Category: logics

Deconstructive Genealogy/Onto-ethical critique

What then does the task of incorporating a self-reflexive and self-critical ethos into the concrete problematization and explanation of social phenomena entail?  On the one hand, the ontological postulates of our approach concerning radical contingency have to inform the construction, investigation and explanation of social phenomenon (155).

We must develop a style of research that builds contingency into its very modus operandi, and which is open and attentive to possibilities disclosed by the research itself.

A Deconstructive Genealogy of a social practice or regime

The task here is to reactivate and make evident options that were foreclosed during the emergence of a practice – the clashes and forces which are repressed or defeated – in order to show how the present configuration of practices relies on exclusions that reveal the non-necessary character of the present social formation, and to explore the consequences and potential effects of such ‘repressions’.  On the other hand,

Onto-ethical critique

In the mode of what we could call an onto-ethical critique the task is to critically interrogate the conditions under which a particular social practice or regime grips its subjects despite its non-necessary character.  This mode of critique furnishes us with a means of critically interrogating the will to (fantasmatic) closure. 

However, both modes of critique are informed by an ethos of exercising a fidelity to contingency itself, by displaying other possibilities for political decision and identification as well as other modalities of identification.  Together they contribute to a practice of ethico-political interpretation. (155)

deductive-nomological, hypothetico-deductive

Our more concrete object of critique was the subsumptive character of the dominant mode of social and political theorizing.  Subsumption in the field of method is evident when mainstream social scientists either deduce explanation from higher order laws or generalizations — the so-called deductive-nomological form of explanation — or deduce predictions which are subjected to exhaustive tests — the so-called hypothetico-deductive form of validation.  Empirical objects are thus subsumed under the theoretical concepts, and do not modify or transform the latter, thus giving rise to what Althusser calls ‘a relation of exteriority’ between theoretical categories and empirical phenomena ( citing Althusser Reading Capital: 49) (210)

Causal Mechanisms

 After all, one of the central ingredients of a natural science conception of causallity is its subject independence.  The causal process is unaffected by what any of us think about it or do in relation to it.  Take the law of gravitation … we as subjects can act in light of such causal lasws, but we cannot modify, or be considered supports of, the laws themselves, whether intentionally or otherwise.  The functioning of comparable processes … in the social sciences, however, is parasitic upon human practices, in the sense that they are constitutively sustained and mediated by the discursive activity of subjects.  … the functioning of causal laws does not require the passage through the subject: the content of causal laws is not parasitic upon the subjects’ self-interpretations.  This is why we prefer the term ‘logic’ to ‘mechanism’.

The term logic better avoids the connotations of subject independence that talk of causal laws and mechanisms suggest.  At the same time, it allows us to maintain the central insight which prompted the turn to mechanisms in the first place, namely, that not all is reducible to the contextualized self-interpretations of subject: logics are thus meant to capture the subject-dependent aspect of social processes, as well as aspects which are not reducible to the empirical context.  (97)

Critique of causal mechanisms

Now it is clear that those who stress the role of causal mechanisms also go beyond the field of self-interpretations. For example, though Elster stresses the indeterminacy of their triggering and interaction, he uses mechanisms to provide a causal connection between phenomena and events.  But he brackets the ontological conditions of possibility of these mechanisms, and underplays their organic and dynamic relation to self-interpretations and their contexts … Elster short-circuits the passage through the subject by conceiving mechanisms as a set of ‘abstract essences’ or free standing ‘tools’ that are not tied to any ontology, and which can be applied to different contexts without modification (159).

For us by contrast, logics are always linked to a particular field of self-interpretations.  Social logics, in particular, provide access to the practices under  investigation, enabling us to grasp the point of a practice or institution, as well as the rules and structures that organize them … Social logics require therefore a ‘passage through the self-interpretations of subjects’, and they provide a bridge between description/characterization and explanation/critique.

In any fully-fledged critical explanation of a phenomenon, political and fantasmatic logics have to be articulated with a range of social logics together with the empirical contexts they inform and within which they function.  The entire logic of explanation thus requires the passage through self-interpretations (160).

Critique of hermeneutics

[A] hermeneutical inquiry not only pushes the study of society beyond the given facts and behaviour to the meaning an interpretation of facts, but it also moves beyond self-interpretations to the study of rules and interpretations of self-interpretations.  Hermeneuticists thus seek to render the implicit explicit and to interpret self-interpretations, yielding contextualized self-interpretations. ..

