells, unions, and other places of ‘doctrinal production’. Derrida clearly has a very negative evaluation of these apparatuses and de facto ‘Marxism’ or ‘communism’ – the Soviet Union, the International of Communist Parties and ‘everything that resulted from them’ (Derrida
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1994: 13–14) (which is a considerable amount). This solid, bulky machinery produces solid, bulky ideology. But Derrida claims to oppose this kind of Marxism, not out of reactionary or conservative motives, but rather, to distinguish the spirit of Marxist critique from ‘Marxism as ontology, philosophical or metaphysical system, as “dialectical materialism,” from Marxism as historical materialism or method, and from Marxism incorporated in the apparatus of party, State, or workers’ International’ (Derrida 1994: 68). We may be left wondering what this ghostly spirit does stand for. We can only proceed, for now, by recognising what it is opposed to – the attempts by the Marxist apparatuses to reassure themselves, by means of Marx, and Marx’s own sureness of revolution (Derrida 1994: 38–9). The spectre of Communism that Marx and Engels declare is haunting Europe became hardened into Leninism and then Stalinism. Then the roles were reversed: ‘Marxist ontology was also struggling against the ghost in general, in the name of living presence as material actuality, the whole “Marxist” process of the totalitarian society was also responding to the same panic’ (Derrida 1994: 105). What troubles Derrida, it seems, is the manifestation of Marxism, whether as apparatuses, parties or states, or as strategies and projects, or else, in theory, as ontology or method. By becoming manifest, the radical spirit of Marxism is lost and Marxism becomes stubborn, conservative and self-legitimating. Marxism loses its ability to haunt and criticise and hence becomes, itself, terrified of ghosts and criticism. Our second point about ‘living with’ is, therefore, that Derrida does not particularly want to live with the Marxists who, in his view, have attempted to flee from the critical spirit of Marx, who are caught up in the reproduction of ideological dogma and who have become uncritical and unthinking. They are possessive about Marx and particularly about the Marxist corpus. But by concentrating on the body, they have lost touch with the spirit. They have become devotees of the ‘good book’ but not of the critical spirit that inspired its writing. There seems to be something about this view that is worth cautious acceptance. It is certainly true of ‘Marxism-Leninism’ but also of much that passes itself off as ‘classical Marxism’. Many attempts at Marxist ‘theory’ are indeed gripped by dogmatism, self-assurance and uncritical use of ideas and concepts, although it must be added that many of these ‘Marxists’ are still preferable to the pretentious, ultra-critical, principle-free ‘post-Marxists’ who have moved in Derrida’s direction. But if his critique of Marxism involves a critique of dogmatism, it must be said that Derrida’s assessment of Marxism is itself rather dogmatic and presumptuous. Although he rightly asks, ‘Who is Marxism?’ (Derrida 1999: 225), he rather undermines this point by treating us, throughout Specters of Marx, as if we are all wooden Stalinists. It is a pity that Derrida concentrates on a Stalinist version of Marxism and its official apparatuses, parties and states. But this is perhaps also a product of ‘living with’. Maybe it is a product of living with, for twenty
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years, the ‘politics and friendship’ of Louis Althusser, his colleague at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. At the Ecole Derrida felt ill at ease, marginalised, intimidated and in an embarrassing situation. The whole Marxist problematic seemed to be marked by its relation to the French Communist Party, a tyrannical party and one insensitive to critical, transcendental and ontological questions (Derrida and Sprinker 1993: 187). Derrida was living with Althusser and his circle and they were living with this party, and it seems that for Derrida the expression of Marxism became forever associated with the Stalinist apparatus (and to a lesser extent, Althusser’s relation to it). In this way we can perhaps make sense of the fact that, for Derrida, the ontologised expression of Marxism seems to be bound up with apparatuses – states, parties, ‘dogma machines’. Althusser’s intervention into this problematic was obviously a very influential one, but for Derrida it would still seem to be within this problematic, albeit questioning of it. The Althusserian discourse raised a series of new problems – the problem of theoreticism or ‘a newfangled scientism’ and the move to eliminate ideology and history from ‘Theory’ (Derrida and Sprinker 1993: 188, 193). Thus Derrida had to live with Marxism ontologised; Marxism ontologised as Stalinist party and ideological apparatus, Marxism ontologised as Althusser’s circle, and Marxism ontologised as self-certain theory whether in its conventional Stalinist form or else in the Althusserian form of scientism or theoreticism. ‘Living with’, finally, also means Derrida’s living with his Marxist friends and their influence over his attitude towards Marxism.
Living in If Derrida is opposed to ontology and the ontological assertions of Marxism, what does he propose as an alternative? The answer is hauntology; something that is not reducible to the certainties of ontological being and non-being, presence and absence or life and death. Hauntology is the world of spirits and spectres. We need to conceive of a spectrality where, as Fredric Jameson puts it, ‘the living present is scarcely as self-sufficient as it claims to be; that we would do well not to count on its density and solidity, which might under exceptional circumstances betray us’ ( Jameson 1999: 39). Through this exposition we can start to see the potential radicality that Derrida’s theory of the spectral contains. It is aimed at the various theorists that Derrida has to live with – both the Marxists and the postmoderns – but it also aims at that which the postmoderns support and the Marxists oppose; Derrida gives an account of the spectrality we live in. Derrida’s account of the spectrality we live in draws heavily on Marx’s analysis of capitalism, commodity production and fetishism. Starting with the question of social production, Derrida writes: ‘as soon as there is production, there is fetishism: idealisation, autonomisation and automatisation, dematerialisation and spectral incorporation’ (Derrida 1994: 166). These are
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brought together under the conception of the spectral; as in Marx, they form a chain – of secret, mystique, enigma, fetish and ideology (Derrida 1994: 148). Production relations assume the mystical form of the commodity and these commodities in turn mystify the social relations between people. And while the ‘ghosts that are commodities transform human producers into ghosts’ (Derrida 1994: 156) the ideological effect of fetishism is to naturalise and objectify these relations. Commodities are ghosts while people, through labour power, become commodities. A phantasmagoric form of relations envelops everything. In the arena of exchange, commodities metamorphose, money is speculated and capital accumulates while labour, in its turn, becomes abstract and alienated. This creates a supernatural phenomenality based on the ‘ungraspable visibility of the invisible . . . that non-sensuous sensuous of which Capital speaks . . . it is also, no doubt, the tangible intangibility of a proper body without flesh’ (Derrida 1994: 7). This fetishism also has the effect of turning the ideas generated by capitalist relations into something like religion (the fetish as an idol) where adoration, prayer and invocation are addressed to an invisible god (Derrida 1994: 42). Therefore, despite his complaints about the Marxist tradition, it should be clear that Derrida draws heavily on aspects of Marx’s theory of commodity production and the fetishisation of social relations. Derrida also makes clear that he wishes to draw on Marxism as a radical critique. It is not Marxism as ontology that Derrida wants, but the critical idea, the questioning stance, the spirit of Enlightenment and a certain emancipatory and messianic affirmation. This is the messianic in the sense of a promise of what is to come; a promise offered by the spectre at the beginning of the Communist Manifesto. This is not to descend into teleological purpose or design but to invoke the idea of emancipatory promise or the promise of a better future, a future to come that is promised in the here and now. The messianic promise opens up the spirit of Marxism. It is linked, in particular, to the idea of democracy: For democracy remains to come; this is its essence in so far as it remains: not only will it remain indefinitely perfectible, hence always insufficient and future, but, belonging to the time of the promise, it will always remain, in each of its future times, to come: even when there is democracy, it never exists, it is never present, it remains the theme of a non-presentable concept. (Derrida 1997: 306) This idea of the messianic should, then, be contrasted with the current ideology about the ‘End of History’ and other eschatologies that are identified with the present rather than the future to come. The philosophers of the right like Fukuyama are guilty of neo-evangelistic rhetoric in their praise for capitalism, a rhetoric that is assured by a Christian eschatology
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or Hegel’s state of universal recognition (Derrida 1994: 59–62). In light of this right wing triumphalism, the spirit of Marx may be summoned to wage war, but it must take on board a messianic of its own based on a deconstructive account of emancipatory promise and the ideas of democracy and justice. We are living in a real, material world, but one that is dominated by spectrality. Marxism, Derrida argues, needs to respond to this by becoming more spectral itself: Marxism remains at once indispensable and structurally insufficient: it is still necessary but provided it be transformed and adapted to new conditions and to a new thinking of the ideological, provided it be made to analyse the new articulation of techno-economic causalities and of religious ghosts, the dependent condition of the juridical at the service of socio-economic powers or States that are themselves never totally independent with regard to capital . . . (Derrida 1994: 58–9) These new conditions require a change in the party–state relation and Derrida argues that ‘the structure of the party is becoming not only more and more suspect . . . but also radically unadapted to the new – tele-techno-media – conditions of public space, of political life, of democracy, and of the new modes of representation’. This calls into question the nature of the party and also its ‘State correlative’. Derrida is thus ‘tempted to describe . . . a deconstruction of the traditional concepts of State, and thus of party and labor union’ (Derrida 1994: 102). This does not mean, he notes, that we have to take sides on the question of the withering away of the state, but we might at least call for the end of the party. Despite this, Derrida seems to be more or less correct when he talks of a New World Order based on an unprecedented form of hegemony and argues that ‘what you call “globalisation” is a strategy of depolitisisation enrolled in the service of particular political interests’ (Derrida 1997: 158). Does not this question of hegemony confirm the continued importance of the state as hegemonic player and the importance of organising ‘particular political interests’ in social and political forms? In order to avoid the idea of the postmodern – which, after all, Derrida is keen to reject1 – it is necessary to stress the importance of a concept of hegemony and its relationship to party and state. Even if the hegemony of the political – of parties and politicians – is dominated by the Western model (Derrida 1994: 52), these concepts must be maintained in order to know our enemy. These apparatuses of hegemonic power also extend into communications and academic culture, as Derrida notes, and, ‘whatever may be the conflicts, inequalities, or overdeterminations among them, they communicate and co-operate at every moment toward producing the greatest force with which to assure the hegemony or the imperialism in question’ (Derrida 1994: 52).
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We now have some idea about the kind of world Derrida sees us as ‘living in’. It is dominated by a spectrality of mystifying images. But this is derived from particular social processes and, most importantly from our view, the relations of capitalist production. The mystifying illusion that these relations entail led Marx to talk of commodity fetishism and represents what we might call a negatively determined ideological realm – one where many of the ideas, beliefs and understandings that predominate are secreted by the social practices that people engage in, but assume a partial, misleading or mystifying form. However, Derrida extends his account of the production of ideology to include, not only the spectres of capitalism as a system, but also the spectres generated by particular bodies and apparatuses that are wielded in the name of certain interests. In contrast to the negative, often automatic secretions of capitalist practices, there are also more consciously articulated ideologies that are more closely tied to hegemonic strategy and discourse. They are the spectral ‘conjurations’ within the system as opposed to the fetishised products of the system. We ‘live with’ these spectres of hegemonic struggle and we will always be engaged with such forces. But together, friend and enemy alike ‘live in’ a world that is spectral down to its very foundations. This is Derrida’s account of the world in which we live. Hopefully, a few Marxists will see that it is quite good. The problem is deciding what type of account it is. Derrida calls it a hauntology implying that it undermines an ontological account of pure being or non-being. But for us, the idea of fetishised forms, mystifying ideologies and hegemonic struggles is quite close to a Marxist ontology; a sophisticated ontology, that is, which resists the kind of reductionism and identity that Derrida is so keen to oppose. Derrida has argued that the world is not self-evident, self-present, identical to itself or founded on pure being. Marxists should not only have no problem with this but should see Derrida’s account of spectrality as a contribution to an alternative ontological view!
Living with ontology If Derrida’s claim is that spectrality is an inescapable aspect of our social existence, then our reply to him should be that ontology is an inescapable aspect of an account of this spectrality. The concept of spectrality may be an attempt to question the certainty of being/non-being, but it is not an alternative, for spectrality is itself an account of what the social world is like. Denied or not, there will always be an implicit account in Derrida’s work of what the social world must be like. Our accounts of the world, spectral or not, live in ontology just as surely as we live in the world itself. Fredric Jameson outlines Derrida’s opposition to a Marxist ontology as the rejection of ‘a form of the philosophical system (or of metaphysics) specifically oriented around the conviction that it is some basic identity of being which can serve as a grounding or foundational reassurance for
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thought’ ( Jameson 1999: 37). As we noted earlier, Jameson advises us not to count on this kind of solidity lest we are unexpectedly betrayed. As Jameson defends the importance of Derrida’s hauntology as an alternative to ontology he claims that ‘a world cleansed of spectrality is precisely ontology itself, a world of pure presence, of immediate density, of things without a past: for Derrida, an impossible and noxious nostalgia, and the fundamental target of his whole life’s work’ (Jameson 1999: 58). Finally, Warren Montag repeats this one-sided conception of ontology when he boldly states that: ‘Ontology speaks only of what is present or what is absent; it cannot conceive of what is neither’ (Montag 1999: 71). Is this true? Must an ontological account always assert pure presence, for example? What if we accepted the idea of the spectral as part of our ontology? We might distinguish between a materialist ontology that asserts pure being and a realist ontology that embraces materialism but not in a simple, reductionist or monovalent way. Thus the fuzzy images of the spectral as expressed in Derrida’s account can be accepted into a realist ontology that sees their material ‘origin’ in social relations, but which does not reduce the explanation of them to this origin and which does not seek to explain their functioning according to some primary cause, but sees them as having their own emergent character. We can live with Derrida’s view of spectrality within an ontology that insists, however, on a wider reality that includes the production of this spectrality in real, material processes, but which is not necessarily reducible to these. Derrida might object that we are still making the material prior to the spectral, but the only alternative to this would be to make the spectral prior to (or constitutive of ) the material, or else to exorcise the material altogether. A realist ontology, or to be more precise, a critical realist ontology, already opposes the kind of pure presence, identity and positivity that Derrida and friends claim is fundamental to ontology. Our account of ontology opposes itself to what Roy Bhaskar calls ontological monovalence, namely; a purely positive account of reality or real negation analysed in purely positive terms; that which erases the contingency of existential questions, screens the contingency of being or despatialises and detemporalises accounts of being (Bhaskar 1993: 7, 400–1). As well as opposing itself to a purely positive account of the real, critical realism also rejects a straightforward ontology of the present. It does this through a critique of what it calls actualism, that is, the identification of reality with the presence-to-itself of things, events or states of affairs without recourse to underlying structures or causal mechanisms. The actualist ontology is represented by generalised identity theory, the belief that causal laws can be reduced to constant conjunctions, the reduction of what is real, necessary and possible to that which is manifest, evident and apparent, the reduction of structures and generative mechanisms to events and states of affairs, the reduction of powers to their being exercised and the rejection of an open future in favour of that which is universal-and-necessarily
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certain (Bhaskar 1993: 235). In contrast, a critical realist ontology views the world in terms of processes rather than present events or states of affairs, as stratified and layered rather than empirically flat, as emergent and overdetermined rather than reducible to some primal origin and as dialectical and contradictory rather than self-evident or identical. Finally, critical realism insists on distinguishing between the transitive process of knowledge and the intransitive or independent objects of that knowledge. By making this distinction between the processes of knowledge and that which knowledge attempts to explain, critical realism is necessarily obliged to embrace a form of epistemic relativism. This is to recognise the necessarily social or transitive character of knowledge. There is no direct ‘correspondence’ between transitive theory and its intransitive object; rather, we only know these objects under socially and historically relative descriptions. There is no guarantee about the correctness of a theory and different theories about aspects of the intransitive world should, therefore, be assessed on the basis of their explanatory power. The tendency towards scientism that Derrida notes in the Althusserian approach should be rejected by recognising that there is no certainty of ‘correctness’ and that due to the social character of knowledge and the intransitivity of its object, ‘ideological’ elements are unavoidable. This leads critical realism to a position which William Outhwaite has described as ‘ontologically bold but epistemologically cautious’ (Outhwaite 1987: 34). From this we might suggest that Derrida has got his critical priorities the wrong way round.
A strategy for living In contrast to the type of critical realism outlined above, the followers of deconstruction seem far too epistemologically bold while at the same time remaining ontologically cautious to the point of denial. Epistemologically, deconstruction claims a near monopoly on radical or revolutionary behaviour by its denunciation of ontology and metaphysics and its advocacy of a deconstructive practice as the only possible alternative. Deconstruction is out to expose and critique all examples of metaphysics, logocentrism and identity thinking. Yet Derrida and others are reluctant to conduct the autocritique that they recommend to so many others. Aijaz Ahmad is keen to point out some of these weaknesses including the fact that deconstruction is primarily a textual hermeneutic that involves too much extravagance, methodological individualism and too voluntaristic a notion of social relations and politics (Ahmad 1999: 107–8). And this kind of voluntarism and creative spontaneity flows directly from the critique of ontology. Ruling out an ontological approach rules out a study of capitalist society and thus the potential for change. The danger, as Ahmad notes, is that Derrida seems to renounce the idea of socialism as arising out of the contradictions of capitalism itself and instead turns it into voluntarism based on acts of faith (Ahmad 1999: 95).
