Finally, the leisure to return to this conversation! You and Alexei both wrote wonderful comments; I think I’ll respond to Alexei’s comment in the post following, where you foregrounded it.

Since I think I understand you much better now, this will mostly be a sort of mirror to what you’ve written, with some pointers towards where future conversations could go.

First of all, I recognize the distinction between the working out of a system, and the dissemination of that system. For reasons I’ll explain in my response to Alexei, I think the distinction is a conditional one, yet in general there is a kind of spacing here that allows my thinking about dissemination, and yours about reflexivity, to be developing in parallel rather than at odds. It makes perfect sense to say that a theory has to find its way before it can account for itself, and there is a funny sort of analogy here to the whole process of literary production, from the (usually) mystical origins of its imaginative structure, all the way to the accumulated criticism done later by others.

In terms of capitalism’s historical uniqueness, I do see how the globalism and systematicity of the present world market differs from the (by comparison) highly localized kingdoms and territories of the feudal world. My only question is how you would want to theorize the real phenomenon of uneven development. Somewhere, I think in Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves, I was just reading about a tribe in Brazil that, as late as the 1960s, would not have been able to supply a definition for “Brazil.”

I have no difficulty identifying your version of, and interest in, political critique with the work Marx sets out to do in Capital and the other texts. Really, what surprises me is the way in which returning to Marx, and ranging yourself with Hegel’s beautiful defense of the naive beginning, is also a move away from the pessimism of the Frankfurt school, who seemed to have felt themselves beyond Marx since, lost though they were, they were no longer capable of sharing his revolutionary hopes.

I’ve been reading Dennett together with Godel, Escher, Bach, and perhaps for that reason I’m struck by the way that your model of capitalism resembles both models of life, and recursive, self-duplicating systems more generally. Into some inchoate space, a special kind of matter (DNA) appears that has the capacity over time to duplicate itself and colonize the field while preserving its same structure. I wonder what you make of this homology, and what you make of the overlaps with thinking about ecosystems and homeostasis. It seems to me that while something like Weber’s “iron cage” suggests stasis, many radically-informed models of capitalism describe it as incapable of becoming truly stable, unlike a living ecosystem.

while I too share your concern for the practicality of theory or philosophy, and I agree with you hat there is no such thing as ‘neutral theorizing.’ But I’m not at all sure I would agree with either of your metaphors. Like you, I don’t buy the idea that theory is mere observation. Nor, however do i think that there is an incisive — and decisive — moment, which, if missed, signals the failure to actualize whatever possibility it uncovered. Even if one picks the lock to an other’s home, bt takes nothing, and the other installs a new deadbolt, one still has the tools — and the skill — to pick it again, not to mention the knowledge of where the valuables are kept. As I see the matter, only fashion and reactionary politics can be “revolutionary”; Radical change, I think, is slow in coming.

So, if I might proffer my own analogy, I tend to think that philosophy/theory is much more like (but not identical to) Schrödinger’s box in that it is always already a world constituting and transforming intervention — although its effects are not as immediate or as direct as perhaps we would like them to be. It’s objects are social kinds, and hence produced by social practices, which can be changed by different modes of thinking. To pick up the example you used here, we need only think about the number of people who smoke today, compared to the number of folks who smoked in the first half of the 20th Century. And, while it may be true that I can come to recognize that I am addicted to cigarettes, and that smoking is killing me (however slowly), but nevertheless continue to smoke — and enjoy it — I may also affirm the various anti-smoking (by-)laws that prohibit smoking in public places, attempt to make sure minors cannot begin to smoke, etc. I can change the way we think about smoking. And, with a little luck smoking will be passé, a few generations down the road, . It may not help me, but it nevertheless changes the complexion of our social spheres.

Similarly, a theorist pursues a political interest by thinking and writing about it (I realize this probably sounds naive, but please bear with me). He disseminates his mode of thought by talking, by teaching, and by publishing, though not necessarily to bring about any immediate change, but rather to initiate its possibility (think here of Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex). That is to say, a theorist creates politically important issues by making them public.

