Your points are well taken and I apologize to any who feel that my arguments
constituted a personal attack on them. I was sincerely trying to stick to
what I perceived to be the issues of the case. It seems the "common
ground" to which you alluded eluded us because we don't perceive the same
issues here. Forging common grounds usually means abandoning previously
held positions in the process of negotiating one that allows everyone to
feel that something has been retained of where they first stood. But some
issues can't be backed down from. I also believe that the critical analysis
of opposing viewpoints is part and parcel of all discussion aimed at
greater understanding. Unfortunately, the process of doing this often seems
an attack on the individual who presented the idea. Many claims were put
forward in this discussion, e.g., Jay Lemke's assertion that the academic
freedom in US post-secondary education derives from the German tradition,
that really didn't seem to me to be anything more than red herrings. That I
felt this way about those assertions wasn't meant constitute an attack on
Jay Lemke or even a questioning of the truthfulness and historical accuracy
of the assertions themselves. All of which would have been beside the point
as I saw it. But apparently it might have come across like that.
Kathie, and many others, have stated that this is an issue concerning
"diversity of voices", a position grounded on the belief "there is no move
upwards or onwards, closer to truth or right or correctness". Today, this
ultra-relativism is clearly a fruit of post-modernist theory although
american anthropology is full of precursors, notably Franz Boas. At one
time this relativism was vital for defeating myths of the moral and
intellectual superiority of Western Civilization that were used as the
ideological basis for the oppression of non-Western peoples throughout the
world. Similarly, the various liberation movements challenged the hegemony
of various myths of domination. But today it confounds the very ground upon
which the gains attained through the women's movement in the last thirty
years have been achieved. In contrast to those who hold that I have been
preaching some abstract universals I would like to make it clear that I
strongly believe that truth is the outcome of historical process.
I think that there is a movement "closer to truth or right" that results
from a consideration of the relation between a particular case and the
historical process from which it emerged (which may or may not be found in
historically similar forms). So I question the degree to which the Daly
case constitutes a particular that belongs to the struggle against the
concrete historical relation of oppression to which it ascribed. My
conclusion is that it does not, that the removal of Mary Daly from the BC
faculty is not an example of the historical fact of the oppression of
females in contemporary society; that in fact teh case involves an attempt
to defend certain privileges that had emerged and were the outcome of that
struggle and that had accrued to specific individuals ; a defense that, at
this time and in the given form the Daly case assumes don't further the
struggle whose name is invoked but that bulwark a system of privileges
generative of other relations of oppression. That is the truth of the
matter as I see it.
I also think xmca is a good place to fully examine the concrete historical
role of the ultra-relativist epistemology succinctly stated by Kathie as:
"each of us creates, negotiates, expresses a unique reality" and how it
conditions post-modern and feminist discourse. To my understanding, this
individual relativism is absolutely opposed to the fundamental principles of
cultural historical activity theory as found in Vygotsky, Luria, Engstrom,
and others. This relativism contains a partial truth but is incorrect
precisely because it is no more than partial, as incorrect as simply saying
that there are no individuals and that we all simply inherit identities and
enact roles determined by History, identities and roles that are beyond our
power to influence or modify, let alone create. At the present historical
juncture, when we are inundated by difference and bereft of any "common
grounds", I don't see how such an epistemology provides any basis for
developing a shared ground for dialogue that might further our understanding
of the relations between culture, activity, and history.
Paul H. Dillon