Bourgeois Theorising
Some of the crowds I run in are the kind of strange places where people sometimes accuse each other of bourgeois theorising. I have been known to indulge in this (both bourgeois theorising and accusing others thereof) myself on a number of occasions. Just so it is clear what it is I am both guilty and accusing you of, here's my very brief attempt at some rough-and-ready conceptual analysis of `bourgeois theorising'.
The bourgeois, being society's ruling class, have an interest in presenting things as impossible to alter, and ensuring we do not in fact systematically alter our conditions in such a way as to reliably bring about a better social order that would not be subject to their/(our, being real about who I am and what I do!) misrule. Bourgeois theorising is thus theorising that misleading stands in the way of coming up with a workable causal understanding of social systems, which is to say an understanding that could fruitfully guide democratic policy making or activism towards the creation of a better polity. Some common ways bourgeois theorising expresses itself: presenting as inevitable what is actually subject to human amelioration, thus discouraging policy efforts aimed at changing whatever is at issue. Presenting as unknowable what is in fact knowable, and thus suggesting we could not plan out in advance the actions we ought take to fruitfully democratically govern our social order.
Some notes on this. First, this is super vague, and here are some things that I am not being clear enough on. First, does the theorising have to be obfuscatory in the sense of being inaccurate? Might bourgeois theorising be a better guide to the truth -- maybe some features of social life really are inevitable? Second, what counts as `standing in the way' -- convincing people to the contrary? phrasing things in a manner that is incomprehensible to the vast majority of the population? having as an implication that the relevant sorts of knowledge is impossible even if it does not convince people to the contrary? Third, how insistent am I upon the democratising element -- what if, in present social circumstances, better causal theories would actually empower regressive tyrannical factions, even if in the future such knowledge would be useful to the democratic polity or could also be useful to activists agitating for democracy?
Second, I don't think that bourgeois theorising need be done by people who are bourgeois; though perhaps bourgeois people are more likely to engage in this, I don't know. I don't think people who are not bourgeois are guaranteed to do work that is not bourgeois theorising -- on the flip side, maybe they are not even less likely to do it for all I know. And I don't think it has anything to do with the intent of the theorist. Bourgeois theorising picks out a problem with the theory, not with the theorist.
Third, I think a lot of scholarship that many think of as liberatory or emancipatory is in fact bourgeois theorising. An example I sometimes see in conversation is that an admirable attention to lived experience or life's many complexities can devolve into a kind of pedantic particularism, where accuracy in the details of particular cases are insisted upon and induction is blocked unless one has a very high degree of similarity shown between cases. In their full rich detail every case is different from every other case, so without some tolerance for inductive error or omission of details we cannot learn about the future from the past, or from each others experiences. But we need to know some things in advance about what happens if one makes various interventions for democratic policy or activist agitation to be better than chance at attaining their ends, and among the things we need to know are general social regularities, and that the experiences of comrades is a good guide to our own future, even where those comrades are in various ways different, and facing situations different from, us and our own. A mode of theorising that makes it harder to gain such knowledge is thus bourgeois theorising. (This interacts with a point made above: I sometimes suspect that many people who engage in this apparently liberatory bourgeois theory are acutely aware of the fact that the near term consequences of accurate general causal knowledge about society being available is benefitting the social engineering projects of neoliberal technocrats.)
The bourgeois, being society's ruling class, have an interest in presenting things as impossible to alter, and ensuring we do not in fact systematically alter our conditions in such a way as to reliably bring about a better social order that would not be subject to their/(our, being real about who I am and what I do!) misrule. Bourgeois theorising is thus theorising that misleading stands in the way of coming up with a workable causal understanding of social systems, which is to say an understanding that could fruitfully guide democratic policy making or activism towards the creation of a better polity. Some common ways bourgeois theorising expresses itself: presenting as inevitable what is actually subject to human amelioration, thus discouraging policy efforts aimed at changing whatever is at issue. Presenting as unknowable what is in fact knowable, and thus suggesting we could not plan out in advance the actions we ought take to fruitfully democratically govern our social order.
Some notes on this. First, this is super vague, and here are some things that I am not being clear enough on. First, does the theorising have to be obfuscatory in the sense of being inaccurate? Might bourgeois theorising be a better guide to the truth -- maybe some features of social life really are inevitable? Second, what counts as `standing in the way' -- convincing people to the contrary? phrasing things in a manner that is incomprehensible to the vast majority of the population? having as an implication that the relevant sorts of knowledge is impossible even if it does not convince people to the contrary? Third, how insistent am I upon the democratising element -- what if, in present social circumstances, better causal theories would actually empower regressive tyrannical factions, even if in the future such knowledge would be useful to the democratic polity or could also be useful to activists agitating for democracy?
Second, I don't think that bourgeois theorising need be done by people who are bourgeois; though perhaps bourgeois people are more likely to engage in this, I don't know. I don't think people who are not bourgeois are guaranteed to do work that is not bourgeois theorising -- on the flip side, maybe they are not even less likely to do it for all I know. And I don't think it has anything to do with the intent of the theorist. Bourgeois theorising picks out a problem with the theory, not with the theorist.
Third, I think a lot of scholarship that many think of as liberatory or emancipatory is in fact bourgeois theorising. An example I sometimes see in conversation is that an admirable attention to lived experience or life's many complexities can devolve into a kind of pedantic particularism, where accuracy in the details of particular cases are insisted upon and induction is blocked unless one has a very high degree of similarity shown between cases. In their full rich detail every case is different from every other case, so without some tolerance for inductive error or omission of details we cannot learn about the future from the past, or from each others experiences. But we need to know some things in advance about what happens if one makes various interventions for democratic policy or activist agitation to be better than chance at attaining their ends, and among the things we need to know are general social regularities, and that the experiences of comrades is a good guide to our own future, even where those comrades are in various ways different, and facing situations different from, us and our own. A mode of theorising that makes it harder to gain such knowledge is thus bourgeois theorising. (This interacts with a point made above: I sometimes suspect that many people who engage in this apparently liberatory bourgeois theory are acutely aware of the fact that the near term consequences of accurate general causal knowledge about society being available is benefitting the social engineering projects of neoliberal technocrats.)
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