Posthegemonic Comments
Hmm. I'm flattered if I helped to inspire this, Jon. You continue to warm a number of issues here, in suitably concise, provocative and economic fashion. And while I certainly agree with the general thrust of this (I think your comments abou the anxiety on evidence are especially apt), I also wonder if it wouldn't be useful to point to an example of someone employing such a fallacy.
Still, is it really the case that social scientists (how would you describe these stripes - they are not Karl Rove's that is for sure) ascribe no place for the symbolic in their analysis of what counts as political? Also, would the part of your post concered with what may or may not be unique to literature be affected at all if you were to substitute "metaphorical" for symbolic?
Take care,
Matt
As a praticing social scientist, I think Jon is quite correct: there is a general ignorance of the symbolic and, when it is recognized, its importance is downplayed. Even more sophisticated and (empirico-)theoretical trends within the social sciences are largely ignorant of the symbolic -- Foucault (and his followers), for instance, have no place for the symbolic. For them, the symbolic ended with absolutism (and possibly re-appeared in Iran). The Foucauldian attack on 'sovereignty' and the 'juridical' is very much an attack on the symbolic.
The symbolic seems like a better term to use than the metaphoric, because not all symbols are metaphors--there's metonymy, for example.
I'm not sure what is meant by saying that Foucault has no place for the symbolic. Isn't much of his analysis built on the power of the symbolic order--language--to shape the world? So "the homosexual" is the product of the symbolic order--the act of naming brings the category into being. Isn't this ascribing power to the symbolic?
Susan: Foucault's (and yours?) understanding of the symbolic is reductive in my view. For instance, you point to the ability of language to 'say one thing, but mean (many) other(s)'. Jon gives an example of this with the albatross, which, as image, has many possible meanings/understandings. To point to Foucault's attentivity to language is, essentially, just that: he's attentive to language.
I understand the symbolic in a far more expansive way and think that the symbolic is present in all regimes in a way similar to how Foucault discusses the symbolic in D&P when describing the torture of Damiens or when discussing Las Meninas in OT.
Briefly, I understand the symbolic to be everything that is not the real. Or, rather, the real is what escapes the capture by the symbolic. The symbolic is a system that structures the regime through the place of law, power, and knowledge. If there is no symbolic, there is no regime. It's always there, just in different forms. To this extent, I'd put the symbolic on the same page as Durkheim's "collective representations", but, also more importantly, with Claude Lefort.
(You'll note, of course, that Foucault's three main theoretical concepts -- power, knowledge, and law -- are the same as Lefort's. Foucault, however, is mostly blind to their symbolic import.)
Craig, two things. First of all, I think that Foucault is more than "attentive to language" (nor do I anywhere point to the ability of language to "say one thing and mean many others" . . ). Rather than simply analyzing the many possible meanings of a given word or symbol, as an attentive close reader might do, Foucault analyzes the way in which language and discourse (and I realize the two are not synonyms) produce and structure social reality. This, to me, seems very close to the notion of the symbolic as you seem to be using it—which sounds like the Lacan's Symbolic order. In other words, the symbolic is the order of signification and structure, not merely of words.
Second, I'm not familiar with Lefort. But I don't understand what you mean by saying that Foucault is "blind" to the "symbolic import" of power, knowledge and the law. In what way are you using the term symbolic here?
I don't follow either, Craig.
Matt, here's an instance of the kind of thing I meant, in which a social scientist substitutes the term "symbolic" for the "cultural." Ironically, a) this piece allegedly argues for culture and b) García Canclini is often fêted (or derided) as a practitioner of Latin American "cultural studies." So when even he evidences such an ambivalence about the symbolic, then a fortiori...
Meanwhile, I had thought originally to indicate that I wasn't particularly wanting to engage with the Lacanian use of the term. I'm sure something could be said about that, but I wanted to say something rather simpler. Less a reductive definition of the symbol than a restricted one.
For these purposes, I'd stick to the definition of the symbol as some kind of "double voicing"; as such, we could probably say "metaphorical," too. But probably the same, give or take, goes for metonymy.
At the same time, this restricted notion of the symbolic also does imply a broader conception or representation. Here's a thought: isn't the symbol a means of representing representation? What's doubled, at a more abstract level, is the process of doubling itself?
Of course, in some ways I'd want to downplay the symbolic, too. Or rather, to read it differently, as the site of a particular affective investment, rather than as a sign of transcendence. There's the challenge: an immanent reading of the symbol, one that doesn't simply write it off as irrelevant.
Just to add my, sadly predictable, tuppence worth... If you're looking for a social scientist ("the" social scientist, in his increasingly megalomaniacal self-presentation) who thought he was focusing on the symbolic, whilst situating himself in a lineage descended from Durkheim's "collective representations" (Craig), yet who ended up quantifying every manifestation of the symbolic in the most crudely reductive fashion as the statistically quantifiable expression of an agent or group's pre-existing inherent "interest" (Jon), then look no further than dear old Bourdieu. This being a long-winded way of saying that, generally speaking, if Durkheim's the answer, then it must be a ... you can guess the rest.
Jeremy.
Thanks Jon, though I wonder if that example isn't still a little bit obtuse? I think I understand where you're coming from, but it's not quite clear.
Meanwhile, I had thought originally to indicate that I wasn't particularly wanting to engage with the Lacanian use of the term. I'm sure something could be said about that
That'd be interesting, I agree.
Oh, and putting Bourdieu in the same old boat as Durkheim, really!
Thanks, Jezzer. I thought about marking Bourdieu as an exception, but see why you don't want to: but then, as always, I want to save our man Pierre from himself, early from late...
Matt, when I next come across a decent example, I'll post it.
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