There’s a kind of conceptual ball-juggling act required when writing

Tusar N. Mohapatra wrote: In this interesting conversation, as a non-specialist I noticed that certain words like, immanence, self-reflexivity, normativity etc. have been subjected to rigorous scrutiny, but similar care have not been applied while using the words such as, social, historical , or culture. In the absence of an overall mapping the context travels back and forth between the mundane and the sublime. This tantamount to serious methodological lacunae, which I wonder, how goes unnoticed. Or, may be it is a deliberate ploy to allow the discourse continue and philosophy flourish. Tuesday, 24/04/2007 at 7:27 pm Permalink

N Pepperell wrote: LOL! Yes, I suspect it would look a bit weird - particularly coming into this discussion at this point. I actually have, in other contexts, done work on the emergence of the concept of the “social”, “culture”, etc. - even in the original post here, I was nodding at this by gesturing at the notion of a historicisation of history.

There’s a kind of conceptual ball-juggling act required when writing on this stuff, from the sort of perspective I’ve been using here - you have to balance the need, intrinsic to the framework itself, to problematise and reconceptualise foundational concepts, against the need to hold enough things constant within a specific discussion that you can try to communicate other things more clearly.

At the same time, even if the specific terms “social”, “cultural”, or “historical” are not being pulled apart in detail, the discussion above actually does touch on these concepts - not to speak for Sinthome, but I suspect part of what is worrying him in how I’ve written above is precisely what he takes to be the vision of social, cultural or historical he is concerned that my approach might require - this is part of what’s at stake when he suggests that my approach sounds like it believes immanence must be immanent to something else. I’m then contesting whether that is necessarily the case - awkwardly, by trying to talk about the way in which immanence might come to be instantiated in different ways. Etc.

So, in a sense, the questions you’re asking actually are there in the discussion - it’s just that, in this particular instance, we’re articulating the debate in relation to concepts of immanence, self-reflexivity and the like. In another context, we might well - and probably have well - gotten at a similar constellation of issues using different terms. Certainly there would have been a period - when I spent more time talking to sociologists and historians than I did to philosophers - when I would have spent a lot of time trying to tease out the implications of how terms like “social”, “cultural” and “historical” are deployed. Tuesday, 24/04/2007 at 8:29 pm Permalink