[PEN-L:1852] Re: the space of freedom? <v04011701b29213014b4d@[166.84.250.86]> <3.0.6.32.19981207215506.0080fe60@mailbox.swipnet.se> <v04011702b28eeaceeed4@[166.84.250.86]> <l03130303b28e13b873e4@[130.244.215.50]> <366759A9.2CAF3385@netlink.com.au> <l03130309b28af9986369@[137.92.41.119]> <36642299.7BFCBF8D@netlink.com.au> <366378F2.E95DAE82@netlink.com.au> <s662a8c7.085@mail.ci.detroit.mi.us> <l03130304b2897483d770@[130.244.185.53]> <l0313030db28bd1df3998@[137.92.41.119]> <l03130300b28c708d5876@[130.244.204.95]> <l0313030bb2941c495422@[137.92.41.119]> <l03130306b2994f79218b@[137.92.41.119]> <l03130310b29ed3aa3f74@[137.92.41.119]> <l0313030bb2a37cf3afd0@[137.92.41.119]>

[rc&am <rcollins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rob Schaap wrote:

> I still don't get it.  Am I necessarily a liberal because I am a humanist?

well, yes, but a progressive or critical one, which as i said, is a step up from
rorty.

> And can't freedom-from-exchange-relation be imagined from inside that
> relation?

yes. i thought this was my point: that a critiique of capitalism is generated by
the contradictory character of capital itself.  critique does not come from some
point outside.  i guess this is why i was suggesting there may be problems with
trying to see the precondition of freedom as a condition of externality.

> And what is that would be free, anyway, if not the human
> subject?  Or must we throw out 'freedom', do you think?

i wuldn't throw the notion of freedom out, tho i would rethink it as something that
is internal and contradictory - that necessary contradiction - if you will - are
the condition of freedom.  is this gettng a bit hegelian? probably, since to talk
about freedom in an abstract way always conjures up spirits, doesn't it?


>>
>
>> I go a step
>
> further, of course, in claiming that we can know some things about being
> human.

like what exactly?  go on show us your list of what you know to be essentially
human.

> We must critique universalist claims, but I have never seen it done without
> the deployment of implicit universalist claims (eg. 'will to power' in
> Nietzsche and Foucault or a priori 'differance' in Derrida and Lyotard -
> and whatever 'discourse' and 'power' are in whatever hands they are being
> shaped).

sure, i agree which is why these folk don't quite come up to scratch for me.  but
why this should bother you...  doesn't this tho kinda prove my point: that the
particular, the relative, always appears to haunt even the most well-intentioned of
critics against universalism, who criticise it for the particularity that
universalisms attemtp to (well) universalise?    doesn't then critique ('freedom')
move by being such an immanent critique?  isn't this the only way of avoiding the
conceit of transcendance that is is implie dby humanism?  don't you halt critique
the very moment you claim there are indeed transcendant or essential attributes?
this is why i think, when all is said and done, that humanism (especially in a
battle with any critique of humanism) is an obstacle to freedom/critique, not a
condition of it.

> I still reckon the most modest of human universals (Habermas on
> communicative rationality; Chomsky on linguistic structure; Kant's
> categorical imperative; Marx's creative social being) afford us both
> rhetorical defence and critical space - such premises seem quite up to
> negating the whole legitimacy of our order, to my mind..

yep, and i would not belittle the importance of the rhetorical, this is pretty much
what philosophy and politics are.  but i reckon chomsky gets into some kind of
biologism with his linguistics, doesn't he, which is the line he draws against
change.  kant situates his imperatives as rooted in nature, and naturalises
distinctions between men and women, for instance, as the line against change.  marx
i reckon has the most to offer, since the notion of creation (whilst having
elements of the deistic, which he recognises and criticises in things like the
theses on feuerbach) doesn't predetermine the line of 'development' or set into
place limits for change or for critique, and btw, i don't reckon marx sees labour
as the source of all value, so he does not strike me as a subjectivist.

rob, i reckon on most things we'd be on the same side of the barricades.  the
difference here i think comes down to whether you see the space of critique as
internal ort external to the given.  which of course, relates to whether or not you
see the given as contradictory.  rorty for eg doesn't which is why his
anti-universalism is just so much fodder for the easily-impressed anglophone
poseur-deconstructionists (gee, is that going to get me into trouble?).  so, given
this, i reckon it's time marxists stopped thinking the debate was one between pomos
and marxists, and started thinking a bit more seriously about what the stakes
really are here.

i'm going offline for a couple of weeks or so, or at least until i'm back from hols
and have finished a couple of articles that i should have already done by now.

best,

angela