A Sociological View of the Background of Extremist Talk and Action: Sustaining a Shared Future for Dialogue


Alan Blum, York University

In my presentation I take up how Karl Marx, new left views, especially Eldridge Cleaver, and sociological descendants such as Irving Goffman, merge with a line of influence from Plato through Hegel, Freud, Wittgenstein, Simmel, Arendt, Gadamer, to Lacan and many others, that can enable us to conceive of a discourse joining the humanities and sociology on ways of formulating the background. As noted, in my research over time, this background as we understand it-as our subject- has to be language. We live in language, in the midst of its inheritance that is reflected in classifications and images.This inheritance governs our speech about values, evaluation, quality and the clichés that circulate around the question of meaning as an environment of knowledge, leading all of our opinions and beliefs to depend upon this inheritance as the thread of continuity that even underlies all of our efforts to modify and transgress it. As Wittgenstein says, the background as definitive as it is, is inexpressible or in his words, is not a thing but is not nothing either. Nothing we do can be defended absolutely and finally….Perhaps what is inexpressible(what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning”(Wittgenstein, 1980, 16e, page 17). I always start with Wittgenstein’s mantra that suggests how any belief or interpretation we do is ambiguous and at the same time tries to ensure its self-evidence as untouchable by eliciting automated overviews, commentary, and accounting schemes as if they are unambiguous and objective in the way of declarations, and denunciations rather than dialogue, a rhetorical infrastructure disclosed in clichés, platitudes, and all formulaic talk that always invites us to analyze its participation in a discourse. Now, in terms of the manifesto of this Congress, how can a divided, discordant society represent itself as sharing? Our interest in the background of thought and action as it is disclosed in language leads me to treat the Congress manifesto to discuss Sustaining a Shared Future as an opportunity to visualize research on sharing in a society such as ours. That is, can a capitalist society really do sharing or is it’s mechanical solidarity just a feint of togetherness that disguises the idea of life chances in order to serve its purposes. I wrote about this in detail in the Imaginative Structure of the City pp.215-222 on how Marx talked about this deceit as the secret of the proletariat (their scepticism about the bourgeoisie illusion of progress) as his version of repression correlative in its way to the self -deceiving unconscious. Max Weber frames the problem. “The fates of human beings are not equal. Men differ in their states of health or social status or what not...In every situation he who is more favored feels the never ceasing need to look upon his position as in some way "legitimate", upon his advantage as "deserved" and the others disadvantage as being brought about by the others "fault". That the purely accidental causes of the difference may be ever so obvious makes no difference.” Weber enunciates as a fundamental law of social life: “The reason for this fact lies in the generally observable need of any power, or even of any advantage of life, to justify itself.” If social life is a struggle for control of the conditions of determining meaning, then every advantage seeks to sustain itself as an advantage in a way that can be described as a fundamental law of life. Here Weber’s suggestion that every advantage of life justifies itself by virtue of the force of its self -determination alone means that it is essentially groundless, that it cannot ground itself by appealing to anything external to itself. What Weber’s comment suggests that any speech can be seen as if it is doing a justification of its advantage that functions to provide self- assurance for its speaker. Can this sociological vision of the background be a topic for dialogue rather than for exchanges of declarations and dogmatic declarations? Should the desire to sustain a shared future not be translated as a shared future capacity for dialogue about hate and any topic?

This paper will be presented at the following session: