>Dear Mark,
I appreciate your last sentence here on what's at stake regarding the
consequences of untamed capitalism. Also that we need to engage at the level
of changing social relations.
Has anyone read Jonathan Porrit's new book (05) Capitalism as if the world
matters? He brings us back to earth with a bang, arguing that capitalism is
here to stay at present - there is no currently viable alternative. And there
isn't time to hang around to wait until capitalism has gone away. So we , he
says, have to find a way of engaging with the big multinationals in order to
bring about the changes that are needed if life as we know it is not to come
to an end relatively soon. Interestingly so does Jared Diamond in his ( I
think very enlightening book) Collapse.
Porrit says "It is human behaviour and the resulting social dynamics that lie
at the heart of today's social and ecological problems". ( p 10) =He talks
about 5 capitals: natural, human, social, manufactured, financial. I felt that
the chapters on human and social capital were very limited - far away from the
kind of sophisticated conceptual and empirically underpinned critique and
knowledge good (community) psychology could offer. As, in my opinion, is the
rather derivative psychology that Layard draws on in his book Happiness. But,
at least they are trying to find a way of bringing psychological perspectives
onto deep and important problems.
Diamond concludes that societies/ cultures that do not collapse are those
that manage to change their values as circumstances change. I think this means
those that are critical in the sort of senses we have been debating here
recently. I paraphrase and simplify Diamond's ideas here, of course. But the
thrust is that our survival depends, it seems , on changing our western
untamed capitalist values. Changing human individual and collective beliefs,
behaviour and relationships ( with one another and the world) must surely be
at the heart of any solutions to the environmental crises we face, if they are
to be found. Are we as psychologists out there in the public domain
sufficiently contributing to thinking about ways of changing dominant damaging
values? What else could we do I wonder?
Annie
=== Original Message From The UK Community Psychology Discussion List
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>Thanks Grant for that interesting posting.
>In relation to the 'postmodern' I suppose I'd have to say 2 things.
>1) I have used it in what was a brief piece as a kind of shorthand (that
>risked losing all nuances) for the tendencies towards extreme relativism
>and idealism (in the sense of denying that there is a social reality -
>however hard to apprehend), and of a denial of the possibility of what is
>usually called 'grand narratives' - i.e. general theory of the world. So
>I apologise to anyone who self defines as postmodernist that also rejects
>those extremes, most notoriously expressed in a text (I forget by whom)
>called something like "The Gulf War Didn't Happen".
>2) I also want to question that there is something that can be sensibly
>called a 'postmodern condition' - i.e. as a theory of the state of the
>world or of modern culture, it just seems inadequate to me, posing a break
>with the modern, whereas what I see in imperialist globalisation, in the
>extension of capital into all areas of life, including culture (and
>Habermas is good on this - colonisatin of the lifeworld) is an extension
>of the worst aspects of modernism - modernism without enlightnment. This
>idea seems to have a lot in common with the 'end of history' ideologists
>of triumphant capitalism at the start of the 90s.
>
>For some time I bought the Habermasian line that tries to recapture an
>emancipatory tradition in modernism, contrasting it with the repressive,
>rationalising, mechanical modernism of the capitalist machine. However,
>reading Enrique Dussel on philosophy of liberation, I came to the view
>that this notion is very Eurocentric, and the modernist project is beeply
>bound up in the economics of capitalist expansion, the politics of
>colonisation and empire, and the social psychology of exclusion. Instead
>Dussel proposes a paradigm of transmodernity, that (and I don't have the
>texts to hand to check exactly) tries to synthesise a liberatory praxis
>and world view from the modernist ouvre together with other world views -
>especially those excluded within and excluded outside the totality of the
>system.
>Again these are difficult ideas to grasp, (and I'm in great danger of
>oversimplifying and caricaturing them), but this seems to me to suggest a
>way out of the impasse of a stalled and flawed enlightenment project.
>Dussel uses the term 'analectics' to capture this synthetic praxis - the
>idea being to go beyond the dialectic model of thesis-antithesis-synthesis
>(which Grant alludes to in the Lyotard quote) to and instead to integrate
>a diversity of perspectives (from the stanpoint of the many and diverse
>victims of the system and their cultures and ideologies and from their
>allies within the system- which might include 'critical' community
>psychologists) - but within an integrative whole - not a fragmentary
>'postmodern' melange!
>
>I do have to come back to a strong sense of what's at stake hear. We are
>living in a world dominated by a monster that is destroying not just
>people, families, communities, wealth and welfare, publically owned goods,
> cultures and ways of being, but also the planet itself. That monster is
>the untamed capitalism resurgent since the early 70s, now in a full blown
>expansionist phase. I still see much of the postmodernist tradition as a
>fashionable diversion that engages with this at the wrong level altogether
>- that of the particular, often at the level of the word, rather than at
>the level of social relations.