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Derrida’s alternative to ontology is hauntology and the messianic. However, it is more the case that being is replaced by something called spectrality while the messianic is presented as the universal structure of experience (Derrida 1999: 248). It is not that we can escape from ontology, more that Derrida substitutes a fuzzy ontology for a clear one. Yet, Derrida’s attempt to deny his own ontology means he is unable to give any content to his fuzzy alternative. Therefore: what remains irreducible to any deconstruction, what remains as undeconstructable as the possibility itself of deconstruction is, perhaps, a certain experience of the emancipatory promise; it is perhaps even the formality of a structural messianism, a messianism without religion, even a messianic without messianism, an idea of justice . . . and an idea of democracy . . . (Derrida 1994: 59) This is supposed to be the alternative to the Marxist project or programme. In his latest work the issues of democracy and justice are related to the idea of a radically new conception of friendship. This is a democracy ‘beyond the homo-fraternal and phalogocentric schema’ one that is no longer an insult to freedom and equality (Derrida 1997: 306). But where does this leave us? To give some practical content to the concepts of freedom, equality, justice, democracy and friendship would mean that they cease to be messianic becoming instead tied down to the practical issues of the here and now. And because he is attempting to avoid ontology, he is prevented from discussing these issues and their implications except in the most abstract, fuzzy, messianic way. Thus, the account of the unrealised promise of justice and democracy is rendered virtually meaningless. Derrida’s concept of the messianic takes on a status as mystical and mystifying as the spectrality he describes. This element substitutes for any social content including, for example, a class analysis. Where such concrete political questions arise, Derrida is keen to knock them down. Class, it is claimed, is used by Marxism to provide an ultimate support or self-identity.2 Again, it is the case that Derrida denies the complexities of the ontology he criticises (this time associated with Marxist theories of class), while his attack on ontology forces him to deny any substantial content to his alternative. Meanwhile, Derrida’s friend, Werner Hamacher, joins the debate by attacking the capital/labour distinction, writing that: ‘Labour is no more a given fact than capital; it is not a transcendental form of value determination or essence of anthropo-technological systems without first being a project, a credit, an advance’ (Hamacher 1999: 192). To this we might respond that Derrida’s only stated alternative concepts, justice and democracy (and the related issue of friendship), are no more given facts than labour; they have no transcendental form without first being a project. Or
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we could say that like democracy and justice there is a certain undeconstructability about labour and that it has precisely the trans-historical character that Derrida’s followers deny. Democracy, it is argued, is always insufficient and future. It never exists and is never present, it is a nonpresentable concept (Derrida 1997: 306). But if labour were to be never present, humanity would not have survived to ponder the question. Why, therefore, cannot we have a promise of labour to come? At least Derrida is correct to argue that ideology cannot be banished or exorcised as many Marxists seem to believe. Derrida’s notion of spectrality can obviously be related to the ideological fetishism of capitalism. But it is also presented as a fundamental element of all societies. Ideology will be present wherever there are social practices and projects. It is true that Althusser also strongly advocates this position through his notion that ideology is secreted by all human practices. However, it is spoiled by the imposition of a strict distinction between science and ideology which rather flies in the face of what he is trying to say about the impossibility of avoiding ideology. But if Althusser’s position is guilty of scientism, Derrida welcomes the irreducible heterogeneity and internal untranslatability of the text (Derrida 1994: 33). Unfortunately, Derrida becomes the prisoner of his own views. Having recognised the unavoidable problem of ideological thinking, he tries to disguise his own account through the ghostly language of the spectre. He uses this to give an account of the mystifying ideology produced by the capitalist system but out of embarrassment with the ontological implications of this claim, Derrida tries to mystify his own words. It is at this point that Derrida becomes afraid of living. Having stressed the inescapability of ideology he tries to respond by denying ontological claims. It would be better to respond to the unavoidability of ideology by recognising the accompanying inescapability of ontology and, consequently, taking a decision as to what kind of ontology is preferable. Derrida talks about the importance of hegemony but is reluctant to take sides himself. Hegemony is an important part of Derrida’s spectrality. It represents a manifestation or the organisation of such a manifestation. It is presented as official discourse, of parties and politics, hierarchised and selective information and communication, the discourse of apparatuses, the dominant rhetoric and ideology (Derrida 1994: 52, 55). Unlike the ghostly secretions of phantasmagoric capitalism, hegemony is related to the positive act of ‘conjuring up’ an alliance or overpowering an enemy. But this, in turn, has a negative connotation: ‘For to conjure means also to exorcise: to attempt both to destroy and to disavow . . . Exorcism conjures away the evil in ways that are also irrational, using magical, mysterious, even mystifying practices (Derrida 1994: 48). Derrida has always been able to present this view as a radical challenge, not only to the powers that be, but to the whole history of Western hegemonic systems. He asks:
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who sets down the law here. And who founds the law as a right to life. We will ask ourselves who grants or imposes the right to all these distinctions, to all these preventions and all the sanctions that they give rise to. Is it a living being? . . . A living present? . . . Whose friend or enemy? (Derrida 1997: xi) This is indeed an important question. But posing the question of hegemony in terms of friends and enemies opens up the argument. Hegemony is a struggle that requires two sides. It is true that Derrida somewhat reduces the importance of hegemony by linking it too closely to the idea of the dominant usages of language. But he does at least declare war on the dominant usages of language (Derrida 1997: 71). Rather than remaining undecided, posing the question of friendship requires the taking of sides; the question of hegemony has to be resolved. Hegemony intervenes into that which Derrida calls the ‘perhaps’ by suspending the undecidable: nothing takes place and nothing is ever decided without suspending the perhaps while keeping its possibility alive in living memory. If no decision (ethical, juridical, political) is possible without interrupting determination by engaging oneself in the perhaps, on the other hand, the same decision must interrupt the very thing that is its condition of possibility: the perhaps itself. (Derrida 1997: 67) Derrida’s work shows us how the history of dominant discourses is based on violence against the ‘perhaps’ or the undecidable by means of strategic battles and hegemonic assertion. But, for us, the lesson to draw is not that we should turn our backs on this dilemma, but that we should develop our own hegemonic strategy; to suspend the perhaps and make our own assertions having recognised the futility of trying to avoid them. Rather than undermining a potential Marxist strategy or a Marxist ontology, Derrida’s words should install in us the realisation that there is no alternative. Is it possible, then, to engage in a relation of friendship with Derrida? On his terms it seems not. A disjunction exists in the relation between friendship and politics. Friendship, as we have noted, belongs to the messianic, the undeconstructable, the undecidable. It relates to the ethical which, in a Levinasian vein, is based on the relationless relation to the Other. As Simon Critchley notes: what we seem to have here is a relation between friendship and democracy, or ethics and politics, which is both non-foundational and non-arbitrary, which leaves the decision open for investigation whilst acknowledging that the decision comes from the other. (Critchley 1999: 277)
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The movement from ethics to politics, the act of decision or the suspension of the perhaps, is based on the ‘utter singularity of a particular and inexhaustible context’ (Critchley 1999: 277), a context, however, in which the political has no foundation and claims no limit on the freedom of the decision. This may be useful in helping Derrida avoid metaphysics, but it does not give us much basis for particular friendship. For us, friendship can help support us in taking a decision. For Derrida, friendship belongs to the undecidable. To put it in terms of Levinasian ethics (or Levinas’s conditions of ethics), Derrida is addressing the alterity of the Other (that which puts me in question) at the expense of the actuality of others (those who we can work with). The consequences of this are clear when Derrida seeks to articulate his non-foundational politics. Insofar as the messianic can be given some meaning, it might be linked to the politics of the New International and the community of friendship that this entails. But even Critchley is forced to admit, rather euphemistically, that the New International, belonging only to anonymity, is a little unspecific (Critchley 1999: 166). We are forced instead to follow Critchley’s suggestion which, drawing on the equally indefinite work of Laclau and Mouffe, claims that deconstruction implies a humanitarian politics based on a ‘politicised Marxism’ which acts as a democratic radicalisation: Such processes of democratisation, evidenced in numerous examples (new social movements, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, etc.), would work across, above, beneath and within the territory of the democratic state, not in the vain hope of achieving some sort of ‘society without the state’, but rather as providing constant pressure upon the state, a pressure of emancipatory intent aiming at its infinite amelioration, the perfectibility of politics, the endless betterment of actually existing democracy. (Critchley 1999: 281) There is a lot that can be said about such a declaration, much of it unpleasant. We will content ourselves by noting that those who constantly condemn the supposed foundationalism of Marxism seem quite happy to accept the foundations of ‘actually existing democracy’ and advocate, to use critical realist parlance, not so much a radical transformation as an amelioration of an existing state of affairs.3 In this sense, the friendship between, say, Derrida and Critchley is not for us. But that does not mean that we cannot define our own notion of friendship based on what we would like Derrida to offer. Therefore, we will again pose the question of learning to live alongside that of ‘living with’ and learning to be. To live is to step out into the real world. It is to accept ontology. Of course Derrida is more aware of ontology than anyone else – his whole project is designed to expose it in others. But this makes him afraid about ontology in his own work and consequently
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it makes him afraid of living. But living is worthwhile because to live is to realise a real friendship. And if, as we contend, ontology is already there – that Derrida’s account of spectrality is an account of an essential aspect of social being – then there is no point in hiding. Derrida needs to make an ontological and strategic decision. He needs to get out more and make some new friends. Politics of Friendship deals with friendship in the messianic. But sometimes it is necessary to have some real friends. Of course, we have many problems with Jacques Derrida and his project of deconstruction but as he says, ‘it is in “useful” friendship, and within it, then, political friendship, that the greatest number of grievances and recriminations are encountered’ (Derrida 1997: 205). The fact that Derrida causes us so many anxieties is because reading him is worthwhile. He writes that he is not trying to please anyone (Derrida 1994: 88) so we should stop using such a measure to assess his work. However, it is worth arguing that, despite the trouble he causes us, Derrida is someone who we can live with. We can immediately give three good reasons why his friendship is valuable: a) Derrida’s radical ideas on reading, textual practice and grammatology; b) that he points to the need for a firmer critique of many of the assumptions and certainties of the Marxist tradition; c) the importance of his account of spectrality and ideology.4 We have not dealt with the specifics of Derrida’s grammatology, but a good realist interpretation of this can be found in Norris (1987). This grammatology or theory of writing bases itself on the idea that a simple element cannot be present in and of itself. Each element is interwoven with others creating a chain or trace of differences, syntheses and referrals (Derrida 1981: 26). This is surely consistent with a dialectical and realist approach that views writing, like all other aspects of reality, not as a series of individual components but as a complex system of relations. On the basis of this, we might also go along with Derrida’s statement that there cannot be ‘a homogenous Marxist text that would instantaneously liberate the concept of contradiction from its speculative, teleological and eschatological horizon’ (Derrida 1981: 75). We must criticise those Marxist approaches that use self-certainty to impose a certain closure. This method is most closely associated with Stalinism, but it does creep into ‘classical Marxism’ too, and it does, as Derrida notes, undermine the very spirit of a Marxism as a critical perspective. We should accept that Marxist texts, like other texts and other practices, cannot escape the traces of ideology and are, like the things they study, worthy objects of scrutiny. It is in keeping with a realist approach that we employ a deconstructive method to the works of Marxism in order to assess their claims. However, it is in keeping with a Marxist approach that we should employ deconstruction in a realist manner, upholding a critical ontology and resisting the temptation to descend into inter-textuality for the sake of itself. Finally, Derrida’s account of spectrality is important because it relates to the particular spectrality of capitalist relations of production and the
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consequent irrealist effect of commodity fetishism. This theory of spectrality maintains the view that ideology has mystifying effects that conceal and confuse. However, although Derrida’s account of ideology can immediately be related to Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, it also relates to ideology more generally and the fact that it is an unavoidable part of all social practices. This more general aspect of spectral alienation is well expressed by Jameson when he writes that: Such ghosts express the fear of modern people that they have not really lived, not yet lived or fulfilled their lives, in a world organised to deprive them of that satisfaction; yet is this suspicion not itself a kind of spectre, haunting our lives with its enigmatic doubt that nothing can dispel or exorcise, as with the peculiar quotation with which Derrida’s book begins: ‘I would like to learn how to live finally’: reminding us also to make a place for the ghost of Life itself . . . ( Jameson 1999: 40) It could be argued that Derrida’s position on ontology deprives him of the satisfaction of living. Yet, his own theory of spectrality tells us that there is no point in hiding. To us, Derrida is worth ‘living with’ precisely because his spectrality is a useful addition to a critical ontology. And deconstruction, in the right dosage, can be useful in dealing with our own ills as well as those of others. But what can we offer Derrida in return, especially if he does not particularly want our friendship. Perhaps, at least, we could try to teach him how to live a little.
Notes 1 2 3
4
‘I do not consider myself either a poststructuralist or a postmodernist. I have often explained why I almost never use these words, except to say that they are inadequate to what I am trying to do’ (Derrida 1999: 229). Derrida 1994: 55. For a critique of Derrida’s caricature of Marxist theories of class see Jameson 1999: 48–8. A detailed critique of those, like Critchley, Laclau and Mouffe, who seek to articulate the politics of deconstruction would itself require a lengthy article. The question to pose here is why a critique of Marxist economic determinism should necessarily lead to a theory of hegemony so vague and indeterminate that any attempt to outline an actual hegemonic strategy becomes useless. Derrida’s theory of ideology is developed at greater length in a companion article ( Joseph 2001).
Bibliography Ahmad, Aijaz (1999) ‘Reconciling Derrida: “Specters of Marx” and Deconstructive Politics’, in M. Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations, London: Verso. Althusser, Louis (1971) ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, in L. Althusser Essays on Ideology, London: Verso.
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Bhaskar, Roy (1993) Dialectic, London: Verso. Critchley, Simon (1999) Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity, London: Verso. Derrida, Jacques (1981) Positions, London: Athlone Press. —— (1994) Specters of Marx, New York and London: Routledge. —— (1997) Politics of Friendship, London: Verso. —— (1999) ‘Marx & Sons’, in M. Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations, London: Verso. —— and Michael Sprinker (1993) ‘Politics and Friendship: An Interview with Jacques Derrida’, in E. Ann Kaplan and M. Sprinker (eds) The Althusserian Legacy, London: Verso. Eagleton, Terry (1999) ‘Marxism Without Marxism’, in M. Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations, London: Verso. Hamacher, Werner (1999) ‘Lingua Amissa: The Messianism of Commodity Language and Derrida’s Specters of Marx’, in M. Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations, London: Verso. Jameson, Fredric (1999) ‘Marx’s Purloined Letter’, in M. Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations, London: Verso. Joseph, Jonathan (1998a) ‘In Defence of Critical Realism’, Capital & Class, 65: 73–107. —— (1998b) ‘Realistic Organisation?’, Historical Materialism, 3: 85–94. —— (2001) ‘Derrida’s Spectres of Ideology’, Journal of Political Ideologies 6, 1: 95–115. Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London: Verso. Lewis, Tom (1999) ‘The Politics of “Hauntology” in Derrida’s Specters of Marx’, in M. Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations, London: Verso. Marx, Karl (1976) Capital, Volume I, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— and Frederick Engels (1964) The German Ideology, London and Moscow: Lawrence and Wishart. Montag, Warren (1999) ‘Spirits Armed and Unarmed: Derrida’s Specters of Marx’, in M. Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations, London: Verso. Negri, Antonio (1999) ‘The Specter’s Smile’, in M. Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations, London: Verso. Norris, Christopher (1987) Derrida, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Outhwaite, William (1987) New Philosophies of Social Science, London: Macmillan.
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14 Deconstructing anti-realism Derrida’s ‘White Mythology’ Christopher Norris
Some versions of anti-realism Anti-realism is currently the prevalent trend across many schools of thought in epistemology and philosophy of science. There are, to be sure, some strong countervailing voices and some well-developed arguments in support of an alternative (ontological-realist or causal-explanatory) approach (see especially Bhaskar 1986, 1989; Harré and Madden 1975; Salmon 1984; Smart 1963; also from a range of philosophical standpoints Devitt 1986; Leplin 1984; Psillos 1999; Rescher 1987; Smith 1981). However, these have enjoyed nothing like the same degree of favour with workers in other disciplines – among them the sociology of knowledge, cultural theory, and science studies – where anti-realism is nowadays the orthodox line. Nor is it hard to understand why this should be the case. For those disciplines clearly have a large investment in the idea of scientific ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ as relative to – or constructed within – some culture-specific discourse, framework of enquiry, historical paradigm, conceptual scheme, or whatever (see for instance Barnes 1985; Fuller 1989; Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay 1983; Latour 1987; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Rouse 1987; Woolgar 1988a, 1988b). Hence the rapid diffusion of arguments from recent (post-Kuhnian) philosophy of science which are taken as lending powerful support to the anti-realist case. Other sources include W.V. Quine (on ontological relativity, meaning-variance, and the underdetermination of theories by evidence); late Wittgenstein (on language-games and cultural ‘forms of life’); Heidegger, Gadamer, and other proponents of a depthhermeneutical approach; Foucault’s relentlessly sceptical ‘genealogies’ of power/knowledge; postmodernists such as Lyotard with their talk of paralogism, narrative pragmatics, and ‘performativity’ as the sole criterion of scientific truth; and the ‘strong programme’ in sociology of knowledge with its declared principle of according equal treatment to all scientific theories, whether true or false as judged by our present-day cultural lights.1 What they all have in common is the turn toward language – or some version of the socio-discursive constructivist argument – deployed as a counter to realist claims of whatever variety.
