Monday, January 8, 2018

A RESPONSE TO AUSTIN HAIGLER

Austin Haigler offers this comment and question regarding my lectures on Mannheim:

“I am really intrigued by Mannheim's distinction that time consciousness is ideologically encoded. As well as your subsequent ideas towards space consciousness being likewise. Question, given you had remarked that the space consciousness ideas you laid out were rough drafts or outlines, what is the more official take on these two ideas? Any interesting work done by philosophers or sociologists about the application of them? Or, critique?”

I think Mannheim’s extended discussion of the ideological encoding of time consciousness is the most brilliant section in one of the best books of social theory ever written.  As a Kant scholar, I am of course attuned to the idea that space and time are part of the fundamental structure of experience, and Mannheim was clearly consciously signifying on Kant [as we say in Afro-American Studies] in that discussion.  In my lectures, I had a go at trying to construct a parallel ideological critique of our experience of space.  My effort was in the nature of a jeu d’esprit, hardly at the level of Mannheim’s discussion.  I have never tried to elaborate on it [please feel free], and so far as I know, no one has ever noticed it in print or discussed it.


If anyone is interested in my idea, you can find it written out and archived at box.net.

1 comment:

  1. Ah very good. Thanks for the reply. Has subsequent work been done following Mannheim's critique of time consciousness? Or did scholarship mainly concentrate on other aspects of Ideology and Utopia?

    Seems a shame if not.

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