Re: BHA: Santa, God, kneeling

[Colin Wight <Colin.Wight@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi   Hans,

Nothing in my position denies the reality of emergent entities, but in
relation to the discourses, prcatices and social relations which constitute
what I call the 'Santa complex' and you name Santa, these do not refer to
Santa, the white bearded old man. I'm not quite sure why I am having to go
over this, but still, it seems to me that you are engaging more than a
little creative linguistics. What does the term Santa refer to? If you
reserve the right to say that it refers to whatever you decide it refers
to, then you win the argument by default. Santa is real and exists for you
because by Santa you mean something that is real and exists - that is
something which none of us who deny the existence and reality of Santa deny
exists, we just don't think the term Santa refers to this entity you use to
the term to refer to. Coneptual clarity, as far as I can tell is still
lacking. This thing that is real and exists, is not some white bearded old
man with powers X...Z (i.e. the normal refrent of the term Santa).

Hence there really is no Santa.


 I.e., regarding
>social relations it is especially easy not to see the forest
>for the trees.

Or the reverse, it is possible to see only the forest and not that forests
consist of trees. Besides, the relationship betwen forests and trees is a
bad analogy for that between agents and structures.

>
>A simple illustration of the kinds of real entities I mean
>here is: if someone writes a book, it may happen that the
>book takes on its own life: that what the book says may not
>exactly be that what the author meant to say or what she has
>stood for at any time in her life.  I would argue here that

>in such a situation the book is an emergent real entity with
>its own meaning irreducible to the conscious intentions of
>its author,

Well again, sorry to be so pedantic, but the book is not the emergent
entity. And you are wrong, I would insist on differentiation and conceptual
clarity. There is the writer of the book, there is the book itself, there
are the many reading and individual interpretations of the book, and there
is the emergent entity (which possibly is the myth of the book which is
constituted out of the many readings of the book but probably does not
match any of them exactly. Still, the book is a good example, because tell
me, does Gulliver exist?

Of course meaning are real and of course books (and email presumably
judging by th emine are been construed) get misunderstood.


>The evidence of inferiority of women Colin alludes to is
>in my view evidence of the oppression of women and of the
>effects of the oppression of women, which are both real
>and socially created.  The important insight here is that
>the generative mechanisms for the empirical phenomena
>Colin alludes to lie in society and not in biology.

Well, yes, I would agree, but surely your argument vis-a-vis Santa commits
you to saying that women are inferior. I mean the point is Hans, we have
our view on this issue, but then others have theirs, you seem to be
automatically prioritising your view, becuse it suits your view. For you
Santa is real and exists but the inferiority of women doesn't. But since
there are prcatices and disourses and social relations of both of these
entities, why deny reality to one yet affirm it to the other?



>The issue is clearer with the concept of race because race
>has no basis in biology whereas gender does.

But just as with santa, there are discourse and practices and social
relations vis-a-vis the inferiority of certain races, hence on the logic
you apply to Santa, why isn't the inferiority of certain races real? Of
course race is real, I doubt that anyone on this list would deny reality to
socially constituted reality.

Cheers,




------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales
Aberystwyth
Tel: (01970) 621769
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---