Comments on: … is commonwealth? http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/ A working notebook Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:01:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1-alpha by: Nate http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2611 Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:06:24 +0100 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2611 hi Eli, Yeah I'm here, I'm heading out of town on the 2nd or 3rd of July. Do you still have my phone number? Give me a call. If not, Joe F has it. Looking forward to seeing you. take care, Nate ps- on sameness and difference, I read a good essay on this once but I forget by whom. The basic point was that these are relational and relative categories. Same-ish, different-ish, or according to some observer based on some set of criteria. There's a lot on this in Andrew Bowie's excellent book on Schelling (I think Bowie in that book may come down on the side of the identity of identity and difference, but it's quite nuanced), Peter Dews also has some smart things to say on this. From the relatively little I've read of both german idealism/early romanticism and of french poststructural-ish stuff I get the sense that a lot debates have been had many times, a lot of theoretical reinvention of the wheel. hi Eli,
Yeah I’m here, I’m heading out of town on the 2nd or 3rd of July. Do you still have my phone number? Give me a call. If not, Joe F has it. Looking forward to seeing you.
take care,
Nate
ps- on sameness and difference, I read a good essay on this once but I forget by whom. The basic point was that these are relational and relative categories. Same-ish, different-ish, or according to some observer based on some set of criteria. There’s a lot on this in Andrew Bowie’s excellent book on Schelling (I think Bowie in that book may come down on the side of the identity of identity and difference, but it’s quite nuanced), Peter Dews also has some smart things to say on this. From the relatively little I’ve read of both german idealism/early romanticism and of french poststructural-ish stuff I get the sense that a lot debates have been had many times, a lot of theoretical reinvention of the wheel.

]]> by: Eli http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2610 Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:30:23 +0100 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2610 Minor comment on wildlyparenthetical's comment... we don't have to make an either/or choice between sameness and difference as the basis for community (or any other social formation). More dialectically, we might claim that difference and sameness are co-constitutive (and accuse post-structuralists of indulging in that binaristic logic that they liked to accuse others of doing...). I gather that poststructuralists were generally interested in rejecting dialectical philosophy (Foucault makes some scathing remarks about it at one point, something about a dead hegelian skeleton) - but I think we can chalk that up to their historical moment, coming after a flood of 20th-century French Hegelians... anyway, are you around in minneapolis the next couple days? i'm visiting again! Minor comment on wildlyparenthetical’s comment… we don’t have to make an either/or choice between sameness and difference as the basis for community (or any other social formation). More dialectically, we might claim that difference and sameness are co-constitutive (and accuse post-structuralists of indulging in that binaristic logic that they liked to accuse others of doing…). I gather that poststructuralists were generally interested in rejecting dialectical philosophy (Foucault makes some scathing remarks about it at one point, something about a dead hegelian skeleton) - but I think we can chalk that up to their historical moment, coming after a flood of 20th-century French Hegelians…

anyway, are you around in minneapolis the next couple days? i’m visiting again!

]]> by: Nate http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2607 Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:35:15 +0100 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2607 Thanks y'all. Chuckie - "In general, I prefer pragmatics to semantics as the basic orientation to reflection on word meanings." Fully agreed, but I do find the look it up in a dictionary and start from a perhaps static and ahistorical meaning kind of thing a helpful well to set wheels turning in my head, and as useful thing to tilt against when appealing to variations in the uses of a term. take care, Nate Thanks y’all. Chuckie - “In general, I prefer pragmatics to semantics as the basic orientation to reflection on word meanings.”

Fully agreed, but I do find the look it up in a dictionary and start from a perhaps static and ahistorical meaning kind of thing a helpful well to set wheels turning in my head, and as useful thing to tilt against when appealing to variations in the uses of a term.

take care,
Nate

]]> by: Chuckie K http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2606 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:46:22 +0100 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2606 In German Gemeinwohl. Starting off largely as an early modern political notion. The public good. As in the definitions. But entailing the feature absent from the OED of the obligation of the king/emperor to secure the conditions of the Gemeinwohl for the 'commons,' the not noble vast majority of the population. Thus actual 'meaning' of the term as a standard for judging the performance of the ruler in polemics and mobilizing a democratic pressure (among others) to regulate that performance. In general, I prefer pragmatics to semantics as the basic orientation to reflection on word meanings. In German Gemeinwohl. Starting off largely as an early modern political notion. The public good. As in the definitions. But entailing the feature absent from the OED of the obligation of the king/emperor to secure the conditions of the Gemeinwohl for the ‘commons,’ the not noble vast majority of the population. Thus actual ‘meaning’ of the term as a standard for judging the performance of the ruler in polemics and mobilizing a democratic pressure (among others) to regulate that performance.