Now, perhaps I’m too patient, but I’m sceptical of every brand of millinerian theory, any Leninist avant-guardism (like Zizek’s), which promises that the revolution is (or could be) imminent, or that Utopia must come here and now. I’m sceptical of quick fixes, since they tend to come in moments of crisis, of implacable guilt, and they only lead to the continuation of crisis. At the moment, I actually think that we need more thinking, and less (mindless, instinctual, or responsive) action. We need to understand what it means to act politically, what a political action entails, whom it affects, and what it requires. And all this is this is a far cry from picking a lock, and stealing the establishment’s stereo for the good of the folks on the street.

Joe – just very quickly: I absolutely agree with the need to thematise the issues you’re describing – in my very first response to you, in the post above, there’s a link off to a post on “sociology and psychology” (apologies – rushing – but the link is in the original post up top), which raised the need to combine a social theory of the sort that I’m trying to unfold, with a very different kind of theoretical reflection on what Alexei is calling “dissemination” and on what I think touches on some of the issues you’re trying to capture. The linked post is an early one, and probably didn’t express this distinction clearly, but should at least give some indication that I’m sympathetic to what you’re saying – but am trying to make a particular distinction with the concept of “theoretical reflexivity” that allows me to make certain conceptual distinctions between kinds of theory and kinds of theoretical objects.

The strategic intention of the distinctions I’m trying to make may not be clear – I can try to express this better when I have more time – but there’s nothing in what I’m trying to do that I see as at all hostile to the sorts of things you’d like to see done. It’s just that the concept of “theoretical reflexivity” won’t really clarify what I think about the issue of dissemination, because it’s not really what this particular concept is trying to “pick out”. I can understand why this is frustrating – and I do think the issues you’re raising are important. I just can’t really answer your questions with reference to this concept, because this isn’t the level at which the concept is operating in a direct sense (although it does carry some implications for the questions you’re asking, but these are mediated and more on the level of boundary conditions).

If you’ll forgive an extremely random stab at some of the issues you raised in your first recent comment: on a couple of occasions, you try to draw a contrast between what I’m doing and “the critique of political economy”. The critique of political economy, though – if by this you mean Marx’s work in Capital – is actually my source and model for the concept of theoretical reflexivity: this term is intended to make explicit something Marx is doing in Capital, in a situation in which Marx offers very few metatheoretical clarifications about the strategy of his analysis.

Which brings us to your next point: you comment – quite correctly – that I’m not being reflexive (in my sense or any other) in this discussion: this is absolutely correct. To be reflexive in the sense in which I intend the term would require a fully unfolded theory. I’m not ready to do that, and so the discussion at this point really is just at the level of metatheory: I’m going through a process of trying to understand how a particular kind of critical theory needs to “work” – developing some programmatic descriptions of what it needs to do, and why, and how its theoretical moves differ, if they differ, from other common forms of theory. At this stage, though, I haven’t actually shown that I can meet any of the metatheoretical standards I’m outlining – I try to be quite explicit about this, and am under no illusions about the preliminary character of my analysis.

Aside from the fact that my own theoretical work is very much in-process, there’s an intrinsic problem with this kind of theory – Hegel expresses it well at the beginning of Phenomenology (unfortunately I don’t have time to find the quote – apologies), where he talks about how “science” can’t operate dogmatically – that it has to unfold its own premises (including premises like “immanence”, “materialism”, or “reflexivity”) immanently in the unfolding of its own analysis. Hegel comments that one side effect of this is that, at the beginning of the analysis, what I’m calling a “reflexive” theory will always look just as dogmatic as what it’s criticising – it will look as though it is starting from “ungrounded grounds” or first principles, and therefore the nature of its critique of other forms of theory will seem fairly opaque. As the analysis unfolds, the theory has to move beyond this, through its immanent analysis, to demonstrate how the theory is the theory of its object – that the possibility (Hegel would probably say the “necessity”) for the theory was implicit in the object all along.

I would argue (and I’m by no means the only person who argues this) that Marx is using this theoretical structure in Capital: that the initial categories (commodity, use value, exchange value, etc.) look dogmatic to begin with – they look like definitions that Marx is positing, from which he will then deduce other things. Or they look like his description of “bourgeois ideology” – illusory abstractions that he then refutes with reference to the “reality” of production.

