Customer Reviews

Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity (Cultural Memory in the Present)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Luhmann does not fit nicely into the categories made available by current theory-speak. He can be a difficult read. The incoherence of the previous review (dated May 3, 2010) is indicated by its author's contradictory contentions that Luhmann is at one and the same time a constructivist and a positivist. The author's definition of autopoiesis is faulty: autopoiesis is not simply a process of replication of structures but incorporates that level of function into the self-maintenance of a system whose product is its own ongoing process of self-production. This generalized redescription of autopoietic operation gets Luhmann from biological to sociological systems theory. With that move Luhmann opens up a discourse that is much wider than sociology per se. The author engages it on its philosophical turf, but the matter of the Western ontological tradition versus the counter claims of Luhmann's epistemological constructivism cannot be decided on the weight of a few insults.

By taking seriously the implications of operational closure in self-referential systems from cells to societies, Luhmann's work offers an important challenge to a range of intellectual verities. What this means is that the contingencies of interrelation among systems both determine how they evolve, and yet, are not where we usually go looking for them. The first step to finding the blind spot of a system is to be aware of the need to see past your own.

In any event, the importance of Theories of Distinction is that it provides a choice selection of short pieces by a notoriously prolix author, along with editor William Rasch's quite useful introduction. This volume, along with Hans-Georg Moeller's Luhmann Explained, is the best way for an American reader to begin to get their bearings within Luhmann's writing. After that it will demand serious commitment to work through some of his full-tilt volumes. For many, The Reality of the Mass Media would be a rewarding next step; for others, Art as a Social System. Until his last work The Society of Society arrives in English translation, the best advanced course in his general theory will remain Social Systems.

Luhmann is a fan of Husserl's phenomenology. In Husserl, the transcendental subject has intention, or the positing of a difference. So, differences define the phenomenological world as composed of asymmetric distinctions. Differences make up "operative construction," like calculus or cybernetics. In such activities, systems achieve "autopoiesis"; that is, they construct themselves the way chromatin produces chromosomes. Luhmann writes: "In the language of Parsons' pattern variables...universalization can only be achieved through specification." (71) This takes the place formerly occupied by transcendental premises. Instead of appealing to final units, everyone just describes descriptions.

"Describing descriptions" puts everybody in a pretty bad place. Society replaces philosophy and religion, and we have to live with a world society that is complex of cultural traditions, "without top and without center" (89) because of the post-modern condition. Since everything is just bundles of contradictions, there is no ontology and no ethics. The best we can hope for is "deconstruction," which is discovering the autopoiesis and self-observation of a system. Reliable tools for "deconstruction" are the mass media prefer discontinuity over continuity because they have to produce information. (108)

We can be saved by scientific systems analysis, he says. "Radical constructivism' replaces the distinctions of subjective/objective and of transcendental/empirical with the distinction of system/environment. We will be saved by science, not philosophy, since epistemology cannot "provide a foundation for the sciences because it cannot offer basic principles, arguments, or even certainty...[but makes] society irritatingly aware of the fact that [society] produces science." (152)

These very readable translations of Luhmann's essays reveal precious little sociology emerging from his repeated, empty programmatic statements. His emptiness comes from his definition of ontology, which he defines as "being/not being." Ex nihilo nihil fit wrote Aristotle, meaning "from nothing, nothing comes." Ontology is about being and becoming, not about being and not being. Asymmetric differences (categories) are very helpful in understanding experience, since they are joined in symbols. In the last essay, Luhmann cries, "We no longer have a knowledge of psychological and social systems that can be integrated." (155) By "integration," he longs, like any positivist, to reduce culture to social structure.