Chapter 2
Phenomenological Structuralism
Against the Hegelian dialectical, postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial logic
of many white Western and black bourgeois scholars exploring the Haitian Revolution,
culture, and identity of the Haitian people, I propose an anti-dialectical perspective
grounded in the Weberian (1958 [1904–1905]) sociology of The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism coupled with the structural Marxism of structuration theory.[1] From the former my phenomenological structural sociology borrows the logic of
the internalization of the ideas and ideals of the ideological superstructure of a
society as the basis by which social actors go about recursively reorganizing and
reproducing their being-in-the-world as their purposive-rationality or practical consciousness,
which is the language of the latter, structurationism. Phenomenological structuralism
seeks to fix structurationism to account for alternative agential moments outside
of structural reproduction and differentiation. In the end, I apply my structurationist
sociology to understanding the constitution of Haitian practical consciousness as
the parallel development of two forms of system and social integration, the Catholic/Protestant
Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the whites and Affranchis on the one hand; and
the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism of the majority of the Africans on the
other.
Background
The structurationist or praxis school in the social sciences is commonly associated
with Jürgen Habermas (1987 [1981], 1984 [1981]), Pierre Bourdieu (1990 [1980], 1984),
and Anthony Giddens (1984) in sociology, and Marshall Sahlins (1976, 1995 [1981])
in anthropology (Crothers, 2003; Ortner, 1984). Elaborated in a series of theoretical
works and empirical studies, structurationists or praxis theorists account for agency
and consciousness in social structure or system, “by clamping action and structure
together in a notion of ‘practice’ or ‘practises’” (Crothers, 2003, pg. 3). That is,
structures are not only external to social actors, as in the classic structural functional
view, but are also internal rules and resources produced and reproduced by actors
“unconsciously” (intuitively) in their practices. In structurationist or praxis theory,
as Marx one-hundred years before suggested, the structure is “not a substantially
separable order of reality”, but “simply the ‘ideal’ form in which the totality of
‘material’ relations…are manifested to consciousness…” (Sayer, 1987, pg. 84). From
this perspective, accordingly, structure or, sociological speaking, social structure,
“may set [(ideological)] conditions to the historical process, but it is dissolved
and reformulated in material practice [(through mode of production and ideological
apparatuses)], so that history becomes the realization, in the form of society, of
the actual [(embodied rules)] resources people put into play” (Sahlins, 1995 [1981],
pg. 7): consciousness, as a result, refers to “practical consciousness” or the dissolution
and reformulation of a social structure’s terms (norms, values, prescriptions, and
proscriptions) in material practice.
Although this Neo-Marxist “clamping together” of structure, praxis, and consciousness
descriptively accounts for “the individual moment of phenomenology” by explaining
the unanimity, closure, and “intentionality” of a form of human action or sociation,
the capitalist social (material) relations of production and its class division, which
constitutes the integrative actions of modern society. It fails, however, as pointed
out in the epistemological postmodern/post-structural positions of Michel Foucault,
Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill-Collins, to account
for the origins and nature of fully visible alternative forms of practices (i.e.,
“the variability of the individual moments of phenomenology”) within the dominant order that are not class based, but are the
product of the deferment of meaning in ego-centered communicative discourse, a la
the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of the Vodou
leadership of Haiti. Structurationists fail to see that society and its dominant institutionalized
identity and behavior is not solely “one-dimensional,” i.e., a duality, and differentiated
by the dialectic of capitalist social relations of production, but is constituted,
through power relations, as transition, relation, and difference. This difference,
akin to Jacques Derrida's différance, is not biologically (racially) hardwired in the social actor. It is a result of
self-reflective and non-impulsive social actors, upon internalizing the arbitrary
structural terms or signifiers of their society via their consciousness, bodies, language,
and linguistic communication, conceiving of and exercising other forms of being-in-the-world
from that of the dominant symbolic order and its structural differentiation or relational
logic through the deferment of meaning in ego-centered communicative discourse (Habermas,
1987 [1981], 1984 [1981]; Giddens, 1984).
