Coding

(v.f re Assumed flat plane  absolute categorization can be driven by instrumentality (links to feminist criticism? ask Catherine re refs) re natural systems: complementary, self similar, no absolute boundary,

(metaphor of hands of body)

*the tendency towards classification via binary categories is an issue  with potentially serious consequences in the context of fixing (arbitrary and profitable) oppositional subject positions...

Classification/coding  can be 'object' based or functional...

i.e. can relate to human need or be an isolated depiction -  e.g. it can be automated and uncurious replication or a conscious deliberation and discussion  of function.(relates to Habermas Communicative Discourse)


Online QDa

Bridging the epistemological dilemma?

What Habermas has done to hermeneutic philosophy is important nonetheless. He suggests that it has overemphasized the likelihood of fully mutual and consensual understanding of the spontaneous exercise of rational control. Actors are imbedded in social arrangements that systematically distort communication in ways of which they cannot be fully aware. On these grounds, Habermas argues that rational understanding must also be exercised, and often is, in a more self-conscious and less spontaneous way than through the exercise of understanding alone. This leads Habermas from hermeneutics as such -- even when it is rightly understood -- to a historically grounded advocacy of social science theory. In pursuit of theory, Habermas rephrases Gadamer's approach to traditional rationality in a manner that emphasizes its impersonality. Because `reflexivity and objectivity are fundamental traits of language,' he writes, hermeneutics is actually suggesting that `pre-understanding can be thematized.' Through self-reflection, `interpretive schemes ... are formulated in everyday language ... which both enable and pre-judge the making of experiences.' Self-reflection, thematization, and interpretive schematization are interpretive practices that will at some point be applied to themselves: `The rational reconstruction of a system of linguistic rules ... is undertaken with the aim of explaining linguistic competence' (1987: 177-9).

Derrida and Foucault supply the deep justification for such poststructural argument. Whereas Bourdieu seems blithely to exempt himself from his own relativizing strictures, Derrida (1981) has insisted that the knower is simply a literate bricoleur. Reality, in turn, can be nothing other than a text, a symbolic construction that is itself related to other texts -- not to history or social structure -- in arbitrary ways. Indeed, texts cannot themselves be accepted as representations, even of arbitrarily signified referents. Composed not just of presences but of absences, texts do not exist as complete wholes.

Foucault's second critique is an analytical one. In his later work he insists on the virtually complete identity of knowledge, or discourse, with power. In doing so, the very possibility of decentered experience is denied. The subject, Foucault is fond of repeating, is completely constituted by discourse. In this way, discourse becomes both the basis for power and merely its manifestation in another form. Because truth is relative to discourse, it is impossible to appeal to universalizing standards against worldly power: `Truth isn't outside power, or lacking in power.... Each society has its regime of truth, its "general politics" of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true' (Foucault 1980: 131). To set about rationally to evaluate the logical consistency, theoretical implications, or explanatory value of a given discourse is obviously a waste of time.


The simple and dangerous dichotomy is firmly set. The only alternative to the fallacy of absent reason, to positivism, is a thoroughly relativist sociology of knowledge, an archeology of the historical conditions of discourse.

 Alexander J.C. (1995) General Theory in the Postpositivist Mode: The Epistemological Dilemma and the Search for Present Reason by Jeffrey C. Alexander, in Fin de Siecle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction and the Problem of Reason. [by]  (Verso, New York, NY). pp. 90-127.



Alexander resorts to post positivism? to escape the  dilemma/crisis of materialism v absolute relativism

Is the dilemma a product of language games not of actual lived experience...
As all there are are language games...
Will language evolve in the direction of responsibility in a closer representation of the self similar complementary aspects of our multileveled nature... i.e. beyond the excluded middle...


Eagletons discussion of Ideology in  "What is Ideology?"   where he dismisses the deconstructionists attempts to avoid closure as not practical  gives us an insight into the problems with language and capital... some of us are getting paid to produce and move language , some are getting paid to produce and move objects ..(not necessarily the same amounts)
Yet it is clear that forcing closure can be an ideological tool used to repress and trap people into the instrumental when driven by an economic system detached from social needs. A response to this is derive.(Debord)..


