I probably ought to have just posted Phil privately, but I don't like to
assume that nobody is interested - 'cause I don't know, and so...
hey Phil guy, maestro-meister,
i'm still muddling this materialist philosophy thing -let me reference what
has got me in this intellectual puddle:
re the following summary of Horkheimer's critical theory -
RE: Maxie Horkheimer's reading of Marx - (by Walter BonB 1993)
"...materialist thought ...refers to a 'concept of knowledge as a
non-independent process which can be defined only in the context of the
dynamic of society.' It leads neither to absolute truth, nor to ultimate,
definitive statements but stands in a 'dialectical' relationship with
social developments. " (106)
Now this is fine, this is what Dorothy Smith (1990) takes
from Marx, that materialism is revealed in ideology; materialism being an
interaction of concepts and reality; clashing values and privileges and so
on;
the failure of marx to predict the revolution:
SO then Hork identifies the fallacy of marxism as failing to predict the
effects of capitalism; not recognizing how capitalism stalls social
progress by replacing it with technological progress/scientific
discoveries,
and a "belief" in "factuality" as universal instead of
ideologically-deformed fragments of incomplete perspectives
(part of the lack of social progress, is the lack of intellectual rigour;
not 'cause folks are dumb but because
of how the capitalist production of tech as progress functions in praxis
and discourse and knowledge; and how this
exacerbates the divisions between reality (dialectics)
and ideology (materialism) -
and a "massive internal crisis of materialism" is produced (by lack of
social progress; and the misinterpretation of technological progress) -
and so this mis-identification is revealed through false connections to
theory; (i.e. all scientific work appealed to traditional theory
(empirical/positivist)
and in gaps
in research (purely quantitative) and theory construction (reflective
theory without reflective
critique) -
but anyhow, the point is that the resolution to this crisis of materialism
which is - not unlike - a crisis of representation, or a division of
epistemology into "facts" and "knowledge/theory" which has produced
specialized
disciplines and faculties for developing
"sciences" / and "knowledge" in isolation of each other; and this was, for
Hork,
incomplete knowledge; an ideological product of its historical time,
like early 1920s Germany -
so he was referring to the splitting of science from social participation,
where science is a social construction ( and so science that supposes
autonomy from this is establishing "false" connections to traditional
theory
out of this, it was possible to begin articulating materialist knowledge;
which was, once reconnected, a philosophy -
but it wasn't an academic philosophy; it was a materialist philosophy which
meant it was - always incomplete
- historically constrained
- ideologically suspect
- socially-responsible-responsive and (here's da "HUH?")
-anti-metaphysical = socially-oriented towards a
progressive utilization of scientific practice
(this is sort of contradictory, which is where I keep seeing materialist
philosophy - how it be both, when one is not the other;
So, if I ask myself what is materialist philosophy, it is
in a sense - a contradiction, no? it is - according to this view -
like ideology-ideology, which effectively cancels the other out, each
half paralyzes the other because it is an artificial representation
of (bourgeois and scientific collusion!! aieeeeeee!!)
I mean I realize this is hardly new: but I wondered if philosophers
of a specific "breed" refer to themselves as "materialist philosophers"
and
what do folks think of this notion, this incomplete effort to
re-position the social in a relation with institutions and society
... is it possible? not to physically start moving folks around (ha) but
to re-orient social production and institutonal production towards
progress... but I don't know if I believe in progress, so am faced
with utopianism here -
so what Jay seemed to be ranting so eloquently about was
this division, between which is this (weeelllll theoretically speaking)
unfathomable hole/gap/rupture/split that is fundamentally contradictory
a "lacunae" of academic purpose/function/production that,
once brought into a relation with theory, like the atom atom
smashes; disintegrates, nullifies the other; renders everything artificial;
meaningless, and so there was this rage of counting behaviors for a while
because this avoided the confrontation with meaninglessness...
so it seems like there is no point of reconciliation; there is no "halfway" -
so,
by this reckoning,
a materialist philosophy would be contradiction -
a necessary invention;
but to no social end, 'cause the authority is in the theory and so it has
to eat up the social cause of the contraditory positions these occupy,
which suggests that the social is the "spoiler" or the site of "queering"
authority in theory - which sound like a hundred thousand projects I read,
where researchers had this great idea that had no existence in the
social context;
and so the study would study that (hey man look at the lint in my bellybutton)
and so bah-LAH bla blah, I am BABBLING so i'll STOP now and let this turn a
while longer.
have I got this twisted?
diane,
phil. pls. bail me outta this and i'll
tell you what i thought of hypercapitalism.
aye, 't'is a form of blackmail.
diane