By “clamping” action, structure, and consciousness together, i.e., part/whole totality,
however, structurationists do not account for, nor demonstrate, the nature and relation
of this non-biologically and non-impulsive determined difference (différance) to that of the dominant practices of the social structure as highlighted in the
theorizing of postmodern and post-structural scholars. Instead, they re-introduce
the problem in a new form: How do we know or exercise anything at odds with an embodied received view grounded in, and differentiated by,
capitalist social relations of production? Paul C. Mocombe’s (2013, 2014, 2015) phenomenological
structural ontology, phenomenological structuralism, seeks to fix structurationism
to account for this problematic by synthesizing the materialism of physics, with the
agential initiatives highlighted in the phenomenological method and discourses of
Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, the Neo-Marxist structuralism of structurationism,
and Wittgenstein’s notion of language game. For Mocombe, in building on the duality
concept of structuration theory, human social action, consciousness, and identity
is not only a duality determined by their relation to the mode of production and its
differentiation. But it is also a dualism, the externalized structure of a society
reified, in the words of Louis Althusser (1970, 2001), through language, ideology,
ideological apparatuses, communicative discourse, and the mode of production. As such,
social action and identity/consciousness constitution are not necessarily a duality,
i.e., the internalization of the external language, ideology, etc., of a social structure
recursively (re) organized and reproduced as the practical consciousness of a social
actor. Duality is a contingent phenomenon based on a human subject’s stance vis-à-vis
the reified structure, which presupposes their existence and the will of those in
power positions. In other words, alternative actions or practical consciousnesses
are distinct reified languages, ideologies, ideological apparatuses, and modes of
production from that of the dominant social structure within which they operate. These
alternative actions or practical consciousnesses are the product of four sources,
and Being’s stance, ready-to-hand, unready-to-hand, and present-at-hand, vis-à-vis
them: 1) the drives of the body and brain, 2) impulses of residual actions/memories
of embodied recycled past consciousnesses of subatomic particles, 3) ideologies of
a social system along with its differentiating logic (structural reproduction and
differentiation), which produces the variability of actions and practices in cultures,
social structures, or social systems as highlighted by structurationist theorists,
and 4) the “present-at-hand” phenomenological meditation/deferment that occurs on
the latter actions via linguistic/symbolic communication. The exercise of power by
social actors in power positions in the ideological apparatuses social actors are
interpellated in, in the end, determines what practical consciousnesses are allowed
to manifest in a material resource framework without a social actor facing alienation,
marginalization, or death.
To this end of fixing structurationism to account for the nature and origins of alternative
practical consciousnesses outside the structural reproduction and differentiation
of capitalist relations of production, Paul C. Mocombe’s (2014, 2015) phenomenological
structuralism builds on the material relationship highlighted in physics between the
identity and indeterminate behavior of subatomic particles highlighted in quantum
mechanics and the determinate behavior of atomic particles in their aggregation as
highlighted in general relativity to understand the material constitution of consciousness
at the subatomic/neuronal level in, and as, the brain and its manifestation as human
practical consciousness at the atomic level as revealed by modes of production, language,
ideologies, ideological apparatuses, communicative discourse, and the actions of the
body. I go on, in the subsequent chapters, to utilize Mocombe’s structurationism,
phenomenological structural ontology, to account for the emergence of the two worldviews
(forms of system and social integration), the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit
of capitalism social class language game and the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism
social class language game, found in the nation-state of Ayiti (Haiti).
Theory
According to the tenets of quantum physics as reflected in supersymmetry theory, dark
matter, parallel universes (multiverses), and the EPR paradox, the universe is composed
of ordinary matter (atoms and molecules) and dark matter (axions, wimps, neutrinos,
bosons, and fermions).[2] Dark matter, as opposed to ordinary matter, constitutes over eighty percent of
the material substance that constitute the cosmos. This dark matter is not constituted
by atoms and molecules like ordinary matter but consists of subatomic particles and
energy. The particles in the nature of quarks are identified as wimps or axions, very
tiny particles that contribute to the formation of nuclear components. These tiny
particles are conceived of as coiled energies, strings of space-time, packets of energy-like
photons. They are physical in nature but immaterial, and coexist, in a parallel/alternate
universe, with ordinary matter in the same location without impediment or interference.