Notwithstanding the advantages of the hermeneutical perspective, our use of logics goes further than this, for the latter not only focus our attention on the rules or gramnmar that enable us to characterize and even criticize a phenomenon, but they also allow us to disclose the structures and conditions that make those rules possible.   They (the logics) ‘go beyond’ contextualized self-interpretations because they speak to the latter’s contingent constitution and sedimentation, focusing attention on the way their ‘ignoble origins’ are generally forgotten or covered over as the practices and their self-understanding are then lived out.  (citing Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil :177) (158-9)

practices, regimes, and logics

Structure of Chapter 4 Ontology

  1. Social and Political practices, Regime
  2. Ontical/Ontological distinction
  3. Radical contingency opposed to empirical contingency
  4. 4 dimensions of socio-political reality
  5. Dislocation: ideological-ethical axis
  6. Public contestation: political-social axis
  7. Political and Social
  8. Radical political demand, Hegemonic political demand
  9. Reactivation
  10. Ideology and ethics
  11. Practices and regimes revisited
  12. Subjectivity

Three-fold typology of logics
Social, Political, Fantasmatic logics which when articulated together constitute the basic explanatory schema of our poststructuralist approach to critical explanation.  This complex of logics provides us with the theoretical resources to characterize practices and regimes, to account for their dialectical relationship, and to explan how and why they change or resist change. 106

Social logics comprise the substantive grammar or rules of a practice or regime, which enable us to distil their purpose, form and content.  Moreover in characterizing a regime, we also describe the context of the practices under study, since a regime is always a regime of practices 106

A regime is just another term denoting the particular context of a practice or set of practices. It denotes the broader context that structures social practices, as well as the new social structure that emerges out of hegemonic political practices.  However, the term regime has for us the advantage of denoting something that is more individual than context, and this is because it already flags the fact that some work has already taken place in characterizing that context in a particular way.  In other words, this characterization process implies that the analyst adopts an active role in constructing the context as a particular regime. (125-6)

In short, the regime/practice complex is primarily a heuristic device that enables us to conduct concrete analysis (126).

Method of critical logics

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).

Fantasmatic Logics

Consider first the relationship between fantasmatic logics and social practices.  Though social practices are punctuated by the mishaps, tragedies and contingencies of everyday life, social relations are expereinced and understood in this mode of activity as an accepted way of life.  The role of fantasy in this context is not to set up an illusion that provides a subject with a false picture of the world, but to ensure that the radical contingency of social reality — and the political dimension of a practice more specifically — remains in the background … (T)he role of fantasy is to actively contain or suppress the political dimension of a practice (145).

The operation of fantasmatic logics can thus reinforce the social dimension of practices by covering over the fundamental lack in reality and keeping at bay what we have labelled ‘the real’ (146).

In sum, whether in the context of social practices or political practices, fantasy operates so as to conceal or close off the radical contingency of social relations.  It does this through a fantasmatic narrative or logic that promises a fullness-to-come once a named or implied obstacle is overcome — the beatific dimension of fantasy – or which foretells disaster if the obstacle proves insurmountable, which might be termed the horrific dimension of fantasy (147).

Images of omnipotence or of total control –> beatific dimension of fantasy
Images of impotence or victimhood –> horrific dimension of fantasy

Logic of Equivalence, Logic of Difference

The logic of equivalence involves the simplification of signifying space, the logic of difference involves its expansion and complexification (citing LM 144).

The political logics of equivalence and difference (furnish) us with a conceptual grammar with which to account for the dynamicsof social change.  They help show how social practices and regimes are contested, transformed, and instituted, thereby extending our grammar beyond social logics (145).

Logic of Equivalence (LOE) and Logic of Difference (LOD)

–  LOE (associative), captures the substitutive aspect of the relation by making reference to an ‘us-them’ axis: two or more elements can be substituted for each other with reference to a common negation or threat.  They are equivalent not insofar as they share a positive property (though empirically they may share something in common), but, crucially, insofar as they have a common enemy … Entails the construction and privileging of antagonistic relations, which means that the dimension of difference on each side of the frontier is weakened, whether differences are understood as a function of demands or identities.  For instance, a national liberation struggle against an occupying colonial power will typically attempt to cancel out the particular differences of class, ethnicity, region, or religion in the name of a more universal nationalism that can serve as a common reference point for all the oppressed; indeed, its identity may be virtually exhausted in its opposition to the oppressive regime.  By contrast the LOD draws on other discourses in an attempt to break down these chains of equivalence.  The age-old practice of ‘divide-and-rule’, for instance in which an occupying power seeks to separate ethnic or national groups into particular communities or indirect systems of rule, is invariably designed to prevent the articulation of demands and identities into a generalized challenge to the dominant regime (145).

