Lacking a coherent place to start, I
will dive into this entry with the help of an author that was not on the
required reading list. Gaston Bachelard connects quite well with this week’s
readings. He was mentioned overtly by Bourdieu last week, was a contemporary critic
of both Freud and James, and was an influence on the Frankfurt School (i.e. Horkheimer
and Adorno), Foucault (who Said draws from quite heavily), Derrida and
Althusser. His concept of the “epistemological break” is explicit in each of
these entries, apart from Freud. He states that “scientific progress always
reveals a break, or better perceptual breaks, between ordinary knowledge and
scientific knowledge” (Bachelard 1949: 270).
Affectively, he is challenging us to see through the doxa, and
understand that we are approaching our own inquiries with a pre-established
frame of reference, that in some cases, muddles our interpretations beyond
repair. He is careful, like Bourdieu, not to take a nihilistic jump, but says
rather that science is indeed useful for our understanding of the social and
natural world.
William James approached this in a
new way around the turn of the century. I can sympathize with James’ notion of
pragmatism, which is built on the implications of practice in any
epistemological realm. He does well in turning away “from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles,
closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins” (Kivisto 2008: 169). With
this method, we are then free to use
various theoretical tools to aid our understanding of the world. Like Nietzsche,
he mentions the Almighty and his control over Euclidean space. Yet, as
Nietzsche says “God is dead” (Kivisto 2008: 160), and thus so too is an a priori Euclidean understanding of
space if we implement a pragmatic approach. Bachelard also took this prospect
up with great diligence in his work on time-consciousness. Both show that by
undermining some of these assumptions we can make progress in scientific
understanding, among other things. Our new opinions proffer these
epistemological breaks in thought, and from there we can construct a new
concept of the world; with innovation and the openness of scientific
experimentation.
Yet,
where James lost me is when he asserts that “to a certain degree… everything
here is plastic” (Kivisto 2008: 171). Our construction of a knowledge base
becomes slippery and specious. Bachelard called this the “easy tolerance of the
Pragmatists” (Jones 1991: 49), and is unfortunately a rather pervasive way of
thinking; whether it be in the Thomas Theorem’s famous princess example or the
apparent belief system of the Tea Party to ignore events that “actually”
happened. In the right hands, this
method can benefit us greatly, but it can also be a crux for the lazy
scientist. But who does this right? Where do we start? Nietzsche forbade us from
starting on theistic grounds, Said undermines the West-centric perspective, and
Horkheimer and Adorno deem the tenets of the Enlightenment “totalitarian” as
well. It seems we need to go back to the hegemonic forces that shape those
frameworks and assumptions that we have in the first place, and as Bourdieu
said, take up a barrage of arms to better conceive of our social milieu.
Freud
offers some intriguing tools to help us interpret both psychological and
macro-social phenomena.[1]
Freud’s conception of drives is exemplar as an observation of closed systems
(more on this later), as are the heuristic applications of the id, ego, and
superego in clinical settings. I found his work on dreams intriguing, and,
according to this clinical psychologist, is an applicable tool used toward
understanding anxieties that are displaced in obsessive-compulsive tendencies
(e.g. like checking fire alarms). This attests to the section about the
repressed being manifested through the displacement of fear/anxiety in other
real world objects (e.g. in hoarders). I would even agree with Freud’s approach
to the oedipal complex, though only to a degree. I have my own reservations
about the libidinal aspect of his theory, preferring to conceive of Eros and Thanatos more broadly, as propulsionary factors of closed systems
in the physical world. It’s tough to say how much of this was implemented after
Freud’s theory became popular, but the application of the oedipal complex is
ubiquitous (see TLC’s Strange Sex Season
1, Episode 1 for an example of young men pursuing “cougars” in New York City).
The “O.C,” more generally taken to examine conflict between cross-sex
relationships with parents, has also been useful in dealing with friends and
family in the past. Unfortunately, the defense mechanisms he lays out are all
too real, especially when trying to suggest the prospect of change to those
unwilling to listen. Interestingly, Willer (in press) uncovered some of these
defense mechanisms experimentally in the case of the hyper-masculine.