They belong to the fermion family of invisible particles whose counterparts are named
a boson, which is pure energy. So, as highlighted in supersymmetry theory, for every
boson particle of matter, a symmetry counterpart, fermion, exists which manifests
itself as force or energy. Thus, for every reality we discover in the solid world
around us, we must assume that there exists a symmetric counterpart, or boson, which
is invisible but is nevertheless as physical as its visible counterpart. These supersymmetric
doubles constitute the backbone of alternate realities, parallel universes that are
displayed in ten dimensions, including our ordinary three-dimensional Cartesian reality.
Moreover, according to the EPR paradox, these particles have psychic properties. That
is, the particles are conscious. They are aware of their position, of themselves,
and of their surroundings. In other words, the multiverses created by these particles
are endowed with consciousness.
Hence the multiverse originated either by fiat or quantum fluctuation. It is a bosonic
force that was brought forth together with a fermion counterpart. It is also the primeval
pan-psychic field whose fermion can be called a psychion, a particle of consciousness.
These have evolved together to produce the four forces of nature, electromagnetic
force; gravity; the strong nuclear force; and weak nuclear force, in our universe,
which in turn produced atoms, molecules, and aggregated life. In other words, according
to quantum mechanics subatomic particles of energy constitute all the matter of the
universe via the Higgs Boson Field, i.e., the god particle, which objectifies and
materialize the matter that we are, see, hear, taste, feel, and touch. Subatomic particles
constitute our material bodies and consciousness as neuronal energies, which constitute
and operate the brain and the body. However, subatomic matter, which are strings at
the subatomic particle level, operate differently from observable objectified energy,
matter, in that their behavior are indeterminate and can exist in multiple places,
dimensions or parallel universes, simultaneously prior to being observed or even during
observation as aggregated matter. In fact, the subatomic particles that constitute
our material bodies and consciousness as neuronal energies are the same subatomic
particles that constitute everything that we consider to be the world, universe, other
species, etc. At the subatomic particle level we are not subjects contemplating an
object, i.e., the world, multiverse, etc., we are the world, an undifferentiating
energy. Hence, the implication suggested by the Standard Model of physics is that
the observable and non-observable matter that constitutes our universe exists elsewhere
in other unseen dimensions and parallel universes simultaneously with our own dispensation
of space-time. Contrary to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, we
do not occupy a universe. We are part of a multiverse with a plethora of I (s) and
other sentient beings existing in them indistinguishable from one another at the subatomic
level as energy. They become distinguishable at the atomic level through subatomic
particle aggregation, i.e., matter. Subatomic particles aggregate to form objectified
matter, universes, worlds, species and sentient beings with consciousness, etc. The
plethora of I (s) and other sentient beings are constituted and connected via subatomic
particles that are recycled throughout and as the multiverse to constitute and operate
consciousness as subatomic neuronal energies of the body and the brain, which encounters
objectified matter as objectified matter via the actions and senses of the brain,
body, language, ideologies, ideological apparatuses, modes of production, and communicative
discourse. In essence, consciousness is recycled subatomic energies of the multiverse
objectified and embodied, similar to Hegel’s conceptualization of Geist. Whereas for Hegel Geist is distinct from the material world and unfolds dialectically in it, via embodiment
of certain individuals, towards an ever-increasing rationalization of the world towards
self-knowledge and freedom. For me the historical manifestation, Being-in-Spacetime,
of the objectification of subatomic particles of the universe as consciousnesses and
bodies has no definitive end-goal and is indeterminate. But constrained in materialized
space-time by our material bodies and power relations or the social class language
games, dualism, of those whose objectification, i.e., historicity, precedes our own
individual consciousnesses and control the economic conditions of a material resource
framework, which they reify via mode of production, language, ideologies, ideological
apparatuses, and communicative discourse.
Like the laws of physics, which attempt to regulate and determine subatomic particle
activity as general law (Theory of general relativity) once they are aggregated, the
social class language game of those who control the economic conditions of a material
resource framework attempts to regulate and determine the indeterminacy of meaning
unfolding in and as the consciousnesses of social actors via bodies, mode of production,
language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse. Unlike,
postmodern and post-structural theorizing, which utilize the indeterminacy of meaning
as highlighted by the unconscious in the psychoanalytic works of Sigmund Freud and
Jacques Lacan, my phenomenological structuralism analogously builds on the material
relationship in physics between the identity and indeterminate behavior of subatomic
particles highlighted in quantum mechanics and the determinate behavior of atomic
particles in their aggregation as highlighted in general relativity to understand
the material constitution of consciousnesses at the subatomic/neuronal level in, and
as, the brain and their manifestation as human practical consciousnesses, via the
body, at the atomic level. I do not, unlike psychoanalysts like Lacan and Freud or
phenomenologists like Edmund Husserl, claim to know how the embodiment of recycled
subatomic neuronal energies via the microtubules of the brain come to constitute consciousnesses
in the brain and their subsequent revelation as the practical consciousnesses of bodies.
