GOOD MORNING AND HOW IS THE MIND TODAY? THE PROBLEM OF TRYING TO CONCEPTUALISE CHANGE IN THEORETICAL NOTIONS DEVOID OF MATERIAL SUBSTANCE A few months ago I found myself in the company of a activist from my days of Elsies River Youth Movement in the 80s who had since moved on theoretically to embrace the thinking of Antonio Negri and his notion of the multitude as a primary change agent in contrast to the role of class as a change agent. While he could not pin down the physically identity of this multitude or materially define its existence beyond the conceptual level, he had to concede that this theoretical deficiency, rendered this notion of the multitude without any collective agency as a material force,which could act as a defined constituency with shared interests to agitate for progressive change in society. Be that as it may, the point here is that poorly theorized conceptual notions of change and ill-defined constituent interests to drive the change envisaged often results in transformation degenerating into transformania devoid of programmatic substance. This means that the call for transformation without a concrete description of what should be transformed; what it should be transformed into; how it should be transformed; what indicators and criteria can be used to measure transformation; and what the roles and responsibilities of parties involved in transformation are once the instruments of transformation are in place; is futile in the absence of answers to these fundamental questions. Without answers to these questions, transformation degenerates into a label without any content and is of no use to anyone. However, as for my activist friend with his newfound notions such as Antonio Negris multitude, Nassim Talebs black swan events, Phillip Balls critical mass,etc.; it would do well to heed the caution of Nicolas Polantzas words in his book titled THE PROBLEM OF THE CAPITALIST STATE wherein he argues : For concepts and notions are never innocent, and by employing the notions of the adversary to reply to him, one legitimizes them and lends it their persistence. Every notion or concept has meaning only within a whole theoretical problematic that founds them; extracted from this problematic and imported uncritically into Marxism, they have absolutely uncontrollable effects. They always surface when least expected, an constantly risk clouding scientific analyses. In the extreme case, one can be consciously and surreptitiously contaminated by the very epistemological principles of the adversary, that is to say the problematic that founds the concepts which have not yet been theoretically criticized, believing them simply refuted by the facts.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 04:28:40 +0000
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