[PEN-L:2701] Casting out Subjects

[Terrence Mc Donough <TERRENCE.MCDONOUGH@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From the Irish Times.

A new rite for exorcism is to be introduced by the Catholic Church.
.... Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez explained how demonic
possession may be determined.  Such a person may be "speaking with a
great number of words from unknown languages, or understanding them,
making known things either distant or hidden,  showing strength
beyond one's situation, together with vehement aversion towards God,
Our Lady, the Cross and holy pictures."

Perhaps a spot of exorcism is all the pomotistas need.  (Mike L and
Doug H. take note of the bit about understanding them.)

But seriously folks...

The stuff I have read here from Judith B. doesn't seem to go beyond
people's behavior is structured, but they also have agency, which
only restates the structure agency problem.  Marx solved this problem
eons ago with the stricture that men make history but they do not do
so under conditions of their own choosing.   What the old man is
getting at here is that a theory of history (social change) is a
theory of the conditions within which action is undertaken, rather
than a theory of the exercise of free will (agency being a less
embarassing term for free will).  Marx argued the dynamic force in
history is class strugge thus transcending completely the structure
agency problem.  How certain individuals come to play certain roles
in the class struggle, revolutionary, reactionary, reformer,
quisling, college professor, etc. is an interesting question at the
boundaries of a theory of history and psychology, but it is not
central to an understanding of historical dynamics and therefor not
central to an understanding of progressive social change.

I remember when the pomos thought the subject was decentered rather
than central,  and thought then that with the pomo fracturing of
collective identities (Mike L's point) it was only a matter of time
before the individual re-emerged as the only really  indivisible
social unit.  With the foregrounding of the structure agency question
this seems to have happened.  It ill behooves Marxists to get too
wrapped up in a question which has long been solved from a social
scientific perspective, however interesting it may remain for
psychology.

Terry McDonough