That is, the transcendental ego or I of a differentiated individual subject, which
I or anyone else does not have access to, could just as much be the past I, recycled
subatomic particles, of a sentient being from an alternative universe or dimension
of the multiverse and not necessarily the product of repression and the rule of the
father, i.e., social construction. Psychoanalysis and the indeterminacy of the processes
of the unconscious and the universal mapping of consciousnesses, i.e., its form of
understanding, by Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and contemporary neuroscientists,
for me, in other words, neither adequately captures the indeterminate behavior of
embodied recycled subatomic particles as neuronal energies of the brain and the myriad
of practical consciousnesses they may produce as revealed by diverse practices of
bodies, nor can they account for the origins of the transcendental ego or I. Husserl,
Freud, and contemporary neuroscientists attempt to highlight and capture the Kantian
form of the understanding and sensibilities of the aggregated body and brain, which
is unable to explain how aggregated subatomic quantum particles give rise to the transcendental
ego of consciousness, which produces praxis. I am not claiming that my phenomenological
structural ontology captures this process. The only thing of consciousness, produced
by embodied subatomic particles, I am claiming to be ontogenetically universal is
the stance of the transcendental ego, what Heidegger calls the analytic of Dasein, vis-à-vis the drives of the aggregated body, impulses of recycled past consciousnesses
of subatomic particle energies, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, structural
reproduction and differentiation, once it becomes constituted by subatomic particles.
Hence my use of phenomenology in phenomenological structuralism. I hold on to the
phenomenological logic of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre here to capture,
in a behavioral sense, the how, via Heidegger’s three stances ready-to-hand, unready-to-hand,
present-at-hand, of identity constitution amidst indeterminacy of consciousnesses
and actions produced by embodied recycled subatomic neuronal energies/particles.
It is the stance of a transcendental ego vis-à-vis 1) the drives of the aggregated
body, 2) the drives or impulses of recycled subatomic particles, 3) structural reproduction
and differentiation of ideologies, ideological apparatuses, and mode of production,
and 4) the deferment of meaning in ego-centered communicative discourse, which determines
our practical consciousness. In other words, what I am suggesting here in my phenomenological
structuralism, which seeks to highlight the phenomenology of being-in-the-structure-of-those-who-control-a-material-resource-framework
and the origins of our practical consciousness, is that embodiment is the objectification
of the transcendental ego, which is a part of an universal élan vital (Henri Bergson’s term), the primeval pan-psychic field, that has ontological status
in dimensions existing at the subatomic particle level and gets embodied via, and
as, the body and connectum of Being’s brains. Hence the transcendental ego is the
universal élan vital, which is the neuronal energies of past, present, and future Beings-of-the-multiverse,
embodied. This transcendental ego, and its stance, encounters a material world via
and as the body and brain in mode of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses,
and communicative discourse.
Once embodied in and as human individual consciousnesses in a particular universe,
world, and historical social formation, the transcendental ego becomes an embodied
hermeneutic structure that never encounters the world and the things of the world
in themselves via the aggregated built-in genetic ontology of the body and the impulses
of the neuronal energies. Instead embodied hermeneutic individual consciousness is
constituted via the recycled subatomic neuronal particle energies which are aggregated
as a transcendental ego and the body in their encounter and interpretation of past
recycled neuronal memories and things enframed in and by the language, bodies, ideology,
ideological apparatuses, practices, and communicative discourses of those who control
the economic conditions of a material resource framework and its social relations
of production. In consciousness, as phenomenology posits, it (individual subjective
consciousness of embodied beings) can either choose to accept the structural knowledge,
differentiation, and practices of the body; the impulses of recycled past consciousnesses
of subatomic neuronal particles; the ideologies of those who control, via their bodies,
mode of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative
discourse, the economic conditions of the material resource framework and recursively
reorganize and reproduce them in their practices; or reject them, given the ability
to defer meaning in ego-centered communicative discourse, for an indeterminate amount
of action-theoretic ways-of-being-in-the-world-with-others, which they may assume
at the threat to their ontological security. It is Being’s stance, ready-to-hand,
unready-to-hand, and present-at-hand vis-à-vis 1) the drives of the body, 2) impulses
of residual actions/memories of embodied recycled past consciousnesses, 3) the phenomenological
meditation/deferment that occurs on the latter actions via linguistic communication,
and 4) ideologies of a social system along with its differentiating logic, coupled
with the will of those in power positions, which produces the variability of actions
and practices in cultures, social structures, or social systems that enframe the material
world.