Space for public discussion of rationality  (Habermas,) that includes, not excludes it's complimentary opposite 'limb' for example the derive (Debord)  *is an example of the  extension of rationality (Derrida) ( away from the imposed reductionist flat plane, a simplification convenient to the coders/coding of the  flat binary database**  and those who 'benefit' from their implementation), in the direction of the complimentary, self similar, natural...
the (extension of) the dialectic?
perhaps it could be argued the 'irrational'  inevitably finds its way through the logical exclusions and boundaries*(), but the well financed  efforts to construct walled enclosures around  various 'expert communities' perhaps suggest many believe otherwise...


* similar to the way the bWo (Deleuze) mirrors the 'oWb' that is a culture driven by the hegemony of instrumental rationality (See notes on this post)
**a simplification but the tendency towards classification via binary categories is an issue  with potentially serious consequences in the context of fixing (arbitrary and profitable) oppositional subject positions...
*** Eagleton (ibid) offers a discussion of those theorists who believe discourses have boundaries and those (Lacal and Mouffe) who do not....?

Critical Theory - Social and Literary

To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jürgen Habermas in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] (Knowledge and Human Interests), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics, i.e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions—including the interpretation of texts which are themselves implicitly or explicitly the interpretation of other texts. Critical social theory is, in contrast, a form of self-reflective knowledge involving both understanding and theoretical explanation to reduce entrapment in systems of domination or dependence, obeying the emancipatory interest in expanding the scope of autonomy and reducing the scope of domination.
From this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on interpretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian sense. Critical theory in literature and the humanities in general does not necessarily involve a normativedimension, whereas critical social theory does, either through criticizing society from some general theory of values, norms, or "oughts," or through criticizing it in terms of its own espoused values.


In the 1960s, Jürgen Habermas raised the epistemological discussion to a new level in hisKnowledge and Human Interests, by identifying critical knowledge as based on principles that differentiated it either from the natural sciences or the humanities, through its orientation to self-reflection and emancipation. Though unsatisfied with Adorno and Horkeimer's thought presented in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Habermas shares the view that, in the form of instrumental rationality, the era of modernity marks a move away from the liberation of enlightenment and toward a new form of enslavement.^[8]



His ideas regarding the relationship between modernity and rationalization are in this sense strongly influenced by Max Weber. Habermas dissolved further the elements of critical theory derived from Hegelian German Idealism, though his thought remains broadly Marxist in its epistemological approach. Perhaps his two most influential ideas are the concepts of the public sphere and communicative action; the latter arriving partly as a reaction to new post-structural or so-called "post-modern" challenges to the discourse of modernity. Habermas engaged in regular correspondence with Richard Rorty and a strong sense of philosophical pragmatism may be felt in his theory; thought which frequently traverses the boundaries between sociology and philosophy.


http://criticaltheory-download-ebooks.blogspot.com/p/what-is-critical-theory.html

Creativity and Rationality

There is no reason the forgo the concern with rationality, which Habermas and now the broader cognitive approach have striven to rescue from the turmoil of the last complicated centrury. But there are good reasons not to oppose rationality with creativity. the hopes of an emancipated and plural humanity will have to bank on these two distinctive reflexive elements of the species

Creativity and Master Trends in Contemporary Sociological Theory

José Maurício Domingues European Journal of Social Theory 2000 3: 467

Communicative and Strategic Discourse Habermas Fairclough

Strategic Discourse : Instrumental, Goal Oriented: Commercial/Beurocratic/Institiutions - Prescriptive?

Communicative discourse: Understanding Oriented - Interpretive?

Colonisation of Lifeworld by System

Can we have Institutions that maintain Communicative Discourse?

c.f Rationality and Distinction<> Flow and Appreciation?


Eg Problems solved by creative potential of individuals? = ideological practice c.f political mobolisation


eg Foucault sees  eg councelling therapy as social control

Dialectic of Rational Discussion and Random Expressive Flow

Option Research Question
Deconstruction of the  binary opposition of Rational Discussion ( Communicative Action) and Random Expressive Flow  (Universal  experimental  access to Performative Empowerment )


Re:  Mission statement and financial interests of educational institutions


Contrast with Instrumental Rationality

Re Butler Habermas

Current Position

*** My attitude at the time of writing coincides with Habermas  in the sense that that the abscence of an empirical foundation does not deny the possibility of a rational normative foundation which is essentially an ethics of communication, a meta ethics... if  once it is acknowledged that a 'text' can be read in as many different ways as there are readers, and  someone may have  a different association between internal feeling and external form,  the process of enquiry and communicationj becomes of much greater delicacy and importance, as assuming your own cultural forms, constructions and objects will lead to the same subjective experience & feelings in another is not rational in communicative terms...although it may be in terms of  'narrow self interested and oppressive' /'pragmatic' instrumental rationality via interpellation.. (c.f pre emptive/ stereotyping and provisional constructs) SRT