In general, I prefer pragmatics to semantics as the basic orientation to reflection on word meanings.

]]> by: todd http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2605 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:17:09 +0100 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2605 it is a reference to the early american socialist movement which was enamored with coops. I learned about it from this book http://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Seattle-Memoir-Harvey-OConnor/dp/0853450242/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213884932&sr=8-1 People moved out west to found socialist (and anarchist) communes. They called it the cooperative commonwealth. As it fell apart, they shifted to talk of industrial unionism, socialism, communism, but early iww english-speaking groups were filled with SPUSA types who were into that business (till we purged them ;) it is a reference to the early american socialist movement which was enamored with coops. I learned about it from this book
http://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Seattle-Memoir-Harvey-OConnor/dp/0853450242/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213884932&sr=8-1

People moved out west to found socialist (and anarchist) communes. They called it the cooperative commonwealth. As it fell apart, they shifted to talk of industrial unionism, socialism, communism, but early iww english-speaking groups were filled with SPUSA types who were into that business (till we purged them ;)

]]> by: WildlyParenthetical http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2604 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:29:41 +0100 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/06/19/is-commonwealth/#comment-2604 Hey there, Nate, long time no writing (shouldn't even be doing this lil bit, but the rates of plagiarism in the papers I'm marking is depressing me, alongside the crazy transphobia...). I just wanted to note here that I totally love Moira Gaten's challenge to the concept of Hobbes' Leviathan. She basically argues that the imagining of the body politic as a literal and male (and white and so on - and I think this connects in intriguing ways to your questions about working class masculinity) is not innocent, but precisely the grounds for the inclusion/exclusion of women: a 'swallowing' of women's labour, which naturalises it (and thus renders it without value) and also downplays its significance to the 'artificial man' of this commonwealth. I wrote a paper for a conference once which suggested that Australia's immigration policy garnered its discursive legitimacy from this configuration of the country as a body, combined with the medicalised imagining of the refugee as virus. Personally - and kinda guided by this analysis, I guess - I have my usual concerns about 'common' in commonwealth: any community premised on commonality structurally encounters difference as a problem. There is, of course, lots of way more sophisticated poststructuralist examinations of community, which I tend to agree with, which argue that community lies precisely *in* difference, rather than in sameness. Which may well have nothing to do with what you're saying, given that I just don't know the different branches of Marxism etc, but that's what it hit off for me! Hey there, Nate, long time no writing (shouldn’t even be doing this lil bit, but the rates of plagiarism in the papers I’m marking is depressing me, alongside the crazy transphobia…). I just wanted to note here that I totally love Moira Gaten’s challenge to the concept of Hobbes’ Leviathan. She basically argues that the imagining of the body politic as a literal and male (and white and so on - and I think this connects in intriguing ways to your questions about working class masculinity) is not innocent, but precisely the grounds for the inclusion/exclusion of women: a ’swallowing’ of women’s labour, which naturalises it (and thus renders it without value) and also downplays its significance to the ‘artificial man’ of this commonwealth. I wrote a paper for a conference once which suggested that Australia’s immigration policy garnered its discursive legitimacy from this configuration of the country as a body, combined with the medicalised imagining of the refugee as virus.

Personally - and kinda guided by this analysis, I guess - I have my usual concerns about ‘common’ in commonwealth: any community premised on commonality structurally encounters difference as a problem. There is, of course, lots of way more sophisticated poststructuralist examinations of community, which I tend to agree with, which argue that community lies precisely *in* difference, rather than in sameness. Which may well have nothing to do with what you’re saying, given that I just don’t know the different branches of Marxism etc, but that’s what it hit off for me!

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