7/31/2019 Habermas Explains

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1.Habermas explains, people "can develop personal identities only if they recognize that the

sequences of their actions form narratively presentable life histories; they can develop

social identities only if they recognize that they maintain their membership in social groupsby way of participating in interactions, and thus that they are caught up in the narratively

presentable histories of collectivities." Jrgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative

Action . Vol. II:Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Boston:Beacon Press, 1987).

a. Social identity = membership in social groups = (participation in interactions) =

caught up in the narratively presentable histories of collectivities?b. Participation = yes!

c. Form of participation need not be w/ other members of the social group nor any

inter- action but can also take the Form of an intra- action within ones mind =

or by ones accouterments or possessions which yield a certain mental picture ofones self as a member of said group.

2.Austin calls the performative quality of language, its ability to bring about a change,

becomes another important feature of narratives. When we speak we indeed do more than

describe events. We also produce actions, which then exercise profound consequences onsocial and historical processes.

a. The performative character of language draws attention to and dramatizes therelation between power and representation. Not only are there unequal positions

from which discourse unfolds, as Habermas warns, but narratives of power are also

able to create new categories of understanding, frames of reference, forms of

interpretation that naturalize meanings and in turn affect the course of social action.Roland Barthes,Mythologies (New York: Paladin, 1972).

3.Moreover, if we assume that power cannot subsist without being representedif

representation is the very essence of power, its forcethen narratives also produce powerwhile representing it . the fact that events seem to narrate themselves self-referentially

doubles the authority of power, whose discourse purportedly tells the truth. Power becomesboth the producer and the product of its own discursive formation. The power of narrativeand the narrative of power form an explosive combination.

a. See Louis Marin, "The Narrative Trap: The Conquest of Power" in Mike Gane, ed.,

Ideological Representation and Power in Social Relations (London: Routledge,1989). Marin goes to the extreme of affirming that because power has no reality

beyond its representation, therefore representation is the very essence of power:

"Power is therefore exercised but it does not exist" (ibid., p. 108). Power needs

discourse to be represented, and power can only sustain itself through its signs. Butbecause power is the exercise of force, discourse is also a product of force, and it

does establish power by representing it. Marin, however, also suggests that the

power of discourse, its performative nature, can oppose through irony and mockerythe discourse of power. Although confined to tricks, the weak can challenge power

by using power's own force, its discourse.