As such, as in Heidegger’s phenomenology, phenomenology in phenomenological structuralism
is not just transcendental, it is also hermeneutical. The act of interpretation (based
on the stance of Being) or an embodied hermeneutic structure via the body, language,
ideology, and communicative discourse is a universal precondition of being-in-the-world-with-other-human-beings.
However, whereas Heidegger is interested in the question of the meaning of Being-as-such,
i.e., the phenomenology of Being, phenomenological structuralism is concerned with
the sociology of Being, the question of the meaning or constitutive nature of embodied Being-as-such’s-being-in-the-world-with-others
who attempt to constrain practical consciousnesses via their bodies, language, ideologies,
ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse derived from social relations
of production. That is, as in Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology, I am interested
in the necessary societal relationship and practical consciousnesses that emerge out
of the phenomenology of Being-in-the-world-within-structures-of-signification-of-others,
who control the economic conditions of the material resource framework we find ourselves
existing in, that presuppose our historicity, and Being’s perceptions, responses,
and practices, i.e., relations, to these structures-of-signification in order to be
in the world. Unlike Heidegger, however, my concern is not with the phenomenology
of being-in-the-world as such because Being never encounters the world and its transcendental
ego as the-thing-itself. Instead being encounters the world via its body/brain, recycled
(impulses of) past consciousnesses, and structures of signification, which derive
from class division and social relations of production as reified in the bodies (as
agential initiative), language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative
discourse of those who control the resources of a material resource framework.
Be that as it may, whereas I accept the Husserlian phenomenological understanding
that the facts of the world and their conditions of possibility are present in consciousness,
i.e., the notion of intentionality, consciousness is always consciousness of something
as we experience being-in-the-world-with-other-beings via our consciousness, i.e.,
transcendental ego, bodies, language, ideologies, and communicative discourse. My
position here, however, is that as an embodied hermeneutic structured being we never
experience the facts of the world and their conditions of possibility as the “the
things in themselves.” We experience them not culturally and historically, which is
a present-at-hand viewpoint, but structurally and relationally, via the bodies, language,
ideology, and communicative discourse in institutions or ideological apparatuses,
i.e., the social class language game, of those who control the economic conditions
of the material resource framework we find ourselves thrown-in, via our bodies, language,
and communicative discourse. In other words, my phenomenology of embodied Being-in-the-world-as-such’s-Being-with-others,
phenomenological structuralism, synthesizes Merleau-Ponty’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology
with Karl Marx’s materialism and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language game to suggest that
being-in-the-world with others, our practical consciousness, is a product of our interpretation,
acceptance, or rejection of the symbols of signification, social class language game,
of those bodies in institutional/ideological power positions who control via their
bodies, language, ideologies, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse
the economic conditions of a material resource framework as we encounter them and
their symbols/signifiers in institutions or ideological apparatuses via our own transcendental
ego, bodies, language, and communicative discourse. Hence we never experience the
things-in-themselves of the world culturally and historically in consciousness. We
experience them structurally or relationally, and our stances, ready-to-hand, unready-to-hand,
present-at-hand, vis-à-vis these ideological structures determine our practical consciousness
or behaviors.