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Insofar as these arguments have found support from within the AngloAmerican philosophical community it has come mostly from ‘postanalytical’ thinkers – Richard Rorty prominent among them – who seek to demote science (and philosophy of science) from its erstwhile privileged position (see especially Rorty 1991: 35ff., 46ff. and 78ff.). Of course there are others like Michael Dummett who continue the analytic project (broadly defined) but who nonetheless espouse an anti-realist position which denies the existence of verification-transcendent truth values (see for instance Dummett 1978; also Wright 1986, 1992). On this view – in short – it is strictly unintelligible that our best notions of truth, method, observational warrant, theoretical adequacy and so forth might not correspond to the way things stand ‘in reality’. That is to say, we could have no possible grounds for supposing this to be the case given the fact that any reasons adduced would always be reliant on criteria derived from those same (for us truth-constitutive) standards of evidential reasoning. It is mainly under pressure from arguments of this sort that philosophers like Hilary Putnam have retreated from a strong realist position – such as Putnam took during the early 1970s – to a stance of (so-called) ‘internal realism’ which concedes most of the adversary case while hoping to avoid its more extreme relativist implications (Putnam 1987, 1990, 1992). As I say, such arguments have not gone unchallenged even by those who would accept the proposition that any analysis of knowledge and truth must at some point necessarily have recourse to a theory of language and representation. This still leaves room for a causal account – such as that developed by Kripke and the early Putnam – which would seek to explain how terms acquire meaning through an inaugural act of designative naming that ensures adequate continuity of reference across, and despite, any subsequent shifts in the range of properties (or identifying criteria) that may become associated with them (Kripke 1980; see also the essays – Putnam’s among them – in Schwartz (ed.) 1977). Similar arguments have also been deployed in philosophy of science – by Hartry Field among others – with a view to understanding how terms like ‘mass’, ‘gravity’, ‘atom’ and so forth can undergo large-scale (even ‘revolutionary’) paradigm-shifts while retaining at least some partial fixity of reference (Field 1973, 1974, 1975, 1982). For otherwise the way is open to Kuhnian or Quinean talk of wholesale ontological relativity, of diverse ‘incommensurable’ paradigms, and of scientists quite literally inhabiting ‘different worlds’ before and after the event (Kuhn 1970; Quine 1960, 1961, 1969; see also Harding (ed.) 1976). In which case there could be no accounting for our knowledge of the growth of scientific knowledge, or indeed for that capacity to compare and contrast different paradigms which Kuhn perforce takes for granted despite his express convictions to the contrary. Still, it is clear that the ‘linguistic turn’ in its various forms has done more to promote anti-realist than realist approaches to philosophy of science. That is to say, it has most often been enlisted in support of conventionalist,
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instrumentalist, or cultural-relativist doctrines, all of which manifest a strong elective affinity with the idea of truth as a discursive construct devoid of any real-world ontological grounding. In what follows, I shall take a rather oblique route by way of addressing these issues. A main point of reference will be Derrida’s essay ‘White Mythology’, a work that is often read – mistakenly I think – as adopting an extreme anti-realist (or ‘textualist’) position with respect to philosophical and scientific truth-claims. Of particular interest in the present context are Derrida’s lengthy and detailed discussions of the role of metaphor in concept-formation and its bearing on matters of ontology and epistemology as raised by philosophers of science from Aristotle to Bachelard and Canguilhem. At this stage, however, I should like to turn briefly to William Empson’s The Structure of Complex Words (1951), a book that has been pretty much ignored by philosophers but which offers some promising resources for a theory of truth, meaning and interpretation that goes strongly against the current anti-realist and cultural-relativist trend. It is also of particular relevance here for two further, more specific reasons. First, Empson sets out to challenge a certain kind of depth-hermeneutical thinking which, in his view, promotes an obscurantist idea of the relation between metaphor and concept, or (so-called) ‘primitive’ language and its role in the early stages of scientific theory-construction. On this topic he takes issue with the philologist and poet-philosopher Owen Barfield (1973). However, much of what Empson says would apply just as aptly to Heidegger’s etymopoeic quest for an authentic truth once vouchsafed in certain fragments of the Presocratics but thereafter progressively obscured by the accretions of ‘Western metaphysics’ and latterday techno-science (see especially Heidegger 1969, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1991). Second, there is a striking resemblance between Empson’s (broadly empiricist) way of treating these issues and that distinctive mode of French epistemological enquiry whose antecedents lie within the rationalist tradition and whose chief modern representatives are Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem. Such comparisons are drawn more often in connection with the strain of ontological-relativist thinking associated with Quine and Pierre Duhem. Indeed, it is under this conjunction of names – the ‘Duhem-Quine thesis’ – that anti-realism has lately gained ground among many philosophers and historians of science.2 So there is, as I say, good warrant for pursuing this approach via Empson and Derrida, both of whom offer a different (more critical) perspective on the turn toward language as an ultimate horizon of truth, knowledge, and enquiry.
Empson and Derrida on metaphor in science Empson’s chapter is entitled ‘The Primitive Mind’ and has to do with certain lexical items – such as the Greek pneuma = ‘breath’, ‘wind’ or ‘soul’ – which are felt to have involved some ‘total meaning’, some complex of
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deeply-associated senses that inherently elude any form of reductive (logicosemantic) analysis (Barfield 1973). Empson resists this idea, as might be expected. He gives a whole series of detailed counterarguments – historical, social, psychological, philological and (not least) scientific – in support of his view that there is more going on in such words, and at a more consciously-accessible level, than is allowed for by talk about the ‘primitive mind’ and its pre-logical operations. In particular, he questions Barfield’s claim (as summarised by Empson) that ‘whatever wisdom we still have is drawn from magnificent rich words which were devised before the dawn of history, and that our prying rationalism is gradually but fatally destroying them’ (Empson 1951: 375). This idea Empson sees as resulting mainly from Barfield’s contempt for modern science, along with his disdain for those rationalist philosophies of mind, knowledge and language that were instrumental in preparing its advent. I think there is nothing fanciful or overly tendentious about comparing Barfield’s thought with Heidegger’s on these matters; indeed the comparison fairly leaps off the page if one turns back to Barfield’s Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning. What gives it added point is the way that Empson argues – convincingly to my mind – for the treatment of these (so-called) ‘primitive’ words as possessing an intelligible structure, a complex logicosemantic content that can still be understood despite their other, to us more obscurely animistic, suggestions. Thus, Barfield thinks that the mixture of senses in pneuma (‘breath, wind, soul’) is best interpreted as ‘not a root sense with two metaphors but [as] one rich profound ancient total meaning’ (cited in Empson 1951: 376). Here he comes close to Heidegger’s etymopoeic dwelling on the wisdom laid up in those pre-Socratic words and fragments which supposedly conserved a proximity to Being – a power of authentic revelation – that was lost (or progressively obscured) with the advent of propositional or correspondence-based theories of knowledge and truth (see especially Heidegger 1962). He also shares Heidegger’s suspicion of the term ‘metaphor’, suggesting as it can a mere ornament to the straightforward literal sense (see for instance Heidegger 1971; also Derrida 1978a). Or again, it may serve to reinforce the idea – elaborated by philosophers from Aristotle down – that metaphorical language falls within the compass of a generalised theory of meaning, truth and reference which allows for its paraphrase or analysis in logico-semantic terms. (Such, according to Aristotle, was the best – most complex – sort of metaphor, that which involved a ‘proportion-scheme’ or fourfold ratio of meanings: ‘as A is to B, so C is to D’; see Aristotle 1924.) Thus Heidegger rejects any over-ready recourse to ‘metaphor’ as a description either of his own language or the language of those poets and philosophers who figure most importantly in his later work. For this reading (as he sees it) will always be open to the kind of onto-metaphysical reappropriation that would treat such language as merely a detour on the path to a more adequate conceptual understanding.
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Empson’s disagreement with Barfield has to do with precisely this question as to whether – or just how far – we are able to distinguish between the various orders of depth-ontological, metaphorical and propositional (or logico-semantic) meaning. What he chiefly objects to in Barfield’s account is the idea that logical thinking can have played no role in those ‘primitive’ uses of language; hence that we can only distort or falsify their meaning if we try to figure out how a word such as pneuma acquired its (to us) quite extraordinary range of senses. In fact, Empson thinks, there is evidence enough – from historical, anthropological and linguistic sources – to construct a perfectly intelligible theory as to why this occurred, in what contexts of belief, and how different processes of thought (metaphor and analogy among them) affected its development at various stages. Thus: Homer does not use it, only a cognate word, and that only for ‘strong wind’; and when pneuma first appears in Greek it is used only for ‘wind’. One must agree, no doubt, that a tendency to make the metaphorical connection ‘wind, breath, soul’ must go back at least to the primitive Aryans; there is that queer stuff in the Vedas about the different breaths. Still, for the Greek word, and among the recorded Greeks, we find metaphorical uses being added as secondary meanings to a root meaning, and not a total meaning which gets progressively cut down. No doubt Mr. Barfield would say that the Greeks’ apprehension of metaphor was quite different from ours, but I do not see how there could be a radical enough difference to suit his purpose. (Empson 1951: 376) This point is clearly crucial for Empson since his main quarrel with Barfield’s approach concerns the latter’s claim that these ‘primitive’ words take rise from a pre-logical state of awareness – a ‘rich profound ancient total meaning’ – which gives no hold for such distinctions as those between metaphor and concept or (indeed) the concept of metaphor and that which eludes all such ‘metaphysical’ determinations. Here again we are very much in Heideggerian country, that is to say, in a depth-ontological realm where analysts should properly fear to tread given its remoteness from anything conceivable on their own rationalist (proposition-based) theory of meaning and truth. And yet, as Empson says, there is little to commend an alternative theory which gives up so soon on the attempt to make sense of what is not – after all – so very obscure a piece of ‘primitive’ thought. ‘It seems clear’, he continues, that ‘there was a widespread view that the life was in the breath (as we would say the mind is in the brain), and this belief, no doubt, affected the word pneuma’ (Empson 1951: 376). Still, there is no reason to suppose – like Barfield – that this fairly straightforward (even commonsense-intuitive) analogy must have taken hold in association with some mythical idea about the ‘breath of God’ as the creative and sustaining source of all life. Of course,
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such a myth could easily arise and does, indeed, appear to have played some part – via the breath-wind-soul metaphor – in this word’s complex development. Nor is the connection particularly obscure even to our own more ‘rationalist’ way of thinking about these matters. All the same, Empson remarks: (T)he more seriously you took the myth, or felt the myth in the word, the more reason you would have to distinguish the meanings. Your breath may be the same sort of thing as the wind, but it is definitely not the same as ‘the breath of the wind-god’ or ‘the exhalations of evil spirits’. By the time a word has got as much ‘total meaning’ as this, there is a tug between its different parts or uses; it will make what I call ‘equations’, and I do not think it gives what Mr. Barfield means by a ‘primitive undivided total meaning’. (Empson 1951: 376) Empson’s point is that we will fail to understand these so-called ‘primitive’ uses of language if we assume, like Barfield, that their mode of operation is so utterly remote from our present-day (logical and scientifically-informed) habits of thought. In a general way this amounts to something like Donald Davidson’s ‘Principle of Charity’, that is, the idea that if we want to make sense of other people’s utterances and beliefs then we had better start out from the premise that more likely than not they have some reason – some intelligible grounds – for speaking or thinking as they do (Davidson 1984). On the other hand, this principle clearly has its limits when confronted with mistaken – though still comprehensible – beliefs such as that which identifies ‘life’ and (human) ‘breath’ with ‘the breath of the wind-god’ or ‘exhalations of evil spirits’. Even so, Empson argues, we can get a fair grasp of the thought-processes that lay behind them by taking due account of those various explanatory factors and then inferring to the best, most intelligible (reason-preserving) theory of how they came about. For otherwise we shall pay them the backhanded compliment – like Quine’s ‘radical interpreter’ – of claiming in principle to find them utterly opaque (for all that we can know) while continuing in practice with the default method of making them come out true by our own interpretative lights (see Quine 1969). I had better quote some more from Empson contra Barfield to show what is involved in his alternative approach. It is unlikely, he suggests, that the full range of meanings in pneuma (‘breath = wind = soul’) was there at the earliest stages of the word’s development; after all, ‘the thing is too complicated’. However: some group of speakers may have believed very completely that the life is in the breath, and expressed this so fully in language that they had one word ‘breath+soul’, which they put to both uses without
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feeling that there were two senses. There is no tension from theology about the thing; they believe the theory as we believe the mind is in the brain; and they combine the senses as we use ‘light’ for the waves and the sensations and the lamp that gives them. My only point is that this is not ‘primitive’. It is easy to suppose a theology that was slowly democratized, as in Egypt; in the First Empire only the Pharaoh’s breath would be a soul (whatever that was), and everybody’s breath would start to be a soul some time in the Middle Kingdom, so that everybody had to pay the priests . . . What we want from ‘primitive’ language, if that is to explain the development of complex words, is a process that may work at any time, and therefore among ourselves, though perhaps feebly. (Empson 1951: 377) This goes clean against Barfield’s idea that we are completely cut off from these processes of thought because they belong to a pre-logical mentality whose resources were so much richer and more creative than our own. On the contrary: Empson is enough of a scientific realist – and a ‘rationalist’ in Barfield’s (derogatory) sense of that term – to reject any such dim view of the progress achieved through the separating-out of those various meanings in the word. Certainly, he would not for one moment suggest (as Quine does when pushing hard on the theme of ontological relativity) that there is nothing to choose, ultimately speaking, between equations of the order ‘breath = wind = soul’ and equations like those involved in the mind/brain identity-thesis or the capacity to think of ‘light’ simultaneously under various (e.g. perceptual-intuitive and scientifictheoretical) descriptions. Rather, Empson’s point – borne out by a good deal of work in philosophy of science – is that we should neither exaggerate nor minimise the difference between, on the one hand, those kinds of thought that operate mainly by means of analogy or metaphor and, on the other, those that achieve a greater degree of scientific, conceptual, or logico-semantic precision. To exaggerate this difference is either, like Barfield, to promote an obscurantist mystique of ‘primitive’ thoughtprocesses or – as happens more often – to consign such thinking to a realm quite beyond rational comprehension. But it is equally mistaken to minimise the difference on grounds of ‘ontological relativity’, that is to say, the idea that what counts as ‘rational’ thought is dependent on ( = relative to) some given conceptual scheme and its associated range of objects, events, or Quinean epistemological ‘posits’. For on this account there is simply no explaining our knowledge of the growth of scientific knowledge, or the fact that we can – in many cases – interpret earlier (false or superseded) beliefs as making sense by their own scientific lights but also as calling for further explanation in historical, social, or perhaps psychological terms. Up to a point, Empson’s case against Barfield takes the form of a Davidsonian riposte, that is, a transcendental (or condition-of-possibility)
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argument of the sort that Davidson standardly applies to thinkers such as Quine, Kuhn, Whorf and Feyerabend (see Davidson 1984: 183–98). Thus, according to Barfield, ‘we must start out towards meaning from the meaningless . . . from the rich disorder of primitive words, not from the special set of meanings developed by scientific language, especially as this set has certain harmful implications such as the cutting off of subjective from objective’ (Empson 1951: 380). But there is a problem here if one asks, reasonably enough, how Barfield could hope to describe or explain the differences between these two ways of thinking unless in a language that somehow managed to translate the one into the other. After all, as Empson puts it: ‘he can hardly claim to be writing himself entirely in rich primitive total words; he writes clearly and well’ (Empson 1951: 380). So Barfield is caught in the same kind of performative contradiction that afflicts the arguments of Whorf, Kuhn and company: asserting what quite simply cannot be the case with regard to the limits of ‘rational’ or ‘logical’ thought if his own propositions are to have any relevance to the topic in hand. However, there is a stronger line of argument in Empson that doesn’t give way – as Davidson’s does under sceptical pressure – to the charge of empty circularity or of offering a merely formal (non-substantive) definition of reason and truth. It emerges most explicitly in a passage of reflection on the way that science sometimes has recourse to ‘primitive’ (analogical or metaphoric) modes of thought which may yet give rise to some genuine advance in its descriptive, conceptual or causal-explanatory powers. ‘One could’, Empson concedes, ‘make a dilemma about the wicked scientific words: either they are simple though dead, and then at least they are safe tools, or else they are full of delusive suggestions, and then they are what he [Barfield] likes, they are primitive total meanings’ (Empson 1951: 380). But this is to ignore the plentiful evidence from history and philosophy of science that what starts out as a suggestive analogy or a speculative metaphor can then undergo a process of refinement – of conceptual elaboration and critique – to the point where it acquires a decisive power both to influence thought and to bring about new discoveries. Thus: the development of science in the seventeenth century really did make a conscious return to the primitive in language, without needing prehistory or remote tribes. One must use the practical English of the artisan and avoid words carrying hints of scholastic philosophy; no doubt the chief idea was that these words were safe and simple, but they also made active suggestions. The trouble with bogus causes like ‘a dormitive virtue’ was not that they made false suggestions but that they stopped thought; to have a name for the cause of this one effect was to feel you needn’t generalise. The common words were not only clear but widely applicable, that is, easily extended, in fact they had a looseness of their own, which was of a useful kind. (Empson 1951: 380)
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Empson’s point is that some sorts of pre-logical explanation – such as that by ‘dormitive virtue’ – are indeed ‘primitive’ insofar as they block any possible advance toward more adequate forms of investigative enquiry by falling back on a mode of identity-thinking which amounts to no more than verbal mystification or bewitchment by language. That is to say, they ‘stop thought’ by imposing an order of redundant pseudo-explanation which leaves no room for the kinds of ‘active’ propositional thinking – or epistemo-critical reflection – that can otherwise be carried on by means of complex words. These latter may themselves be ‘primitive’ in a different sense of the term, as for instance with the seventeenth-century preference for language of a down-to-earth empirical (or ‘artisanal’) character freed from the abstract-essentialist accretions of old-style scholastic discourse. They may also make use of so-called ‘primitive’ devices such as metaphor and analogy in order to articulate ideas which, as yet, lack any adequate means of observation, conceptualisation or experimental proof. However, at a certain stage in their history such metaphors will become (so to speak) scientifically operational, perhaps through the advent of some new technology that brings them within the scope of a theory with definite (now testable) consequences. One striking case would be that of particle-physics from its pre-scientific origins in the ancient Greek atomists to its post-Daltonian emergence as a science with ever-increasing powers of observational and theoretical-explanatory grasp.3 Here, the most crucial technological advances would include the invention of the Wilson cloud-chamber and the development of more powerful particle-accelerators or electron microscopes with higher powers of resolution (cf. Hacking 1981, 1983). At any rate there is something deeply obscurantist – and scientifically ill-informed – about a philosophy of language (such as Barfield’s or indeed Heidegger’s) which reads this history as one long process of epochal decline from the richness and vitality of ‘primitive thought’ to the superficiality of compromised notions like ‘metaphor’ and the soulless abstraction of present-day scientific rationalism. Empson has a nice example (taken from J.B.S. Haldane) of the way that metaphors can assist in the process of scientific concept-formation: In practical work you speak of ‘seeding’ crystals; a saturated solution which might produce several forms of crystal is given a small seed crystal of the form required. This was a kind of metaphor – an easily remembered name for the process, which also described it; but it came to suggest ideas about the structure of the primitive cell and make a partial bridge between living and dead matter. The change of meaning falls entirely within the scientific field, but surely it yields just the type of profundity that Mr. Barfield expects only from primitive words. (Empson 1951: 380)