>
>Mark Buron
>
>
>
>
>> I have been a lurker on the list for a few months, but have enjoyed some
>> of the fascinating recent contributions, and I have at last been moved
>> to contribute a thought, despite my possible lack of qualifications :-)
>>
>> I found myself thinking a great deal about Mark Burton's interesting
>> posting on 'being critical' and enjoyed David and Paul's recent
>> comments, amongst others.
>>
>> Mark's posting reflected a (useful) tension that was apparent at the
>> Newcastle conference. Both the idealism of modernity and the iconoclasm
>> of post-modern thinking were represented at various stages of the
>> conference and are apparent in the literature. If I remember correctly,
>> David Smail referred to Habermas and the Frankfurt School in his
>> presentation at conference, as he does in his book 'Power Interest and
>> Psychology'. He is also critical of elements of post-modern approaches
>> to therapy, especially Narrative Therapy which (if I have understood) he
>> calls 'psychotic', the apotheosis of 'magic-voluntarism'(p.7)*.
>>
>> On the other hand, much hay has been made by explicitly applying the
>> thinking of post-modern types such as Derrida and Foucault by, for
>> example, Ian Parker (eg 'Deconstructing Psychotherapy'). This work is
>> also of value for community psychology, and it has much to say about
>> 'being critical', not in a destructive way, but in a restless attempt to
>> identify, unsettle and unbalance entrenched power structures.
>>
>> It is therefore this paragraph in Mark's posting that I want to comment
>> on:-
>>
>> "Another use of 'critical', however, seems to come from the lay notion
>> of the 'critic'. At its worst (and most post-modern) that can mean 'say
>> what you like', and 'pose around as the most critical voice of all'.
>> There is no method, just individual opinion. The process is destructive
>> not constructive. It is part of the 'society of the spectacle', of
>> consumerism, of capitalism itself."
>>
>> It reminded me of the sensationalist rhetoric of Alex Callinicos in
>> "Against Postmodernism". I am not sure it is helpful to try and ensnare
>> the multiplicity of post-modern thinking, or post-modern methods, in a
>> bi-polar construct 'capitalism versus Marxism', right versus left wing:-
>> post-modern thinking is diverse. There is also a danger that we
>> underplay the influence of post-modern thinkers on the development of
>> 'reflexive modernity' which still binds strongly to Marxist roots.
>>
>> In fact, my attitude to what it means to be 'critical' was heavily
>> influenced by Lyotard, "a critique can only ever be reformist and is
>> eternally trapped in the sphere of the criticised (1974, Libidinal
>> Economy)". To be revolutionary we need to be able to turn our backs on
>> entrenched polarities and look away.**
>>
>> I think we have much to learn from post-modern thinking and indeed, much
>> of the language in this mailing list echoes that of some of the most
>> interesting post-modern writers such as Foucault "The individual is the
>> product of power. What is needed is to "de-individualize" by means of
>> multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must
>> not be the organic bond uniting hierarchised individuals, but a constant
>> generator of de-individualization" (From "Introduction to the
>> Non-Fascist Life").
>>
>> I don't think community psychology needs to take shelter under any of
>> the great movements (Marxism, The Frankfurt School, Post-modernism) or
>> any of the great egos that dominate much of modern thought, be it
>> Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard....Habermas or Marx! But we must be careful
>> not to parody useful post-modern methods and thought as nihilistic, or
>> capitalist. There are lots of useful ways of being critical.
>>
>> I've enjoyed the provocative postings on the list; a little corner of
>> the non-fascist life!
>>
>>
>> Grant Jeffrey (possibly protesting too much ;-)
>>
>>
>>
>> *(Interestingly, in their book 'Anti-Oedipus',1983, the post-modern
>> writers Deleuze and Guattari make a virtue of the very psychosis that
>> David Smail identifies with their alternative to psychoanalysis -
>> 'schizo-analysis'!)
>>
>> **(Nietzsche (1887, Aphorism 276) "I do not want to wage war against
>> what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse
>> those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. All in all
>> and on the whole, some day I wish to be only a Yes-Sayer.")
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>--
>From Mark Burton
>Manchester UK
>
>___________________________________
>
>COMMUNITYPSYCHUK - The discussion list for community psychology in the UK.
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Annie Mitchell
Clinical Director and Acting Programme Director,
Doctorate in Clinical and Community Psychology,
University of Exeter
01392264621
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