Thank you for the correction. I must admit my memory of "Alice in
Wonderland" isn't all that great. Of course the dictionary definition of
"reification" is just what most responses to the original query indicate:
"to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing."
Merriam-Webster gives 1854 as the date of first known usage. This precedes
Lukacs by 70 years. Furthermore, since Lukacs wrote his texts in German,
"reification" is a translation. So what's in a word anyway?
The question is: Why would someone ask for a dictionary definition on the
xmca listserv? Are dictionaries that hard to find? Or is it just the case
that the members of the list more trustworthy concerning word definitions
than any of the available dictionaries? Since these possibilities seem
somewhat absurd, one would have to conclude that the question had a broader
intent; e.g., the importance of the word in social theory.
The dictionary definition involves a problematic epistemological
presupposition: the distinction between abstract and concrete. This
distinction is inherent in the subject-object psychology that constructs
constructs social relations out of the ahistorical properties of an
essentialist human psychology. This meaning inverts the meaning that Lukacs
and others intended: historically specific social processes generate the
forms of objectivity and individuality found at any given time.
I think that the term, "reification", has *significance* in social theory
on the basis of its technical use in the marxist/critical theory discourse.
That it be found in other contexts and discourses or that the best
definitions are to be found in the works of natural scientists belies a well
known pattern: the absorption of concepts that expose repressive social
processes into the discourses that reinforce those processes. But then,
that's happening all the time everywhere, isn't it? For example: focusing
on micro-level domains of social interaction without contextualizing them
with respect to the prevailing, macro-level social processes, eg. the
commodity relation, that generate the pervasive forms of objectivity and
individuality through the process of reification.
Paul
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> "The question is," said Alice, "whether you _can_ make words mean
>so many different things."
> "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master --
>that's all."
>