Shopping for Philosophy II: This time it’s personal

Is this where I lose the plot?

One reason for rejecting critical theory as used by many archaeologists is that I cannot take it seriously. A helpful book I read was Intellectual Impostures by Sokal and Bricmont. Not because it gave me an excuse to ignore a large body of work, but rather because it gave me the confidence to be able to say that some of this stuff was incoherent. It wasn’t a blanket rejection of philosophy. Around the same time I was getting interested in Singer’s work, because I could see what the problems he wanted to solve were. And any philosopher that has to have an armed guard must be doing something right. But by and large I’ve been able to comfortably ignore much modern theory not simply because it’s bad, but worse – it’s irrelevant. I suppose with Ophelia Benson skewering critical theory and with the launch of Theory’s Empire*, a book I haven’t read yet, I could fossilise in my views with no real injury. Indeed yesterday I showed that it would be par for the course in archaeology to select a theoretical school and squeeze snugly into it.

It would be a little dull though and rather parochial. Fortunately I’ve subscribed to the Philosopher’s Magazine and been flipping through its back issues. The result is I think Philosophy might be a useful tool for thinking about ancient societies. In terms of shopping for a patron philosopher I’m seriously browsing Habermas. He scores well in posing terms being associated with the Frankfurt School which, as far as I can tell, is the philosophical equivalent of a BMW.

The reason I picked him was from a post by Michael Bérubé. He said that Habermas was in opposed to Lyotard, and given what I’d read of Lyotard was dire that sounded promising. So far the reading is promising. Habermas rejects social atomism which is a far simpler way of phrasing what I wanted, basically that there’s interplay between various levels of society at from the supra-individual level to the sub-individual level.

Another factor, which I find attractive, is that he doesn’t seem to see Philosophy as an arbiter of reality. Rather it’s a subject with its own perspectives which can assist in studies rather than referee them. This works for me because it means that I can be reflexive in the use of critical theory, rather than accepting it as a given and merely questioning the validity of the historical or archaeological data. I remember being told countless times in archaeological theory lectures that “data are theory laden”, usually with hand gestures which were obscene in the north of England, but clearly not in the south. This would appear to allow for methodology to be informed by theory and vice versa so you genuinely end up with the interplay of the two informing each other.

This shouldn’t be news. Hodder is famous for his hermeneutic spiral which suggests exactly this. Yet I struggle to recall many theoretical works where the archaeologist or historian turns back to the theoretical source and says “…and here’s where we can prove the philosopher wrong, a better form of the idea is…”

There is a cost and it’s a big one. If you are going to meaningfully engage with the philosophy then it seems to be that it requires you to expose yourself to philosophers. That means submitting papers or giving seminars. This entails courage to accept that experts in their field will tell you you’re wrong or, perhaps needing more courage, standing up and telling them they’re wrong.

The latter has to be an option. Postmodern theory is obsessed by modernity and in the case things like Baudrillard’s simulations is flatly wrong when dealing in pre-modern times. It’s as if postmodernism is, in part, a nostalgic urge to return to an Arcadian state which never existed.

So am I a hypocrite? Maybe.

I can’t believe that Habermasian philosophy will be any more accessible to archaeologists and historians than evolutionary theory. He’s simply too new. He’s not even dead yet. I could argue that his theory fits my own perspective of the past, but then that’s hardly an example of integrating his thought into my work, merely a case of borrowing kudos. However, I am getting ideas to think about which I would not otherwise have. He is interesting in his concepts of system and lifeworld, which help conceptualise ideas about communication of ideals and reaction within things like economy. But there is no philosophy department in Leicester, so how do I know that I’m really engaging with the philosophy rather than listening to the echoes in my own head?

I think ultimately if I am to use philosophy then I cannot treat it as a reference or a rule-book. As with any other cross-disciplinary work if a study is to be any good it has to work across all the disciplines and methods it employs. That means I have to work on the philosophical implications of my work. Is there any value in the work of a historian or archaeologist who will select morsels of philosophy but not submit them for review by anyone who actually specialises in philosophy?

* Found via the Trireme Veterans for Truth. —–