سوشیانس تارنمای رسمی شروین وکیلی
Liberation of the meaning; A systemic approach
Sherwin Vakili
Aug. 1999
1. At first, this text was supposed to be a critical inquiry on Foucault’s lecture “L’ordre du discourse” (Foucault,1971), and its core question, which is about the mechanisms and processes that suppress the discourse and differentiates the serious, authentic and creditable statements from ordinary, low level speech.
Meditating on this question, and evaluating Foucault’s brilliant answers critically, a new answer popped out which is more related to complex systems theory and systemic approach toward sociology, rather than Foucauldian archeology/ genealogy. And by this reformulation of the question, this paper emerged as an answer. Before starting our discussion, some considerations must be made to illuminate the writer’s philosophical presumptions and the theoretical paradigm used to deal with the problem.
As mentioned, the main question of our debate is the influences of power on discourse. Looking through the mechanisms responsible for top/pop discourse discrimination is a fruitful method for understanding the patterns of power dynamics. The rules that govern the boundary formation between the vulgar dialogues of the pop and intellectual monologue of the cultural reference group, are from a special point of view, a good laboratory to analyze the power/truth interconnections.
The presupposition that there is an important and determinative interrelation between these two entities, has a long history. From Protagoras to Nietzsche and Foucault, some semi-anarchic thinkers believed that transcendental pure essence of the crystallized truth and rationality is a myth and human interests, along with power relations are determinative forces shaping the truth. Here, we accept this irritating assumption, and therefore believe that asking about power’s limitative functions on truth formalizing systems (language/discourse) is meaningful.
So, by a Foucauldian vocabulary, the core question of “what determines the value of a discourse?” can be interpreted to “what are the disciplinary mechanisms acting on the discourse?” (Foucault, 1979). For dealing with such a taboo inquisition, first of all we should clarify our own theoretical background. This text is written in a systemic paradigm. The systems theories in sociology, whose best known defender was Niklas Luhmann, is a multidisciplinary holistic approach towards the dynamics, structures and functions of the society, when it be analyzed as an evolutionary autopoietic system. Nowadays, the Luhmannian formulation of this theory is the most influential. Although, we are all in debt of Luhmann’s deep and thoughtful interpretations of the social phenomena, our own systemic model bifurcates from his in some points, especially in the course of definition of subjectivity and its place and importance in our systemic model.
Our aim here is neither dealing with Luhmann’s ideas, nor commenting on Foucault’s approach. Instead, we try to look into the problem of “meaning exclusion” via power procedures, through our own systemic model of cultural evolution. The theoretical base of this text is a special version of systemic sociology, which is called “theory of the Manesh”, proposed lately as a M.Sc. thesis (Vakili, 2002 [B]). This theory, is under the influence of Luhmann’s systemic sociology (Luhmann, 1995), and backed up by a multidisciplinary approach, especially the sociobiological view of E.O. Wilson (Wilson,1995) and fantastic insights of Richard Dawkins’ memetics (Dawkins,1989).
Here is no time and space for restating the methodological odds and ends of this model and showing its applications in the field of cultural studies. Therefore, it will suffice to mention the main points of this theory:
A) In this theory, we define Manesh as the quantum of cultural dynamics. A Manesh is an autonomous, replicative system that exists as a subsystem of a symbolic/ semantic apparatus -such as natural language. The natural neural networks – especially human brains- act as their natural dwellings. So, each Manesh’s informational structure is essentially coded as a pattern of neural activation. These systems change the behavioral patterns of their hosts, and replicate through communicative channels. Their semantic or syntactic content change randomly through time, via internal or external variables. These structural oscillations are functionally equal to genetic mutations in biological replicators.
B) Culture, in the theory of the Manesh is defines as a field of interconnecting assemblages of Manesh, that can interact with each other because of their communicative code-meaning resemblance. So, culture can be formulated as a meta-evolutionary field, containing a complicated array of evolutionary replicating systems. So, we may think of two different hierarchical layers of evolutionary processes in a social system: processes related to bodies -biological evolution- and those linked with manesh –cultural evolution.
C) Natural selection in Manesh acts via the hedonistic factor of pleasure and reward (Vakili, 2002 [A]). It means that replication success of a Manesh -which represents its duration and evolutionary fitness- is determined basically by its statistical ability to create pleasure in its host-brain.
