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 <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
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