[...] [T]he projection of British imperial power and the accumulation of Enlightenment knowledge about the extra-European portions of the globe in the late eighteenth century were intertwined endeavors. On the one hand, British imperialism fabricated a sense of difference that marked colonizable geographies as not only different from but also inferior to an imagined metropolitan center. On the other hand, eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinking hyper-valuated the leitmotifs of progress and reason. The result was a near-frenzied intellectual quest — what Michel Foucault pointedly labeled a taxonomic impulse — to order the world, to classify people and societies, to study the progressive advance of reason in world history, and to understand and explain why some cultures (namely those of western Europe) had reached reason's pinnacle while others had not.
This focus on human progress was particularly central to Scottish Enlightenment thought. David Hume, for instance, argued that "a man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century." To Hume and his fellow Scottish Enlightenment theorists historical investigation was a means by which to grapple with large questions about both human progress and human divergence. What were the conditions of human civilization at the dawn of history? How had human civilization changed over time? What caused sociological differences between various civilizations? To get at the answers to these questions, historians of the Scottish Enlightenment turned to history in the abstract, which is to say they looked for universal laws of human development derived from conjectures about the progress of societies over time.
[...] In the biological sciences, this faith that the world could be classified and understood in rational terms would express itself most fully in the work of Carolus Linnaeus, whose system of binomial nomenclature functions as the taxonomic system used by biologists to the present. Historians of the Scottish Enlightenment [...] were no less committed to a positivistic sense that universal human reason could be employed to produce a rational comprehension not only of the past but also of the sociological and ethnographic divergences of the present.
No theory was better suited to this venture than was the stadial or four-stage theory of human history that Adam Smith outlined in his lectures on jurisprudence. In Smith's model, history itself could be understood as a rational Enlightenment taxonomy in which civilizations were grouped and classified on an intellectual scale that measured humans and their relationship to the natural world. At their most primitive, humans had no actual relationship to the material world. They owned nothing; they were hunters and gatherers who roamed the earth in search of sustenance, constantly buffeted by nature's whims. When humans recognized the value of owning herds of animals and keeping them pastured in a settled location, they advanced to a higher stadial level of being and to a more complex relationship with the material world. This relationship was advanced yet again when herding communities developed an agricultural economy. At the pinnacle of the stadial ladder were those humans who had distributed society's labor into an economic network in which barter, trade, and, finally (and preferentially), commerce could flourish.
This chapter argues that empire's hierarchies and the Enlightenment's taxonomies operated in tandem with one another [...]. Despite the Enlightenment's commitment to the proposition that reason was a universal human quality and that reason had the capacity to produce universal understanding of the world, its systems, and its inhabitants, the taxonomic impulse behind stadial theory rather cleverly produced an intellectual hierarchy that situated eighteenth-century western Europe at the zenith of both history and human achievement, thus pointing to a tension in the core values of Enlightenment thought. As was imperial power, the Enlightenment's taxonomic impulse was predicated on an absolute sense of difference that could be hard to square with universal claims about human reason.
— Tillman W. Nechtman, Nabobs: Empire and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. pp. 25-7.
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Archives are places of loss and silence, of allergy and hay fever. They are dwellings and, most famously, a site, even a cause, of fever. Historians and scholars have used these metaphors as a way of challenging the archive as a repository of objective historical truth, revealing the power structures and violences that have fed into it and upon which the archive is built. Drawing from the interventions made by postcolonial scholarship, feminism and gender studies, historians have broadened our understanding of what an archive is, what it does to our historical subjects, and how we—as historians—can read archival sources.
- Jane Freeland (December 21, 2020). "The Allure of the Archive: On Frustration and Comfort in the Historian’s Craft." German Historical Institute London Blog.
If you only accept the archive as the way to tell history, a huge part of the human experience is lost - and it's the history of the oppressed and the marginalized that disappears. (Not to mention, you wouldn't be able to do the history of Antiquity or that of oral societies.)
Even if there have been and are critics rationalism, positivism, and the subject-object division continue to influence the social sciences and thought strongly today.
Building on these critiques, Abdullah Öcalan has formulated a foundational critique of these methods of social sciences in his prison writings. He believes them to be inappropriate, even dangerous. Some of the important points of his critique are:
Along with rationalism, analytical thought was separated from ethical values, empathy, and social responsibility. These methods allowed for the construction of logical lines of reasoning and calculations whose ways — appropriate to respective interests and its logic — could reach dimensions of genocides, feminicide, the destruction of nature, from Fukushima to Hiroshima to Auschwitz.