I think the textual strategy of Capital is much more complex: that Marx explicitly says that what he is trying to grasp exists neither in circulation nor in production – although it is expressed by both. I therefore take his text as an immanently voiced presentation of a reflexive theory of capitalism, which unfolds its key theoretical categories by showing how these forms of thought and their associated practices are generated as moments within the social form being criticised. This is the kind of theory I am trying to do.

I want to get to your questions about totality, and also your concluding questions about capitalism, but I simply don’t have the time today – I’ll have to come back to these and other issues later – apologies again – this is very frustrating for me, as I’d like to offer a more productive response… :-) What I can say is that I suspect I’m using “totality” in a slightly different sense: saying that something is a “totality” means something a bit different from saying that a social context generates certain patterns that can be generalised. I clearly believe there are certain systematic tendencies – otherwise I don’t think we could speak of critical theory as a determinate negation (apologies for tossing another technical term – rushing badly…). But I distinguish this from claims about a social totality. I also don’t reject the notion of a totality in any dogmatic way, although, as I mentioned in the paragraph on Hegel above, I understand that it might sound this way. Notions of totality and necessity have been very common ways of understanding theoretical reflexivity, and my position is that these concepts may not be necessary to reflexivity.

In terms of capitalism’s historical distinctiveness: I won’t have time to defend this position here but, yes, I do think capitalism is distinctive. I think it’s a global social relation that is not identical with any specific concrete institutional incarnation, but defined in terms of a systematic and theorisable pattern of historical transformation – to me, this qualifies as historically unique. And I think that, unless we can grasp this uniqueness theoretically, it’s very difficult to understand certain very basic things about our social context – including the problem of the failure of certain large-scale utopian projects.

In terms of whether feudalism also had some sort of internal historical dynamic: personally, I’m extraordinarily sceptical – and this scepticism isn’t random: this is the specific issue I studied for years, in preparation for my current work. There’s no reason, of course, for you to trust my personal assertions about what I think of medieval history, but my scepticism stands on strong sociological ground: both Weber and Marx (by Capital) treat capitalism as something that emerged contingently. They suggest that, from our current standpoint, we can certainly look back and reconstruct what historical shifts were necessary in order to lead to us; these historical shifts, though, would not have been visible as such in their own time. Capitalism, however, is thematised differently by both authors: as a social form that has an immanent developmental dynamic whose directionality can be theorised in advance (whether we agree with how they tried to do this is another matter). The narrative of capitalism for both authors is therefore in the form of a story of “the contingent creation of necessity”, and both distinguish the kind of necessity they treat as characteristic of capitalism, from the reconstructive logic with which they explain the origins of capitalism out of feudalism – only capitalism is thematised as an “iron cage” or as a dark “Geist”.

We don’t have to accept these narratives, of course – but I certainly wouldn’t casually suggest that it’s common to speak as though all forms of human community possess some kind of intrinsic developmental dynamic.

And very very quickly, in terms of the “privileged status” of the theory of capitalism: this isn’t a type of game I’m playing. I’m not telling people not to engage in other forms of theory, or that other kinds of analysis are unimportant. It is an explicit dimension of my project to delimit more clearly the sorts of things a reflexive theory of capitalism can grasp, and the sorts of things that remain contingent from within that specific sort of theory. I do tend to think that theories need to be adequate to their objects, and I think that capitalism as an object has certain peculiar characteristics that make a certain kind of theory possible (and requisite) – but this means that the metatheoretical comments I’m making are not intended to be some kind of manual for “how to theorise”: the object dictates its appropriate mode of theorisation. This is why I emphasise that my metatheoretical statements about reflexive theory are also and intrinsically claims about my object: they might not be relevant to other kinds of theoretical work.

Hugely sorry for writing like this – I’ll probably introduce all manner of new confusions, writing in a rush… Apologies if this just creates new messes for everyone…

And Alexei: good to see you back, and hope you’re enjoying your renewed appreciation of Kafka ;-P

Like rob, you’ve done an excellent job helping to distinguish my position from NP’s; I only mourn the fact that once again I end up tilting at strawmen, rather than, as I would prefer, building up my understanding of NP’s project.