We initially know, experience, and utilize the things of the world in the preontological
ready-to-hand mode, which is structural and relational. That is, our bodies and impulses
encounter, know, experience, and utilize the things of the world in consciousness,
intersubjectively, via their representation as objects of knowledge, truth, usage,
and experience enframed and defined in the relational logic and practices or language
game (Wittgenstein’s term) of the institutions or ideological apparatuses of the other
beings-of-the-material resource framework whose historicity comes before our own and
gets reified in and as language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative
discourse based on their mode of production or satisfying the needs of the aggregated
body. This is the predefined phenomenal structural, i.e., ontological, world we, the
psychion or transcendental ego of the primeval pan-psychic field, and our bodies are
thrown-in in coming to be-in-the-world. How an embodied-hermeneutically-structured
Being as such solipsistically goes on to view, experience, understand, and utilize
the predefined objects of knowledge, truth, and experienced defined by others and
their conditions of possibilities in consciousness in order to formulate their practical
consciousness is albeit indeterminate. Heidegger is accurate, however, in suggesting
that three stances or modes of encounter (Analytic of Dasein), “presence-at-hand,”
“readiness-to-hand,” and “un-readiness-to-hand,” characterizes our views of the things
of consciousness represented intersubjectively via bodies, language, ideology, and
communicative discourse, and subsequently determine our practical consciousness or
social agency. In “ready-to-hand,” which is the preontological mode of human existence
thrown in the world, we accept and use the things in consciousness with no conscious
experience of them, i.e., without thinking about them or giving them any meaning or
signification outside of their intended usage. Heidegger’s example is that of using
a hammer in hammering. We use a hammer without thinking about it or giving it any
other condition of possibility outside of its intended usage as defined by those whose
historicity presupposes our own. In “present-at-hand,” which, according to Heidegger,
is the stance of science, we objectify the things of consciousness and attempt to
determine and reify their meanings, usage, and conditions of possibilities. Hence
the hammer is intended for hammering by those who created it as a thing solely meant
as such. The “unready-to-hand” outlook is assumed when something goes wrong in our
usage of a thing of consciousness as defined and determined by those who adopt a “present-at-hand”
view. As in the case of the hammer, the unready-to-hand view is assumed when the hammer
breaks and we have to objectify it, by then assuming a present-at-hand position, and
think about it in order to either reconstitute it as a hammer, or give it another
condition of possibility. Any other condition of possibility that we give the hammer
outside of its initial condition of possibility which presupposed our historicity
becomes relational, defined in relation to any of its other conditions of possibilities
it may have been given by others we exist in the world with. Hence for Heidegger,
the ontological status of being-in-the-world-with-others, via these three stances
or modes of encountering the objects of consciousness hermeneutically reveal, through
our view, experience, understanding, and usage of the predefined objects of knowledge,
truth, and experience. Whereas Heidegger in his phenomenological work goes on to deal
with the existential themes of anxiety, alienation, death, despair, etc. in my phenomenological
stance regarding societal constitution or Beings-as-such’s-being-in-the-world-with-others
via our stances to the body, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, communicative
discourse, and social relations of production I am not concerned with the phenomenological
preoccupation of individual solipsistic existence as defined in Jean-Paul Sartre’s
work which claims to take off from Heidegger. Instead, I am interested in the universal
ontological structure, i.e., social structure or societal constitution and practical
consciousness, which arises out of Heidegger’s three stances, what I am calling phenomenological
structuralism, vis-à-vis embodiment, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses,
communicative discourse, and social relations of production. That is, I am not concerned
with Sartre’s phenomenologization of the Cartesian res cogitans/ transcendental ego, i.e., the present-at-hand transcendental ego, which he gives
ontological status in the world as a solipsistic individual seeking to define themselves
for themselves lest they be declared living in bad faith. In my view, the overemphasis
of that particular aspect of Dasein is a product of a specific historical and relational mode of production, and only
account for one of its analytics as highlighted by Heidegger. For me, the transcendental
ego, which is a part of a universal élan vital, the primeval pan-psychic field, existing in another dimension at the subatomic particle
level, does not originate out of the historical material world, but several variations
of it becomes objectified via embodiment and the aforementioned stances in a universe,
galaxy, and historical material world structured by other embodied Beings and their
stances. Upon death its historicity via subatomic neuronal particles gets reabsorbed
into the élan vital, primeval pan-psychic field, to be recycled to produce future beings. As such consciousness,
i.e., practical consciousness, is a product of the stances of Dasein vis-à-vis its embodied recycled past consciousnesses/impulses, language and ideology,
which can be deferred in ego-centered communicative discourse, and structural reproduction
and differentiation determined by mode of production, ideological apparatuses, and
those in power positions. Be that as it may, as with Heidegger, who refutes Sartre’s
existential rendering of his phenomenological ontology, I am interested in the objectified/reified
societal constitution and practical consciousnesses of the transcendental egos and
their relations that emerge within a dominant constitution of Being that controls
a material resource framework of the world via bodies, mode of production, language,
ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse vis-à-vis the stances
of the transcendental ego.