– LOD (syntagmatic), captures the combinatory or contiguous aspect of the relation, which accounts not simply for differences in identity among elements, but also for keeping elements distinct, separate, and autonomous.  Both dimensions are always present in the sense that each presupposes the other.

LOE and LOD thus emphasize the dynamic process by which political frontiers are constructed, stabilized, strengthened , or weakened.  They elucidate the way one or another dimension acquires greater or lesser significance, even while each presupposes the other. (citing Laclau 2005, 79) (144).

In sum, the political logics of equivalence and difference comprise a descriptive framing device which is derived from a particular understanding of discourse and the importance accorded to processes of signification.  They enhance our approach to social science explanation by furnishing us with a conceptual grammar with which to account for the dynamics of social change.  They help show how social practices and regimes are contested, transformed, and instituted, thereby extending our grammar beyond social logics (145).

Thatcher Regime

LOE was mobilized to shift terrain away from the post-war consensus

range of diverse demands were linked together into a project that publicly contested the failing Keynesian welfare state project.

linked together demands for

  • free economy
  • strong state
  • traditional morality

This involved a form of populist politics successfully dividing existing ‘one nation’ welfare state consensus into two camps, those in favour of the newly proposed project versus those associated with the Keynesian post-war consensus (173).

Following groups made equivalent and then targeted by this new project:

  • public sector workers, trade unions, teachers, doctors, lawyers, immigrants and gays

Installing the Audit Regime in UK universities

‘Modernizers’ have constructed a series of antagonistic equivalences in order to establish political frontiers that make possible the installation of the new practices.  Thus we have seen the ideological construction of ‘surplus’ versus ‘deficit’ departments, ‘research active’ versus ‘research inactive’ members of staff, ‘good recruiters’ versus ‘bad recruiters’ traditional’ versus ‘innovative’ modes of service provision, and so forth (176).

On the other hand, and at the same time, university managers and administrators have — by means of various logics of difference — sought to manage change by addressing demands and by changing the structures of governance, so as to prevent or displace public contestation.

The Logics pt2

… if naturalists offer the prospect of a causal explanation by subsuming the phenomena under universal laws or general mechanisms, and if hermeneuticists explain via the use of particular contextualized interpretations, our approach conceives of explanation in terms of a critical and articulated assemblage of logics. Our parsimonious theoretical grammar consisting of logics and dimensions thus contributes to a kind of ‘middle-range theorizing‘, which moves between empirical phenomena, consisting of self-interpretations and practices, and our underlying ontological premises. Our task is thus ‘to re-describe the ontical level in terms of distinctions brought about by [our] ontology’ (Laclau 2004 cited in Glynos et al: 164.)

Fantasmatic logic: the way the subject enjoys that covers over, conceals the radical contingency of social reality

… logics are always linked to a particular field of self-interpretations. Social logics, in particular, provide access to the practices under investigation, enabling us to grasp the point of a practice or institution, as well as the rules and structures that organize them … Social logics require therefore a ‘passage through the self-interpretations of subjects’, and they provide a bridge between description/characterization and explanation/critique 159.

In any fully-fledged critical explanation of a phenomenon, political and fantasmatic logics have to be articulated with a range of social logics together with the empirical contexts they inform and within which they function. The entire logic of explanation thus requires the passage through self-interpretations 160.

Ontological Framework: 2 key dimensions

The ontological framework that makes possible our approach has two key dimensions, which centre on the notion of subjectivity. These are what might be called the hermeneutic-structural and the poststructural dimensions. 162.

Hermeneutic-structural: centrality of self-interpretations of subjects in social science explanations. But discursive practices exhibit varying degrees of sedimentation, ranging from regimes and institutions to everyday social habits

While the social logics structuring them (discursive practices) 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 … logics can have significant explanatory and critical leverage independently of the consciously held self-interpretations of agents 162.

poststructural: highlights that social structures are never complete in themselves “by foregrounding the dislocatory nature of the symbolic order (the ‘real’ in Lacanian terms) and thus the possible emergence of subjectivity as such 162.

The hermenuetic-structural dimensions fails to exhaust our particular ontological framework.  It is at this point that political and fantasmatic logics come into play, thus enabling us to generate critical accounts of the constitution and dissolution of social structures themselves.  This is  because they assist in the process of revealing and explaining the non-necessary character of social logics and the practices they sustain and animate. 162