O'Brien tells Smith 2+2=5

From: Paul H. Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Sun Jun 18 2000 - 07:23:49 PDT


Jay,

You wrote:

"Does this get us to a political response to globalization? It might if we
could 'hear' the very long nows on the timescales of global processes. More
feasibly, its logic might suggest that we ask just what makes us so sure
that there are global-scale social-institutional processes? This whole
discourse is one of those occasional attempts to marry phenomenology and
semiotics, and phenomenologists, esp. of the ethnomethodology school, and
even of the hybrid Latourian school (more an alliance perhaps in Latour's
case personally, but a hybrid for others in ANT), are really quite
skeptical of macrostructures. I don't agree, but I admit that pure faith
and intellectual tradition is not a very good basis for claiming that
globalization is not just a descriptive practice with no phenomenological,
or any other kind, of reality. "

Globalization has no reality!! That's rich.

I don't think I could produce a better argument to demonstrate the
practico-logical consequences of your theoretical modeling. Hey, if it
doesn't fit in the theoretical model I guess it just doesn't exist even
though the Japanese pulp factory has just been set up across the street
because the treaties that enact "globalization" have removed your control
over your neighborhood. But hey! We can't say anything about that (it's on
a scale we can't perform at) and what the hell, it's just a descriptive
practice with no kind of phenomenological reality.

I'd just like to know what that horrible smell coming from across the street
is?? Or why the forests are all getting cut down.

As to the "scales of time" model, I checked my notes and notice that I did
post substantially on this when we discussed that paper in November. It's
surprising because despite all your insistence on phenomenology, the concept
of time you have developed is a primary example of the "objectivist
conception of time" that was the central focus of the phenomenologists'
(Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) critique. I posted
extensively about this already. Looking at your recent accretions to the
original model (more and more epicycles that one can read about at about
$150/publication) I find nothing that substantially corrects this--but how
could they, for despite the portentious flow of complaints to the contrary,
the entire structure presupposes a objectivist conception of time.

At this point I have nothing more to add--besides I really want to the rest
of my time to discussing Peter's papers and Ilyenkov, not yours, which we
already did in November.

Paul H. Dillon



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