Your distinction between mode and dissemination is crucial to a larger discussion about what theory does, and what it means for a theorist to pursue a politically important interest. Put simply, how can a theorist be interested in emancipatory potentials that only reveal themselves via a certain kind of critique, unless he or she is simultaneously concerned with the dissemination of that theory in the name of actual emancipation?

The metaphor here is not that of a telescope, which allows us to see things (e.g. Saturn’s rings) that we are not modifying in the process. A telescope on Earth is outside of the semi-closed system that is “Saturn and its rings.” What we do with the knowledge we gain is a separate question.

Instead, the metaphor is that of the lockpick. If we use a lockpick to open a door, we simultaneously learn what is inside and gain access to that thing. We affect the state of the room itself: even if we do nothing, the proprietors will return, see that the lock has been tampered with, and install a new deadbolt.

In other words, unless we entertain the idea that theory is so irrelevant to the social field that is really is like looking through a telescope at Saturn, we have to assume that theory cannot be neutral, that it is implicated in the very fissure-points it seeks to analyze, and therefore that its mode and its dissemination are one.

As I was reading through Joseph Kugelmass’ response, and the comments here, it occurred to me that there are, perhaps, two separate concerns in play, which I don’t think I’ve seen separated. On the one hand, there’s your concern for a particular mode of theorising, and then there’s Joseph’s concern for the dissemination of such a mode of thought among what one used to call the masses. I tend to think of these two issue as being distinct. That is, whether a theory can be reflexive seems to be utterly distinct from the question concerning whether the emancipatory potentials a reflexive theory uncovers can be conveyed (without distortion) to those who would carry them out.

I also think that the difference between your position, NP, and the one I take Joseph to be articulating (my apologies, Joseph, if I’ve misunderstood) amounts to a different conception of theorising: NP seems to me to be articulating a speculative account of society (i.e. she appears to be interested in a particular form of the ‘identity of what is non-identical:’ the emancipatory potentials of a given social organisation and the preexisting, rational conditions which re-affirm what currently exists as society. Joseph, on the other hand, appears to be attacking the limits of reflection — “they know what they do, but do it anyway” — as a rationalizing force, which carries the potential for emancipation. If I’m right about this, then Joseph’s criticism is an excellent critique of various Kantian paradigms for social theory, but it is not a position that NP holds.

I think that’s it for now. Cheers

Once again, the oddities of my summer schedule have fragmented my voice in this conversation, something I truly regret since you’ve responded so fully and thoughtfully. Please accept my apologies for being held up until now.

Since both you and rob have suggested that I’m misreading your use of the term “self-reflexive,” in looking at your new comment I tried to suspend my own assumptions in order to see more clearly how you meant the term. I want to highlight two passages in particular.

First:

Reflexive theory is actually making much stronger and more specific claims than other forms of critical theory. Reflexive theory shares with many other forms of critical theory the notions that no society is a fully enclosed or self-identical totality, and that transformation would use whatever historical materials are ready to hand, but the claims of reflexive theory are actually much more specific than this (and therefore much more questionable, much more open to challenge). Reflexive theory claims that the social field it is analysing systematically generates specific kinds of emancipatory potentials – including particular forms of perception and thought, habits of practice, material resources, etc. – that can be theorised. Reflexive theory is therefore not simply positing that a break or rupture within the social is always possible (although it wouldn’t deny this): it is claiming to be able to say something about the kind of break or rupture – about the sorts of conflicts that are likely to emerge – about the terms in which dissatisfaction is likely to be expressed, etc.

Second:

I just don’t see any particular evidence of the sort of systematic generation of potentials for particular kinds of transformation that could have been theorised from within that social field (well, more accurately, I don’t like applying the term “social field” to something like “feudalism”, which I think is a retrospective category of convenience that we use to demarcate a fairly diverse set of social environments or varying levels of cohesion and interrelatedness, but I’m not trying to go into this level of detail here…). So a reflexive theory would be appropriate only to a very specific kind of social “object” – an object that is not only non-identical or internally contradictory or subject to rupture, but an object that is internally contradictory in a peculiarly systematic way.