D) Pleasure is itself an ancient system for encoding biological fitness, so the evolutionary success of the physiological bodies and semantic contents of their brains (Manesh) link via this unified field of natural selection. This brief review of the main assumptions of the Theory of the Manesh, may illuminate our means and goals. In the systemic paradigm, we tolerate the paradoxes and dialectic concept counterbalances. This seems compatible with Foucault’s ideal formulations (Foucault, 1978), but in the other hand, we do not share his furious opposition to meta-narratives (Foucault, 1991). In systemic approach, we accept the incomplete and non-deterministic nature of the scientific theorization, but we keep trying to reach the most integrated and compatible rational model, which then will become the dominant narrative according to evolutionary laws.
So, we are not supposed to content ourselves with a mere descriptive answer to the problems of meaning exclusion –as Foucault does- and try to extract a liberate methodology, which is somehow systematically present in the “L’ordre du discourse” (Foucault,1971).
2. We may start our survey by a less an ambitious question: “How can we define the meaningful discourse in the theory of the Manesh?”
For answering this question, we need the concept of phase space. Phase space is a theoretical N dimensional space, whose each axis represents one special variable influential in the dynamics of our subject of observation. Each subject matter in the CST can be analyzed as a system, with its specific dynamic parameters and determinative variables. So, we can define a phase-space for any system. For example, the phase space for a simple projectile with four variables (initial velocity, mass, gravitational force, and air resistance),is four dimensional. Each moment of the projectile in this hypothetical space can be shown by a single point, and if we add time as the fifth axis, we can show its whole path by a single line in this space. This line, representing the passage of the system through all possible choices, is called a trajectory. The system is called simple or linear if the pattern and form of its trajectory could be formulized by differential equations. Otherwise, it is complex, and if there be some undetermined parts in it, we call it chaotic. Chaotic systems are complex entities whose trajectory is irregular and unpredictable, but usually locally patterned. The pattern of these combinations of lawful fragments and its chaotic joints to other such pieces is determined by synergetic regularities, emerging from complex structure of the system and making its autopoietic behavior possible.
In complex systems, we always observe a high level of indeterminacy, which is an effect of system’s high degree of freedom. Degree of freedom can be modeled on the phase space as trajectory points in which the system possess more than one behavioral choice. These points are called symmetry (or Curie) points.
System at these points select one of the choices possible, and because of the symmetry -or equi-potentiality/ equi-probablity- of the choices, no external observer can foresee its behavior after the Curie point. As an imaginative representation, we may say that trajectory at the symmetry point breaks to two or more probable continuities. This phenomena is called bifurcation, and is a sign of the systems indeterminacy. System at the symmetry point choose its own behavior. In this special domains of phase-space the internal variables abruptly dominate the external factors, that’s why the exact form of the trajectory at these areas become vague and unpredictable. Systems when reached the symmetry points, have to pass it anyway, because one of their phase space ingredients is temporal dimension. So whether decidedly and thoughtfully or arbitrarily and randomly, the system chooses at the symmetry points, and through this act “breaks the symmetry” .Breaking the symmetry is another definition for information creating. So, complex systems by traversing their ramified trajectories, continually break the symmetry and by reducing their past tense behavioral ambiguity, create the information that is used for increasing their internal complexity.
It is the simplest interpretation of Luhmann’s “increasing the internal complexity by cost of decreasing the external ambiguity”. Psychological states -such as hesitation- and sociological mass movements such as mobs are good examples for indeterminacy and symmetry breaking of complex systems. The information created through this process is understood as the memories of the person or society of its deeds. Psychological systems are conditioned by the -hedonistically defined- victories or failures in reaching their goals, which are always pleasure related in our model (Vakili, 2002 [A]). In each system, we may define one or more equilibrium states that can be represented by some points on the phase space. These points are energetically, thermodynamically, or functionally optimal and economical. So the trajectory near these points bends toward the nearest one, and remains there until an external force rides them out of this “potential well”. These points are called attractors.
3. Now, after this brief review of Manesh’s theory concepts, we may turn to our central problem. What is the meaningful discourse and how is it determined and differentiated?
Let’s start with a simple model.