In order to explain society and find solutions to problems, Öcalan pleads for a synthesis of analytical and emotional reason. For, not the logic of application, but the ethics of a democratic-ecological and gender-libertarian society ought to be the point of reference for social scientific thought.
In this course, it needs to be considered that knowledge has objective and subjective sides — consciousness and wisdom result from the encounter of the observed and the observer after all. In this relationship there is no subject and object — but rather an encounter.
In his critique of positivism, Öcalan especially points to the danger of describing history and social development by “law of nature” and linear, mathematical formulas or in perceiving it as a mere amassment of facts: The dogmas of “objective thought” and “universality” deny society’s diversity, will and ability to act.
When events — separated from the social and historical context — are isolated and observed externally aim, cause and impact remain unclear. The exaggerated split into different scientific disciplines and subjects also contributes to this. It has turned out that social sciences that merely string together and describe facts do not serve to resolve social problems.
Öcalan evaluates the dualism of splitting society into subjects and objects, us and them, body and soul, god and slave, dead and live, etc. as another mean to assert domination. The existence of transitions between categories and the social diversity beyond these categories are denied this way. Öcalan further describes that this domination principle was historically first used to legitimize patriarchal domination. Later on, the same method was used for the “economic” legitimization of class domination, racism, imperialism and other forms of oppression.
According to him, the Marxist dualist interpretation of social development by “antagonistic contradictions” in which one class fully defeats the other has proven to be insufficient. The dialectic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis causes changes, but not necessarily a classless, communist society! History cannot be analysed as “closed chapters” or only from the perspective of the rulers. Because history — in which there have always been struggles from freedom as well — continues to impact the present.
Referring to Adorno’s claim “Wrong life can not be lived rightly”, Öcalan emphasizes the importance of methodology. A method cannot be treated isolated from its conception and the interests connected to it. Therefore, a method is necessary which is in harmony with the aim of a free society. Appropriate methods to seek the truth need to be found, without ending in a method-inflation (in the sense that “Everyone seeks for their own truth”).
from Alternatives to the Established Social Sciences by Ann-Kristin Kowarsch, written for the conference “Challenging Capitalist Modernity—Alternative Concepts and the Kurdish Quest” which took place in Hamburg, Germany, 3-5 February 2012.
The Coffin of Andy and Ley-ley and its connection to time travel to Positivism
TW: Dead Dove Do Not Eat (as in the game itself: like literally skip if you are unable to hear out a side that's quite positive about it), obv incest, questioning morals, pet death, death overall, murder, teen pregnancy, unhealty relationships; Spoilers to: TCOAAL, Crime and Punishment, We Need To Talk About Kevin. + it's a long yap.
So, usually I am ts4 cc finder (new post soon), yet I thought lately about TCOAAL and the hate it gets and I just couldn't help myself from asking - "why?" as when usually I see a critique being made about the game, it is said that "the game portrays incest as alright". I can't help but scoff at this statement, as to me it is obvious as a daylight TCOAAL does not show even remotely a positive thing here.
And before the start, be respectful when discussing in the comments pls as I really tried my best to research for this yap session and hope for someone who actually cares to read allat ✌🥀
Now, before continuing, I have to admit that I low-key clickbaited you - using word "Positivism" was low-key as a use to gain haters of this game to read it ;p but that's also not the whole point. If said word was solely for the purpose of clickbait, I would not contain it in my post.
So what is Positivism?
"Positivism" is a name of a literary era we use in my homeland (Poland) for "Realism". Why am I bringing it up? Well, if you had as detailed classes about this era as I did, you may remember that during Realism we as humanity started digging deeper into psychology. Many great artists such as Dostoyevsky (also og his surname in latin alphabet is spelled Dostojewski, as -ski is also an ending polish aristocracy had in their surnames and his dad was polish aristocrat) started including in their artworks backgrounds of their characters to explain some of their (irrational to us unless given this background) thought process. That's where I'll stay here for a while.
