I've found this exchange elucidating. I agree w/ paul's characterization of
history, but I also take an eco-social perspective on change. History is one
source of agency in an eco-social system that moves on despite us.
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul H.Dillon [mailto:illonph@pacbell.net]
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 11:03 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: history discussion
mike,
you wrote,
"So the subjective/emotional/partial/value laden is inexhorably
there infusing and being infused by the objective/totalizing/presumably
neutral (at least transparent) transformed worlds of prior generations
that are making themselves known to us in various ways."
Descriptions like these are very difficult for me to integrate with the
notion that people feel a sense of ownership or belonging within certain
streams of history-culture and that this characteristic has important
consequences for cultural/historical research that are totally missed in
systems theory approaches.
Wouldn't you agree that the way you characterize the historical-cultural
milieu: objective/totalizing/presumably neutral, doesn't really square with
the way that the histories of which we are a part are first imparted to us:
from our parents, the psychological foundation of our security and sense of
self, notion of home, etc. etc. Here again, the supposedly neutral
cultural-historical traditions, are in fact first given to us at a time when
we can't distinguish what is being given from who is giving it. To me this
seems like a situation in which the "historical content" could hardly be
considered neutral. Isn't their a hierarchy among the "various ways" that
"transformed worlds of prior generations" make themselves known to us.
Marx's statements about human senses being the labor of generations comes to
mind.
As Eugene says, what do you think?
Paul H. Dillon
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