JURGEN
HABERMAS
Habermas, last of the Frankfurt
School line, nemesis of the relativist postmodernists and
post-structuralists, and standard bearer of the Enlightenment, is a
staunch proponent of Hegelian
totalizing (or communitarian) societal values, sees postmodernity in negative terms, as an
abandonment of the Enlightenment project, and therefore a bad thing.
"For Habermas, indeed, postmodernism involves the explicit repudiation
of the modernist tradition ... and as such the expression of a new
social conservatism" (Jameson, Introduction to The Postmodern Condition). In this he is at odds with Lyotard,
who absolutely rejects such totalization. Meanwhile, Habermas's view
of Fordism
is more positive: he saw increases in education, health care
provisions, more leisure time, increased wealth of workers, all
continued the Enlightenment project -- it was rational and
beneficial.
Beyond this, Habermas's ideas concerned
the idea of the self (subject) and and its place in the world
(object). Selfhood can only emerge through an intersubjective language
community.
See also:
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STUART
HALL
![Stuart Hall]()
Cultural theorist, social
constructionist, academic and former leading light of the
Birmingham
School (he now works at the
Open Unversity in England). Hall deals with issues of hegemony, etc., in a post-Gramscian way. Hall broadly
follows the Institutional approach to language and culture, placing
language use within a framework of power, institutions, and systems of
politics and economics. This theory presents individuals "as
simultaneous makers and consumers of culture, participating in that
culture according to their place in economic and political structures.
This area emphasizes the role of institutions -- governments,
churches, states -- in making culture." (John Boylan, MA, 1992). Other
advocates include Raymond Williams, Gaye Tuchman, and Michel
Foucault. This is what also makes him fundamentally a social
constructionist.
Hall uses hegemony -- the willing acceptance of one social group's
dominance and control by another -- in terms of the more complex view
of social structure developed in recent years within the Gramscian
tradition, and articulated by theorists such as Hall and Laclau and
Mouffe.
Hall has also developed reception theory -- an approach to textual analysis
which allows for a measure of "negotiated" or "oppositional" readings
of the text by the audience. This means that audiences/readers don't
simply take in a TV show, newspaper, etc., dumbly, accepting the
textual meaning intended by the producer or editor. Instead, they
negotiate meaning in the media text, that is, they take in some
of the meaning supposedly embedded in the text, but they also infer
some of their own meaning into the text. Depending on their cultural
backgrounds, some people might accept most of the media text's
message, while others reject it almost entirely, preferring an
oppositional reading of the text.
To explain this further, Hall proposed
a model of encoding-decoding
of media discourses. In this the meaning of the text, which is located
somewhere between its producer and the reader, is framed
(or encoded) by the producer in a certain way, and the reader
decodes the text's message slightly differently, according to his/her
personal background, and the various different social situations and
frames of interpretation. See, e.g., Denis McQuail, Mass Communication Theory: an
Introduction.
See also:
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DONNA
HARAWAY
Prominent cultural theorist who uses
the metaphor
of the cyborg to discuss the
relationships of science, technology, and "socialist-feminism." Very
briefly (and there will be more of this to come) she holds that
hi-tech culture challenges and breaks down the old dualisms of Western
thinking in relation to each of us -- things like the mind/body split,
Self/Other, male/female, reality/appearance, truth/illusion, and so
on. We are no longer able to think of ourselves in these terms, or
even strictly speaking as biological entities. Instead, we have become
cyborgs, mixtures of person and machine, where the the
biological side and the mechanical/electrical side become so
inextricably entwined that they can't be split (sort of like the Borg
in Star Trek). Another fictional example of a cyborg is RoboCop, or
The terminator. (By contrast, Data in Star Tek the Next
Generation, or the replicant
Rachel in Blade
Runner, are
both androids.) For most of the movie she doesn't even realize she's
more machine than human. Anyway, for more on this see, e.g.
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The
Reinvention of Women.
According to Claudia Springer, "Among
the most carefully researched analyses of how scientific knowledge has
complemented both patriarchal and racist ideologies is Haraway's
history of primatology, Primate Visions.
Traditional primate studies, she shows, have revolved around
the binary terms of nature/culture and sex/gender, and under the guise
of objective science have expressed value judgments used to explain
human as well as animal behavior. Thus, "primatology has been used
to justify cultural constructions of gender by attempting to locate
their origins in nature and in biological sex" (Springer, 1996,
pp. 47-48). Springer concludes: "The feminist analysis of scientific
discourses is one aspect of a much larger cultural crisis over gender
and sexuality. Late twentieth-century Western culture is divided more
than ever before between those who reject and those who cling to the
patriarchal assumption of male superiority."
See also:
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DAVID
HARVEY
Harvey developed the notion of Flexible Accumulation -- a possible postmodern solution
to ugly capitalism. (See also his book, The Condition of
Postmodernity.
Flexible in terms of:
a)
labour processes (small amounts instead of mass production).
b)
labour market (move labour to the best markets internationally).
c)
products (change of products offends older companies).
d) patterns
of consumption (persuade people to buy products for new reasons; age
of marketing).
e) "greatly intensified rates of commercial,
technological, and organizational innovation.
David Harvey on
Postfordism:
"The relatively stable aesthetic of
Fordist modernism has given way to the ferment
instability and fleeting qualities of a postmodern aesthetic that celebrates
difference, ephemerality, spectacle, fashion and the commodification of cultural forms."
