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[xmca] Half a coconut
I recently had a chance to read more carefully Wolf-Michael Roth's MCA
editorial on Solidarity and Responsibility.
I know that there was some prior discussion of it here, in a thread
about the eyes of a coconut, but that seems to have veered off from
what seems interesting to me in the editorial, which was highlighted
by Derek Melser at one point. I don't know if I've missed any
subsequent discussion, but don't find it in the archives, at least
with a google search.
So here are some notes on the ideas and arguments in the editorial,
for any who are interested. (W-M R and I have been on a firstname
basis for a very long time, but he's "Roth" in the notes because it's
shorter!)
Notes on Roth editorial MCA
Solidarity and Responsibility. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 16: 105–
116, 2009.
= Roth appears to argue from Is to Ought, from a holistic-extension
notion of primal solidarity in being/doing, prior to discursive
notions of voluntary solidarity, for a moral responsibility to
respect, indeed to privilege uniqueness in the Other, rather than
simple not-I differentiation and the corresponding notion of a
constructed collective and its artificial solidarity.
= the notion of an ontological or pre-discursive, actional
solidarity seems very close to Victor Turner’s famous _communitas_:
originating in the underlying experience of co-activity, which is
prior to social structural relations and can be glimpsed when these
are set aside (his liminality, Bakhtin’s carnival)
= Turner also argues in parallel with Buddhist philosophy (prajna vs
vijnana, or roughly intuition vs discursive reason), that difference
is the product of social relations and discursive semantics, while
what precedes them is more holistic.
= the notion of partes extra partes with which Roth characterizes
his view of the ontology of unique wholes is a bit ambiguous in the
philosophical tradition
there is a Cartesian version of it which is atomistic – every part
exists outside of and independent of every other part, and which leads
to a view of space as consisting of just one damn place after another,
only externally relatable
and then there is also the Leibnizian version, which I think is the
one Roth is using, in which each thing or place is an extension or
diffusion of its own unique qualities, but in which a principle like
that of the mirroring of monads allows larger scenes to also be
wholes, within which qualities may extend across what on smaller
scales are parts apart from one another, hence providing the sort of
holism of absolute differentnesses or uniquenesses that Roth seems to
want
= Roth takes all this finally to classrooms, schools-as-educating
communities, and the paradoxes of democracy. If we are all unique
within larger wholes, then it makes sense to pay attention to others’
viewpoints when decisions are to be made, indeed the more diverse the
input the more likely a good, or at least an as-thoughtful-as-possible
decision.
Some such decisions are not really decisions, outcomes are largely
predetermined by circumstances (habitual, predictable, routine); but
others require breaking out of predictable patterns, choosing the
risky or unlikely alternative, creating new options – and so new
wholes, within which we all become newly unique-again. (Which, by the
way, is in itself a good moral argument for democratic decision-
making, since we are all always affected in fundamental ways by
decisions. Despite our cultural and masculinist preference for the
illusion of our independence. Being unique and partes extra partes
does not, in the holistic paradigm, insure our independence, just the
opposite. This might go some way towards explaining the popularity of
Cartesian atomism, where we can just ignore the other atoms.)
Voluntarist solidarity, Roth is arguing, I think, is dangerous
because it presupposes the atomist Cartesian ontology of our being: we
begin and remain autonomous, we choose to come together in
communities. What can be chosen, can also not be chosen. What is
voluntary can be suspended, delegated to dictators, elites, teachers,
curriculum bureaus.
Holistic solidarity, like communitas, on the other hand arises in
our being and doing together, which is a condition into which we are
born and from which we never entirely depart (having internalized so
much of it before we even try to get away). But it is nonetheless a
condition that also reinforces our uniqueness (or supports it, or from
which it is emergent, depending on your metaphysics), and from which
we can no more get away than we can get away from ourselves.
But I am still not entirely sure that Roth is not over-claiming on
how much democratic Ought is derivable from the holistic Is. Bakhtin
is fairly casual about the logic of the ideational and the axiological
(in his later terms), or the twin answerabilities of response and
responsibility. I am not well enough read in Levinas to say in his
case. Personally I don’t see why we should want to ground the moral-
ethical in the ontological, in the nature of things. Isn’t that
theology? Because a God exists, we should do what He says? Isn’t a
secular philosophical version of this kind of argument just another
desire to privilege the ontological, the factual, the true over the
Good?
For me the good, the ought, in its many forms and aspects, has its
own standing, equal with the true, and not subordinate to it. The good
and the true, or by degrees as we really experience them, the more or
less desirable, the more or less likely, along with the more or less
important, the more or less surprising, serious/humorous, mysterious/
comprehensible, etc. all stand as equal partes extra partes in
relation to one another.
As they do in the semantics of our language. And I think as they
also do experientially and phenomenologically, though the holism of
experience will be something not so neatly corresponding to semantic
categories, will feel like something more of a mish-mash, at least as
seen from the neat typologies of language and philosophy done in
language.
From here this discussion could go in many directions, so I will
stop for now and see what others may say.
Jay.
Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
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