In language not as long-steeped in the Platonism of abstration-lovers
everywhere (yes, I'm one, but a sadder and wiser one): we have to learn in
each instance how to re-construct an abstraction from these concrete
particulars of this and other instances ... for the actual pathway to the
"same" abstraction from the concrete must always be different depending on
which instances we start from ... this is why it is never trivial to
'apply' abstract ideas, and why abstractions are NOT genuine invariants
across situations (our neo-idealist confusion), but only the artifacts
(valuable as such) of our processes of constructing 'abstractions' (the
Peircean 'abduction'), which in turn is why "transfer" rarely happens (cf.
Lave).
The irony in 'ascending to the concrete' is in the reversal of the VALUE
ordering that puts the abstract "above" the concrete, and that value
ordering, while it claims to be based on utility, is deeply contaminated by
its ideological reflexes of valuing capitalist activity over labor
activity, masculinized abstract thinking over
"feminized/immature/primitive" concrete thinking. The utility claim itself
is disingenuous. Absent transparent transfer, it is NOT the abstract
principle by itself that has utility in new situations ... but only the
dialectical transformation of that principle in the concrete work of
"fitting" it to the new concrete situation. The ironic reversal is there to
remind us that all practice is concrete, even intellectual practice, and
that activities do not achieve their objects unless and until we have
dialectically re-concretized our abstractions.
As to Marx, I will leave others to debate if it matters, but while for me
his intellectual method does show the abstractionism of his historical era
(many will disagree, I realize), his value system for economics and for
social relations and processes does in fact privilege concrete material
labor, and he does use this as a paradigm case for reasoning about many
other 'matters'. Any exposition of dialectics tends to sound Hegelian and
abstractionist, because it is necessarily just discourse about discourse.
The _praxis_ of dialectics is not about talk, but about concrete action in
which abstract theoretical analysis plays a role, but is itself transformed
case by case. For me, praxis can't have general rules ... and that includes
educational praxis whether for teaching or as learning ... real praxis
means that you create a new theory for each case, recognizing of course
that you are never without a theory, even at the beginning ... the new
theory is not arrived at only at the end of the activity, though it is then
that we can retrospectively articulate it .... it is in continuous process
of creation and transformation during and because of the concrete activity
as we enact it.
This is a very radical intellectual position, and one that demands a
considerable price -- losing rhetorical power to dominate arguments. It
says that what makes a theory useful is not its generality, but its
specificity to the case in question. This implies that
theory-as-abstraction has nothing to do with 'truth', that there cannot be
'general truths'. Insofar as truth has any practical meaning, only
instances are true. This makes it impossible to argue for conclusions about
instances on the basis of the 'truth' of theories. It annihilates the
rhetorical (usually called logical) basis for technocratic ideology: real
experts are not people who know general truths, but rather people who know
specific cases ... and, yes, know them in terms of abstract categories by
which we can learn how, case by case, to relate one case to another ...
i.e., people with a lot of practice at ascending to the concrete. Experts
(the word means 'experienced') always invent theories to explain to
themselves what they know about instances, and how we connect instances ...
but wise experts know that we reinvent the theory every single time.
One footnote to this argument may be needed. There may be some kinds of
practices for which the theory does not come to differ significantly each
time ... but they are quite _atypical_ practices, special constructions
which so define their objects of interest (as in mathematics or physics)
that it is only the similarities from case to case and not the differences
which are important. These practices also depend on rigorous elimination of
difference from the whole network of actors and activities, as Latour
nicely describes for laboratory sciences and their standardized, black-box
technologies. Plato fantasized that mathematics' way of knowing was the
typical case. Modern positivism refuses to see that physics, too, is
atypical. Modern academic intellectualism, as well, is deeply in cahoots
with technocratic ideology ... trying to sell people the idea that general
theories/truths, which can only be about partial similarities and must
ignore signficant differences, are the best basis for making decisions
about instances ... and thus that those who operate with these
theories/truths have a legitimate claim to power.
Nothing could be further from the truth. JAY.
---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
---------------------------