“Habermas himself does not provide a genuine account of the mediation of individual and society, because he solves the problem, at least in principle, in advance through the pre-established harmony between an already linguistic un-conscious and an intersubjective social world. The problem of mediation only arises when there is a sufficient difference to be mediated. Habermas, in short, purchases the mediation between psyche and society by de-radicalizing Freud’s notion of the unconscious. Habermas is correct in arguing that “language functions as a kind of transfomer” which draws the individual into the intersubjective social world. But it does not do so without a residuum of private in-itselfness – without which we would all be pre-coordinated clones – and it is this residuum that does not adequately appear in Habermas’ account.”
Source: Intersubjectivity and the Monadic Core of the Psyche: Habermas and Castoriadis on the Unconsious by Joel Whitebook
Within social structures there are particular ‘positions’ associated with certain roles. It is particularly important to distinguish the occupant of a position from the position itself. One of the most pervasive illusions of everyday thinking derives from the attribution of the properties of the position, be they good or bad, to the individual or institution occupying it. Whatever effects result, it is assumed that particular people must be responsible; there is little appreciation that the structure of social relations, together with their associated resources constraints or rules, may determine what happens, even though these structures only exist where people reproduce them. In such circumstances it is futile to expect problems to be resolved by the discovery of a guilty persons and their replacement by a different individual. We may question individuals in a structure in the hope of finding someone to blame or credit for certain outcomes without ever finding one where ‘the buck stops’. As Andre Gorz writes
The predefined obligations inherent in [the bureaucrats'] function[s] relieve them of all personal responsibility and decision and enable them to meet the protest with the disarming reply: ‘We haven’t chosen to do this. We’re only enforcing orders.’ Whose orders? Whose regulations? One could go back indefinitely up the hierarchy and it would still be impossible to find anyone else to say, ‘Mine’
Gorz is not attacking the evasion of individual responsibility but its non-existence in such cases. Failure to recognize the existence of internal relations and structures can also be seen in the example of responses to criticism of the police. This is sometimes expressed and interpreted in terms of the presence of ‘bad apples’ in the force, that is, as criticism of particular members of the police. Even when criticism is explicitly directed against the structures of positions, rules and powers which make up the institution of the police, it is sometimes – perhaps deliberately – misconstrued as being directed against individuals.
Source: Method in Social Science by Andrew Sayer, Pages 92-94
This post will be a starting point, with three following posts. The posts will cover:
(1) A first post, that touches upon Giddens’s focus on the meta-reflexive and contextual discontinuity (Archer 1995: 116; Mutch 2004: 430). Giddens emphasises a strong agential capacity and wholesale reflexivity, characteristic of modernity itself. He states “What is characteristic of modernity is not just an embracing of the new for its own sake–which of course includes reflection upon the nature of reflection itself” (Giddens 1990: 38). However, is it, as Archer argues, that the “victims of educational discrimination are not victimized by their lack of ‘discursive penetration’ of the situation in which they find themselves.” (Archer 1995: 116)
(2) The above approach follows from Giddens’s own structuration theory, with a theoretical inadequacy that follows from its conceptualisation of structure – there is no context as ontologically antecedent to agential capacities and capabilities.
(3) From the above two points, it can be argued that New Labour’s policy ethos of a reflexive and quasi-disembedded ‘aspiring’ learner, with personalised ‘needs’ and learning, shares an affinity with Giddens’s meta-reflexive (especially when he speaks of a “re-distribution of possibilities” and “the cultivation of human potential”). Similarly is the case with educational institutions as reflexive service providers. However, in this age of an instrumentalist bias of education, can we really speak of a wholesale reflexivity?
Based on the above three themes, I intend to follow with a critique of Giddens’ theory of reflexive modernity, but with a theoretical engagement of its foundations. What hopefully follows is a series of posts on reflexivity and the subsequent emergence of social actors, with structured roles. The focus will henceforth be on the reflexive deliberation of concerns, that agents take for themselves, but asks how does this arise qua reflexivity and relational selfhood (considering constraints and enablements).
