Alena,
I think you're right when you say that to someone who is not "moving" in the frame of positivist/modernist approach to metanarratives all discussion of eclecticism looses its meaning. But I do not understand very well the sense you gave to syncreticism and the link of it to eclecticism.
When I think to syncreticism I personally associate it to a specific way of thinking (a kind of thinking by complexes - disparate from thinking by concepts). One labelled "eclectic" could be acting voluntary with no syncretic thinking - although all syncretic thinking is somehow "ecletic" in that sense (the sense I understand the word "syncretic")
Well, back to the discussion on eclecticism once more, I understand that one thing is a critical approach to disparate perspectives from the rich soil of historical-cultural theory or from any other theoretical frame and another one is the mixing of them (disparate perspectives) without no critical consideration - ecletcticism.
To be "eclectic" and do an "eclectic approach" can sometimes be a voluntary act with "uncofessable reasons".
-----Mensagem original-----
De: Alena <sanusi@ucsu.colorado.edu>
Para: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Data: Quarta-feira, 7 de Novembro de 2001 08:56
Assunto: Re: more eclecticism
Mike wrote:
> I think the concern is with cases where there is no thought out
>rationale for the linkages, not for cases where the linkages are
>not formative of a logically necessary and sufficient set.
> Do we have some sort of clear cut counter example, or constrasting
>examples, to sharpen our joint understanding of what we mean by
>eclecticism?
I haven't gotten as much as I would like to have gotten from this
discussion on eclecticism, perhaps because by being postponed
and then come back to it has lost its "grounding" in the topic of the
time.
I don't know whether what I would like to have as "grounding" is what
Mike meant by his call for counter- or contrasting examples, but the
way I am thinking of it, I would like to have a concrete example of
work that has been accused of eclecticism and the nature of the
shortcomings in that work that its eclecticism is supposed to account
for.
It seems to me that this accusation (for such it always is -- otherwise
"innovative" or "wide-ranging" or "synthetic" are the words used) only
becomes relevant when researchers doing work according to a
well-worked-out format want to discuss work that is interdisciplinary
or seeks to push the envelope, to go beyond what the well-worked-out
format can be claimed to apply to.
I'm puzzling over the relationship of "eclecticism" and "syncretism". Is
it one of timescale (eclectic being current, syncretistic being legitimation
over time) or of practitioner (eclectic being something that an individual
or individual project is, syncretistic being something that a culture or
society is)? Or is it that we use "eclectic" to make negative judgements
of colleagues, and "syncretistic" to appear not to make negative
judgements of subjects/Others/natives? It seems to me that it is
interesting to oppose these two terms since both involve appropriation
of disparate elements of belief, but they do such different work.
It seems to me that only those who have a modernist belief in knowledge's
convergence on a metanarrative would be concerned with moves to
diverge. If what you are interested in is how to respect contradictions and
disparities, rather than contributing to the construction of a metanarrative,
then surely the accusation of eclecticism loses its sting. No?
--Alena
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