Derrida stated he sees deconstruction as Affirmation(ref). In  Derrida's own words :  deconstruction "doenst destroy but analyses the  layers and formation of  concepts, offers a genalogical analysis of trajectory of concept...  and analyses hidden assumptions"(ref youtube?). eg subject   human rights -  become aware of historical components of concept and all its determinations (human subject - female subject , european). He argues it doesnt undermine rationality in a universal sense,  but  a particular norm of rationality (associated with the universal claims  of Aristotelian binary oppositions and Cartesian Dualism and the idea of a rational coherent concious ego) which it can be argued  manifests in hegemony  and hence  deconsstruction can be seen as a step to a future, more  inclusive rationality that respects difference.  

Through abandoning meta-language ( a discussion about attribution) we abandon reason  this leaves " reason" to falls prey to instrumental rationality  ( an ideology that claims to not be an ideology ?) due to the influence of specialised  "expert interests" dominating the discourse via mystification and specialised language games ( we hand power to those who have the technique to win langauge games..)

Since the 1970's the  "empirical evidence"  points to the fact that our capitalist system,  driven by a narrow divisive instrumental rationality is well on the way to destroying its own ecological life support system... as it is driven by a limited form of "Rationality" assuming this is the case those with a more encompassing view have to respond  with some form of  rationality if they going  to be taken into account... whether it is and expanded form of rationality (Derrida) or a Communicative rationality (Habermas)

My stance is that I consider structuralist methods (eg Osgood, Kelly) can still be used effectively to elicit structures of meaning held by individuals and identify commonalities in meaning imposed via ideology even if the concept of universal structures has been disproved.

Also

take into account the width of world views from the performative to the empirical

In my opinion  essential criteria include 

1.  does the author discuss assumptions in an attempt to futher understanding or  purposely obscure them in order to win and assumed language game\ some authors claim that to clarify assumptions is impossible?

2, Frame problem  discourse boundary post structuralim : if we have a  closed expert discourse then instrumental  rationality is likely to dominate, how can we have a clsosed discourse if we have no  "self" but that constructed in discourse - c.f interpellation, binary dualism - categorisation systems <>  ecological

3: is there a simple binary distintion between  Marx and the post structuralists - Derrida 

4. Are binary distinctions addressed

5. is ideology, and instrumenta  rationality addressed

6. Are 'expectations' addressed ( expectations of outcomes in the context of experimentation)

7.In my opinion the main colonisation of the life world has been with Aristotelian Binary dualisms themselves and the dualistic premises on which our language, institutions and expert systems are built, and their manifestion in the Digital Hardware, and Software  - this needs to be taken into account. 

Those facets of Post structuralism that deny the legitimacy of any meta narrative based on unity or wholeness is  in my opinion questionable as all observation of nature shows it to consist of wholes (eg the systems approach ) the replacement of this model with  a flat plane of separate competing  discourses , priviliges distinction over union and those who promote it must be explicit about this bias  and how they address this  otherwise this leaves us with a  binary meta narrative...  and fits neatly with the meta narrative  of  a digital darwinian capitalism  of the "American Dream" as desrcibed in Jameson.

8. In what sense can/ does the performative  get colonised by instrumental rationality, is it inevitable ?

2.5 From group domination to professional and 

institutional power

Van Djik 362

9 Self Fulfilling prophecy.

Critical Language Study - Fairclough

Addresses colonization of lifeworld (Habermas) offering specific techniques re
discourse analysis : eg of advertising, beurocracy..

Post Stucturalism

Post-structuralism is both an extension and a critique of the fundamental concepts of structuralism rather than a theory in its own right.

Post-structuralism is concerned with philosophical issues such as the nature of "truth" and conceptions of the individual. While structuralists conceive of the "subject" as the socially determined centre of consciousness, post-structuralists "de-centre" the subject by claiming that "the self" is constituted through signifying practices situated within social discourse.They argue that language is always fluid and meaning can never be recovered completely. there is no absolute authority for knowledge or "truth"; there is only interpretation which produces meaning by the interaction of a reader with a text. All claims to "truth" are treated as products of discursive struggles for power.  Post-structuralists search for contradictions and multiple meanings in a text or aim to expose the power relations within language, discourse and representation.