Assume that in an illiterate society such as , the only communicative channel available is oral language of L. If L is composed of words with maximum length of phonemes, propositions with the maximum length of B words, and units of communicative action with the maximum C propositions interchanged, Then Communicative sphere of the S can be modeled as a phase space such as S, in which:
- possess C dimensions,
- II) Whose dimensions are not simple lines representing unique parameters, but a chunked independent phase space with B dimensions,
- III) Again, whose dimensions are not simple lines, but a chunked independent phase space with A dimensions,
We call this complicated phase space, with its interwoven multi-layer subspaces, a “hierarchical phase space”. This kind of phase space, although hard to bear in mind, is theoretically definable. We may model this space with computer techniques and solve some of our analytical questions by its aid. In this paper, for the sake of simplicity, we just represent the two or three dimensional shadows of this ultra-phase-space. More precise analysis of such a phase space can be done with the matrix formulations.
Now, think of a bipolar simple dialogue in the . Each of the speakers, due to their socially based, internalized rules of dialogue -like what ethno-methodologists like to mention- produce strings of lingual signs. Each string combined of meaning-carrier words which shape the propositions. We can show each string by a point in our simplified ultra-phase space. By this method, we may represent all possible communicative actions in our model by interconnected lines.
Linguists have shown us that all the phonological combinations available in our phase space is not instrumental. The realms of language L is a subspace of , where the linguistic rules of the phoneme/ word/ proposition combinations govern.
We have a succession of one hundred G’s in , but this is not a usable word
of language L. Pronounceability, simplicity, discriminability and referentiality
are key concepts that differentiates the meaningful subspace of L, from
Non-lingual background parts of .
We may extract the meaningful subspace of s as an incarnation of the L in the , by taking the criteria of referentiality. Each point of that refers to something, and so means something, belongs to s. We may understand s as the phase space of the meaning in the society S. In a dialogue, all of the pseudo-lingual strings outside s assess as meaningless and therefore non-communicative. These non-interpretable strings are called “noise” in the information theory.
The meaning phase space of s is defined in a society, rather than on an individuals. Each individual -depended on his or her unique life experiences-has access to a special domain of s. Most parts of the are unfamiliar to a normal speaker of a language. Scientific concepts, juridical idioms, a great deal of ethnic or class slangs, and many regional famous sayings are completely impalpable for a simple user of the language.
For example, if Persian language possesses sixty thousand words, a normal literate native speaker of this language uses around six thousands of them in his ordinary life. It means that only ten percent of the s in this individual is used. In other words, s possesses sixty thousand points representing the words that each individual just access to a subspace of it, which amount ten percent of its volume.
Production of the meaningful speech is governed by exactly the same laws. Rules of the conjugation determine the pattern of word formation and the laws of syntax reign the kingdom of propositions, the same can be told about the discourses and rhetorical traditions. So, we have some generative rules that determine the structure of s in each hierarchical level.
Our abstract model can be better understood with an example. In Persian, we have a alphabetical system containing 32 letters. If maximum length of a word in Persian be 20 letters, maximum length of each proposition be 30words, and maximum length of each unit of discourse be 500 propositions, then the phase space for Persian discourse will possess 500 dimensions, each of its dimensions composed of a 30 dimensional space, whose each dimension is in turn a 20 dimensional space itself. It is the meaning of our ultra-phase-space. As mentioned, just a subspace of this complex imaginary apparatus is instrumentally available as a discursive playground.
The boundaries between the meaningful s and the remainder of meaningless is not rigid and static. The emergence of s out of and its changes is a synergetic phenomenon. The language as a whole, and its discursive parts are dynamic evolutionary systems, which are invented, used and revised by the individuals to be adaptive to their cognitive and communicative needs.
4. By this systemic description of the meaningful discourse, it comes to light that in each society (), in each social condition, only an extravagant limited part of the whole symbolic phase space is available due to each individual as meaningful, appropriate and useful communicative choices. The individual’s field of selection by this means is reduced to a predetermined and purified assembly of traditionally benign choices. Other possibilities are ruled out as impolite, irrelevant, irrational, and insane, as Foucault categorizes them. This pattern of choice reduction leads to a shrunken semantic phase space, whose actual choices are limited to a few traditionally predetermined cases. This mutilated field of availability in the semantic sphere can be called the “permissible field”, which is different from the prohibited part which was ruled out.
