Several consequences follow from our account of logics:
1) Methodologically we argue that the development of an explanation must start with intentions and self-interpretations. It is absolutely crucial to pass through subjects’ self-interpretations, not only as part of the process of problematizaton, but also to arrive at an understanding of the character of social logics, as well as political and fantasmatic logics. In conceptual terms, logics are aligned with self-interpretations against causal mechanisms, because it is through self-interpretations and thick descriptions that the ontic is connected to the ontological, and social logics connected with the political and fantasmatic logics … Contextualized self-interpretations are necessary but not sufficient components of a social science explanation. Showing why and how this is possible allows us to carve out a space beyond the domains of causal laws and mechanisms on the one hand, and self-interpretations and thick descriptions on the other. (161)
… [T]he process of social science explanation ought to be understood in terms of articulation rather than subsumption. It is evident from our account that any fully-fledged explanans contains a plurality of different kinds of logics and concepts, which have to be linked together to critically explain. This raises a question about the conditions under which it is possible to bring together these heterogeneous elements into an explanation without subsuming them under higher-order laws or abstractions and without falling into a pure descriptivism … [W]e should understand critical explanation as part of an articulatory practice, by which we mean ‘any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice’ (cited in LM 1985: 105) (162).
2) This is not voluntarism:
Siding with hermeneutics against naturalism we argue that contextuallized self-interpretations are an essential and ineluctable aspect of any critical explanation. But now siding with naturalism, we argue that critical explanations cannot be reduced to contextualized self-interpretations, because we bring to each particular object of study a set of concepts and logics that necessarily transcends the particularity of context.
[D]iscursive practices exhibit varying degrees of sedimentation, ranging from regimes and institutions to social habits. While the social logics structuring them are literally buoyed up by subjects — they do not exist except through the activity of subjects — they are not necessarily cognitively accessible to subjects, at least not immediately and without some form of intervention. This means that logics can have significant explanatory and critical leverage independently of the consciously held self-interpretations of agents … (162).
While in our view logics are subject-dependent, in the sense that our explanations require a passage through a subject’s contextualized self-interpretation (the hermeneutical constraint), they also require something that transcends them (15).