Harvey's Dialectics
>> Monday, April 27, 2009
From David Harvey's Justice, nature, and the geography of difference.
Historical materialist enquiry infused with dialectics can integrate themes of space, place, and environment into both social and literary theory.
Literary theorists have brought about resurgence in dialectics, setting the stage for confrontations in social theory between positivism, materialism, and empiricism, with phenomenology, hermeneutics, and dialectics. Parallel modes of thinking:
1) Notion of “thing” as something that has history and has external connection
2) Notion of “process” containing history and possible futures, and “relation” containing ties with other relations Duality has no purchase in dialectics, yet the debate does have significance in regards to the abstraction of phenomena we encounter in everyday life.
Dialectics in 11 propositions:
1) “Dialectical thinking emphasizes the understanding of processes, flows, fluxes, and relations over the analysis of elements, things, structures, and organized systems.”
2) “Elements or “things” are constituted out of flows, processes, and relations operating within bounded fields which constitute structured systems or wholes.
3) The “things” and systems which many researchers treat as irreducible and therefore unproblematic are seen in dialectical thought as internally contradictory by virtue of the multiple processes that constitute them.
4) “Things” are always assumed “to be internally heterogeneous” at every level.”
a) What looks like a system at one level becomes a part at another level?
b) The only way we can understand the qualitative and quantitative attributes of “things” is by understanding the processes and relations they internalize.” Contradiction is a union of two or more internally related processes that are simultaneously supporting and undermining one another.”
c) “There is no limitation to be put on the argument.” We do not internalize everything, but only what is relevant.
d) Setting boundaries is a major strategic consideration. What is relevant, at what scale?
5) “Space and time are neither absolute nor external to processes but are contingent and contained with them. Processes do not operate in but actively construct space and time and in so doing define distinctive scales for their development.”
6) “Parts make whole, and whole makes part.”
7) The interdigitation of parts and whole entails “the interchangeability of subject and object, of cause and effect.”
8) Creativity arises out of contradictions from the heterogeneity in systems and internalized heterogeneity of “things”.
9) All aspects of all systems change
10) Dialectical enquiry is a process that produces permanences that can be supported or undermined by continuing processes of enquiry.
11) Exploration of “possible worlds, or potentialities is central do dialectical thinking
To the extent to which you replace labor power with machines, the market is reduced as unemployment increases. This means that the market has to expand, rewarding the rich and those who are not unemployed and have the money to consume more. Capitalism thus creates uneven development. This contradiction is manifested in crises.
DIALECTICAL CONCEPTS, ABSTRACTIONS, AND THEORIES
The above 11 dialectical concepts attempt to allow us to accept a strong view of dialectics, that the world is inherently dialectic, while according to Marx’s practice, focusing on socio-economic systems. The dialectic approach implies that the search for order must be replaced with a search for generative principles that produce different types of orders.
RELATIONS WITH OTHER SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT
Cartesian thinking is lacking in some ways. It cannot cope with change and process except in terms of comparative statics, feed back loops, or linear rates of change.
DIALECTIC APPLICATIONS – MARX’S CONCEPTION OF CAPITAL
Capital is conceptualized as a process or as a relation rather than a thing. He further states that we must concentrate our attention to the transformative moment of production if we want to understand the creative mechanisms of transforming the process of capitalism. The labor process and its appropriation allow capital to flow. Marx’s ideas have required further specialization, and can be used to explain processes and flows occurring today. But dialectics is not free from destructive misappropriation and a trenchant unchanging view of the world, but neither is any other form of worldview (i.e. Capitalism).
1) Notion of “thing” as something that has history and has external connection
2) Notion of “process” containing history and possible futures, and “relation” containing ties with other relations Duality has no purchase in dialectics, yet the debate does have significance in regards to the abstraction of phenomena we encounter in everyday life.
Dialectics in 11 propositions:
1) “Dialectical thinking emphasizes the understanding of processes, flows, fluxes, and relations over the analysis of elements, things, structures, and organized systems.”
2) “Elements or “things” are constituted out of flows, processes, and relations operating within bounded fields which constitute structured systems or wholes.
3) The “things” and systems which many researchers treat as irreducible and therefore unproblematic are seen in dialectical thought as internally contradictory by virtue of the multiple processes that constitute them.
4) “Things” are always assumed “to be internally heterogeneous” at every level.”
a) What looks like a system at one level becomes a part at another level?
b) The only way we can understand the qualitative and quantitative attributes of “things” is by understanding the processes and relations they internalize.” Contradiction is a union of two or more internally related processes that are simultaneously supporting and undermining one another.”
c) “There is no limitation to be put on the argument.” We do not internalize everything, but only what is relevant.
d) Setting boundaries is a major strategic consideration. What is relevant, at what scale?
5) “Space and time are neither absolute nor external to processes but are contingent and contained with them. Processes do not operate in but actively construct space and time and in so doing define distinctive scales for their development.”
6) “Parts make whole, and whole makes part.”
7) The interdigitation of parts and whole entails “the interchangeability of subject and object, of cause and effect.”
8) Creativity arises out of contradictions from the heterogeneity in systems and internalized heterogeneity of “things”.
9) All aspects of all systems change
10) Dialectical enquiry is a process that produces permanences that can be supported or undermined by continuing processes of enquiry.
11) Exploration of “possible worlds, or potentialities is central do dialectical thinking
To the extent to which you replace labor power with machines, the market is reduced as unemployment increases. This means that the market has to expand, rewarding the rich and those who are not unemployed and have the money to consume more. Capitalism thus creates uneven development. This contradiction is manifested in crises.
DIALECTICAL CONCEPTS, ABSTRACTIONS, AND THEORIES
The above 11 dialectical concepts attempt to allow us to accept a strong view of dialectics, that the world is inherently dialectic, while according to Marx’s practice, focusing on socio-economic systems. The dialectic approach implies that the search for order must be replaced with a search for generative principles that produce different types of orders.
RELATIONS WITH OTHER SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT
Cartesian thinking is lacking in some ways. It cannot cope with change and process except in terms of comparative statics, feed back loops, or linear rates of change.
DIALECTIC APPLICATIONS – MARX’S CONCEPTION OF CAPITAL
Capital is conceptualized as a process or as a relation rather than a thing. He further states that we must concentrate our attention to the transformative moment of production if we want to understand the creative mechanisms of transforming the process of capitalism. The labor process and its appropriation allow capital to flow. Marx’s ideas have required further specialization, and can be used to explain processes and flows occurring today. But dialectics is not free from destructive misappropriation and a trenchant unchanging view of the world, but neither is any other form of worldview (i.e. Capitalism).
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