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This example is all the more interesting for its parallels with work in (mainly French) philosophy of science which Empson is unlikely to have come across. Thus the cell metaphor is of central importance in the thinking of Georges Canguilhem, a philosopher who – along with Gaston Bachelard – did much to clarify the nature of those crucial transition-points (or ‘epistemological breaks’) that marked the emergence of scientific concepts from their background contexts of pre-scientific imagery, metaphor, and analogy (cf. Canguilhem 1968, 1969, 1988). For there existed a close, even formative relationship between the development of the cellular theory in biology, organic chemistry and the life-sciences and, on the other hand, certain values – ‘affective and social values of co-operation and association’ – which go some way toward explaining its rapid diffusion and acceptance. ‘With the cell’, Canguilhem remarks, ‘we are in the presence of a biological object whose affective overdetermination is incontestable and considerable.’ And again: Who knows whether, in consciously borrowing from the beehive the term cell in order to designate the element of the living organism, the human mind has not also borrowed from the hive, almost unconsciously, the notion of the cooperative work of which the honeycomb is the product? . . . In fact the cell is both an anatomical and a functional notion, the notion of an elementary material and of a partial, subordinate individual labour. (Canguilhem 1969: 49). However, this is not to say – like the relativists, neo-pragmatists and ‘strong’ sociologists of knowledge – that scientific ‘truth’ is through and through just a product of certain metaphors (alternatively: discourses, paradigms, language-games, or cultural ‘forms of life’) and can therefore claim no privilege in matters of conceptual or epistemic warrant. On the contrary: it is Canguilhem’s aim to specify as exactly as possible that process of critical ‘rectification’ through which suggestive metaphors are at length transformed into adequate scientific concepts. And in order to do this – he argues – it is necessary to provide a theory of metaphor (a philosophically adequate theory) that can show, in particular cases, how metaphor has functioned in the discourse of scientific thought and how (at what precise point) that discourse has managed to break free of its dependence on residual metaphoric elements. The point is best made through another of Canguilhem’s examples, that of the ‘circulation of the blood’ as it entered the vocabulary of modern (post-Harvey) physiology and medical science (Canguilhem 1969: 22–3). This was clearly an advance in certain respects over the previous idea of the bloodstream as a kind of irrigation-system, a metaphor whose sources – agricultural and horticultural – are intuitively evident enough. Still it is a theory which cannot (or should not) be taken at literal or face value
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since it also bears certain metaphoric attributes whose scientific validity is open to question. Derrida summarises Canguilhem’s argument in a passage from his essay ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’. Thus: When the biological concept of the circulation of the blood is substituted for the technical concept of irrigation, the rectification has not reduced every figure of speech. Although not the irrigation of a garden, such as it is described in the Timaeus or De Partibus Animalium, the ‘circulation’ of the blood does not properly travel in a circle. As soon as one retains only a predicate of the circle (for example, return to the point of departure, closing of the circuit), its signification is put into the position of a trope, of metonymy if not metaphor. (Derrida 1982a: 263–4) On this account, advances in scientific knowledge come about through a mostly gradual (but sometimes revolutionary) process of reconceptualisation, a process whose stages are clearly marked by the overcoming of naive – metaphoric or anthropocentric – habits of thought and the attainment of more adequate theories. Thus, truth is always by very definition on the side of those disciplined, self-critical activities – science, philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophical semantics – which wield the resources to correct or to ‘rectify’ their own less rigorous procedures. As Derrida puts it (again with reference to Canguilhem): ‘[d]oes not a scientific critique’s rectification proceed from an inefficient tropic-concept that is poorly constructed, to an operative tropic-concept that is more refined and more powerful in a given field and at a determined phase of the scientific process?’ (Derrida 1982a: 264). Still it must be noted that this claim is couched in the form of a rhetorical question, one that leaves open the distinct possibility that there may exist problems about the concept/metaphor distinction that are not fully reckoned with on Canguilhem’s account. Thus Derrida continues: The criterion of this progress or mutation (‘break’, ‘remodelling’, and many other forms that should be distinguished from each other), has been defined, certainly, but a double certainty now seems problematic: 1. That this criterion must necessarily put to work a rhetorical evaluation (‘from metaphor to concept’, for example); 2. That tropes must necessarily belong to the prescientific phase of knowledge. (Derrida 1982a: 264) In short – as will hardly need saying for any attentive reader of his text – Derrida is sceptical as regards the possibility of ever providing a theory of metaphor (a philosophical or scientific theory) that would not, at some point, itself have recourse to metaphorical terms or expressions. Indeed, a
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large part of ‘White Mythology’ is devoted to bringing out the various sublimated metaphors – the elements of ‘tropical’ discourse – that have characterised the philosophic discourse on metaphor from Aristotle to the present day. To this extent Derrida follows Nietzsche in adopting a genealogical approach – a relentless ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ – that would seem utterly opposed to any project, such as Canguilhem’s, for separating out the two (supposedly distinct) orders of metaphoric and conceptual-scientific discourse.4 What we must recognise here, so Derrida insists, is the ‘condition for the impossibility’ of any such project, that is, the extent to which philosophy is caught up in a system of tropical swerves or displacements that will always turn out to dictate the very terms by which philosophy seeks to control or delimit the operations of metaphorical language. ‘By definition’, he writes: there is no properly philosophical category to qualify a certain number of tropes that have conditioned the so-called ‘fundamental’, ‘structuring’, ‘original’ philosophical oppositions: they are so many ‘metaphors’ that would constitute the rubrics of such a tropology, the words ‘turn’ or ‘trope’ or ‘metaphor’ being no exception to the rule. (Derrida 1982a: 229) And the same would apply to all those cardinal distinctions – concept/ metaphor, intelligible/sensible, essence/accident, nomos/physis, reason/ intuition, logic/rhetoric, etc. – that have structured the discourse of Western philosophy from its earliest stages and which cut right across such merely regional differences as that between (present-day) ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ thought. For here also it is possible to show that each term in every one of the above-cited pairs is itself linked up with a whole series of kindred binary distinctions whose ‘condition of (im)possibility’ is the idea that philosophy can draw a firm categorical line between metaphor and the philosophic discourse on metaphor. To maintain this assurance, Derrida suggests: one would have to posit that the sense aimed at through these figures is an essence rigorously independent of that which transports it, which is an already philosophical thesis, one might even say philosophy’s unique thesis, the thesis which constitutes the concept of metaphor, the opposition of the proper and the improper, of essence and accident, of intuition and discourse, of thought and language, of the intelligible and the sensible. (Derrida 1982a: 229) In which case, clearly, certain problems arise with Canguilhem’s attempt to articulate an adequate (philosophically-grounded) theory of metaphor –
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or epistemology of tropes – that would in turn permit a rigorous distinction to be drawn between pre-scientific thinking, on the one hand, and genuine scientific concepts on the other. For such a project would always at some point run up against the impossibility of doing without metaphor, or the presence within its own discourse of metaphors (among them the metaphor of ‘concept’ and the concept of ‘metaphor’ itself) which rendered that distinction problematic.
Nietzsche, Bachelard, Derrida I should not wish to present all this as a deconstructive fait accompli, a dismantling of the entire inherited structure of ‘Western metaphysics’ that requires no more than the obligatory nod toward Derrida’s ‘White Mythology’. Such has very often been the response to his work among literary theorists and post-analytical thinkers, like Richard Rorty, keen to enlist him on their own side as a gifted debunker of old-fashioned notions such as reason, validity, science, critique and (most of all) the idea of philosophy as a ‘constructive’, truth-seeking enterprise (Rorty 1982: 90–109). That this amounts to a massive misreading of the essay – and of much else besides in Derrida’s corpus – is a case that I have argued at length elsewhere and shall not repeat in detail (Norris 1989; see also Rorty 1989). What I do wish to emphasise (since it bears so directly on my argument here) is a point that he makes with great insistence throughout ‘White Mythology’ but which is strangely passed over – or strategically ignored – by readers intent upon extracting simplified slogans to the effect that ‘all concepts are sublimated metaphors’, ‘all philosophy a kind of writing’, ‘all truth-claims a form of rhetorical imposition’, etc. For, there is scarcely a page in this long and elaborately-argued essay that doesn’t contain at least one explicit statement to precisely the opposite effect. How else should we understand one particular passage, placed as it is – significantly enough – after an extended citation from Nietzsche’s essay ‘On Truth and Falsity in Their Ultramoral Sense’, a text that has come to enjoy near-canonical status among the adepts of literary deconstruction? Nietzsche’s ‘procedure’, as Derrida describes it, consists in the ‘generalisation of metaphoricity’ by ‘putting into abyme one determined metaphor’, namely (in this instance) the metaphor of man as a ‘seeker-after-truth’ who labours at his scientific conceptions just as the bee ‘works at the cells and fills them with honey’. So it is, Nietzsche writes, that: science works irresistibly at the great columbarium of ideas, the cemetery of perceptions, builds ever newer and higher storeys; supports, purifies, renews the old cells, and endeavours above all to fill that gigantic framework and to arrange within it the whole of the empiric world, i.e. the anthropomorphic world. (Nietzsche 1911: 187–8)
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Of course, Derrida has a point to make – though not just a shrewdly opportunist or ‘textualist’ point – in juxtaposing this passage with Canguilhem’s reflections on the way that the cellular image started out as a socio-anthropomorphic metaphor and was then transformed (by dint of more rigorous conceptualisation) into a scientific theory with genuine descriptive and explanatory power. For the Nietzschean strategy is possible, Derrida suggests: only if one takes the risk of a continuity between the metaphor and the concept, as between animal and man, instinct and knowledge. In order not to wind up at an empiricist reduction of knowledge and a fantastic ideology of truth, one should surely substitute another articulation for the (maintained or erased) classical opposition of metaphor and concept. This new articulation, without importing all the metaphysics of the classical opposition, should also account for the specific divisions that classical epistemology cannot overlook, the divisions between what it calls metaphoric effects and scientific effects. (Derrida 1982a: 262–3) It may be said that Derrida is here – as so often – writing in the mode of oratio obliqua, offering not so much an argument of his own (against Nietzsche’s indiscriminate erasure of the metaphor/concept distinction) as a neutral or implicitly critical paraphrase of Canguilhem’s case for maintaining and sharpening that distinction. Indeed, it would be ill-advised to ignore this possibility with an essay that contains such a large proportion of material quoted directly from various sources or alluded to obliquely with varying degrees of implied approbation or dissent. Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence – here and elsewhere in ‘White Mythology’ – that Derrida rejects any simplified version of the Nietzsche-inspired creed which reduces all concepts (scientific and philosophical) to so many ‘forgotten’, ‘repressed’, or ‘sublimated’ metaphors. And this, as he argues, by the strictest order of logical and epistemological necessity. For, whatever the pervasiveness of metaphor in the texts of philosophy, still it is the case that there can be no thinking about metaphor except by way of those intra-philosophic concepts and categories which have set the very terms of debate on this topic from Aristotle to the present.5 Moreover, this requirement of thinking metaphor philosophically is one that bears along with it a series of further (more specific) implications with regard to the role of metaphor and philosophy vis-à-vis the natural sciences. That is to say: it is a precondition for our knowledge of the growth of knowledge that metaphor should indeed be subject, as Canguilhem claims, to a process of conceptual ‘rectification’ or progressive elaboration and critique. For, otherwise, that knowledge would amount to nothing more than a species of wishful illusion, a belief unsupported by anything outside or beyond its own (purely fictive) self-image as described in the above
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passage from Nietzsche. And even he (Nietzsche) is unable to sustain this argument to the point where all truth-claims – his own necessarily included – would emerge as mere figments of a rhetorical ‘will-to-truth’ that offered no knowledge save (impossibly) the knowledge of their own delusive character. If Nietzsche is just able to avoid this ultra-sceptical impasse it is only by conserving a certain idea of science (Wissenschaft: more accurately ‘knowledge attained through exacting and disciplined enquiry’) which he can then hold up as a critical standard against which to measure other, more fallible varieties of truth-claim.6 Hence, the continuation of that passage from his essay ‘On Truth and Falsehood’: As the man of action binds his life to reason and its ideas, in order to avoid being swept away and losing himself, so the seeker after truth builds his hut close to the towering edifice of science in order to collaborate with it and to find protection. And he needs protection. For there are awful powers which press continually upon him, and which hold out against the ‘truth’ of science ‘truths’ fashioned in quite another way, bearing devices of the most heterogeneous character. (Nietzsche 1911: 188) This passage, and others like it, are standardly ignored by poststructuralist commentators for whom Nietzsche figures as the great elective precursor, the thinker who – more than anyone before Derrida – sought to ‘deconstruct’ the ideas of truth and reason into so many images, metaphors, or tropes devoid of veridical content.7 And of course they can cite other remarks (notably the well-known passage about truth as a ‘mobile marching army of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms . . .’) as conclusive evidence that such was indeed Nietzsche’s professed intent (Nietzsche 1911). But this reading is selective to the point of downright distortion, whether applied to Nietzsche’s or to Derrida’s texts. For in both cases – Derrida more explicitly – there is a strong countervailing line of argument, one that brings out the sheer impossibility of reducing truth (so to speak) without remainder to the endless play of metaphorical displacements, swerves, substitutions and so forth. Thus, as Derrida observes, again with reference to Canguilhem, ‘there is also a concept of metaphor: it too has a history, yields knowledge, demands from the epistemologist construction, rectifications, critical rules of importation and exportation’ (Derrida 1982a: 264). No doubt it can be shown – and is indeed shown to convincing effect by both Nietzsche and Derrida – that this ‘concept of metaphor’ is itself the product of a whole complex metaphorics (or tropology) which cannot, for that reason, be theorised ‘without remainder’. Yet the counterargument still applies: it is only by a rigorous (philosophical) thinkingthrough of these issues that the discourse on metaphor is enabled to achieve
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such hard-won critical knowledge. The same point is made in ‘White Mythology’ with regard to Gaston Bachelard’s closely analogous attempt to analyse those elements of ‘naïve’ metaphorical and anthropomorphic thought which may provide the initial impetus for some new project of scientific enquiry, but which then – beyond a certain stage in its development – constitute a block to further, more adequate conceptualisation (Bachelard 1938, 1968, 1984). The chief danger here, as Bachelard sees it, is the obstructive persistence of ‘immediate’ metaphors, those that don’t remain mere ‘passing images’ – of use for their suggestive or short-term heuristic value – but which ‘push toward an autonomous kind of thought . . ., tend(ing) to completion and fulfilment in the realm of the image’ (cited by Derrida 1982a: 259). On this point, Bachelard is ‘faithful to tradition’, that tradition according to which (in Derrida’s words) ‘metaphor does not appear either simply or necessarily to constitute an obstacle to scientific or philosophical knowledge’. Rather, ‘[i]t can work for the critical rectification of a concept, reveal a concept as a bad metaphor, or finally “illustrate” a new concept’ (Derrida 1982a: 259). Once again Derrida evinces a degree of scepticism as regards the possibility of any such project being carried through to its announced or desired conclusion. For in Bachelard’s discourse there remain certain crucial (indeed indispensable) operative metaphors, figures of thought that inherently resist the drive toward critical ‘rectification’. They include, for instance, figures of the circle and the ellipse, taken by Bachelard as paradigm cases of the way that science (astronomy or celestial mechanics) developed in the period between Aristotle and Newton. ‘For Aristotelian science, the ellipse is a poorly made circle, a flattened circle. For Newtonian science, the circle is an impoverished ellipse, an ellipse whose centres have been flattened one onto the other’ (Bachelard 1938: 337). In Bachelard’s view what is required of the philosopher-historian of science – especially one working in the wake of relativity-theory – is a further effort of conceptual distancing, a critical reflection that strives so far as possible to dispense with such metaphors. ‘Little by little’, he recalls: I slowly attempted to pry the mind loose from its attachment to privileged images . . . Also, I have little hesitation in presenting rigour as a psychoanalysis of intuition, and algebraic thought as a psychoanalysis of geometric thought. Even in the domain of the exact sciences, our imagination is a sublimation. It is useful, but it can fool us to the extent that we know not what we sublimate and how we sublimate it. It is valid only insofar as one has psychoanalysed the principle. Intuition must never be a given. It must always be an illustration. (cited in Derrida 1982a: 260) As I say, Derrida maintains an attitude of clearly-marked critical reserve when treating these claims for a ‘psychoanalysis’ – in Bachelard’s peculiar
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usage of the term – that would demarcate the realms of metaphor and concept, geometry and algebra, pre-scientific or image-based ‘intuition’ on the one hand and adequately theorised scientific ‘illustration’ on the other. Thus he notes, among other examples, the recourse to physical or tactile images (‘obstacle’, ‘obstruction’, etc.) and to metaphors drawn from the visual or ocular domain (in Bachelard’s words: ‘only an illustration working beyond the concept, putting a bit of colour on the essential characteristics, can aid scientific thought’ (cited in Derrida 1982a: 260)). At such points, it is far from evident that Bachelard has succeeded in holding the line – the epistemo-critical line – between ‘immediate intuition’ and ‘a non-immediate, constructed metaphor’. And if this distinction becomes blurred then there is not much hope (or so it would appear) of maintaining the yet more difficult and elusive distinction between metaphor-in-general and the realm of adequate scientific concepts. However, Derrida is equally far from endorsing the kind of wholesale onto-epistemological scepticism that would view such endeavours as a pointless attempt to shore up the edifice of science (or philosophy of science) against current antifoundationalist or relativist trends. This comes out clearly in his discussion of the place of metaphor within Aristotle’s thinking and its linkage to the entire Aristotelian system of natural science, ontology, epistemology, logic, rhetoric and (not least) the theory of mimesis or poetic representation (Derrida 1982a: 230–57). It is a rigorous, subtle and farreaching discussion to which I cannot do full justice here. What does require emphasis – in view of certain widespread misunderstandings – is Derrida’s reiterated point: that to ‘deconstruct’ such received oppositions as those between concept and metaphor or scientific and pre-scientific modes of thought is not to deny that those distinctions have a role (a crucial, indeed an indispensable role) in the process of elucidation and critique which has been carried on by philosophers of science from Aristotle to Bachelard and Canguilhem. It may well be the case – as we have seen already – that a deconstructive reading will complicate this process by revealing the persistence of metaphoric residues (or of non-‘rectified’ intuitive imagery) in even the most rigorous, self-critical forms of philosophico-scientific discourse. Such is the ‘condition of impossibility’ that, according to Derrida, must always emerge when philosophy attempts to control or delimit the operations of figural language. For one need only examine the terms in which such arguments are typically cast – among them (for instance) the figural appeal to ‘criteria of clarity or obscurity’ – in order to be convinced that ‘this entire philosophical delimitation of metaphor already lends itself to being constructed and worked by “metaphors”’ (Derrida 1982a: 252). But this remains just a facile exercise – a textualist variant on well-worn sophistical themes – if one fails to take account of Derrida’s reiterated cautions that ‘metaphor’ (or the concept of metaphor) is strictly unintelligible outside the discourse of philosophical analysis and critique. Thus ‘metaphor, along
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with all the predicates that permit its ordered extension and comprehension, is a philosopheme’ (Derrida 1982a: 228). And this principle holds even if – as Derrida argues – such ‘philosophemes’ can ultimately be shown to issue from a realm of ‘fundamental’, ‘constitutive’ or ‘structuring’ tropes which philosophy can never conceptualise ‘without remainder’. For, there is still the requirement (the absolute and principled necessity) to think these metaphors through with the utmost philosophical rigour and precision. Which is also to say that our only resources for discussing metaphor to any critical purpose are those that derive from the philosophic discourse on metaphor from Aristotle to the present.