Hence the understanding here is that the transcendental ego of Being becomes embodied
and objectified in a material resource framework enframed by bodies, the mode of production,
language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse of those
who control a material resource framework. As embodied consciousness the transcendental
ego initially encounters itself and the world in the ready-to-hand preontological
mode. This means as aggregated recycled subatomic particle, Being is, initially, unconsciously
driven by the drives of its body and the agential initiatives or impulses of recycled
past subatomic neuronal particles as limited by their embodiment. If its drives or
impulses are uninhibited by the bodies, mode of production, language, ideology, ideological
apparatuses, and communicative discourse, i.e., social class language game, of those
who control the material resource framework, Being may spend all of their existence
in this stance. However, should they encounter resistance vis-à-vis their drives and
the social class language game of those who control the material resource framework,
Being moves to the unready-to-hand stance where they think about and question their
own drives and or those of the material resource framework. At which point, they may
become present-at-hand and may opt for either the practices associated with their
internal drive or impulses, which they reify as culture, or that of the social class
language game in power. If they choose the latter, being simply seeks the structural
practices and differentiation of power at the expense of their internal drive. In
the former case, choosing to reproduce their internal drives, impulses, or deferred
meaning of linguistic structures, Being, attempts to recursively reproduce what was
the unconscious drives of recycled past consciousnesses, the body, or deferred meaning
in the conscious present-at-hand stance at the threat to their ontological security
in the material resource framework. At which point they may seek other Beings who
share their drives, impulses, deferred meaning, or seek to change the ideology of
power to accept what has become a decentered subject who has deferred the meaning
of power. The latter position is the basis for postmodern and post-structural thought,
and alternative practices outside of structural reproduction and differentiation.
Phenomenological structuralism, therefore, seeks to highlight the ontological universal
modes of embodied human existence with others, which relationally has emerged out
of the phenomenological processes (Heidegger’s three stances) of the transcendental
ego experiencing, interpreting, and using the representational facts of its embodiment
vis-à-vis the world as defined by and in the language game of others who control objects
of a material resource framework, and how these modes of human existence come to (re)
shape practical consciousness and constitute social structure or societal constitution.
It is within this Wittgensteinian/Marxian/Heideggerian derivative ontology I explore
the origins of Haitian practical consciousness as the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of
communism as it stands against the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism
of the whites and Affranchis of the island.
Generally speaking, consciousnesses for me then are the embodiment of recycled subatomic
neuronal energies of the multiverse objectified in the space-time of multiverses.
Once objectified and embodied the neuronal energies encounter the space-time of physical
worlds via a transcendental subject of consciousnesses and the sensibilities and form
of the understanding of the body and brain in reified structures of signification,
language, ideology, and ideological apparatuses, defined and determined by other beings
that control the resources (economics) of the material world required for physical
survival in space-time. The stances, ready-to-hand, unready-to-hand, and present-at-hand,
of the transcendental ego vis-à-vis, 1) the sensibilities or drives of the body and
brain, 2) impulses of embodied residual memories of past recycled subatomic particles,
3) the actions produced via the body in relation to the indeterminacy/deferment of
meaning of linguistic and symbolic signifiers as they appear to individuated consciousnesses
in ego-centered communicative discourse, 4) and the differentiating effects of the
structures of signification, social class language game, of those who control the
economic materials of a world is the origins of practical consciousnesses. All four
types of actions, the drives or sensibilities of the body, impulses of embodied recycled
past consciousnesses, structural reproduction/differentiation, and deferential actions
arising via the present-at-hand stance, exist in the material world with the physical,
mental, emotional, ideological, etc. powers of those who control the material resource
framework via the mode of production, language, ideology, and ideological apparatuses
as the causative agent for individual behaviors.