For example I will take "Crime and Punishment" made by the mentioned earlier author. The main character - Raskolnikov kills an elderly woman. Hearing this on its own makes him out to be a horrible person, right? Yet that's not all what is shown in the book - we have Rodion's background - the fact that he is a broke, ex-student of law, living not even in an apartment, but a room of a size of a closet, alone and often starving in shady Petersburg. His backstory is also not the nicest. Rodion had to learn from a young age that good and innocent beings are overused by richer, stronger, ignorant ones (talking about a scene where the horse was beaten to death and the boy tried to protect it). We can't forget what pushed him to do his crime:
1. This elderly woman's job was being a loan shark, often using desperate people's financial situation to benefit off of them. Raskolnikov was one of those used people, who when in a huge need of any penny had to sell his dad's watch. The elder woman made many excuses to lower the price to barely 1,15 ruble for which Rodion could live for the next 3-4 days.
2. She was unfair. As mentioned, she made many excuses to lower the worth of things she bought, knowing, that the people who were coming to her, had often nowhere else to go. She also threatened them that if the price for them is too low, she won't give them anything and they may as well leave, as she was aware of her higher postition.
Did that make Raskolnikov's thought process or the act he did to her right or shows it in positive way? No, never.
Does that explain his reasoning? Yes, it does.
Does that portray problems that if solved, the scale of crimes that Raskolnikov did could be reduced? Obiously.
Another example - now from modern day, one about a huge catastrophe that, as people mention, could be stopped.
Listen guys, We Need To Talk About Kevin (haha).
If you haven't seen the movie, I'm gonna spoil it to you in a second:
So, anyone who is ready for spoilers or watched the film is here? Cool.
So Kevin as we know stands behind a mass murder at school and of his own dad and sister, not to mention "not direct" killing of his sister's pet. Is he absolutely guilty of these? As clear as a daylight, duh. Yet, could it be stopped? Also as clear as a daylight - yes. And here is what I see:
There is a group of people who think of Kevin solely as a monster that can't be understood and should not be, as he is too brutal and disgusting after what he did. What they miss out is the fact that Kevin since the early days shows signs of being "a psychopath" - putting that in quote as (fun fact:) oficially in psychiatry there is no such a concept as "psychopath" or "sociopath", only "anti-social behavior" (learned it from my psychologist). What does that change? Well, the fact that Kevin in the moment where he caused tragedy could be a different person if only the doctor Eva and Kevin visited when he was around 4-5 years old actually did his job properly and told Eva to go with him see a psychiatrist. You can also see how mishandled Kevin is (not as in brutally and pathologically raised, but in a way that doesn't supress his psychopatic tendencies) and this later on results in the main plot twist of the movie. Also, if you look closely at Eva's behavior, you can sense that she also may have some higher psychopatic tendencies, yet it is: a) very likely she had a better surroundings that helped reduce her acting on them or b) it's just the way her actress behaves that made me and my psychologist see her this way lol
But the point still stands: with all shown in the movie and some knowledge, you can see why Kevin's thought-process was positive on erasing the people around him. Yet, does that portays it as good? Still no.
So my question is: why is TCOAAL treated so differently?
There is literally a corrupt government and authorities, basically absent parents (the worst type of them: those who physically exist next to you, yet you never feel them emotionally), killing, cannibalism, stalking, teen pregnancy, obsessive, overprotective and overall unhealthy relationships of everyone with everyone - NONE IS SHOWN AS OKAY (if anything it's in nihillistic way ☝)
Let's start to the bottom of the problem that causes the rest - family dynamic of: Renee and her own family, Renee and her father-in-law and Renee's husband and his father (aka Renee's father-in-law, duh). Renee should have never had Andy at her age, that's obvious - that's one of main problems in this story that caused the whole world of this family to flip. The unsupportive family, heavy start for two high-schoolers with a child-on-the-way - it is a perfect recipe for pathology.
Renee herself is presented as a character that has an obsession to present herself as independent being - if we look at how her phone calls with her family look like it's not really surprising, as they sound pretty much like people who take joy in seeing others fail and being "better" than them. Her want to be independent is understandable, yet this feeling of never really wanting to cut off from them is one of her weaknesses. Renee is actively destroying herself by keeping in touch with her family: she keeps creating lies when faced with the phone calls from them that lead to frustration, since they are far from reality. Renee in other words wears herself out by not being able to admit to being weak and that being weak in certain situations like hers is okay. That also may be since it was very likely she has heard only about "it being okay later on" or that "you have to be strong" as comforting when failing (btw don't do that, better say that it is okay to fail sometimes).