Derrida and Benveniste on Aristotle Let me give more substance to this generalised claim by quoting a further passage from ‘White Mythology’, this time at a length adequate to convey the complexity of Derrida’s argument. The passage has to do with Aristotle’s account of metaphor and its place within what Derrida calls ‘the great immobile chain of Aristotelian ontology, with its theory of the analogy of Being, its logic, its epistemology, and more precisely its poetics and its rhetoric’ (Derrida 1982: 236). It is also concerned with Aristotle’s attempt to distinguish human from non-human (animal) modes of being on the basis of a theory of language – a philosophical grammar – that would define man as a speaking-and-reasoning creature as opposed to a mere producer of pre-articulate, meaningless, unintelligible sounds. Hence the importance of the letter (stoikheion), the minimal distinctive element that possesses no meaning – no semantic content – in and of itself but whose role it is, within Aristotle’s system, to create the possibility of articulate utterance by accomplishing the passage from ‘sound without signification’ (phone asemos) to meaningful speech-production (phone semantike). From this point, so Aristotle argues, one can go on to derive the entire inventory of human linguistic resources – from syllables, via nouns and verbs, to the highest, most complex levels of logico-grammatical structure – which set human beings decisively apart from the rest of the animal creation.8 Yet there is also another distinctive human attribute, one that enables us to acquire knowledge, to ‘perceive resemblances’, to apply words to objects in habitual or unaccustomed ways, or to reason analogically from one context of knowledge, usage or experience to another. Mimesis and metaphor are the two chief terms that Aristotle uses in connection with this range of capacities. And since they occupy such a crucial place in his system – since without them that system would fall apart – therefore it is wrong (a misreading of Aristotle) to assign them a subordinate or derivative role. Here is the relevant passage from ‘White Mythology’, omitting those extended citations in the original Greek which Derrida is careful to provide but which are not (I think) necessary here:
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This is the difference between animals and man: according to Aristotle both can emit indivisible sounds, but only man can make of them a letter . . . Aristotle does not analyze this difference; he interprets it by teleological retrospection. No internal characteristic distinguishes the atom of animal sound and the letter. Thus, it is only on the basis of the signifying phonic composition, on the basis of meaning and reference, that the human voice should be distinguished from the call of an animal. Meaning and reference: that is, the possibility of signifying by means of a noun. What is proper to nouns is to signify something, an independent being identical to itself, conceived as such. It is at this point that the theory of the name, such as it is implied by the concept of metaphor, is articulated with ontology. Aside from the classical and dogmatically affirmed limit between the animal without logos and man as zoon logon ekhon, what appears here is a certain systematic indissociability of the value of metaphor and the metaphysical chain holding together the values of discourse, voice, noun, signification, meaning, imitative representation, resemblance; or, in order to reduce what these translations import or deport, the values of logos, phone semantike, semainein, onoma, mimesis, homoiosis . . . Mimesis is never without the theoretical perception of resemblance or similarity, that is, of that which will always be posited as the condition for metaphor. Homoiosis is not only constitutive of the value of truth (aletheia) which governs the entire chain; it is that without which the metaphorical operation is impossible: ‘To produce a good metaphor is to see a likeness’. The condition for metaphor (for good and true metaphor) is the condition for truth. (Derrida 1982a: 236–7) Again, this is couched in Derrida’s mixed-mode style of direct or oblique citation from the source-text (Aristotle) combined with analytic commentary and critical exegesis. Moreover, as the context makes clear, it is offered by way of an illustrative statement of precisely those ‘classical’ presuppositions which have governed the philosophic discourse on metaphor and – beyond that – the predominant (post-Aristotelian) way of thinking about issues in ontology, epistemology, philosophical semantics, and kindred disciplines. So there can be no question of reading the passage as an affirmation of Aristotle’s views or even as signalling partial assent to any link in the ‘great chain’ of Aristotelian argument. Yet it is equally unjustified – here as elsewhere in Derrida’s work – to suppose that a deconstructive reading is a priori committed to the disarticulation of all truth-claims and the undoing of any theory (such as Aristotle’s) predicated on values of truth, reason, logical form, conceptual adequacy, empirical warrant and so forth. For this is once again to mistake the whole purpose and argumentative tenor of an essay like ‘White Mythology’: namely, its critical questioning of such values in a manner that itself maintains the highest standards of analytical consistency and
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rigour while not taking anything for granted in the way that those standards have hitherto or traditionally been applied. In other words, deconstruction carries on the critique of established (commonsense, naturalised, or consensus-based) modes of perception or conceptualisation which has characterised philosophy in the tradition from Aristotle to Descartes, Kant and Husserl (see Derrida 1973, 1978b, 1981; also Gasché 1986; Norris 1987). No doubt it does so through a method of analysis – the rhetorical closereading of various cardinal texts in that tradition – which departs very markedly from other, more conventional ideas of what constitutes a proper philosophical critique. No doubt it raises issues – about truth, representation, the extent to which metaphors can be ‘adequately’ conceptualised or intuitions brought under ‘adequate’ concepts – that have provoked consternation (or outright dismissal) among many philosophers. Yet the above passage should at least give pause to anyone who is tempted to regard ‘White Mythology’ as a mere exercise in ‘textualist’ mystification or an argument devoted to such simplified (pseudo-deconstructive) slogans as that ‘all concepts are metaphors’, ‘reality just a fictive or rhetorical construct’, or ‘truth just a product of the will-to-power vested in figural language’. Thus, Derrida is not for one moment suggesting that just because Aristotle has recourse to metaphor – or to metaphor-related notions like resemblance, mimesis, the ‘perception of similarity’, etc. – at crucial points in his argument, therefore his entire ontology and epistemology (along with his logic, metaphysics and conception of enquiry in the natural or physical sciences) comes down to nothing more than a series of figural tropes and substitutions, indifferent with regard to their truth-content or capacity for conceptual elucidation and critique. Nor is he committed to the absurd view that truth and reality just are what we make of them according to this or that favoured rhetoric, language-game, discourse, vocabulary, or whatever. Such a doctrine could be extracted from ‘White Mythology’ only by ignoring those many passages – among them the sections on Aristotle, Canguilhem and Bachelard – that offer a precise and detailed account of the critical epistemology of metaphor and its role in the process of scientific knowledge-production. In short: ‘[m]etaphor, as an effect of mimesis and homoiosis, the manifestation of analogy, will be a means of knowledge, a means that is subordinate, but certain’ (Derrida 1982a: 238). This is not to deny – what is in any case quite evident – that Derrida is here paraphrasing Aristotle and drawing attention to the way in which metaphor has traditionally been treated as ‘subordinate’ to other (more directly reliable) means of acquiring knowledge. Thus: ‘metaphor . . . is determined by philosophy as a provisional loss of meaning, an economy of the proper without irreparable damage, a certainly inevitable detour, but also a history with its sights set on, and within the horizon of, the circular reappropriation of literal, proper meaning’ (Derrida 1982a: 270) To this extent Derrida is describing – and calling into question – an entire set of axioms (along with an implicit teleology) aimed toward the ‘proper’
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understanding of metaphor as a detour on the path to adequate conceptual knowledge. This is why, as he writes: the philosophical evaluation of metaphor has always been ambiguous: metaphor is dangerous and foreign as concerns intuition (vision or contact), concept (the grasping or proper presence of the signified), and consciousness (proximity or self-presence); but it is in complicity with what it endangers, is necessary to it in the extent to which the de-tour is a re-turn guided by the function of resemblance (mimesis or homoiosis), under the law of the same. (Derrida 1982a: 270) But again we shall mistake Derrida’s purpose – or (not to beg the intentionalist question) the logic of his argument in ‘White Mythology’ – if we read such passages as opening the way to a wholesale metaphorisation of philosophy, or a levelling of the metaphor/concept distinction that would view it as merely a symptomatic instance of this drive for the ‘reappropriation’ of metaphor by the philosophic will-to-truth. For there could then be no accounting for that other (often strongly counter-intuitive) process of conceptual ‘rectification’ that enables scientific metaphors, models and analogies to bring about genuine advances in our knowledge of physical objects, processes and events. Empson makes the point more succinctly when he remarks – in a review of E.A. Burtt’s book The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science – that ‘it is unsafe to explain discovery in terms of a man’s intellectual preconceptions, because the act of discovery is precisely that of stepping outside preconceptions’ (Empson 1987: 530–3). It seems to me that similar considerations are at work in Derrida’s (albeit very differently oriented) approach to issues of ontology, epistemology and the logic of scientific enquiry. A crucial text in this regard would be his essay ‘The Supplement of Copula’. Here Derrida argues – as against the linguist Emile Benveniste (1971) – that Aristotle’s table of the categories (the various forms and modalities of predicative judgement) cannot be treated as mere products of a particular language, namely the ancient Greek, whose lexical and grammatical resources they erect into an absolute (quasi-transcendental) set of laws for the conduct of rational thought (Derrida 1982b: 175–205). Of course there is a very real question – much debated by philosophers, Kant among them – as to whether Aristotle’s really was, as he thought, a complete and exhaustive (a priori deducible) listing of the categories concerned (Kant 1965: 113–14). Also there are problems, as scarcely needs remarking, with Aristotle’s essentialist definition of ‘substance’ as that to which the categories apply but which cannot itself be qualified or modified in its essence by any such categorial predicates. However, Derrida’s argument has to do with Benveniste’s more sweeping (and strictly unintelligible) claim that the very idea of ‘categoriality’ is one that could only arise within the context of a given natural
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language that provided the lexico-grammatical means for its expression. For this involves Benveniste in a confusion of terms, a failure to observe the crucial distinction between particular categories (which may indeed be language-dependent) and categoriality as the precondition for making any judgements whatsoever, including judgements with regard to the priority of ‘language’ over ‘thought’ or – as the issue presents itself here – linguistics over philosophy. The latter is a transcendental question, taking the term ‘transcendental’ (as Derrida specifies) ‘in its most rigorous accepted sense, in its most avowed “technicalness”, precisely as it was fixed in the course of the development of the Aristotelian problematic of the categories’ (Derrida 1982b: 195). In this sense of the term, quite simply, ‘transcendental means transcategorial’, i.e. pertaining to the condition of possibility for thought and judgement in general. It literally signifies ‘that which transcends every genre’, every particular (as it might be linguistically-instantiated) mode of categorical predication. Thus ‘none of the concepts utilized by Benveniste could have seen day, including that of linguistics as a science and the very notion of language, without a certain “small document” on the categories (i.e. Aristotle’s table)’ (Derrida 1982b: 188). And again, more pointedly: Philosophy is not only before linguistics as one might find oneself facing a new science, a new way of seeing or a new object; it is also before linguistics, preceding linguistics by virtue of all the concepts philosophy still provides it, for better or worse; and it sometimes intervenes in the most critical, and occasionally in the most dogmatic, least scientific, operations of the linguist. (Derrida 1982b: 188) I must refer the reader to Derrida’s essay if he or she wishes to follow this argument in all its intricate and rewarding detail. Sufficient to say that it operates both through the mode of transcendental-deductive reasoning – as defined above – and through a critical exegesis of Benveniste’s text alert to those items of empirical (i.e. natural-language) evidence that contradict his avowed thesis. Thus, as Derrida remarks, ‘[w]hat is not examined at any time is the common category of the category, the categoriality in general on the basis of which the categories of language and the categories of thought may be dissociated’ (Derrida 1982b: 182). And as a matter of empirical evidence there is the case of Ewe – a language spoken in Togo – which, according to Benveniste, possesses no equivalent (no lexical equivalent) of the verb ‘to be’ in its jointly existential and copulative function, but which turns out, on Benveniste’s own submission, to require that those resources be ascribed to it (in whatever lexico-grammatically distributed form) if Ewe is to make any sense in its various social and communicative contexts. Thus, the transcendental argument receives confirmation at the level of empirical research, that is, through Benveniste’s reflection on
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the evidence of how Ewe speakers actually communicate as distinct from his preconceived ideas about linguistic or ontological relativity. There is another passage from Benveniste – cited at length by Derrida – which brings out the close relationship between these issues in the fields of linguistics, anthropology, philosophical semantics, epistemology and philosophy of science. ‘Surely it is not by chance’, Benveniste suggests: that modern epistemology does not try to set up a table of categories. It is more productive to conceive of the mind as a virtuality than as a framework, as a dynamism than as a structure. It is a fact that, to satisfy the requirements of scientific methods, thought everywhere adopts the same procedures in whatever language it chooses to describe experience. In this sense it becomes independent, not of language, but of particular linguistic structures. Chinese thought may well have invented categories as specific as tao, the yin and the yang; it is nonetheless able to assimilate the concepts of dialectical materialism or quantum mechanics without the structure of the Chinese language proving a hindrance. No type of language can by itself alone foster or hamper the activity of the mind. The advance of thought is linked much more closely to the capacities of man, to general conditions of culture, and to the organization of society than to the particular nature of a language. (Benveniste 1971: 63–4) It is a remarkable passage for several reasons, not least its espousal of an extreme dualism between ‘language’ and ‘thought’, its casual (as if unnoticed) throwing-away of the linguistic-relativist thesis, and its distinction – equally fatal to Benveniste’s arguments elsewhere – between language in general and ‘particular languages’. What emerges through all these manifest contradictions is the acknowledgement that there must be some order of reality that thought can apprehend or that language (language-in-general) can articulate quite aside from all mere relativities of time and place. Thus, the ‘advance of thought’ seems a process that can indeed occur – whether in quantum physics or Chinese philosophy – through a process of conceptual development that cannot be attributed to the formative influence of this or that ‘particular language’. Rather it belongs to the ‘capacities of man’ as a knowledge-acquisitive agent, with perhaps some allowance – and here Benveniste slides back toward a relativist stance – for ‘general conditions of culture’ or the ‘organization of society’. Yet these latter conditions are apparently conceived as belonging to an order more permanent – or at any rate of far longer duration – than anything on the scale (historic or geographical) that Benveniste associates with ‘particular’ localised languages or cultures. In short, the whole passage tends towards a transcategorial conception of thought, language, reason and truth which Benveniste cannot bring himself to endorse explicitly – given his linguistic-relativist credentials – but which comes through in his argument despite and against its overt professions of belief.
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Quantum mechanics has become a standard topos in current debates about ontological relativity and the issue of linguistic representation.9 It has spawned a great range of philosophical positions – realist and antirealist – with regard to the status of quantum phenomena and their implications for philosophy of science, epistemology and interpretationtheory. Benveniste makes only passing reference to this debate in the above-cited passage. However, it does lend support to the view that some degree of ontological realism is presupposed in any discussion of quantum mechanics that seeks an ‘advance of thought’ through the elaboration and testing of specific conjectures. This applies even to highly speculative thought-experiments – such as the famous series conducted by Einstein and Bohr – for which, as yet, there existed no means of observational or experimental proof (Bohr 1935; Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen 1935; see also Bell 1987; Honner 1987; Maudlin 1993; Redhead 1987). For those experiments would, quite simply, have lacked all probative force had they not presupposed certain realist postulates concerning – for instance – the space-time trajectory of photons or electrons, the effects of particle charge, the well-defined limits placed upon simultaneous measurement of location and momentum, the behaviour of waves and/or particles under certain specified conditions, etc. (cf. Brown 1991, 1994). Nor is this argument in any way refuted by their having given rise to heterodox ideas (complementarity, undecidability, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle) that on the face of it would appear incompatible with a realist interpretation. For here, again, it is the case that these theories were arrived at only in response to certain deep-laid conceptual problems, problems that would not have arisen – or required such strongly counter-intuitive ‘solutions’ – except on the premise (the ontological-realist premise) that they captured something that was deeply and genuinely puzzling in the quantum-physical domain.10 I should not wish to place too large a philosophical burden on Benveniste’s brief reference to quantum mechanics or on Derrida’s citation of it in support of his case – as against Benveniste – for the impossibility of relativising truth to language. Still it is a passage of some significance in the present context of argument. This emerges more clearly if one considers Benveniste’s suggestion that ‘modern epistemology’ has no need of anything like Aristotle’s table of the categories since ‘it is more productive to conceive of the mind as a virtuality than as a framework, as a dynamism than as a structure’ (Benveniste 1971: 63). There is an echo here of Whorfian ethnolinguistics, more specifically of Whorf’s muchdebated claim that the ideas of relativity-theory or quantum mechanics could be better expressed in Hopi Indian than in any of the modern European (Greek-influenced) languages since Hopi manifested a different metaphysics, a world-view unencumbered by the subject/object dualism or the rigid categorical framework of predicative grammar and logic (Whorf 1956). What is curious about this claim, as many commentators have noted, is the fact that these theories were expounded and developed not – as it
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happens – in Hopi but in a range of other (mainly European) languages that on Whorf ’s account should have put up maximal resistance to their adequate articulation. All of which suggests that Davidson is right: that there is no making sense of the argument for ontological relativity if that argument is pushed to the point of denying the very possibility of adequate translation from one language to another (Davidson 1984). What is involved here (once again) is a kind of thought-experiment, in this case an experiment with the idea of ‘radical translation’ conducted – as by Whorf or by Quine – with a view to establishing the incommensurability of diverse languages, conceptual schemes, ontological frameworks, etc.11 But the result is rather to prove just the opposite: that any evidence adduced in support of such claims (whether ethnolinguistic evidence like Whorf ’s or hypotheticodeductive ‘evidence’ like Quine’s) will always presuppose the possibility of comparing languages and hence, a fortiori, of translating between them. Thus, as Davidson remarks, Whorf is here attempting to have it both ways, on the one hand declaring that Hopi cannot be ‘calibrated’ with English, while on the other presuming to describe in English those various lexical and grammatical features of Hopi that supposedly render such description impossible. My point is that thought experiments may have various (positive and negative) kinds of result. In some cases – like the Einstein/Bohr debates and subsequent quantum-physical conjectures – they serve as a means of formulating and testing theories which cannot at present be physically verified but which nonetheless require that their terms be taken as referring to certain entities, processes, or events whose behaviour under given conditions is (to put it simply) what the experiment is all about. In other cases – as with Quine, Whorf and Benveniste – what begins as an argument against ontological realism (and in support of the linguistic-relativist case) ends up by undermining its own thesis and thus showing such ideas to be strictly unintelligible. Nor should we be over-impressed by the fact that quantum mechanics has so frequently figured as a paradigm instance of ontological relativity in the thinking of Quine and others (see Quine 1961). For this is to ignore what emerges very clearly in detailed accounts of those original thought-experiments; that is, the extent to which they all necessarily relied on a realist understanding of quantum phenomena even if the results turned out to require some drastic modification to accepted ideas about the ontology of the microphysical domain, the limits of precise measurement, wave/particle dualism, or the distinction between observing ‘subject’ and observed ‘object’. In this respect, the Einstein/Bohr conjectures were on a par, ontologically speaking, with such previous classic thought-experiments as that by which Galileo proved the uniform (massindependent) rate of gravity-induced acceleration for bodies in a state of free fall. He imagined the case of two such bodies, a cannon-ball and a musket ball, securely fastened together. ‘Go figure!’, as they say; the
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experiment is enough to demonstrate conclusively, as a matter of conceptual necessity, what Galileo would later put to the proof by his better-known series of empirical tests at the leaning tower of Pisa (Galileo 1974; see also Brown 1994).