However,
my main discontent with Freud’s
theory is his treatment of “instincts,” which is ultimately a lack of foresight
in human ontogeny and of neural systems in particular.[2]
This may not be pertinent to others (a necessary prerequisite to a tangent if
you’ve ever read one), but I feel the application of his theory is a principle
reason for the “nature vs. nurture” dichotomy and, consequently, the
misconceptions that much of the public has regarding biology, sex/gender, and
sexuality (Blumberg 2009; Foucault 1974). In other words, this, to me,
demonstrates his hegemony over biological and genetic knowledge, even to the
careful scientist without a background in those fields. In the article, he
confounds “instincts,” “at birth,” and “innate.” To say these three things with
the same intention is erroneous and has left scientists bickering for over a
hundred years. We as “social scientists” don’t seem to care that cells exist prior to birth, because there is no
behavior to observe and, thus, no “socialization.” For instance, Bergesen
(2004) is perpetually sighted in cultural sociology texts, attesting to the pervasive
imperialism that nativist-based evolutionary psychology, and best-selling
authors like Elizabeth Spelke and Steven Pinker have over our field and the
public at large. This happens even with suggestive evidence that they are the
same sloppy scientists we condemn for wearing disciplinary blinders (see Spencer
et al. 2009). Freud’s, and now our own, lack of understanding of how biological
processes unfold in any environment (which is
the social, provided there is a source of action (Latour 1997)), perpetuates
the idea that we become objects that are overly-determined by miniscule genetic
puppeteers. With this said, I fail to see how Freud’s conception of “innate
drives” turns into anything different than a shadowy determinism based on the
same mana, which he seemed so
profoundly opposed to. We can circumvent these problems if we pick from a
larger, denser “tree of knowledge” in order to better understand ontogeny and
phylogeny (Maturana and Varela 1981). I believe this is what Bourdieu meant by arming
ourselves with the weapons of a cross-disciplinary discourse to chat with our colleagues
in the natural sciences. This is assuming again that the fruit we pick fills us
with self-reflexivity, rather than vacuous presuppositions. Of course, I am likely preaching to the choir
here, since, for instance, biology is absolutely imperative in helping us
strengthen our understanding of sex/gender. This is one example of an ongoing
struggle that has been pervasive in science.
I
was captivated by Said’s piece on Orientalism, and how he spoke of the
Occidental framing the Orient. Sticking with science, I was brought back to the
History of Science and Technology of Islam in Istanbul. Having visited a couple
years ago, I remember how suspect I felt regarding many of the exhibits. I was
brainwashed by my own education in the American empire of science, and I didn’t
realize at the time how much innovation was stolen. This was especially
pertinent since I was living in Córdoba, Spain; one of the most permeable
centers of exchange between the “Occidental” and “Orient” up to la Reconquista. The heteronomy of the
Roman-Catholic church is still strong there today, as I remember reading that
three Muslims were arrested on charges of public disorder for praying in the
now-dubbed “Catedral” in the city’s center. To a degree, I wonder if I know
anything about the city now that its history seems so clearly Occidentalized to
me. In the end, I suppose this suggests caution on all of our parts. Just as
Freud’s “mana-tized” theory of instincts
eventually monetized the American fetishism of consumption (i.e. Century of the Self) and Nietzsche’s “will
to power” was strategically used to ignite the rise of struggling dictator in
the Weimar Republic (Shirer 1959), we must all be reminded that our work will
someday be seen as the hegemonic dogma of a generation pushing forth toward “progress,”
“truth,” and “enlightenment.”
Bachelard, G. 1949. Le Rationalisme Appliqué. Presses
Universitaires de France: Paris.
Bergesen,
A. J. 2004. “Durkheim’s Theory of Mental Categories: A Review of the Evidence.”
Annual Review of Sociology. 30:
395-408.
Blumberg,
M. 2009. Freaks of Nature. Oxford
University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre.
1991. “On the Possibility of a Field of World Sociology.” Pp. 373-386 in
Social Theory for a Changing Society, edited by Pierre Bourdieu and James
Coleman.
Foucault, P. 1978. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction. Random House:
New York, NY.
Horkheimer, Max & Theodor Adorno.
1944.
Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press.
Jones,
M. 1991. Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist. University of Wisconsin Press.
Kivisto, Peter (ed.) 2008. Social Theory:
Roots and Branches, Third Edition: Oxford.
Maturana, H.R. &
Varela, F.J. 1987. The Tree
of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Shambhala: Boston,
MA.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. Vintage Books.
Shirer, W.L. 1959. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany.
Touchstone Publishing.
Spencer, John
P., Mark S. Blumberg, Bob McMurray, Scott R.
Robinson, Larissa K.
Samuelson, and J. Bruce Tomblin. 2009. “Short arms and talking eggs: Why we should no longer abide the nativist-empiricist
debate.” Child Dev Perspect. August 1; 3 (2): 79–87.
Willer, Robb, Christabel Rogalin, Bridget
Conlon, and Michael T. Wojnowicz. 2013. "Overdoing Gender: A Test of the
Masculine Overcompensation Thesis." American Journal of Sociology. In press.
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