| Lois
Shawver's summary of
Kenneth
Gergen's
Constructionist Dialogues and the Vicissitudes of the Political
Click
here for the full text of this article
In this paper, Ken Gergen suggests that there are three major groups
who endorse social constructionist theories and that in spite of their
common theoretical perspective there is considerable tension among them.
There is a group who give priority to political agendas (ideological critics),
a group that seems to have more interest in language (literary-rhetoric),
and a group that is more interested in understanding the way we construct
our lives (and how to deconstruct them).
Much of the tension comes between those who give top priority to the
political agendas and the other two groups, both of whom feel alienated
by the style of the political group. The political group, he says,
primarily uses a technique of deconstruction that works by challenging
the motivation of the opponents in endorsing the perspective they hold.
Gergen says:
| The ideological critic removes the authority of the truth claim by
shifting the focus from the claim itself to the ideological or motivational
basis from which it derives. By giving an intelligible account of the motives
of the truth teller to suppress, to gain power, to accumulate wealth, to
sustain his/her culture above all others, and so on, the suasive power
of truth as presented is destroyed. In effect, the language of description
and explanation is reconstituted as motive language; claims to neutrality
are viewed as "mystifying," and factual talk is indexed as "manipulation."
In this way the authority's claims to language as truth bearing are
reduced to mere propaganda.
So, if someone says, "I question whether your philosophy of therapy
is valid," the political type (as Gergen defines it) might say, "I question
whether your motives are pure in challenging me. |
What do you folks think of this as a method of discussion? According
to Gergen, those who argue in this way feel that other postmoderns (or
social constructionists) are just naive about politics. Is this a
way to be politically successful? Is there a cost to arguing in this
way? What's the cost to our paralogy? |