In abandoning ontological claims the post structuralist free "what remains" from "empirical reductionism" and hierachy of structural meta-narrative but at the same time don't they abandon wholism? they abandon the conditioned subject but also deny a universal aspect to what is left? what is left if a flat plane of "discrete discourses"open to any interpretation (Kendall) at which the "powers" that remain? go to work in the discourses shaping the "Subjects" ?     through interpellation...(Althuser)  through assumed binary dualisms of language(Derrida)? through instrumental rationality(Habermas)? 

Performative Contradiction

A serious philosophical argument often brought against deconstruction, for 

example by Habermas (1987: 185–210), is that it is subject to the performa- 

tive contradiction. Simply put, this mistake is made when there is a contra- 

diction between what you say, and the way in which you say it. Thus 

Habermas claims that when Derrida argues against reason, he has to make 

use of rational means. ‘Anyone who argues against reason is necessarily 

caught up in a contradiction: she asserts at the locutionary level that reason 

does not exist, while demonstrating by way of her performance in argumen- 

tative processes that such reason does in fact exist’ (Fleming, 1996: 169). 

The claim made above – that we can never have complete knowledge of 

complex systems – falls into the same trap. It looks like an absolute state- 

ment about complex things but denies that such a statement can be made. 

Whether Habermas is correct in his assessment that Derrida argues 

against reason13is of less importance now than it is to look at the ‘logic’ of 

the performative contradiction. The first thing one should notice is that most 

careful or modest claims will come under pressure from this test. The claim 

‘no sentence has an exact meaning’ obviously fails the test, but the claim 

‘perhaps some sentences are not perfectly clear’ is also in trouble. If it is 

correct, then the sentence itself is perfectly clear. If it is not correct, then 

perhaps all sentences are clear. This point can be made more explicit by 

examining what kind of statements would passthe test. The claim, ‘When I 

am rational I will always be right’ passes the test with flying colours! It may 

not be true, but there is no contradiction between what I say and how I am 

saying it. I am always right, and I am also right that I am always right, and 

I can make this claim in an assertive tone of voice. 

Surely a test that will pass most self-assertive, macho claims and 

that will fail most modest claims, cannot be all that useful when dealing 

with complex things. Some reasons for this can be supplied. The performa- 

tive contradiction is predicated on the assumption that one can adequately 

distinguish between the performative and the locutionary levels, and, in 

the terms Habermas uses to criticize Derrida, between logic and rhetoric. 

However, in order to make this distinction clearly, one would need to take 

in a position that can characterize what is being said from an external 

vantage point. In the language of complexity, that would mean that one 

has access to a framework that is not the result of a strategic choice, i.e. 

some objective meta-framework. This is exactly what the view from 

complexity is sceptical about. The argument is that our frameworks are 

all compromised to some extent; dealing with complexity is a little messy. 

As Derrida (1988: 119) says: if things were simple, word would have gotten 

around.14 

In a way, the view from complexity acknowledges that some form of 

performative tension is inevitable. We are playing in what Wood (1990: 150) 

calls the ‘theatre of difficulty’, and this requires a certain ‘performative 

reflexivity’ (1990: 132). We need to demonstrate the difficulties we are in; 

also in the way we talk about them. Our discourse should reflect the 

complexities. To talk about the complex world as if it can be understood 

clearly is a contradiction of another kind15and this is a contradiction with 

ethical implications. Those who claim to have access to the truth are denying 

us our critical perspective and, therefore, keep us in a kind of false 

consciousness by not restoring the world to its original difficulty. It is only 

by acknowledging that we are in trouble that we can start grappling with the 

complexities around us. 

DOI: 10.1177/0263276405058052 

 2005 22: 255Theory Culture SocietyPaul Cilliers 

Complexity, Deconstruction and Relativism

Habermas

Main Distinctions:

• Lifeworld/ System (215)
• Lifeworld as potentially rational discussion of ends and means (ideal speech situation)

• Claim Making & Consensus / Background Assumptions (pp220)

• Communicative Rationality/Instrumental Rationality

3 types of validity claims

• Truth (Science) / Normative (Social/Moral) /Subjective (Phenomenol- Authenticity/Sincerity)

Layder 218


Which areas of lifeworld susceptible to colonisation by system (power&capital&state) which are not - empirical research

Considered Objectivist/Modernist - Layder questions this

Habermas has been criticised for his emphasis on language, rational communication and reason, and negelecting the unconcious and the role of emotion.. (by lyotard foucalt etc) Layder 229 -237

However these factors (emotional and artistic nature) are  what Habermas claims that instrumental rationality denies people through its colonisation of the lifeworld...
also due to forces of mystification through expert interests ( c.f Latour Black box)


Layder on Habermas

Closure and Discourse Communities

If discourse analysis dismiss macro analysis for micro of discourse communities?