Next - her husband never properly standing up to his father. Like omg man you reall seem to love Renee but why are you letting your own father down-talk her? Renee's husband is an adult man, who is still treated like a toddler who broke a vase by his own father. From context, we learn that Andy as their first-born was an accident, but an accident made by the fact that he and Renee really loved each other. Yet his father? His father down-plays it on Renee, scolding mr. Graves for ruining his chances at gaining education and a better job, when it was mr. Graves' own decision to quit school so he could support his pregnant girlfriend instead of leaving her. If his father wasn't such a stuck-up wrack, treating his son like a sim of whose future he can decide (and be mad when it does not happen), maybe Andrew's and Ashley's upbringing would be different (or maybe it would be solely Andrew alone and Ashley wouldn't exist).
Now, having talked about this, another part of the iceberg: Ashley.
So what can be said about her? Manipulative, overprotective, overdramatic, overemotional and yada, yada, yada... I have not seen a beliveable source of what Ashley's very likely mental disorder may be, nor have I talked about it with my psychologist yet, but it is clear that she is naturally not okay. She may be a "psychopath", considering how as a child she treats other people around her, yet it doesn't have to be it, but that's beside the point. Ashley is for sure a kid that requires a lot of psychiatric attention, which, as portrayed by the already bad background, was and is hard. Back to Renee and her obsession of not being weak, parents like her tend to down-play comments that their child may need a consultation with such a specialist, as to them, it equals "you're a bad, irresponsible parent who can't raise properly a child". And also let's be honest, Renee needs therapy herself first. So, Ashley has no access to things that could help raising her to fit into societal behavioral norms.
Next: Renee passing her job as a parent on Andrew. This is a result of teen pregnancy, as Renee at the moment is still a young woman, people her age are very likely just getting married or into casual relationships and just living their best lives. What Renee does in the meanwhile? She's already a mother to two children, working hard with her husband. The feeling of unfairness can be felt from her and it is pretty much valid. FOMO may get to her of wasting her youth on parenthood, yet seeing that her first-born is old enough to take care of himself and younger sister.. well, she abuses her authority over him to force A CHILD look after A CHILD THAT'S NOT MENTALLY ALRIGHT AND NEEDS HELP FROM A PROFESSIONAL. Now, Andrew as a very likely a normal child who does obey his parents is too weak to say anything against his mother, but high enough in family hierarchy to tell Ley-ley to try and be herself without him, as he (fairly) is tired of her and wants to be himself without her too. But once again: he is a normal child, placed against a manipulator who has the power of "I'll tell mom!", with a mother who will support Ashley when it comes to making Andrew babysit her. So his word in practice doesn't mean anything.
Does anyone think it is portrayed as a normal relationship? Well no.
What does it has to do with the whole incest thing? It is actually related pretty much.
So as we know, due to Renee's parental lack of presence, Andrew is locked to Ashley ever since young age, unable to escape from her to be able to be himself. Ashley due to Renee's lack of presence sticks ever since to Andrew 24/7, even at the age where she should be distancing herself from her "role model", which SHOULD be a legal guardian, doesn't do that as it should be, which causes her to isolating herself and Andrew, unable to form relationship with people of different characters, challange their own views and characters obv or go through any normal life stages that other children do (like first new friendships, breaking of those friendships, etc.) - in other words, their mentality isn't growing in a normal, healthy way. Also, the lack of parents may have destroyed the idea of family for both of them, which could have resulted in our main characters inot sensing the fact of the sole fact of their shared blood should click them out of being potential partners.
Also let's not forget about how their portray of societal norms can be: let's remember that these are characters who caused a death of their fellow child as younglings. Let's remember about how Renee seems to want everything to be perfect due to what I mentioned in her part, so it is very likely she told her children that they must fit societal norms or else they're useless. That also makes a connection in brain: "killing by societal norms = bad and beyond repair; we already killed someone, so by societal norms we = bad and beyond repair; so should we really care about not breaking it anymore?"
What does that leave them with? Each other
Who was here when you got rid of your (this girl who suffocated, idk forgot her name)? - Ashley
Who was here for you when you killed together your neighbors? - Ashley.
Who did you ran away with from a place where you would very likely die? - Ashley.
Who always said that loves you and will support you no matter what you do? - Ashley.
And now...
Who was there for you when you were tired of her? - Nobody
Who let you have a normal childhood? - Nobody.
Who let you be a child when you in fact were one? - Nobody.