Of categoriality: language and thought What this episode brings out to striking effect is the fallacy involved in any theory, such as Quine’s, that would relativise ontology to this or that conceptual scheme, or scientific truth to some preferential framework of currently accredited ideas and beliefs. It also knocks a sizable (truth-shaped and realist) hole in those other varieties of relativist doctrine – Whorfian, Kuhnian, Rortian, etc. – which trade on the alleged impossibility of bridging the gap left open by logical empiricism, that is, the gap between empirical truths-of-observation and analytic propositions whose truth is a matter of purely logical necessity.12 It is for lack of such a realist component – or because he fails to specify the ‘structure and content of truth’ in adequate terms – that Davidson’s kind of transcendental argument cannot, in the end, make good on its strong anti-relativist claims.13 There is more to be learned in this connection from Derrida’s ‘White Mythology’ and his critique of Benveniste’s thinking in ‘The Supplement of Copula’. For these essays go beyond the Davidsonian sticking-point, that is to say, the appeal to a formal (abstractly truth-based) theory of meaning and interpretation which can offer only the negative assurance that any statement of the case for ontological relativity is sure to involve some blindness to its own necessary presuppositions. What Derrida provides is a far more rigorous, more analytically cogent and also (I would claim) more substantive conception of truth, one that emerges through his readings of – among others – Aristotle, Canguilhem, Bachelard and Benveniste. At this point we can usefully return to ‘The Supplement of Copula’, taking up the argument where Derrida has shown – and, moreover, shown Benveniste himself to concede though against his own programmatic intent – that the issue of priority between ‘thought’ and ‘language’ cannot be settled in favour of language, or (more accurately) of certain particular languages, among them the ancient Greek, as the precondition for ‘categorical’ thinking in the mode first articulated by Aristotle. Thus: ‘[s]ince they are certainly inseparable from language in general, the “advance of thought” and the “activity of the mind” cannot be linked essentially to a natural language’ (Derrida 1982b: 191–2). From which it follows – again by the strictest order of logical necessity – that ‘there can be “contents of thought” without any essential link to the “forms” of a particular language’. This much Benveniste is compelled to acknowledge – whether overtly or through various implied concessionary clauses – in order that his argument not fall prey to internal contradictions. Yet clearly there remains at least one contradiction at the very heart of his thinking, namely the assertion that
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thought both is and is not dependent on the lexico-grammatical resources provided by some particular natural language. Nor is this problem convincingly surmounted by his recourse to the idea of ‘language in general’ as that which subtends the ‘possibility of thought’ and hence opens the way to translation (or mutual understanding) across otherwise unbridgeable differences of language and culture. For in this case, ‘language in general’ is just another term for those transcendental (or transcategorial) conditions of intelligibility whose existence Benveniste elsewhere denies in accordance with his relativist thesis. In fact, what occurs throughout Benveniste’s essay is a kind of equivocating play on these two senses of language, ‘particular’ and ‘general’, whereby the contradiction is prevented from emerging into plain or fully conscious view. This recalls Davidson’s seemingly extravagant claim – ‘there is no such thing as a language’ – where the indefinite article works unobtrusively to permit an alternative reading, one that makes room for something like Benveniste’s equation between ‘language in general’ and the ‘possibility of thought’ (Davidson 1984: 433–6 and 446). In Davidson, also, this provides at least the semblance of an escape-route from some otherwise intractable problems with the relation between truth, meaning and interpretative context. But with Benveniste the case is more complex since he (unlike Davidson) advances a number of generalised – indeed categorical – claims regarding the dependence of thought upon language and the contingent, culture-bound, or ‘empirical’ nature of Aristotle’s doctrine of the categories. Thus, Benveniste can be shown to lay himself open to the charge of performative – or downright logical – self-contradiction. This is why Derrida’s critique operates both at the transcendental level (that is to say, by revealing the condition of impossibility for Benveniste’s claims) and also through a detailed and meticulous close-reading of his text at just those points where its argument comes most visibly under strain. It is also why he is able to present a more cogent and articulate case against the relativist doctrine than Davidson managed to achieve in essays like ‘The Method of Truth in Metaphysics’ and ‘The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’ (see Davidson 1984). For on Davidson’s account this can only take the form of a weak transcendental argument, one that makes truth either a product of purely formal definition in the Tarskian mode or – as argued in his later essay ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’ – a matter of devising some ad hoc ‘passing’ theory that comes down to Charity (the sine qua non) plus ‘wit, luck, and wisdom’ where needed. What he cannot provide – as Derrida does in ‘The Supplement of Copula’ – is a demonstration of the absolute and principled necessity that any statement of the linguistic-relativist case will turn out to rest upon presuppositions which render that thesis untenable. For such an argument requires that those presuppositions should possess something more than an order of purely a priori or conceptual validity. That is to say, they must also be able to account for that process of conceptual ‘rectification’ whereby the natural sciences have managed to
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achieve a progressively more adequate descriptive or causal-explanatory knowledge of the world. It is just this requirement that Derrida respects – contrary to widespread report – in those passages of ‘White Mythology’ that bear most directly on issues in the history and philosophy of science.
Postscript (October 2001) The above text is one of a pair of essays, first published in 1997, where I argued the case for deconstruction – and Derrida’s work in particular – as compatible with a realist approach to issues in epistemology and philosophy of science (Norris 1997a). The other piece (focused more specifically on Derrida’s relationship to Aristotle) was reprinted in a volume – Questioning Derrida – which brought together a number of articles on related themes, some of them addressing the role in his work of scientific themes and analogies, though mostly from an anti-realist standpoint (Meyer (ed.) 2001). Derrida contributed a postscript under the title ‘As if it were Possible, “within such Limits” . . .’ responding to these various angles on his work and seeking common ground between them despite their express disagreements (Derrida 2001). In particular, he made a valiant and good-willed effort to reconcile my realist (Bohm-inspired) take on interpretative problems in quantum mechanics with Arkady Plotnitsky’s defence of the orthodox (Copenhagen) theory construed in relation to Derrida’s thematics of différance, dissemination, iterability and the ‘general’ (as opposed to ‘restricted’) economy of textual representation (Plotnitsky 1994). As should be clear from my discussion above, I am not so sure that this rapprochement can be brought off without making large concessions to the anti-realist case. One particular passage from Derrida’s postscript is worth quoting at length since it (apparently) goes clean against the claim that deconstructive ‘textualism’ cannot be squared with a realist or objectivist conception of scientific knowledge. On this latter view, briefly summarised, the truthvalues of our statements are fixed by the way things stand in physical reality, rather than being ‘internal’ or ‘relative’ to our present-best languagegames, conceptual schemes, descriptive vocabularies, or whatever. As hardly needs saying there is widespread agreement – among Derrida’s admirers and detractors alike – that deconstruction amounts to a fargone textualist or strong-descriptivist version of anti-realism, one that counts objectivity a world well lost for the sake of such new-found interpretative freedoms (Norris 1989; Rorty 1982, 1989). At any rate, the following passage may serve to inculcate doubts on that score. Still I cite it not so much as a gesture of triumphant self-vindication but more as an example of Derrida’s pointed ambivalence with regard to the issues raised in my essay. ‘It is no accident’, he writes: that Norris so often calls for a re-examination of the status of the analogy in my work, as he does here again, and the reelaboration of
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the problem concept/metaphor. I find particularly judicious his strategy, often privileged in all his texts, and here again (a certain passage through ‘White Mythology’ – in relation to Nietzsche, but also to Canguilhem and Bachelard – and ‘The Supplement of Copula’), and particularly effective the re-situation of the demonstrative means (leviers) he proposes with respect to Anglo-American developments . . . I am not shocked, even if it makes me smile, to see myself described by Norris, in a deliberately provocative and ironic manner, as a ‘transcendental realist’. Earlier I said why I didn’t believe it was necessary to reject the transcendental motive (motif). As for the deconstruction of logocentrism, of linguisticism, of economism . . . and so on, as for the affirmation of the impossible, these are always advanced in the name of the real, of the irreducible reality of the real – not of the real as attribute of the objective, present, perceptible, or intelligible thing (res), but of the real as the coming or the event of the other, where it resists all reappropriation . . . The real is this non-negative im-possible, this im-possible coming or invention of the event whose thought is not an onto-phenomenology . . . Nothing is more ‘realist’, in this sense, than a deconstruction. It is that (whoever) arrives ([ce] qui arrive). And there is no fatality before the fait accompli: neither empiricism nor relativism. Is it to be empiricist or relativist to take into account seriously that which arrives, and the differences of every order, beginning with the difference of context? (Derrida 2001: 113) My first thought on reading this was that I hadn’t wished to be in the least ‘ironic’ (though ‘provocative’ is perhaps nearer the mark) in describing Derrida as a ‘transcendental realist’ with reference to texts – such as ‘White Mythology’ and ‘The Supplement of Copula’ – where that description is borne out (so I would still claim) by the logic of Derrida’s argument as well as by numerous individual passages. However, he is clearly none too keen to find himself enlisted on the side of ‘realism’ (let alone transcendental realism) if by this is meant a commitment to the notion of ‘the real as an attribute of the objective, present, perceptible or intelligible thing’. Rather, for Derrida, the ‘real’ has to do with that which intrinsically exceeds, eludes or transcends our habituated modes of perception and knowledge, that is to say, whatever unforeseeably ‘arrives’ to challenge the order of the selfsame within a thinking that strives to incorporate ‘otherness’ on its own preconceived terms and conditions. Thus, the real ‘is a thought of the event (singularity of the other, in its unanticipatible coming, hic et nunc) that resists its own reappropriation by an ontology or a phenomenology of presence as such’. All of which suggests that if Derrida is willing (however ironically) to acknowledge the description ‘transcendental realist’ then it is only insofar as both terms are construed in a sense far removed from that which I propose in the above essay, or that which scientific realists might be expected to endorse.
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What comes out most clearly in Derrida’s response is his idea that the ‘otherness’ (or ‘real’) in question has more to do with the ethical challenge that thinking confronts once it leaves the safe ground of ‘onto-phenomenological’ tradition and lays itself open – as Levinas would hold – to a radical alterity (that of the other person) which trancends the utmost conceptual resources of that same predominant tradition.14 This in turn goes along with his re-framing of the realism issue as one that concerns the ‘coming’ or ‘event’ of the other, something whose ‘non-negative’ yet ‘im-possible’ singularity is not such as could possibly be brought within the compass of any metaphysics or epistemology. Hence Derrida’s running-together of a series of terms – ‘objective’, ‘present’, ‘perceptible’ and ‘intelligible’ – all of which he takes as symptomatic of logocentric thinking but which the critical realist would regard as involving quite different claims with regard to quite distinct (‘stratified’) realms of enquiry (Archer et al. 1995; Bhaskar 1986, 1989; Collier 1994; Lopez and Potter 2001). So when Derrida writes that ‘nothing is more realist, in this sense, than a deconstruction’ – the kind of statement that one is tempted to cite (out of context) at face value – the ‘sense’ in question turns out to be one that leads straight on to his cryptic remark: ‘It is that (whoever) arrives ([ce] qui arrive)’. In short, the above-quoted passage can yield little comfort to those – like myself – who would argue the case for critical realism as a matter of acknowledging (1) the existence of objective or verificationtranscendent truths, and (2) the need for a stratified approach which distinguishes the intransitive domain of objects, events, causal processes, laws of nature, etc., from the kinds of transitive relationship that characterise our various investigative methods, experimental techniques or controlled interventionist procedures. Rather, it appears that Derrida is attaching a wholly different sense to certain cardinal terms – ‘realism’ and ‘transcendental’ chief among them – which have figured in the debate between epistemological realists and anti-realists. So it is not surprising that my claim raised a smile, even though it came as no shock and indeed allowed Derrida to express generous approval of Norris’s ‘judicious strategy’ while tacitly redefining those terms in accordance with his own more recent agenda. However, I would still stand by the arguments put forward in this essay, based as they are on what I take to be a close and philosophically accountable reading of two texts – ‘White Mythology’ and ‘The Supplement of Copula’ – which show deconstruction to entail a commitment to critical-realist premises. Moreover, this is not just a matter of elective affinity, or of Derrida’s having utilised certain topoi from the work of thinkers such as Bachelard and Canguilhem in order to make his point about the role of metaphor in scientific thought. Rather, it has to do with the basic structure of logical argumentation whereby Derrida frequently deploys a transcendental (‘conditions-of-possibility’) mode of reasoning so as to demonstrate the impossibility of maintaining a ‘strong’ textualist position according to which ‘all concepts are metaphors’, or again – in Nietzschean-Foucauldian vein – ‘all truth-claims are merely a product of
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the rhetorical will-to-power within language’. Space permitting I should have liked to develop this case with reference to other texts by ‘early’ Derrida, among them his critique of Levinasian ethics (‘Violence and Metaphysics’) where he argues forcefully against the idea that ethical thinking could ever achieve so radical a break with the discourse of ‘Western metaphysics’ that it emerged on the far side of all inherited epistemological concepts and categories (Derrida 1978b: 79–153). Since I have written at length on this topic elsewhere I shall simply remark that those early writings very often come around to conclusions that are strikingly at odds with much of what Derrida has published over the past two decades (see also Norris 1988, 1994). At any rate they problematise the Levinasian claim that an ethics of absolute alterity (or radical otherness) requires that we abandon those standards of knowledge-conducive ‘rectification and critique’ which define the very project of scientific enquiry as conceived not only by Bachelard and Canguilhem but also by philosophers in no way beholden to that distinctively ‘French’ critical-rationalist tradition (Norris 1997a, 1997b). Of course it would be churlish on my part not to welcome Derrida’s gracious and appreciative comments in the above-cited passage. All the same it would be letting some crucial issues go by default were I not to register these problems (as I see them) with regard to his later, very different way of thinking about matters of truth, knowledge, and ethical responsibility.
Notes 1 See Rouse (1987) for a synthesis of these various cultural-relativist, ‘strong’ sociological, language-based, depth-hermeneutic and kindred anti-realist trends. 2 Thus Quine: Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries – not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . Moreover, the abstract entities which are the substance of mathematics – ultimately classes and classes of classes and so on up – are another posit in the same spirit. Epistemologically these are myths on the same footing with physical objects and gods, neither better nor worse except for differences in the degree to which they expedite our dealings with sense experiences. (Quine 1961: 44) 3 See especially Bohr (1958); also Gardner (1979); Lipton (1993); Musgrave (1993). 4 See especially Nietzsche (1911). 5 On this topic see Kofman (1993). 6 See Pasley (1978) for some useful essays on this and related topics. 7 See for instance Allison (1985). 8 Derrida refers to various of Aristotle’s texts in this connection, chiefly the Topics, the Rhetoric, and the Poetics. 9 In this connection see especially Quine (1961). See also Brown and Harré (1988); Fine (1986); Forrest (1988); Teller (1986).
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10 For a strong defence of this ontological-realist view, see Popper (1982) and also Norris (2000a). 11 See Quine (1969); see also Quine (1960, 1974) and Davidson (1984: 125–39). 12 See for instance Grünbaum and Salmon (1988) and Salmon (1989). 13 This lack of specificity is all the more evident in Davidson’s promisingly titled but inconclusive sequence of essays ‘The Structure and Content of Truth’ (1990: 279–328). 14 For further discussion of the role of transcendental arguments in Derrida’s thinking see Gashé (1986) and Norris (2000b).
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Derrida, J. (1973) Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. by D.B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. —— (1978a) ‘The Retrait of Metaphor’. Enclitic Vol. 2, No. 2: 5–34. —— (1978b) Writing and Difference, trans. by A. Bass. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. —— (1981) Dissemination, trans. by B. Johnson. London: Athlone Press. —— (1982a) ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. by A. Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —— (1982b) ‘The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics’, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. by A. Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —— (2001) ‘As if it were Possible, “within such Limits”. . .’, in M. Meyer (ed.) Questioning Derrida, with his Replies on Philosophy. Aldershot: Ashgate. Devitt, M. (1986) Realism and Truth, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Dummett, M. (1978) Truth and Other Enigmas. London: Duckworth. Einstein, A., Podolsky, B. and Rosen, N. (1935) ‘Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Reality be Considered Complete?’. Physical Review Series 2, Vol. 47: 777–80. Empson, W. (1951) The Structure of Complex Words. London: Chatto & Windus. —— (1987) ‘Review of E.A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science’, in John Haffenden (ed.) Argufying: Essays on Literature and Culture. London: Chatto & Windus. Field, H. (1973) ‘Theory Change and the Indeterminacy of Reference’. Journal of Philosophy Vol. 70: 462–81. —— (1974) ‘Quine and the Correspondence Theory’. Philosophical Review Vol. 83: 200–28. —— (1975) ‘Conventionalism and Instrumentalism in Semantics’. Nous Vol. 9: 375–405. —— (1982) ‘Realism and Relativism’. Journal of Philosophy Vol. 79: 553–66. Fine, A. (1986) The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and Quantum Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Forrest, P. (1988) Quantum Metaphysics. Oxford: Blackwell. Fuller, S. (1989) Philosophy of Science and its Discontents. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Galileo, G. (1974) Two New Sciences, Including Centers of Gravity and Forces of Percussion. Translated, with introduction and notes, by Stillman Drake. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Gardner, M. (1979) ‘Realism and Instrumentalism in Nineteenth-Century Atomism’. Philosophy of Science Vol. 46, No. 1: 1–34. Gasché, R. (1986) The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grünbaum, A. and Salmon, W.C. (1988) The Limitations of Deductivism. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Hacking, I. (ed.) (1981) ‘Do We See Through a Microscope?’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 62: 305–22. —— (1983) Representing and Intervening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harding, S. (1976) Can Theories be Refuted? Essays on the Duhem-Quine Thesis. Dordrecht & Boston: D. Reidel. Harré, R. and Madden, E.H. (1975) Causal Powers. Oxford: Blackwell. Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time, trans. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell.
