Re: [Critical-Realism] Side note on clear writing and Bourdieu

["Louis Irwin" <louisirwin9@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Mervyn,

It occurs to me that the difficulty in reading Bhaskar is much like that of
reading the Macquarrie & Robinson translation of Heidegger's "Being and
Time".  Hannah Arendt once commented that when looking at the German text
she saw more or less regular German prose, in contrast to the translation
whose neologisms (in your sense) did not reflect the manner of writing in
the original.  Reading RB can sometimes seem like reading a bad translation!
It's true that when you puzzle and ponder, then return to the text, things
do start to fall into place.  But you really have to spend a lot of time
just to figure out what he means, before you even get to assessing the
validity.  I recall a comment Walter Kaufmann made about reading Heidegger
to the effect that the joy of finally understanding a passage, whether true
or false, substitutes for the joy of seeing a new truth.  That's a big
danger.  One's hard-won insight into what has been stated should not count
as support for what has been stated.

Louis


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mervyn
Hartwig
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 7:56 AM
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Side note on clear writing and Bourdieu

Hi Louis

Thanks for this. 

You don't see 'natural selection' as a neologism, and nor do I, because it
now isn't  one for us; but it was in Darwin's time. The same will hold for
Bhaskar's neo-logisms in so far as they become embedded in a new
commonsense. I've heard 'ontological depth' on the telly a number of times.
As in Darwin, there are hardly any new words in Bhaskar (if you disagree it
would be good to see a list), mainly just old words, deployed singly or
conjoined, to form new consistently defined concepts, e.g. the one I've just
mentioned or 'the epistemic fallacy' or 'ontological monovalence' -
venerable words all. As I conceded, there are more such neo-logisms per page
in Bhaskar than in Darwin or Marx, but this is because Bhaskar is exploring
a new conceptual space, so to speak, rather like the old explorers used to
go about 'new' countries bestowing old names on 'new' places (which already
had names of course so the analogy is far from perfect). 

The risk of the whole enterprise raising doubts as to whether it's not a
circle of interlocking illusions seems to me just one that you have to take.
Systems in philosophy and science are I'd say, like ontology, inexorable; if
you don't explicitly elaborate one you'll tacitly deploy an implicit,
usually highly confused, one. Furthermore the Bhaskarian system is generated
in part by critique of what is argued to be itself a system of interlocking
illusions - irrealist, more generally, western, philosophy; and it's
difficult to see how one could make any inroads into such a system except by
developing a new, more adequate system. If you're worried about it all (or
some of it) being an illusion, the thing to do of course is to examine the
arguments and say where they go wrong if they do - and this work is of
course going forward and must if CR is not to become a dogmatic rather than
remain a critical realism.


Mervyn 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Louis
Irwin
Sent: 29 November 2007 22:55
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Side note on clear writing and Bourdieu

Mervyn,

Just a friendly complaint about your understanding of neologisms.  I don't
see a phrase like "natural selection" as being a neologism.  It certainly
refers to a new concept, but it uses everyday words to express them, backed
by a theory which make it clear why the phrase is an apt gloss of the new
concept.  The problem people have with Bhaskar's use of language is that it
seems to involve a highly complex circle of vocabulary that all too easily
generates the uneasy feeling that maybe the whole enterprise might be a set
of interlocking illusions.

Louis

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mervyn
Hartwig
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 7:16 AM
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Side note on clear writing and Bourdieu

Tobin wrote:

"Marx, Darwin, and Freud were able to build their theories without recourse
to jargon"

Sorry, can't leave this go unchallenged. 1. Neo-logisms abound in all three
- e.g. commodity fetishism, natural selection, the reality principle. 2.
You're not comparing like with like. Bhaskar operates at a higher level of
abstraction. He's a philosopher first and foremost, they're scientists first
and foremost.

I agree with nearly everything else.

Mervyn 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tobin
Nellhaus
Sent: 28 November 2007 23:27
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Side note on clear writing and Bourdieu

Dave wrote:

>                                                                I am 
> particularly grateful for Brad's expansion here of Tobin's explanation 
> of (in a word) snobbery

It isn't really correct to say that social distinction, cultural capital,
intellectual capital and the like boil down to snobbery.  Where scholarship
is concerned, that may indeed be an aspect, but a more significant one is
the competition *among* socioeconomic peers.  Setting aside a few important
exceptions, in the main scholars don't write abstrusely in order to gloat
over the lower classes, but rather to get an edge over other scholars. 
Consequently an ambitious scholar must do something much trickier than write

gobbledygook: she must try to write just over the edge of her competitors' 
understanding, so that her peers recognize her as one of their own but just
a wee bit ahead of them intellectually.  (In the present context using the
feminine pronoun sounds a tad tendentious, but I decided that it's
worthwhile to observe that women are caught in this dynamic too.)  Snobs
don't view their "inferiors" as competitors; conversely, scholars can only
compete (in any real sense) with their peers.

