I think we really need to be very careful in assigning our current
analytical modes, categories, and definitions to historical positions. I
appreciate x seems like y, but we frequently do not have the depth of field
to really know that, nor should we trust that other people making claims in
that realm also do. So i'd suggest that talk of constructivism, etc. in its
current form really is historically embedded in our current post 1950 age,
or perhaps as far back as 1920, but past that, I tend to think that the
level of of scholarship required to make the case in relation to the amount
of evidence that exists, especially given the embeddedness of our current
regime of signs, is very hard to produce. This is not to say that someone
could not make a career proving the i-ching or post-aristotelian arabic
texts aren't constructivism, but I'd guess that when push comes to shove....
they aren't and it is going to come down to historiography and hermeneutics.
does this mean we shouldn't use them as rhetorical tropes, as i think a few
authors have done? No, we can use them, but i want to suggest that we should
feel very uncomfortable with that use. The origins of constructivism, vary
per your disciplines, but they almost certainly arise in modernity, likely
late modernity, when the disciplines and our current constructions of
knowledge arose. Do things before, seem similar? Probably, But are they the
same, i'd argue that in all likelihood good
history/philosophy/language/paleography/etc. will show they are not the
same.
-j
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