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—— (1969) What Is a Thing?, trans. by W.B. Barton and V. Deutsch. Chicago: Regnery. —— (1971) Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. by A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row. —— (1975) Early Greek Thinking, trans. by D.F. Krell and F. Capuzzi. New York: Harper & Row. —— (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. by W. Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row. —— (1978) Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. by D.F. Krell. London: Routledge. —— (1991) The Principle of Reason, trans. by R. Lilly. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Honner, J. (1987) The Description of Nature: Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Quantum Physics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kant, I. (1965) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by N.K. Smith. London: Macmillan. Knorr-Cetina, K. and Mulkay, M. (eds) (1983) Science Observed. London: Sage. Kofman, S. (1993) Nietzsche and Metaphor, trans. by D. Large. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kripke, S. (1980) Naming and Necessity. Oxford: Blackwell. Kuhn, T.S. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2nd edn, revised. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. —— and Woolgar, S. (1979) Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. London: Sage. Leplin, J. (ed.) (1984) Scientific Realism. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. LePore, E. (ed.) (1986) Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell. Levinas, E. (1979) Totality and Infinity, trans. by A. Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. —— (1981) Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. by A. Lingis. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Lipton, P. (1993) Inference to the Best Explanation. London: Routledge. Lopez, J. and Potter, G. (eds) (2001) After Postmodernism: Critical Realism. London: Athlone Press. Maudlin, T. (1993) Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity: Metaphysical Intimations of Modern Science. Oxford: Blackwell. Meyer. M. (ed.) (2001) Questioning Derrida, with his Replies on Philosophy. Aldershot: Ashgate. Musgrave, A. (1993) Common Sense, Science and Scepticism: A Historical Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1911) ‘On Truth and Falsity in their Ultramoral Sense’, in F. Nietzsche, Complete Works, ed. by Oscar Levy, Vol. 2. London & Edinburgh: George Allen & Unwin. Norris, C. (1987) Derrida. London: Fontana. —— (1988) Deconstruction and the Interests of Theory. London: Frances Pinter. —— (1989) ‘Philosophy as Not Just a “Kind of Writing”: Derrida and the Claim of Reason’, in R.W. Dasenbrock (ed.) Redrawing the Lines: Analytic Philosophy, Deconstruction, and Literary Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —— (1994) Truth and the Ethics of Criticism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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—— (1997a) New Idols of the Cave: On the Limits of Anti-Realism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. —— (1997b) Resources of Realism: Prospects for ‘Post-Analytic’ Philosophy. London: Macmillan. —— (2000a) Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics. London: Routledge. —— (2000b) Deconstruction and the Unfinished Project of Modernity. London: Athlone Press. Pasley, M. (ed.) (1978) Nietzsche: Imagery and Thought. London: Methuen. Plotnitsky, A. (1994) Complementarity: Anti-Epistemology after Bohr and Derrida. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Popper, K.R. (1982) Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics. London: Hutchinson. Psillos, S. (1999) Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. London: Routledge. Putnam, H. (1987) The Many Faces of Realism. La Salle: Open Court. —— (1990) Realism With a Human Face. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —— (1992) Renewing Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Quine, W.V. (1960) Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —— (1961) ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, in From a Logical Point of View 2nd edn. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. —— (1969) Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. —— (1974) The Roots of Reference. La Salle: Open Court. Redhead, M. (1987) Incompleteness, Nonlocality and Realism: a Prolegomenon to the Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rescher, N. (1987) Scientific Realism: A Critical Reappraisal. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Rorty, R. (1982) ‘Philosophy as a Kind of Writing: Essay on Derrida’, in Consequences of Pragmatism. Brighton: Harvester. —— (1989) ‘Two Meanings of “Logocentrism”: A Reply to Norris’, in R.W. Dasenbrock (ed.) Redrawing the Lines: Analytic Philosophy, Deconstruction, and Literary Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —— (1991) Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rouse, J. (1987) Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Salmon, W.C. (1984) Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —— (1989) Four Decades of Scientific Explanation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schwartz, S. (ed.) (1977) Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Smart, J.J.C. (1963) Philosophy and Scientific Realism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Smith, P.J. (1981) Realism and the Progress of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stoecker, R. (ed.) (1993) Reflecting Davidson: Donald Davidson Responding to an International Forum of Philosophers. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyer. Teller, P. (1986) ‘Relational Holism and Quantum Mechanics’. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Vol. 37: 71–81. Whorf, B.L. (1956) Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings, ed. by J.B. Carroll. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Woolgar, S. (1988a) Science: The Very Idea. London: Tavistock.
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—— (ed.) (1988b) Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Sage. Wright, C. (1986) Realism, Meaning and Truth. Oxford: Blackwell. —— (1992) Truth and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Index
absence 182, 189, 192, 205; and presence 3, 146, 147, 253 abstraction: Bakhtin Circle and method 97, 98, 104; categories of simple determination 116–17; Eurocentrism and modernity 180, 183, 186, 192, 193, 195, 196 aconceptual concepts 15, 209–13, 214 actual 25, 41n8, 147 actualist ontology 253 actus reus 227, 240 Adorno, Theodor W. 164n7, 219, 220, 241n2 aesthetic creations 96–7 affections 176, 179n12 Agamben, G. 165n13 agency 160; and structure 99, 100, 232–8 Ahmad, Aijaz 254 alienation 100, 107, 195 alterity see otherness Althusser, Louis: Althusserians 150, 164n7, 165n22, 249, 254, 256; Eurocentric problematic 12, 181, 183, 189, 191, 194, 196n13; real 10, 137, 138–40, 141, 142, 143, 144–8 analogy 289 analytical reasoning 15, 220–3, 238–40 Anderson, Benedict 187 Anglo-American law, value and contract formation 111, 113–15, 126–9 antagonism 138–9, 140, 148, 153 anthropic, anthropism 12, 13, 180, 182, 183, 190, 192–4 anthropocentrism 189–90, 206
anthropology, philosophical 188 anthropomorphism 189–90, 194 anthroporealism 13, 181–2, 188–91, 192, 195, 196 anti-essentialism 6, 10, 11, 148 antifoundationalism 278 antinomies 221, 226, 230, 236 anti-realism: deconstruction and 16, 262–96; Derrida 203, 204, 205, 289; versions of 262–4 aporias 230 arche writing 207 Archer, Margaret 28, 41n11, 242n8 Aristotle 264, 265, 275, 277; Derrida on 278, 279–87, 289 asylum seekers, as discursive sign 4–5 authoring 91–2 authoritarianism, Thatcherism 47–8 autonomy 153, 177; value relation and law 122, 125–31 passim Bachelard, Gaston 264, 271, 277–8, 281, 287, 290, 291, 292 Bakhtin, Mikhail 8, 17, 89, 91–3, 97, 98, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107 Bakhtin Circle 4, 8–10, 89–110; critical realist accents 93–9, 108; Marxist materialism 89, 93–4, 97, 99–108; social constructionism 90–4, 95, 97, 108 Balibar, E. 142 Barfield, Owen 264, 265–70 passim bargaining 114, 124–33 passim Barnett, Stuart 217, 229, 240 Barrett, Michelle 164n6
Index 299 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111
Barthes, Roland 236 base/superstructure 9, 111, 133, 140 Baudrillard, Jean 138, 165n27, 166n32 Benjamin, Walter 243n13 Bennett, R. J. 52, 54 Benveniste, Emile, Derrida’s critique of 282–9 Berman, J. 242n10 Bernald-Donals, M. F. 94 Bhaskar, Roy 2, 4, 14, 16, 40n8, 45, 94, 99, 111, 151, 202, 204, 205, 206, 215n2, 253–4, 262; dialectics, deconstruction and legal subject 15, 217–45 passim; Eurocentrism 12, 175, 178nn1,9, 180, 181–2, 183, 188–91, 192, 193, 195–6; real 10, 137, 138, 144–8; TMSA 3, 233–40 Blair, Tony, critical discourse analysis 37–8 body, the 89 Bohr, N. 285, 286 Boltanski, Luc 33 Bourdieu, Pierre 33, 202 Brennan, T. 165n21 Budge, R. J. 63 Bunge, Mario 202 Burningham, Kate 73 Burtt, E. A. 282 Butler, Judith 40n3, 241n2 Canguilhem, Georges 264, 271–4, 275, 276, 281, 287, 290, 291, 292 capital, capitalism 6, 116, 120, 121, 141, 148; Bakhtin Circle’s Marxist critique 99, 100, 103, 106–7; Derrida 14, 16, 246, 249, 252, 255–6, 259–60; discursive political theory 11, 151, 153, 154, 155–6, 159, 160–1, 162–4; Eurocentrism 177, 180, 184, 185, 187, 188, 193, 194, 195, 196 categories: Aristotelian 282, 285; Benveniste on 282–8; errors 17, 182, 189; language and thought 287–9; of modern discourse 12–13, 180–97; of simple determination 115–20, 133 causes 1–2, 3, 6, 17; actualism 253; Althusser on 139–40, 142, 150, 191, 194; anti-realism 263; Bakhtin Circle 95, 97; critical discourse analysis and causal mechanisms 43–4, 45;
Eurocentrism 191, 194; Laclau’s revision of Marxist theory 140, 142; legal subjectivity 237; Marxist theory of value and contract formation 9, 111, 112, 116, 118, 119, 120–1, 124, 132, 133; semiosis 1–2, 7, 23, 24–7, 29, 30, 34, 38, 39 cell metaphor 271, 275 Chiapello, Eve 33 Chinese thought 284 circle figure 277 circulation of the blood metaphor 271–2 civil society 173, 179n12 Clark, K. 89 coercion: law as 121, 122–3, 124, 126, 130, 132, 133; modernist 176; see also violence Coffield, F. 51 cognitivism 236 Collier, Andrew 151 Collins, C. 98 commitment, acts of 127–9, 130, 131 commodification 174 commodity fetishism 100, 130, 150, 151, 152, 156, 159, 160–1, 163, 177, 249, 250, 252, 260 communication, generative process 121–6 communicative rationality 4 communism 177, 248 Competition White Paper, critical discourse analysis 37–8 concepts 14–15, 209–13, 214; formation of 264–92 consciousness, relationship to value 9, 121–5, 126, 133 consideration 111, 113–15, 117, 126–32, 133 consumerism, consumption 11, 89, 155 contestation relations 31–2 context 4, 6, 7, 17; Derrida 13, 208–13; semiosis 27–30 contract formation 10, 111–34 contradiction 138, 139–40 Corbin, A. L. 115 Cornell, Drucilla 241n1 criminal responsibility see responsibility, legal
300 Index 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111
Critchley, Simon 257–8, 260n3 critical discourse analysis 4, 6–8, 23, 38, 45–8; application to semiotics 6–7, 23–42; applied to TECs 7, 43–67; Bakhtin Circle 8, 9; environmentalisms 7–8, 68–85 critical legal studies, relationship between deconstruction and socio-historical critique 15, 217–45 critical naturalism see naturalism critical political theory 151 critical realism 1–4, 17, 137; approach to Bakhtin Circle 8–10; and critical discourse analysis 6–8; and deconstruction 3, 6, 13–17, 289, 291; and discourse 2–3, 4–6, 17; and Eurocentrism 11–13; key features 25–6, 202; and post-Marxism 10–11 critical realist ontology 2, 13–14, 253–4, 259; see also ontology critical semiotic analysis 23–4, 32–9 critical sociology, Derrida and law 15, 217–18, 227, 240 Crusades 174 cultural studies 75, 89 culture 194; cultural action and environmentalisms 7–8, 69, 70, 73, 75–9, 80; as resistance 174 Curry, Neil 10 cyborgs 89 Davidson, Donald 267, 268–9, 286, 287, 288 Dean, Kathryn 11 deconstruction 1, 4, 247, 254, 258, 259, 260; and anti–realism 262–96; critical realist reading of 14–15, 201–16; as dialectical critique 15, 217–45; Eurocentric modernity 181, 195–6; relationship to critical realism 3, 6, 13–17, 289, 291 Delanty, G. 70 democracy 89; cultural action 78; Derrida 250, 251, 255, 256, 258; discursive political theory 153, 154, 155, 156, 164 Department of Employment see Employment Department
Department of Trade and Industry 37 depth-hermeneutical approach 262, 264, 265–70 Derrida, Jacques 1, 13–17, 181; as critical realist 201–16; deconstruction as dialectical critique 217–21, 225–32, 234, 235, 240–1; examination of recent work 246–61; philosophical and scientific truth-claims 264, 272–92 Descartes, René 281 desire 11, 153, 163 dialectical critical realism 3, 7, 13, 14, 45; deconstruction and the legal subject 15, 217–45; Eurocentrism 12–13, 180–97 dialectical materialism 248 dialectical method: of Bakhtin Circle 99, 103–5; semiotic 33–4, 35 dialogism 9, 90, 92, 96, 106, 108 différance 15, 207, 209, 213, 226, 227, 229 difference 178; deconstruction 35, 36, 206–7, 209 differential trace 206–7 discourse(s) 3, 17; Eurocentric 11–13 (see also Eurocentrism); semiotic analysis 27, 33–4, 35, 36 discourse–discipline dialectics 12–13, 180–97 discourse theory and analysis 1, 2, 3, 45, 137; of Bakhtin Circle 8–9, 89–110; development of post-Marxist 10, 137–49; Dryzek’s model 68, 69, 70–5, 81–3; post-Marxist political theory 11, 150–68; realist approach 4–6; see also critical discourse analysis discursive practice, dimension of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis 44–5, 46–7, 48–51, 55–64 dislocation, Laclau’s theory 140, 148, 155–6, 158–9, 164 diversity 176 division of labour 119, 126, 127, 131, 160, 161 Dore, A. 63 Dostoevsky, F. M. 92 double hermeneutic 38 Dryzek, John 7, 68, 69, 70–5, 81–3
Index 301 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111
dualism: critique by Bakhtin Circle 94, 100, 103; Derrida 206, 213; Eurocentric modernism 177 Duhem, Pierre 264 Dummett, Michael 263 Durkheim, E., Durkheimian tradition 177, 233 East Midlands Regional Development Agency 63 ecofeminism 8, 76 ecological modernisation 73 ecology: Eurocentric modernism 173, 177; see also environmentalisms economic governance 44–64 economic value see value, economic Einstein, A. 285, 286 Elliott, G. 139 ellipse figure 277 emancipation: critical realism as emancipatory critique 4, 7, 17, 94–5; Derrida and Marxism as emancipatory critique 14, 250, 251; Eurocentrism and 12, 172–3, 176, 179n9; see also freedom emotive element, cultural analysis 74 empirical, real distinguished from 25, 41n8, 209 empirical research 43 Employment Department 50–1, 52 ‘Employment for the 1990s’ White Paper 49, 52 Empson, William 264–74, 282 Engels, F. 101, 248 Engelskirchen, Howard 8, 9–10, 119 Enlightenment philosophy 12, 171, 201 entity relationism 15, 221; and legal subjectivity 231–40 environmentalisms, discourse analysis and critical realist analysis 7–8, 68–85 epistemic fallacy 10, 204, 208, 209 epistemic relativism 6, 13, 16, 175, 202–3, 205, 210, 214, 254 epistemology 202, 206; Derrida and deconstruction 16–17, 205, 206, 208, 254, 262–96; ideological effects of distortion 4–5; and law 219–20 equality 177, 255 erklären 24–5, 26, 38
eschatologies 250–1 essential accidentalism 154, 156 essentialism 154; Marxist 10, 137, 140, 142–3, 148; see also anti-essentialism ethics: Derrida and friendship 257, 258; Derrida on 16, 17, 218, 230, 231, 291, 292; environmentalisms 8, 78; and law 15, 217, 218, 223, 227, 228, 230, 231, 241; responsibility 17, 210; see also moral issues ethnic difference 194 ethnicism 12 ethnocentrism 190–1 ethnomorphism 190–1 ethnorealism 190 Eurocentrism 1, 11–13, 17; dialectical critical realism and 12–13, 180–97; as modernism 11–12, 171–9 Euromorphism 191, 192, 193, 194 Europeanisation 193 Europic, Europism 180, 182, 191, 192–4, 195 Europorealism 190, 193, 195 events 28, 29 Ewe language 283–4 exchange 100, 141, 250; value and contract formation 9, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132 excuse 236, 240 Fairclough, Norman 1–2, 6–7, 43, 44, 45–8, 64n1, 65n2, 69, 80, 81, 82, 83 familial relations 176 Farrell, Lesley 35 fascism 70 feminine values 176–7 feminist theory: environmentalisms 69, 80; Eurocentrism 172, 178n5; legal studies 241n2 Feyerabend, Paul 178n2, 269 Field, Hartry 263 Flax, Jane 204 Focus and Growth (North Nottinghamshire TEC) 44, 58–61 force see coercion; violence ‘Force of Law’ (Derrida) 217–18, 220, 226–31 formal subsumption 185–7, 193 Foucault, Michel: Foucauldian approach 4, 27, 79–80, 181, 262, 291