This reduced form of semantic phase space, although shrunken and folded, is still complicated enough to bear misunderstandings, errors, and parole mistakes, as well as trickeries and lies. We actually oversimplified the essence of natural language in our model by neglecting the perlocutionary symbols, voice stresses and elements of body language. As a matter of fact, our three layered model of lingual phase space is linked with so many other para-lingual and meta-lingual symbolic systems that our theoretical endeavor means nothing more than a local oversimplified structure useful just as a methodological guide.
Our core question, if be reminded, was about mechanisms and causes that differentiate the permissible from prohibited subsystems of semantic phase-space. This is systemic interpretation of the same challenge introduced by Foucault in his “L’ordre du discourse” .We may define the cultural elements (manesh) as evolutionary, autopoietic informational systems included in this semantic sphere. So, the rules that govern the order of the discourse, discriminates the allowed, benign and -economically or politically- useful Manesh, from deviant, ill-minded, and wasteful elements. The pattern of this differentiation is dominated by the power relations in the society, which regulate and control the distribution of these meaningful elements, and by this means determines their fitness, and shapes the portrait of the cultural identity. Our central challenge, so, is to understand the processes that determine this pattern of inclusion or exclusion, absorption or excretion, and selecting or discarding.
5. Reason is the weaponry of an animal without the teeth and claws, as Nietzsche teaches us. By accepting such an axiom -which is taboo neither in systems theory nor Foucault’s paradigm- we should ask about the evolutionary causes and effects that shaped the structure of the reason, or any other configuration of laws responsible for demarcating the border of permissible discourse. There must be a functional explanation that justifies the unique and special structure of this boundary, or a description that formulates our knowledge limitations about this phenomena. If there is something stable throughout the history of this semantic exclusion -even for a few centuries as Foucault’s episteme, there
Must be an explanation about its evolutionary gains as well. We shall search for the costs and benefits of any special pattern of permissible discourse delimitation. In the Theory of Manesh, a social system is described as a four layer hierarchical complex entity which contains, according to a revised version of Parsons’ original cybernetic view (Parsons, 1951), a biological, psychological, social and cultural levels (Vakili, 2002 [B]).
In each of these layers there is a complicated network of interwoven phenomena that as a whole make up the bodies, personalities, societal organizations, and cultural identities respectively. We may use the abbreviation of BPSC as a shortening form of these levels’ names. The differences of these levels is summed up in the table-1.
Social system, alike any other evolutionary system, is dwelling on a fragile border between order and chaos. Entropic principle, along with random malfunctions which are determined statistically by internal or external factors, always threaten the system, against which there is no armor in the system but its autopoietic potential. Any process -in each of these functional levels-that help this self-organizing, anti-chaotic battle is welcomed by the blind laws of natural selection. Social systems pass through the discrete points of a fractal shaped, complicated attractor. The points that posit near equilibrium points, but not overlapping them. (By the way, isn’t it true that the thermodynamic equilibrium is biologically a synonym of death?) So, we may say that social systems roam along a near equilibrium attractor, jumping from a local, temporal point on the attractor line to the other. This is the process that is called autopoietic behavior, and here is the key to understand the evolutionary increase of the system’s complexity.
We already know some of the rules that make up the backbone of such a strange structure. We know that there is a brutal natural selection process active in the whole system. There is at least one set of selective criteria that links to the biological level, and acts on genomic combination, due to the species natural history. In the theory of the manesh, another set of selection rules is assumed at the cultural level. In this level the selection action the semantic entities through changing the distribution of the manesh in the population.
So, we may think of two interdependent sets of selective criteria; the biological inclusive fitness, and the cultural semantic fitness, which is the bedrock of permissible discourse definition. In the field of discourse analysis, what is crucial is society’s stability in the psychological and sociological levels. It means that semantic combinations, meanings, symbols and discursive entities that guard the mental and economic-political states are favorable in the process of natural selection. These are the discursive elements that can be intentionally evaluated by two interconnected criteria.
In psychological level, our standard for absorbing or discarding of the meaning is good old pleasure, and in the sociological level it is measured by the power equations. These factors need a formalistic apparatus to be measured, compared and evaluated, and that’s why so many parallel systems of pleasure/power codifications have been emerged throughout history. Monetary systems, codes of nobility, symbols of luxury, and titles and aristocratic medallions of honor are all sublanguages invented to code these essential variables. These are the socially based equivalents of the biological neuropeptidergic system that codes the pleasure in the brains.