This type of competition is what Par is referring to when he mentions
Bourdieu's analysis of "strategic positionings in a field of struggle," in a

paragraph I'll quote in full:

>          I think that we can find part of an explanation of the 
> fraudulent and conceited manner of writing in what Tobin suggests, and 
> what Bourdieu has analysed in terms of strategic positionings in a 
> field of struggle in which the use of highfalutin expression might 
> grant you a elevated place in the hierarchy, but such a practice is 
> not a guarantee for advancement.
> You'll also have to master the significant concepts, the central 
> problematics etc and also have access to the appropriate instances of 
> consecration (the right schools, cultural institutions, journals etc) 
> which also presupposes or is highly assisted by a high degree of 
> social capital (coming from the right family, knowing the central 
> persons in the social hierarchy).

Mastery of the key concepts etc are crucial parts of the competition among
scholars.  However, at least within the humanities and social sciences, the
competition can ultimately lead to the detriment of knowledge at least as
often as its advancement.  With that in mind I'd like to address two items
in what Par wrote, which pertain to the exceptions I mentioned above.  First

is participation in the field of competition.  Usually that field is defined

as academia, so it is striking how many of the most innovative thinkers were

not university faculty, at least during crucial stages of their work -- for
example, Marx, Darwin, Einstein (when he developed the special and general
theories of relativity), Freud, and of course Bhaskar.  In her introduction
to Walter Benjamin's "Illuminations," Hannah Arendt speaks of "the customary

academic suspicion of anything that is not guaranteed to be mediocre," and
in a similar vein a friend of mine explained to me that in order to succeed
in academia one had best be a middling scholar and one who didn't rock the
boat, and that I wasn't finding a tenure-track faculty position because I
crossed *both* lines.  Obviously these are exaggerations (one can readily
list brilliant and transformative thinkers who are/were university faculty,
e.g. Derrida, plenty of PhDs never got teaching positions because they do
crappy work), and I am not really casting aspersion on the majority of
academic scholars (revolutionary thinkers don't appear everyday, so most
scholars are engaged in the important and complex work of elaborating and
refining pre-existing theories), but there is a significant kernel of truth:

the field of academic struggle often controls and limits intellectual
exploration, and so someone who really is motivated by such exploration may
find themselves uninterested in the competitive game, unable to play it
well, or disqualified from even entering it.  So long as she can find some
other way to pay the rent, an independent scholar may find that not having
an academic position is intellectually liberating.  (I don't want to
romanticize the point: there are also huge practical hurdles, such as access

to research resources or even a library, social support, and intellectual
partnerships.  These barriers are decidedly *not* liberating.  So on
balance, few people really want to be independent scholars, and most of the
smart scholars accept the academic rat race as a necessary evil even as they

chafe against it.)

The argument over the clarity of Bhaskar's writing needs to be put into that

context.  I too fervently wish he were less recondite -- for pete's sake, he

should at least gloss more often!  There have even been debates on this list

about whether or not a particular word had a typo.  I consider the effort at

clarity a matter of social responsibility (much as Orwell does, Brad). 
Mervyn and I have fought over the issue ad nauseum, and his argument (more
or less) is that Bhaskar is opening new ground and consequently has to coin
words to fit innovative concepts ... and I have to say, at least to some
extent he has a point there.  In other words, although in most cases
highfalutin expression is a strategy for elevation in the scholarly
heirarchy, in RB's case that's not the main problem.  I do want to
underscore my "to some extent": for example, Marx, Darwin, and Freud were
able to build their theories without recourse to jargon, and even if one
can't follow Einstein's mathematics, his narrative is clear enough (I was
able to grasp his argument when I was 15).  (Perhaps I should mention that
much of Freud's theory is now known to be wrong -- although that news has
yet to reach some sociocultural theorists -- but that is beside the present
point.)  Still, I have to acknowledge that strongly as I wish Bhaskar's
writing were more often like PON's, he does have other fish to fry.

Thanks,

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus@xxxxxxxx
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce



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