How do we decide the boundary of the discourse community?
What about its relevent environment?
(read Fairclough)


According to poststructural


Isn't such closure necessarily structural thinking which has supposedly been abandoned?


re Layder 233-236

Habermas: Knowledge Types

1 Instrumental/Technical : Concerned with How? (Scientific-Technical)
c.f. Kuhn T , Maxwell N. (From Knowledge to Wisdom)
2. Practical/Social: Concerned with Why?:  extending Social Knowledge  uses quasi scientific techniques?
c.f Discourse Analysis?
3. Emancipatory:? Value to Humanity, Liberation (re Identification)
c.f Meta Knowledge




c.f Performativity (Butler J)


re Representional Knowledge  <> Performative

Critical Theory - Marx etc

Critical Pedagogy and the Constitution of Capitalist Society

Critical Pedagogy: A Brief Introduction

Critical pedagogy began life in the works, thinking and pedagogic practice of Antonio Gramsci, supplemented with the works of key thinkers from the Frankfurt School, but especially those of Jürgen Habermas. It attained wider recognition in the writings and teachings of Brazilian radical educator and activist Paulo Freire. Specifically, Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972) laid the foundations for what became the American Critical Pedagogy School of the 1970s and onwards. The writings of Ivan Illich and the plays and radical drama theory of Augusto Boal were also importance elements for the development of critical pedagogy during the 1970s. Today, Critical Pedagogy in North America, whilst not mainstream, has spawned doctoral and Masters programmes and a plethora of web sites devoted to it [1].

Glenn Rikowski,  University of Northampton

* It is based on the works of Marx and Marxism, first and foremost;

* The starting point is the critique of the basic structuring phenomena and processes of capitalist society – which involves a critique of the constitution of capitalist society;

* The second most significant level of critique is the host of social inequalities thrown up by the normal workings of capitalist society – and issues of social justice can be brought in here;

* The third level of critique brings in the rest of capitalist social life – but relates to the first and second levels as frequently as possible;

* Two keys fields of human activity in contemporary society stand in need of fierce critique: capitalist work and capitalist education and training (including the social production of labour power);

* Labour power – as capital’s ‘weakest link’ – deserves special attention as it has strategic and political significance.

These are the basics of critical pedagogy as anti-capitalism.


http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Critical%20Pedagogy%20and%20Capitalism

Bottled Water a metaphor for the commodification of "Random Expressive Flow"?

Water- Random Expressive Flow?     

Bottle- Packaging/Language/Cultural Form/Ownership?


The water bottle phenomenon has become ‘normalized’; when we look in a classroom, on a bus, in the gym or out at lunch, it’s not about who has a bottle of water, but rather who hasn’t


...bottled water is a commodity that sums up a lot about the consumer culture we live in. Bottled water does have a use value, but that has been masked by false needs through advertising, language, semiotics and marketing. As Lury points out “all material possessions carry meaning” (1996: 13). A water bottle is no longer just a water bottle; it is a social indicator of class, gender or age, it can be viewed as a display of environmental ignorance to some or attentiveness to health and beauty to others. The most important aspect of the water bottle is that it is shrouded in myth, you no longer buy a bottle, you buy a lifestyle. 


Safety, Freshness, Beauty etc etc...


http://jadestroudwatts.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/116/


(who owns the dream/myth?)
At the same moment the commercial message adds value to the product it devalues the natural resource... we are encouraged to see the natural resource/communal resource as "not good enough"   

In the case of  the universal natural resource of "random expressive flow" (assuming it has some inherent value) it could be argued this has been devalued/obscured to the point where is it associated with  irrelevance/madness... in our culture....( where it hasn't been reified onto a form of consumption) in the service of the products of instrumental rationality with which the "normal" and "successful" in our culture surround themselves .... and which  street gangs,  andour armies fight for...




`(Contrast with communicative rationality)