here is the reading digest I turned in for philosophy class last week:
Habermas, Jürgen. “The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of Utopian Energies.“ Translated by Thomas McCarthy.
Hames-GarcÃÂa, Michael. “Can Queer Theory Be Critical Theory?“ in New Critical Theory: Essays on Liberation, edited by William S. Wilkerson and Jeffrey Paris, 201-222. Lanham: Rowman & LIttlefield Publishers, Inc.
Paris, Jeffrey. “Obstinate Critique and the Possibility of the Future“ in New Critical Theory: Essays on Liberation, edited by William S. Wilkerson and Jeffrey Paris, 15-36. Lanham: Rowman & LIttlefield Publishers, Inc.
I have been, up until recently, quite hesitant to buy into Habermas. I thought the activities we engaged in during class this week were very useful, and really made me think and reconceptualize Habermas and think critically about what Critical Theory is. On Tuesday when Orosco asked if Habermas was radical, I was quick to say, no, he wasn’t, because there isn’t a call for liberation, and it seems that everyone else was hesitant to cal him radical for that same reason, or for very similar reasons. After our discussion in class, though, I felt a bit more like calling him a radical, and when Orosco told us that Habermas considers himself a radical democrat, that made a lot of sense.
It’s been interesting to follow my train of thought throughout this quarter. Before coming in, I was fairly against the existence of the state, feeling it would always be repressive. But then, after a few weeks of discussing Habermas, I did get to thinking about health care, and the welfare state, and how beneficial it is to have a bureaucracy that can move goods, especially medicine, across the world efficiently. I don’t think our governments do a great job of that now, but the coordination is necessary in order to keep people from suffering from disease. Well, I guess it’s necessary right now, and it may be necessary in the future. What I particularly like about Habermas is his desire to get the government and market out of our lifeworlds. As someone who supports extending “marriage“ to all families (why not do away with “marriage“ and instead recognize families as temporary, fluid households?), I want the government out of the family: Don’t tell who is a family and who isn’t; just give them all the same family benefits. And why is the government intruding in our bodies and telling us we are “male“ or “female“? If the government does exist, it should be there to provide services for us, not to regulate us.
But still, Paris’s essay is gnawing at me. He writes that, “[Habermas] rejects his own tradition’s powerful orientation toward entirely new forms of life, toward emancipation in a sense that goes well beyond merely the communicative coordination of action orientations…. he writes, ‘But despite all the talk of postmodernity, there are no visible rational alternatives to this form of life. What else is left for us, then, but at least to search out practical improvements within this form of life?“ (19). Maybe I’m too caught up in some Marcusian thought of abstract hope and fantasy, but I want to know why it matters if alternatives are not “visible.“ Why should they be visible? Do we need a direction, a “concrete laid out future“ towards which to work?
In class Orosco asked if some of this work didn’t pre-suppose a definition of sorts, a definition that most of the Frankfurt School fails to provide us: What does it mean to be human? Marcuse hinted at that: free, happy, rational, but then we must define those terms. Or should we? Isn’t one of the problems with totalitarian societies or with repressive state capitalist societies that they have defined too narrowly what those terms are? In America, free means voting and consuming. Happy means employed with a family and home, really a form of security. Rational means practical, void of much emotion, realistic, which means that it is logocentric and doesn’t rock the boat too much. So, I’m hesitant to define these terms because it seems that when someone or something does, the definition becomes totalized and repressive.
Of course, if someone doesn’t define their own terms, they run the risk of their readers defining it for them, so perhaps it is important. Perhaps my hesitance to define these terms, or want them defined, has more to do with my fears rather than my hopes. Perhaps it also has to do with my belief that perhaps we don’t know what happiness is because we so rarely experience it. Perhaps it is a momentary thing, and we are justified in wanting more of it?
But I’ve grown to like Habermas, not on his own, but in conversation with the others. Should we be working on getting the state out of our lifeworlds, off our bodies? Yes, and perhaps that is part of resistance. Should we resist making totalizing claims as Adorno does because it fails to recognize that subcultures read and use mass culture texts in different ways? Yes. Should we understand that communicative action, the way we engage in our everyday lives, is a source of resistance, and that even the way we talk to each other matters? Of course. Should we begin to listen to each other and recognize each other and find public spaces to hold discussions about democracy? Yes.
But I think we can’t forget some of the work that Marcuse, Adorno, and Horkheimer worked on. Should we continue to demand liberation and be obstinate? I think so. Of course, this doesn’t mean we can’t still engage with the state (even Marcuse endorsed a Democrat for President). Should we still be considering altering our bodies and the way they function, as Marcuse proposed? I think so.