- David
Harvey
~~~~~~~~~~
![Georg Hegel]()
GEORG
HEGEL
German precursor of Marx,
who developed the Hegelian
dialectic: that every idea is made up of a thesis,
its antithesis, and its synthesis
(see below). Hegel's deterministic, anti-empiricist leanings are, at
root, more communitarian than libertarian in character; he saw history
as the history of human ideas. But Marx developed his dialectic to set
the economic framework as the base, with the hegemonic culture of the ruling classes as the
superstructure (see below).
While Hegel's ideas, and the ways they
have been presented to the modern world, stand on their own, they can
perhaps best be understood in relation to their later interpretations
by Karl Marx. The famous Hegelian
dialectic, the
Socratic-influenced principle that every idea contains internal
contradictions (the thesis and antithesis) that must struggle to
create a new idea (or synthesis), was later seized on by Marx.
However, Marx rejected the focus on Hegel's abstract Idea and
turned instead to dialectical materialism, based on now-familiar
notions of historical and economic determinism.
Hegel's belief in historical
determinism and the inability of individuals to break free from the
processes of history place him squarely at odds with libertarianism.
As one Canadian historian argues: "The 'historicist' version of
Hegel's theory (the version that greatly influenced Marx) led to the
view that people are creatures of the historical processes in which
their societies are immersed and lack, for the most part, the power to
break free." Hegel, however, was writing within the context of the
strong German desire to create a unified state -- a nationalistic
framework that emphasized above all else the building of a strong
national entity.
8/97
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MARTIN
HEIDEGGER
![]()
German
early-20th century philosopher whose work centers on the "problem of
Being," your basic ontological question. Just to give an indication of
how deep this problem seemed to Heidegger, he's best known for
suggesting that when we write the word Being out
we should always score it out as well (see above right). The word and
its superinscribed deletion should be left to stand because its use is
necessary, yet inadequate. We need the word to talk about what it
means to "be," yet we can't trust it to give us a proper
understanding, and there is no better word available. This prompts
some interesting questions about just how useful language is in
helping us understand the world -- questions later taken up by Derrida
and other post-structuralists.
See also:
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THOMAS
HOBBES
English 17th-century philosopher. At
the heart of Hobbes's thought is the contract theory of
the state -- the conception of individuals acting in their own
self-interest to build a powerful state. This state would control
individuals, by force if necessary, and prevent them from harming or
destroying one another. And individuals should, under these
circumstances, accept the powerful but benevolent state, since they
have more to gain from peaceful coexistence than from insisting on
liberty.
The main way in which Hobbes's social
contract differs from that of John
Locke is in the
role of the ruler. While Locke holds that the government is a party to
the contract and can be overthrown should it break its terms, Hobbes
holds government to be free from such narrow contractual obligations
with the people. The Hobbesian "contract" puts the onus on the people
to fall into line and accept the dictates of their chosen ruler, even
if that leads to authoritarianism.
Hobbes's Leviathan takes an essentially negative view
of human nature, and his theory of individuals' roles in society is
constructed accordingly. At the heart of Hobbes's theory is the
conception of individuals acting together in their own self-interest
to offset their otherwise destructive tendencies. Put simply,
individuals have more to gain than to lose from giving up their
freedom. "They desire peace; they have an aversion to war. They desire
security; they have an aversion to anarchy." (Altschull, 47). However,
in return for this security, the individual "must also submit his will
to the sovereign state" (Ibid.).
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MAX
HORKHEIMER
Critical theorist of the Frankfurt
school. He worked closely with Theodor
Adorno in the
1940s to produce a stinging critique of the capitalist culture
industry: see the Dialectic of
Enlightenment.
Horkheimer's specific
beliefs:
1) All the forces of production are
intertwined; a system.
2) Out of capitalism comes the concept of
the culture
industry, which itself grew out of capitalism - a mass culture
industry which is non-critical and debasing.
3) Adorno (being
negative) thought that the masses were systematically manipulated
and progressively unable to criticize their society effectively; the
culture industry is central.
4) To Adorno, the only people left
who can still critique Enlightenment ideas, capitalism and the
culture industry are the avant-gardes.
5) Imminent Critique
(Frankfurt School)
a) Contrasts the best concept of a thing
(e.g., capitalism) with its reality. b) This is a negative
dialectic; future reality cannot be better than its concept.
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DAVID
HUME
Scottish philosopher. Basically posited
that we cannot be sure of what exists in the world that except that
which we experience only through our own senses. Hume doubted the
reality of matter itself. If "reality" is nothing more than the sum of
our sensory experiences, how can we be certain
that there's any "real" set of corrseponding objects "outside" our
bodies? For all we know, each one of us could simply be a bodyless
brain in a tank someplace, being fed images and other sensory input by
some mad scientist. cf. Immanuel
Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason, a work which provided a
riposte to Hume's ideas.
Hume holds, among all the great
European philosophers, the position of "chief skeptic," but he is also
remembered as the supreme relativist. Hume rejected absolutes of any
kind, just as he rejected metaphysics and religion of any kind.
His value system was totally inductive, determined not by universal
principles but by individual cases growing out of general custom and
popular practice. In this way his epistemology mirrored the
inductive nature of the English common law that still lies at the
heart of American and Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, and which underpins
the broader structure of classical market capitalism.
In a broad sense, it is easy to see the
link between Hume and 20th century American society. His "show me"
skepticism, his absolute belief in empiricism over abstract ideas and
God-given knowledge, and his theory of cause-and-effect are all traits
that remain predominant in American society, law, government,
academia, and journalism today. They are also beliefs singled out for
modification or rejection by many subsequent European theorists, from
Kant
to Marx
and beyond.
See also:
CT. Author
Index