By this symbolic structure of the value-meanings, popular understanding of the good vs. evil, pleasant vs. painful, useful vs. useless, and benign vs. malignant become possible. By the aid of this artificial table of the codes, and this shrunken semantic phase space, people gain the possibility to reduce their own numerous behavioral choices to a limited set of estimable normative action programs. These actions should not threaten the social/psychological stability. Therefore nothing risky, new and creative is permissible. You should not ask about the validity of the dogma, doubting about the commonsensical facts, and acting creatively farther than a normative threshold.
This means a practical behavioral algorithm for each individual. Anyone and is criminate the important, rational, useful, sane, and allowed choices by this way, and then there remains just the complicated act of choosing which is usually programmed itself by the traditions, mass media and propaganda. The cultural elements, or manesh, that control these pleasure/power codification and govern the holistic dynamics of other manesh are among the discursive elements themselves. They are semantic systems that claim the truth about other semantic systems. They are ingredients of the cultural level that act as an internal attractor and determine the distribution of other menesh. They are the landmarks that demark the permissible discourse boundaries.
These regulative manesh, are selected so that their influence on the social dynamism -in all BPSC four levels- maintain the stability of the system. So, the meanings that are dangerous for bodies (such as suicide and homicide instructions), personalities (anxieties and some philosophical doubts), societal (all interactions that are not winner-winner), and cultural (low fitness manesh), must be diminished and filtrated.
6. There are four main manesh-fitness-determining criteria that can be extracted from four layers of BPSC. A) In biological level, the evolutionary discriminator of the permissible/non-permissible discourse-knowledge is the ancient rule of reduction. The substantial passion for reducing all the cognitive elements in hand to one or a few well-known entities, is the best manifestation of this pattern. Nervous systems, along with biological sensitivities, have an innate limitation in surveying the multidimensional and overcrowded external word. Solving of this so-many-stimuli-and-so-few-receptors problem is simply possible by categorizing the stimuli and reducing each of them to an outstanding code.
Generalization of this simple technique have been led to a huge body of theorization about our experiences. From Ionian philosophers and their to our up to dated quantum mechanics, all are based on the strict methods of reductionist approach.
B) In psychological level, what is important is the integration and unity of the heterogeneous set of the cognitive and emotional phenomena which are configured in a first person singular identity of the self. So, the myth of a unifying, integrated entity which can be called “I” emerges through this psychological need. All cognitive or emotional inputs that constitute incongruent or paradoxical patterns inside the psychological level can be assessed as a threat for the stability of the personality, and therefore must be abandoned and excluded.
As we know from psychophysiological discoveries (Braude, 1991), this sort of absolutely congruent and all integrated psychic system is a cognitive illusion rather than an objective fact. So, the most important factors that should be diminished in our black list of threatening paradoxes, are the epistemological doubts and dilemma that point us the illusive nature of this integration. That is why normative cognition is based on a unified, self-congruent field of knowledge, and our aims and dreams are seemingly ordered in such a self-consistent formal system as well.
The passion for integration is not limited to this level. It reflects in the social level as economical, political or organizational desire toward solidification. In cultural level we may touch its echo as the self-organizing behavior of the manesh that leads to the interconnections and unification of the semantic elements to form huge systems of thoughts, fields of theorizing, or epistemic paradigms as Foucault mentions.
C) In the social level, the main phenomena observable is the symbolic interaction, or by Luhmann’s terminology, communicative action (Luhmann, 1995). Success of the system’s functions in this level is depending on vividness and accuracy. What is important in a communicative action is meaning interchange, and this becomes possible via a transparent, unambiguous discourse. So the discursive elements must be filtrated, purified and simplified so that the meaning send by the interrogator be understood similarly by the audience, and this calls for precision.
D) In the cultural level, we confront a new self-sustaining evolutionary system. The manesh, whose vague synonym may be assumed as cultural elements, are replicatory systems with mutable information contents that effect on their carriers/hosts behavioral pattern and by this means determine their pleasure/fitness. These semantic units -the same as all other evolutionary systems- compete with each other for resources and niches. Their niches are human brains and their resources are communicative channels. What is important for a manesh is winning the match of natural selection and find a suitable opportunity for replication. The effective instrument for achieving this goal, is itself of a semantic essence.