302 Index 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111
free market see market system freedom 81, 150, 154–5, 156, 157, 255; of speech 89; see also emancipation Freudian theory 11, 150, 151–2, 156, 156–9, 163 friendship 255, 257–8, 259 Fukuyama, Francis 13, 247, 250 functionality 152 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 262 Galileo 286–7 genres 27, 31, 33–4, 35, 36 geography, application of critical realism and critical discourse analysis 7, 43–67 Geras, N. 138, 151 German philosophy 172; see also Hegel Giddens, Antony 242n8 gifts 129 global/local 71; semiotic analysis 35–8 globalisation 173, 174, 251 God, death of 153, 154 Gordon, J. D. III 113 Goux, Jean-Jacques 152 grammatology 13, 15, 207, 259 Gramsci, Antonio 47, 183 Guide to the Development of TECs (Training Agency) 53–4 guilt, legal subjectivity 238, 240 Guy, R. 54 Habermas, J. 4, 29, 164n7 habitus 28 Haldane, J. B. S. 270 Hamacher, Werner 255 Harré, Rom 83n2, 111, 262 Harstock, Nancy 147 hauntology (Derrida) 13–14, 16, 249, 252, 253, 254 hedonism 11, 177 Hegel, G. W. F.: Hegelianism 124, 138, 139, 142, 217, 251; legal subjectivity 15, 218–19, 221–5, 227, 228–9, 230, 231–2, 240–1 hegemony: Derrida 251, 256–7; TECs 7, 47, 48, 49, 64 Heidegger, Martin 262, 264, 265, 266, 270 Hempel, Carl 40n8
hermeneutics 1, 2, 24, 38; see also depthhermeneutical approach; interpretation heteroglossia 106–8 heteronomy 153 Hirschkop, K. 92 historical materialism 99, 151, 189, 248 Hitler, Adolf 175, 176 Hobbes, Thomas 115 Holquist, M. 89 homoiosis 280, 281 Honneth, Axel 165n27 Hopi Indian language 285–6 Horkheimer, Max 164n7 Hostettler, Nick 11, 12–13 Howarth, D. 64 Howells, D. 54 humanism 177, 191–2 Hume, David 115; concept of cause 24, 25, 26, 38, 40n8, 111 Husserl, Edmund 281 idealism 101, 148, 158, 159, 224; linguistic 201, 206; transcendental 187, 190 identity 162, 164; collective 76; entity relational understanding 234; see also subjectivity identity thinking 15, 219–21, 222, 227, 234, 235, 237, 238, 254 ideology 6, 123; Bakhtin Circle 100, 102, 107–8, 109; Derrida’s thought 248, 252, 254, 256, 259, 260; discourse analysis of TECs 7, 45, 47, 48, 49–50, 59, 61; distinguished from discourse 4–5; and environmentalisms 71, 73, 77, 80, 83; post-Marxism 10, 151 ideology-critique 5 Imaginary/Symbolic contradiction 153, 161–2, 163 immanent critique 97, 235 indeterminacy, Derrida 210–11, 214, 227 indifference, social relations 125, 152 industrialism 72 intentionality 146, 159, 236, 237, 242n9 internal realism 263 interpellation concept 10
Index 303 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111
interpretation 2, 24, 29, 206, 208, 209, 264; see also depth-hermeneutical approach; hermeneutics intertextuality 14, 32, 35; dimension of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis 45–6, 60–1 intransitive dimension 2, 4, 10, 13, 14, 16, 27, 94, 95, 96, 99, 137, 145, 146, 147, 148, 254 Inwood, Michael 222, 223 Irigaray, Luce 241n2 irrealism 1, 2, 4, 10, 17, 144, 260; modernity 12–13, 182, 183–5, 188–9, 196 irrealist humanism 191, 192 Islam 174 Jameson, Fredric 152, 164n8, 165n27, 196n2, 249, 252–3, 260 Jessop, Bob 1–2, 6–7, 43, 69 Johnson, Carol 164n4 Jones, Martin 7, 54 Joseph, G. G. 178n8 Joseph, Jonathan 3, 15–16, 69, 79–80, 209 jouissance 150 judgement 210, 214, 238, 239; environmentalisms 7–8 judgemental rationalism 6, 202–3, 210 justice: Derrida 228, 230, 251, 255, 256; popular 238; relational models 238 justification 236, 240 Kant, Immanuel: Kantianism 89, 97, 98, 187, 190, 205, 221, 224, 225, 226, 229–31, 281, 282 Kanth, Rajani 11–12, 13, 182 Kautsky, Karl 164n1 Kearney, Richard 205 Keat, R. 111 knowledge 11, 13, 17, 146, 147, 254, 292; see also epistemology Kojève, Alexandre 241n2 Kothari, Rajni 78 Kripke, S. 263 Kuhn, T. S. 263, 269, 287 labour 100, 141, 160–2, 250, 255–6; categories of modernity 12–13,
184–8, 193; value and contract formation 121, 123, 130, 133; see also division of labour Labour Party, and TECs 63, 64 Lacan, Jacques 10, 11, 143–4, 148, 151, 153, 161, 163 lack 11, 153, 158, 159, 161, 163, 164 Laclau, Ernesto 3, 10–11, 39, 137, 138, 140–4, 148, 150–68, 258, 260n3 Ladim, Leila 77 Lakatos, Imri 183 language 1, 17; Bakhtin Circle and 8, 9–10, 92–3, 95–6, 100–1, 104–8, 122–3; Derrida 206–7, 257, 287–9; and discourse 70; languages as semiotic systems 25, 28, 33, 34; and thought 287–9; turn to 14, 262–4 (see also deconstruction) Latin America 78 law: critique of anthropomorphism 190; dialectical and deconstructive approach to legal subject 15, 217–45; Marxist theory of value applied to contract formation 9–10, 111–34 Lear, J. 165n21 Lechte, John 220 Leninism 248 Levinas, Emmanuel 230, 257, 258, 291, 292 limit (Derrida) 229–31, 234 linguistic idealism 201, 206 local economic governance 89; critical discourse analysis 44–64 Local Enterprise Companies (LECs) 49, 52 local/global 71; semiotic analysis 35–8 localism 48, 49, 59 logic 212–13, 214, 220; Hegel’s 221–5 logical connectors 60 logocentrism, critique 205, 254 love 176 Lukács, G. 160 Lyotard, Jean-François 262 MacCormick, N. 130 Madden, E. H. 111, 262 management, semiosis 33, 35–6 Mandeville, Bernard de 178n6 Manpower Services Commission 49 Marcuse, Herbert 164nn4, 7
304 Index 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111
market system 49, 173, 176, 178 Marx, Karl: Marxism 4, 40n8, 159, 241n2; application of value analysis to contract formation 9–10, 111–34; conceptualisation of the real 137–49; critique by Laclau and Mouffe see post-Marxism; Derrida’s relationship with 13, 14, 15–16, 246–52, 255, 256, 258, 259; Eurocentrism 12, 172, 177, 180–97 Marxism-Leninism 78 Marxist materialism 118; Althusser 145; Bakhtin Circle 9, 89, 90, 93–4, 97, 99–108 masculinism 176, 177 Matejka, L. 89 materialism: critical realist 8, 17, 27, 28, 30, 79, 80, 83, 253; Eurocentrism 11–12, 172, 175, 182–3; see also Marxist materialism meaning 7, 17; Bakhtin Circle and language 8, 105, 106; cultural action 76, 81; Derrida 210–11, 214; Empson 264; semiosis 23, 27–8, 34–8 Medvedev, P. N. 8, 89, 97–8, 100, 101, 102, 103 Melucci, Alberto 69, 75–7 mens rea 227, 236, 240, 242n9 messianic 14, 230, 250, 255, 257, 258, 259 metaphors: Derrida on 16, 264, 272–82, 290, 291; discourse analaysis 72, 74, 75; Empson on 264–74 metaphysics 254, 258 Meyer, M. 204, 289 mimesis 279, 280, 281 modernism, modernity: cultural action 70, 75; Eurocentric problematic 12–13, 180–97; Eurocentrism as 11–12, 13, 171–9; subjects in 153–4 monist theory 101, 102, 104 monoglossia 106–8 Montag, Warren 145, 253 Montaigne, Michel de 171 moral issues, environmentalisms 8, 70, 71, 76, 78, 81; legal subject 227, 235, 236, 239; see also ethics Mouffe, Chantal 3, 10–11, 39, 137, 138, 142–3, 150–68, 258, 260n3
national identity 5, 187 National Training Task Force (NTTF) 53 naturalism 6, 39n1, 40n8, 94 neo-liberalism 37–8, 47–8, 49, 173, 174 neo-pragmatism 258, 271 New International 258 new social movements 8, 69–70, 75–6, 77–9, 81, 83 New World Order, Derrida’s critique 246–7, 251 Newton, Isaac 277 Ngcokoto, B. 243n10 Nietzsche, Friedrich 203, 273, 274–6, 290, 291 nominalisation 34 nominalism 138, 145, 146 normativism 236 Norrie, Alan 3, 15, 16, 219 Norris, Christopher 13, 14, 16–17, 201–2, 205, 214, 228–9, 242n7; Derrida’s response 289–92 North Nottinghamshire TEC 44, 52–63, 64 Nottinghamshire Learning and Skills Council 63 object, objectivity 146–7, 150, 156, 160 Ollmann, B. 242n2 ontological monovalence 189, 204, 253 ontological polyvalence 189 ontological realism 9, 202–3, 210, 253, 262, 285, 286 ontological relativity 262, 263, 264, 268, 269, 271, 278, 285–7, 288 ontology 6, 16, 17, 94, 138, 188, 201, 202, 246, 264; Derrida’s attitude 13–14, 16, 17, 201, 204, 205, 208, 249, 252–6, 258–9, 282; and law 219–20, 232; see also ontological realism oppression 195 otherness 3; Derrida 16, 205, 208, 209, 258, 290, 291; post-Marxism 152–3; see also difference Outhwaite, William 254 overdetermination concept 11, 139, 140, 141, 142–3, 145, 150–2, 155, 156–9, 162, 163
Index 305 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111
overwording, critical discourse analysis of TECs 59 ownership 9, 48 Parker, Jenneth 7–8 partnership, TECs 59–60 Peck, J. 54–5 Pepper, David 7 performativity of discourse 79, 82, 83 philosophy: of science 9, 16, 43, 111, 262–96; of law see law; traditional 204, 211–13, 214 Pinochet extradition case, and legal culpability 240 Plekhanov, Georgi 164n1 Plotnitsky, Arkady 289 pluralism 176 pneuma 264, 265, 266–8 Pol Pot 177 political economy 112–13, 183, 184, 189, 193 political theory 75; post-Marxist 11, 150–68 politics: critical semiotic analysis 33, 37–8; environmentalisms 71, 78, 83; hegemonic power 251 Pollock, Sir Frederick 113 populism, Thatcherism 47–8 positivism 3, 9, 111, 171 possession 124, 125 post-Marxism 4; discursive political theory 11, 150–68; and the real 10, 137–49 postmodernism 1, 2, 3, 4, 138, 154, 164n8, 262; Derrida 13, 201, 240, 247, 249, 251; new social movements 70, 75, 77, 81 Postone, Moishe 12, 160, 184–8, 193 poststructuralism 4, 6, 34–5, 137, 204, 241n2 power 4, 5, 6, 17; Bakhtin Circle and language 106; critical discourse analysis of TECs 44, 45, 47; environmentalisms 7, 71, 74, 75–6, 77, 78, 79, 83; Eurocentric discourse 11, 176, 181, 185–6; legal subjectivity 240 pre-modernist traditions 171–8 presence and absence 3, 146, 147, 253 Private Industry Councils (PICs) 49, 52
private/public 69, 73, 176–7, 181 privatism 49 problematics, discourse–discipline dialectics 182–91 production 141, 147, 152, 177, 249–50; value and contract formation 116–23 passim, 130–2 progress, Eurocentrism 11–12, 172, 175, 176, 178, 182–3 progressive movements 8, 69–70, 75–6, 77–9, 81, 83 promises 113–15, 120–1, 128–9, 130 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 118 psychoanalytical approach 10–11, 139, 150, 151–2, 153, 156–9, 161, 162, 163 psychological element, cultural analysis 74 public/private 69, 73, 176–7, 181 punishment, retributive theories 236 Putnam, Hilary 263 quantum physics 284, 285, 286, 289 Quine, W. V. 262, 263, 264, 267, 268, 269, 286, 287 Raz, J. 130 real, reality 137–49; Althusser 138–40; of critical realism 144–8, 205–6; Derrida and 203–6, 207, 208, 209, 281, 290–1; distinguished from actual and empirical 25, 41n8; Hegelian 224; Lacanian concept of impossible real 143–4, 148; Laclau 140–4; loss of 158–9, 160–1, 164 real subsumption 185–7, 192, 193, 195 realism 111, 188; scientific, of Bakhtin Circle 97–9; see also anti-realism; critical realism; irrealism realist humanism 191 realist ontology see ontological realism reality see real, reality reasons 7, 23, 26–7, 80 reductionism 14, 23, 101, 102, 103 reference 29–30 reflection theory 101, 125 reflexivity 6, 30, 73, 82 Reformation 174 refraction theory 101, 102–3, 105, 109, 125
306 Index 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111
Regional Development Agencies 64 relativism see epistemic relativism; ontological relativism representation(s) 4, 5, 6, 7, 17, 44; value and contract formation 9, 123–4, 133 resistance: cultural action 77; to Eurocentrism 174 responsibility: Derrida and 17, 210; legal 15, 219, 227, 236, 237–8, 239 Ricoeur, P. 164n2 Ringer, Fritz K. 40n8 Roberts, John Michael 3, 4, 8–9 Robinson, Joan 118 role 152 Roman law 114, 115 Rorty, Richard 263, 274, 287 Russell, Bertrand 220, 222, 238 Sack, R. 48 Salmon, W. C. 262 Samuels, Andrew 84n5 Sandland, Ralph 241n2 Sayer, Andrew 1–2, 6–7, 43, 44, 69, 79 Sayer, Derek 196n11 Scharf, W. 242n10 science: Eurocentrism 11–12, 171, 172, 175, 182–3; philosophy of 9, 16, 43, 111, 262–96 scientific realism, of Bakhtin Circle 97–9 scientism 249, 254 Scottish Development Agency 49 Scottish Enterprise White Paper 52 Searle, John 203 semiosis 1–2, 6–7, 23–42, 123–4, 126; critical semiotic analysis 32–8; need for consideration by critical realism 24–7; role in social structuration 30–2; social preconditions and context of 27–30; study of North Nottingham TEC 44–5, 48, 64, 69; see also signs semiotic orders 33–4, 35 Sennett, Richard 166n36 sentences 92 Sereny, Gitta 238 Shotter, J. 90–1 Shukman, A. 89
signs 8, 102, 206–7; asylum seekers as 4–5; value and contract formation 111, 123–4, 127, 131; see also semiosis Smart, J. J. C. 262 Smith, Adam 114, 125 social actions 28, 29, 30, 69, 82; TMSA 3, 233–40 social class 5, 121, 255 social constructionism 1, 3, 6, 27, 30; Bakhtin Circle 9, 90–4, 95, 97, 108 social context see context social events 28, 29 social history 89 social learning 83 social practice, dimension of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis 47–51 social relations: Althusser 140; contribution of semiosis to construction of 7, 23, 24, 39; Marxist theory of value 117–18, 120; post-Marxist 152–64 social reproduction 3, 6, 23, 30, 31, 94; value and contract formation 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 130–2, 133 social semiotics 4 social structures 3, 4, 6, 17, 40n5; Bakhtin Circle 93, 94, 95, 99; and semiosis 23, 27, 30–2 social ties, modernism and 173, 176–7 social transformation 3, 6, 23, 30, 38 socialism 4, 173, 177, 254 socio-historical critique, deconstruction and the legal subject 15, 217–45 sociology 89; of knowledge 262, 271; see also critical sociology spectrality 14, 15, 16, 249–52, 253, 255, 256, 259–60 speech genres 92–3, 105, 106 speech performance 105, 106 Spinoza, B. 138 spirituality 146 Sraffa, Piero 39 Stalin, Joseph: Stalinism 70, 175, 176, 177, 248, 249, 259 Star Wars 175 state: critical discourse analysis of TECs 7, 44–5, 47, 48–55; modernism and Eurocentrism 176, 178 Stratton, C. N. 52, 53
Index 307 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111
Structural Marxism: Laclau’s critique 141–4; see also Althusser structure 145–6; and agency 99, 100, 232–8 styles 31, 33–4, 35, 36 subjectivity, subjectivities 4, 5, 6, 17, 44; environmentalisms 7, 69–70, 71, 76, 80, 81; legal 15, 217–45; post-Marxism’s discursive analysis 11, 150–64 passim subsumption 163, 185–7, 192, 193, 195 ‘Supplement of Copula, The’ (Derrida) 282–9, 290, 291 supplementarity 15, 226, 227, 229, 234 Swyngedouw, E. A. 48 Symbolic/Imaginary contradiction 153, 161–2, 163 symbolic mechanisms 39, 143–4 TEC Project Team 53 TEC Prospectus (Training Agency) 50, 53 territory, TECs and local economic governance 7, 44–5, 48, 51–8, 61, 63, 64 text(s) 27, 28, 32, 35, 80–1; definition 40n2; Derrida 206, 208–9, 256 textual analysis, dimension of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis 45–6, 58–61 Thatcherism 47–8, 49 theoreticism 249 time 12–13, 184–5, 193 Titunik, I. R. 89 Torfing, Jacob 154 trace 206–7 traditional cultures and philosophy 171–8 Training Agency 50, 53–4 Training and Enterprise Councils (Employment Department) 50–1 Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) 7, 44–64 Training Commission 49 transcendental approach 144, 215n6, 288; of critical realism 2, 4, 12, 40n8, 94, 97, 99, 290 transcendental idealism 187, 190 Transformative Model of Social Action (TMSA) 3, 233–40
transitive dimension 2, 3, 10, 13, 27, 94, 96, 99, 137, 145, 147, 148, 254 tribalism 12, 176 truth 12, 16, 17, 262–92 passim; semiosis 29, 32 undecidability see indeterminacy universalism 154; Eurocentrism 12, 177, 180–96 passim Urry, J. 111 utopias 89, 176, 177 utterances 90, 92, 93, 96, 105, 106–8 value, economic 100, 152, 154, 156, 159, 160, 162; category of capitalist modernity 13, 184, 193, 194, 195; relationship to contract formation 9, 10, 111–34 values, cultural action 76, 78 verstehen 2, 24–5, 26, 38 violence: and law 218, 228, 230, 235; modernist 172–3, 174–5, 176 Voloshinov, V. N. 8, 9–10, 89, 94, 95–7, 102, 104–8, 111, 122–3, 125, 131 Weber, Max; Weberian tradition 40–1n8, 233 Weber, Samuel 161–2 weltanschauung 11, 172 ‘White Mythology’ (Derrida) 16–17, 272–3, 289, 290, 291 Whorf, B. L. 269, 285, 286, 287 Wight, Colin 14–15, 16 Wignaraja, P. 78 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 137, 138, 148, 262 Wolfson, B. 53, 56 Wood, Ellen Meskins 121 words 104–6 workfarism 49 World Wars 175 writing, Derrida’s theory 13, 15, 207, 259 Yeung, W. C. H. 43, 63–4 Z˘iz˘ek, Slavoj 151, 153, 202
