[-empyre-] Meta-

Wed Apr 22 23:42:36 EST 2009

I think if there is any potentially reliable metanarrative, it would
have to take into account the interaction between the spaces between
finite sets of knowledge.  For instance, what is "true" of cognition
might not be "true" of matter, but you can hash out certain truths
about matter via cognition, and you can hash out certain truths of
cognition via material process.  (Although, at the end of the day,
these are all stitched together though cognitive processes.  So....
maybe the only good answer is "maybe."

I am interested in what Joe Tabbi might have to say about this things.
 He's got a book called Cognitive Fictions (which is pretty intense,
by the way).

Also, I don't know if Louis Armand is on the list, but he has several
books that deal with these problems of consciousness.

Davin

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 10:27 PM, Michael Angelo Tata, PhD
<mtata at ipublishingllc.com> wrote:
> I am reminded of Rorty: contingency and irony as a basis for solidarity.
> Despite pomo-ism, have we transcended the meta-N, or is a meta-N of no
> meta-N a meta-N after all?
>
> *******************************************
> Michael Angelo Tata, PhD  347.776.1931-USA
> http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/
>
>
>
>
>
>> Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:32:24 -0400
>> From: davinheckman at gmail.com
>> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] A strange bit of luck
>>
>> I agree, it does tend to be a bit vaguely optimistic, but I don't know
>> that there is necessarily anything wrong with broad metanarratives,
>> particularly at a time when people on the bottom of the pile tend be
>> isolated, and often opposed to each other. A broad narrative about
>> "justice" or "working class solidarity" provides a pretext for talking
>> about groups of people who share common interests. At some level, the
>> idea that I could not coordinate a narrative with disparate
>> populations, itself, becomes a metanarrative. And, a debilitating
>> one.
>>
>> I do think that the capacity for people to bridge these pockets of
>> humanity is powerful and explosive. NGOs are perfectly positioned to
>> provide accounts provided academics, legislators, artists, and
>> "everyday people" are willing to listen and help. (I know a lot of
>> farmers and union workers who are very careful about buying fair trade
>> goods. On the other hand, I know a lot of farmers and union workers
>> who think fair trade is a bunch of liberal, socialist nonsense. So I
>> think we really need narratives that can compete with the paranoid,
>> even jingoistic, attitudes towards trade).
>>
>> A perfect example of success can be found in the recent successes that
>> student activists have had in working with NGOs in Honduras against
>> the anti-union practices of Russell Athletics.
>> <http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4367/pstudents_wont_sweat_it_p>
>>
>> It can't solve everything. But on a practical level, I believe that
>> this type of solidarity is possible, and becomes more and more
>> effective the more it is engaged in. If I can get together with
>> somebody in Detroit and agree to use a particular currency in a
>> particular business network, it is possible for me to work with
>> someone in another country to have a positive impact on a particular
>> transnational network... the only real difference is how the network
>> is organized geographically.
>>
>> Peace!
>> Davin
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Nicholas Ruiz III
>> <editor at intertheory.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > Can't say I'm particularly moved by this.....'yes, we can'...was
>> > ascliché then as it is now, no?  The real question no one cares to answer in
>> > this regard is: yes, we can do what exactly?! For example, the local
>> > currency movement offers a specific answer to a particular problem...but the
>> > broad sweeping metanarratives of global emancipation read more like
>> > political speeches than anything else, it seems to me...
>> >
>> >
>> > nick
>> >
>> >  Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
>> > Editor, Kritikos
>> > http://intertheory.org
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message ----
>> > From: davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>
>> > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> > Sent: Monday, April 6, 2009 6:33:50 PM
>> > Subject: [-empyre-] A strange bit of luck
>> >
>> > I was reading a book today and stumbled across a reference to Arjun
>> > Appadurai's "Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination."
>> > I found a copy from Appadurai's Globalization (Duke UP, 2001) and
>> > started reading.
>> >
>> > First, I was kind of bummed and embarrassed that I hadn't read it
>> > before.  But after getting over that, I was taken aback by the
>> > relevance of this article to the discussions we are having here.
>> > Everything from our crises of meaning, to the use of academic
>> > language, challenges to neoliberalism, the academic research
>> > marketplace, the problems with runaway financial institutions....  but
>> > most importantly, Appadurai offers some constructive suggestions to
>> > academics on how to facilitate "globalization from below."
>> >
>> > I won't break down Appadurai's argument here.  It is widely available
>> > (I found a copy of the article online).  I expect that most here have
>> > already read it.  It's much more readable than anything I could write.
>> > It is worth the time if this is something you are interested in.  But
>> > I will plunk down a giant quote, just to give you a sense of the scope
>> > of his article:
>> >
>> > "Such an account [of globalization from above and below] would belong
>> > to a broader effort to understand the variety of projects that fall
>> > under the rubric of globalization, and it would also recognize that
>> > the word globalization, and words like freedom, choice, and justice,
>> > are not inevitably the property of the state-capital nexus. To take up
>> > this sort of study involves, for the social sciences, a serious
>> > commitment to the study of globalization from below, its institutions,
>> > its horizons, and its vocabularies. For those more concerned with the
>> > work of culture, it means stepping back from those obsessions and
>> > abstractions that constitute our own professional practice to
>> > seriously consider the problems of the global everyday. In this
>> > exercise, the many existing forms of Marxist critique are a valuable
>> > starting point, but they too must be willing to suspend their inner
>> > certainty about understanding world histories in advance. In all these
>> > instances, academics from the privileged institutions of the West (and
>> > the North) must be prepared to reconsider, in the manner I have
>> > pointed to, their conventions about world knowledge and about the
>> > protocols of inquiry ("research") that they too often take for
>> > granted."  (Appadurai 19)\
>> >
>> > Peace!
>> > Davin
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> ________________________________
> Rediscover Hotmail®: Get quick friend updates right in your inbox. Check it
> out.
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>