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From: Chgristopher Heard
Date: 1/24/99
The use of the term pseudo-problems referred in very broad manner to Wittgenstein's observation that philosophical problems abound when language takes a holiday. In the present instance it is a reference to the problem of applying cartesian conceptions to post-cartesian "realities" My use of the term refers not so much to the elevation of rationality found in Descartes as to the priviliging of the individual subject as normative and universal, which is wrapped within that form of rationality.
I am at a loss to understand your reference to structuralism as cartesian from the perspective I have described, as it is fundamentally an anti-humanist position which reduces the subject to a function of one code or another, rather than conceptualizing the individual as a center of agency and self-direction. Moreover, my intended thrust was with the post-structuralists, who reject any universal, or totalizing code, pointing instead to radical contingency as the basis of action, experience and self definition. In much of the work being done in geography, aesthetics and cultural theory not only is the monadic cartesian subject dethroned, but the Kantian constants of time and space are defrocked. The implications for psychoanalytic theory, which remains based to a large extent in variations of the Freudian distinction between timeless id like experience and mature, "reality" based time-structured realities, are fairly profound, and this speaks only to the temporal dimension. Add a devalorization of ego grounded spatial epistemologies and space has been opened to break free of the constraints imposed by discussing intersubjective phenomena via constructs based in a dualistic mode of discourse.
I realize that what I say here is far from self-evident, and requires a much more complete elucidation of premises in order to be persuasive. That however would require a much longer posting than I am yet ready to offer. I hope to be able to begin a more satisfying accounting of the ideas only hinted at here in the next several months. Un fortunately, a number of obligations over the last 12-18 months have hindered both research and writing up to this point.
Thank you for your response. Any comments you can offer in further response to my less than adequate musings would be appreciated.
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