Who laid huge expectations on you when you were just a kid? - A "mother" and a "grandfather"
But let's not forget, about:
Who has always been there for you whenever you were bored and needed attention? - Andrew
Who always listened to you? - Andrew.
Who hasn't left you, when everyone else seemed like they did? - Andrew.
Who always cared about how you felt? - Andrew.
And who was the one that was mad at you for solely behaving the way you didn't control? - a "mother"
Who forced you to act normal, when you clearly were unable to? - a "mother".
Who ACTUALLY tried to understand why you're behaving how you are? - Nobody.
So in adult life, where some people naturally crave intimate contact, with what positive characters in our life are we left with?
Each. Other.
And combined with how their upbringing ruined them, it becomes clear why the taboo of this whole situation doesn't get to our characters. To them, it's only them against the whole hollow world, that in the past has let them down and one that failed them in the time where we begin the game, continuing forward all the time. But who hasn't let any of them down? Each one. And who is a better partner than a person who hasn't let you down?
The only reason I find on why people down-play it to TCOAAL being about incest game is because our characters aren't reacting badly to it, but think about it - does a bad person think they're bad? Do you think supporters of wars (not people - I mean those who are like "HELL YEAH, THIS NATION THAT IS ATTACKED IS BRUTALLY DYING AT WAR!!!!") think they're bad? Did Kevin from previously mentioned movie think that "ooooh, I am a bad person :("? Did Raskolnikov think he is bad? No, he did not. He excused himself, saying that this woman he killed deserved it. Kevin enjoyed doing it (well until the ending of the movie even though he doesn't explain why he feels wrong now, but at the moment of commiting crime he didn't feel even remotely guilty). It is just more than obvious that a character that is morally wrong will not see their immoral behavior as bad - again, they will be like people who will cheer on groups of people they don't like dying.
With all of that being said: does this look like the game makes their relationship as objectively positive thing that should be changed by society? No bruh, same with Crime and Punishment how it doesn't mean that killing is cool and justified or with how Kevin's mass murder is okay. It all means to show you deeper problem, as those backstories aren't thrown at you for no reason: Crime and Punishment shows the faulty system of justice and hardships fair people live through, We Need To Talk About Kevin means to tell you that when your child is behaving "not normal", you should not be worried about visiting a specialist who will help, admitting to being weak and asking for help when you need it. What TCOAAL does? TCOAAL shows you the pathology of misunderstandings in family, faulty upbringing, lack of support and predatory needing to feel superior over someone weaker/in need, the effects of corrupt authorities and abuse overall. It also means to tell you that therapy is okay and if you ask for help you are no worse than someone who doesn't ask is.
Ashley is like Kevin - if given right background, would be different person and the things we saw in media where they appear wouldn't have happened. Andrew is like Raskolnikov (at the start of the book ofc) - his upbringing made him act like he does after chapter 2 (something I didn't talk about as it wasn't as relevant to topics I was yapping), as he learned that kind and fair people are abused in the world full of unjustice. With how people treat TCOAAL, it heavily remind me of how people at the start of Positivism treated books like "Crime and Punishment" or "Miss Bovary" - a "demoralizating pieces of the down-fall of literature".
!!!! ADDITIONAL YAP: IRREVELANT TO THE TOPIC !!!
I have also started to wonder where does this media illiteracy comes from - like why a lot of people hasn't noticed all of what I said and I started to wonder if it's because of the school system difference. For instance, during my research I learned that books like "Crime and Punishment" or "Miss Bovary" aren't obligatory set books in many countries, which surprised me. Google said that only some classes in USA or Great Britain with extended literature class have it as their lecture, while in my country it is obligatory for everyone. Does anyone else have any thoughts about where does that come from? Or is it just that I am an ADHD literacy era humanist nerd who is learning to be a psychologist? ;-;
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It is by following Wittgenstein's lead that analytic philosophy has progressed toward the "post-positivistic" stance it presently occupies. But Wittgenstein's flair for deconstructing captivating pictures needs to be supplemented by historical awareness — awareness of the source of all this mirror imagery — and that seems to me Heidegger's greatest contribution. Heidegger's way of recounting history of philosophy lets us see the beginnings of the Cartesian imagery in the Greeks and the metamorphoses of this imagery during the last three centuries. He thus lets us "distance" ourselves from the tradition.
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
Ernst Mach, an Austrian physicist, was born Feb. 18, 1838, in Chilitz, Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic. He was educated at home until he was 14...