Human hosts absorb and propagate the manesh that increase their pleasure/lifespan. Because of ultra-complicated nature of the cultural level, there is no direct linkage between a unique manesh and the evolutionary/hedonistic gains of it. Manesh like communications, personalities and bodies, act throughout a complex network of interactions and mutual causalities. This means that an individual have no objective clue for estimating the value of a special manesh. The only useful information actually originates from the semantic structure of the manesh itself, and manesh’s claims about its usefulness that is usually echoed by the eager fans. So, the claim for deepness, seriousness, importance and truth is the crucial factor in the cultural level.
7. So far we have analyzed the fitness variables and stability factors effective in a socio-cultural system and showed that there is four semantic attractors, which govern the systems dynamic in each of BPSC hierarchical layers. These factors were respectively simplicity (by reduction), integration (by congruence establishment), accuracy (by conventional precision) and importance (by claiming vitality).
These four semantic attractors lead to four evolutionary strategies in the semantic behavior of social systems. These are the factors that differentiate the permissible discourse from the non-important, ambiguous, paradoxical and enigmatic. This four-layered system of meaning demarcation creates four ways of exclusion and mutilation of the meaning, each based on an illusionary axiom. For the sake of simplicity, we mention them here by metaphoric names. A) Illusion of simplicity and its reductionist methodology leads to “Senemar complex”. The name of this case is borrowed from an old Arabian story which is about a royal architect -Senemar- who had built a palace for the king of Yemen that could be ruined by displacing a singular brick in its wall. The passion of reducing all the weights of the theoretical structures to a unique center of semantic gravitation is a prominent diagnostic of this illusion.
B) Illusion of integration bears the Marduk complex, the great Babylonian god, who became the Lord of the gods because of conquering the Tiamat, the god of chaos. Marduk complex is equal to dogmatic belief in order, lawfulness, and regularity of the world, which is usually thought understandable.
C) Illusion of accuracy makes up the Aristotle complex. Content of this complex is based on identity principle that claims static nature of the universe. There is no change or metamorphosis, outside the secure realm of the Marduk’s laws. As Foucault mentions by his own terminology, this complex as been dominant from seventeenth century on (Foucault, 1970) by increasing the symbolic elements of scientific language and decreasing its semantic field, which makes the predetermined and controlled conventional interconnections possible.
D) Illusion of importance may be called Plato complex, because of his insist on deepening and idealizing of the meaningful codes, as well as his claim of political power due to this potentiality (Popper, 1981). This complex is especially effective because by its claim of importance and seriousness, it links discourse with power and sums up all four illusions in a regular and consistent pattern of belief. Anywhere we encounter their regularities, counter- examples and paradoxes, they may be eliminated by referring to our own superficial and insufficient intellectual efforts, not the invalidity of our axioms. By this means, the cognitive system based on these four complexes become stable and criticism-proof.
8. Permissible discourse is produced by a disciplinary system which is constructed
by these four complexes. Its self-recursive nature, which is a present from Uncle Plato, is its stronghold. The consequences of this demarcating system are accurately mentioned in the Foucault’s “The Order of Discourse”, and can be genealogically analyzed by the aid of his famous model of episteme transformations. The sincerity toward truth, the domination of the author, mathematism and empiricism are all manifestations of these four complexes. The idolatry of the truth can be derived from Platonic complex. The demand for referring the discourse to a known and familiar author is a consequence of the Aristotle complex. Empiricism and mathematism are respectively up to Marduk and Senemar complex. So we can see that Foucault’s pathology of discourse formation is deductible from our own systemic
model, added to a new and more analytic theoretical apparatus.(You see, even in a critical text like this the claim of credit refers to the illusions listed above, that is why building a new analytical construction is so good and brilliant).
Our systemic model differs the Foucauldian paradigm in these points:
A) First of all, in systemic models we do not deny the principle of continuity. We think about some of the patterns and structures as long lived, almost permanent specificities of the social system. Of course this continuity does not lead to structuralism’s dogma about its generality and absolute stability. Foucault’s warnings about the simplicity and insufficiency of the metaphysical continuity presumption, although interesting and useful, is not believed as a discreteness-centered counter-metaphysics. In other words, from systemic point of view, continuation is a theoretical assumption rather than ontological, which is useful for analyzing systems of thought –Foucault himself included- properly.