Starting with the first quote, it’s not entirely clear to me how this kind of “reflexivity” differs from the rest of critical practice. The critique of political economy predicts breaks or ruptures within the existing system, and demonstrates how those breaks or ruptures contain emancipatory potentials. What this kind of theory is not yet doing, at least not in this paragraph, is recursing: that is, investigating its own groundedness in the existing system, and justifying itself as emancipatory rather than complicit. After all, if you are going to tell people that the worlds in which they live are likely to suffer breaks and ruptures, and that these breaks and ruptures will ultimately emancipate them rather than merely leading to entropy and chaos, you have to have some way of proving that these are not false hopes, either the kind of false hopes that have historically led to “uplift” movements and waiting for the rupture to manifest itself, or the kind that lead after a prolonged power struggle to anarchy (inciting the rupture). So perhaps the theory should be recursive, but so long as it is not, I am hard pressed to see what makes it specifically reflexive rather than merely critically engaged with problems of immanence.

There are many kinds of social justice movements that are not theorized recursively; for example, efforts to raise the minimum wage or redress hunger on the local level usually do not have a sophisticated theoretical account of their own origins and legitimate radicality. In my opinion they do not need one. Nonetheless, the very existence of practical problems like hunger, and the inseparability of “emancipation” from these practical concerns, raises questions about whether immanence should be, as it were, “fenced in” by a particular version of the political economy, what Foucault might call a particular episteme. In other words, if hunger has always been a problem and has always found saints enough to oppose it, then the problem of universal sustenance may be immanent to the human condition and not just immanent to the unusually systematic universe of capitalism. More on this in a moment, when I come to the second quotation.

Before I do, I am compelled to ask how reflexive theory justifies the assumption that ruptures or breaks are untotalizable. I’ve worked as a housekeeper, a budget analyst, a teacher, and a librarian, to give a very incomplete list, and in each case there was an undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the workplace, one which was expressed in predictable ways: complaints, turnover, weekend recreation (for some unhappy individuals, substance abuse), occasional institutional reforms, and so on. Both inside and outside the workplace, dissatisfaction was expected and channelized in numerous ways — by employers looking to appear sympathetic, by advertisers looking to sell products, and so on. One response to poverty is the creation of a welfare-state safety net; another is the establishment of impregnable gated communities. Within a capitalist system that is arguably founded on the drama of “unleashing” desire and creating ruptures (e.g. through innovation), how can anyone be sure what within the system is as vulnerable or unrealized as it appears?

Turning now to the second quote, I have to raise a question about the feasibility of granting capitalism exceptional status as an object of critique. It would be better for theory if capitalism was exceptional in this way — different from feudalism, and different from other social formations — because then the critique of capitalism would also be exceptional, and so capable of actually being emancipatory in a way that might otherwise seem unlikely. My response is threefold:

(1) Capitalism is not a unified field; capitalism in Nairobi or Beijing does not work the same way that it does in San Antonio or Havana. Land ownership, hierarchies of title and power, and the nature of peasant populations varied under feudalism; worker status, conventions of ownership, obsolescence, and retention, management of human resources, and the presence or absence of intentionality and “planning” are but a few of the conditions that vary from one state and site to the next.

(2) Change did emerge systematically under feudalism, particularly through the much-discussed phenemonon of the rise of mercantilism and the merchant class.

(3) Critical theory perhaps requires capitalism to be exceptional if it wishes to be transformative and meanwhile to remain a purely “negative” dialectics, but to the extent that it aligns itself with emancipatory traditions, it assumes positive content by becoming an inheritor of universalism, a project that long pre-dates the specific advent of capitalism and that can invert the hierarchy of primacy by making capitalism a failed or illusory universalism, rather than being the death that capitalism grows for itself.

You should be able to post links (people should let me know if this isn’t working), by using the standard html code:

(Note that the rel=”nofollow” bit is automatically added by WordPress – you don’t have to type that – I just can’t stop it from printing out, even between xmp tags… ;-P)

The spam filter will sometimes hold posts with multiple links – if this happens, just email me and I’ll dig out the post.

I’ll take a look at your site when I have the chance.

rob – so does this mean that confusing people with idiosyncratic terms is all I need to do for world fame – ’cause, if so…. ;-P

I would appreciate any criticism on my most recent post on the matter (click IndieFaith above; my attempts at creating links in comment boxes always seem to fail). I hope to catch more up to speed on your overall project. All the best.