discourse/reality/archeology/science

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 26 1999 - 09:57:44 PST


Paul-- Your long message of December 21 on this topic, spurred by my
reposting of Arne's message on the concept of object containts more than
I can deal with all at once. My reason for posting was that in recent
interactions with Yrjo's group in Helsinki, the misundersandings of the
notion of object that routinely arise in US-European discussions re-surfaced
and I thought it would be helpful to the XMCA community to be sensitized
to the issues and helped along.

Among the many interesting things you wrote, the following caught my
attention. I believe it was followed up by a comment from Nate to the
effect that the biological for humans IS cultural-historical. I am
personally very uncertain about "first" and "seconds" here, and on
how to keep the alternatives you point to straight, except in the extremes.

I will try to re-read and re-turn to this.

"
There is a fundamental difference between a position that holds that humans
construct realities through discourses which might be other than they are
and the position that holds that reality is a construct that emerges from
human practice (mediated action). The former denies that the realm of
necessity can be known; the best we can expect is to perform an an
archaelogy and reconstruct the genealogy of objects that are no more than
the expression of one or another relation of power and dominance. .....
mike



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