B) We do not share Foucauldian deep aversion of metanarratives (Dreyfus& Rabinow, 1989). In systems theory, we are aiming to build up a consistent, pervasive theoretical model to justify the patterns and discriminate the regularities. This goal is the same as other paradigmatic models that try to rationalize the facts and formulize the world. It seems that complete epoch of these four illusions be both impossible and fruitless. All major theoretical challenges to understand the being, or criticizing such an understanding, possess a subsidiary scaffold of these merged complexes. All we can do is to remind the illusiveness of these axioms and open up the theoretical semantic phase space by changing these presumptions locally. This is what Foucault calls “reversion” which can also be called criticism.
C) Our model is essentially hedonistic. It is neither Foucault’s, nor Luhmann’s, intention to search and find such an ultimate attractor for a great deal of the behaviors. But in the theory of the manesh we believe that there is an experimentally discriminable attractor, -not unique or teleological, but central and influential- that is the reward system and its complements.
D) Foucault, because of his anti-domination approach towards the discourses and meta-theories, cannot propose liberating strategic programs. This defect is a consequence of his radical refusal of the metanarratives. Our model, in contrast, validates the consistency and pervasiveness as a powerful competitive tool in the cultural level. So, any influential liberating criticism must itself be interpreted to these normative Lingua Franca of the Manesh world. We are not doomed to repeat the errors lurked beneath the normative discourse, but we have to penetrate into its crust if we are aiming a meaningful change occurred by our criticisms. In other words, we need to create a new disciplinary regulation in our discourse, if we want it be resistant against other normative competitors.
9. Our model have some common points with Foucauldian paradigm, on the other and:
A) Both approach accentuate the freedom of criticizing and negate the commonsensicality of the deepest theoretical dogma and presumptions, even just for the sake of curiosity. Moreover, both believe their own assumptions as local, uncertain and somehow arbitrary.
B) Both approaches applaud the multidisciplinary approaches toward the sociological problems. We may even say that they both use a systemic, experimentally enriched method of reformulating our familiar world representations. Both of the methods stress on the multidimensional nature of the social subjects of inquiry.
C) Both strategies concentrate on the biological facts and hard evidences about the social formations. Foucault’s politics of the body, and our centrality of pleasure/fitness are among our rich conceptual borrowings from biology. Genealogically, we may say that this interest to biological documentation have been started by the Nietzsche himself.
D) The core intention of Theory of Manesh and Foucauldian paradigms is liberating the subject. There is a common passion for resisting domination -in Foucault-and enlarging the semantic phase space -in Manesh theory- which from a Kantian point of view, originate from a meta-epistemic ethical motivation for freedom.
10. The aim of the intellectual’s challenges is asking bravely, rather than answering conservatively. The goal of this text has been clarifying a vital and important question. If there be any expansion in the semantic phase space of the reader, this goal is attained.
References
Braude, S. E. First person plural, Routledge, London, 1991.
Dawkins, R. The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1989.
Dreyfus, H.L. and Rabinow, P. Michel Foucault; Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1983.
Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, Tr. byA.Sheridan, Vintage, NY. 1979.
Foucault, M. Colloqui con Foucault (interview with D.Trombadori) in: Remarks on
Marx, Tr. by: James, R. & Cascaito,J. Semiotext pub. 1991.
Foucault, M. L’rdre du discourse, Gallimard, Paris, 1971.
Foucault, M. Neitsche, la geneologie, l’histoire, hommage a jean hypolite,Press universitaire de France, Paris, 1971.
Foucault, M. The Order of Things, Routledge, NY, 1970.
Luhmann, N. Social Systems. MIT Press, 1995.
Parsons, T. Social System, Harvard University Press, 1951.
Popper, K.R. Open Society and its Enemies, Oxford University Press, 1981.
Vakili, Sh. Reward, Symmetry and Free Will, Kanoon-e-Khorshid, Tehran, 2002 [A].
Vakili, Sh. The Theory of the Manesh-ha: Using Complex Systems Theory for Modeling Cultural Changes, M.Sc. degree thesis, Faculty of social sciences, Tehran university, 2002 [B].
Wilson, E,O. Sociobiology, Belknap Press, NY, 1995.
ادامه مطلب: Zurvan Theory