It was a pleasure to read Tom Strong's review of our book, The End of 
Knowing. You always learn something no matter how others read you and, in this case, Tom's reading was often very close to what we had intended.   We especially appreciate his recognition of how we go beyond Gergen and Shotter (two of the social constructionists and fellow postmodernists we feel most close to) -- one of many insightful remarks in the review.  We want to take this 
opportunity to continue dialogue on two other points Tom opened up. 

The power question.  Tom is worried (or at least unclear) about 
whether our methodology sufficiently engages power differentials.  But if power relations are (at least in part) epistemologically rooted, then efforts to 
engage/eliminate epistemology are necessarily efforts to engage/eliminate 
power differentials. Those with power are those who are bearers of Truth; 
what else is privileged meaning except Truth?  It seems to us that eliminating 
those in power (i.e., their location) involves violence or is impossible, 
while eliminating the epistemological source of their power is neither. 
Eliminating truth is our way of dealing with the power question. 
 
Perhaps related to this is what we see as Tom's temporalist 
translation of our historicity.  Throughout the essay, he puts forth immediacy and spontaneity as the alternative/antidote to "aboutness."  This isn't our 
position and what's overlooked in doing so is how committed we are to 
historical process as opposed to temporality.  We don't at all deny 
continuity or carryover from past experience, as Tom seems to take us as doing. 

Performing to us is not getting caught up "in the moment" but getting caught 
up in history. The kind of existentialism implied by an emphasis on 
momentariness is foreign to our work.  And this is where Marx becomes really 
important for us.  It's Marx's conceptualization of history more than his 
conceptualization of commodity that we find most revolutionary and 
revolutionarily useful in his work.  His occasional lapses into temporality 
(as in the oft-quoted comparison between the bee and the architect to 
illustrate human beings' capacity for planned action), are problematic and 
aberrations to us (while many Marxists and non-Marxists alike see this as 
the epitome of Marx's brilliance). So, it's Marx's radical historicalness that 
moves us so much and that corresponds - in our method - to Wittgenstein's 
language games and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. Performed 
activity is not outside of history -- nothing is. We prefer an historical analysis of "a moment" to a momentary one. 

Again, we thank Tom for his careful reading and thought-provoking 
comments.