In other words, our stances in consciousness vis-à-vis the drives of the body, structural
reproduction and differentiation, embodied (impulses of) past consciousnesses of recycled
subatomic particles, and deferential actions resulting from the deferment of meaning
in ego-centered communicative discourse determines the practical consciousness we
want to recursively reorganize and reproduce in the material world. Those who control,
through their bodies, language, mode of production, ideology, ideological apparatuses,
and communicative discourse, the material resource framework, however, determines
what actions they will allow to manifest without the embodied individual facing alienation,
marginalization, or death.
As such, phenomenological structuralism synthesizes, the notions of the materialism
and indeterminacy of behavior of recycled subatomic particles in quantum mechanics
as they get objectified as neuronal energies of the brain and body to produce the
transcendental subject of consciousness; with the potentiality for the multiplicity
of choice or meaning in Heideggerian phenomenology (Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein)
to capture the process of indeterminacy and deferment of meaning highlighted by postmodern
and post-structural theory; with Marxist dialectic and Wittgensteinian notions of
language games to highlight the reified atomic structures, bodies, mode of production,
language, ideology, and ideological apparatuses, collectively understood here under
the concept social class language game, which attempts to structure the indeterminacy
of consciousness at the atomic human level as revealed in the practices, i.e., practical
consciousnesses, of social actors.
As such, the notion of language game utilized here is an adoption of the “language-games” later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1953) conceptualized within a Marxian understanding of the constitution of identities
based on the practical consciousness and ideology of those who control the economic
conditions, social relations of production, of a material resource framework. For
the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations language is a tool and must be thought of as a rule-governed, self-contained practice,
like a game, of activities associated with some particular family of linguistic expressions,
which have no point outside themselves, but is simply associated with the satisfactions
they give to the participants and their form of life. What I am suggesting here, against
the genetic ontology of Christopher Macann (1993) who views the transcendental ego
as “a subjectification of embodied human being,” in my phenomenological ontology,
phenomenological structuralism, which seeks to highlight the phenomenology of being-in-the-structure-of-those-who-control-a-material-resource-framework-in-space-time
through bodies, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and the social relations
of production, i.e., being-in-time, is that embodiment is the objectification of the transcendental ego, which is a
part of an universal élan vital (which is a material thing, the subatomic particles of past consciousnesses, the
eternal recurrence of past consciousnesses, that gets encapsulated in the brain of
breathing subjects we see in any given historical formation) that has ontological
status in dimensions existing at the subatomic particle level and gets embodied as
and via the connectome of Beings’ brains and their bodies. Embodiment is the multiverse
manifesting itself as embodied consciousness or a transcendental ego. Once objectified,
materialized, and embodied as human individual consciousnesses in a present historical
formation the transcendental ego becomes an embodied hermeneutic structure that never
encounters the world and the things of the world in themselves as highlighted by Jacques
Lacan through his conception of the symbolic. Instead embodied hermeneutic individual
consciousnesses are constituted via, and as, recycled neuronal energies of past consciousnesses,
the body, language, and ego-centered communicative discourse in their encounter and
interpretation of things either ready-to-hand, unready-to-hand, and present-at-hand
enframed in and by the historical consciousness, language, bodies, ideology, ideological
apparatuses, and practices, i.e., language game, of those who control the economic
conditions, social relations of production, of the material resource framework it
finds itself thrown in. As embodied consciousness, whose ideas and practices are revealed
and manifested through the body and language, it (individual consciousnesses of beings)
can either accept (ready-to-hand) the signified historical structural knowledge, differentiation,
and practices (social class language game) of those who control the economic conditions,
social relations of production, of the material resource framework and recursively
reorganize and reproduce them in their practices and institutions, or reject them
(in the unready-to-hand and present-at-hand stance), given the ability to defer meaning
in ego-centered communicative discourse, for an indeterminate amount of action-theoretic
ways-of-being-in-the-world-with-others-in-space-time, which they may assume at the
threat to their ontological security. It is the ready-to-hand drives of the body,
ready-to-hand and present-at-hand manifestation of past recycled residual consciousnesses,
the present-at-hand phenomenological meditation and deferment of meaning that occurs
in embodied consciousness via language, ideology, and communicative discourse as reflected
in diverse individual practices, within the ready-to-hand, unready-to-hand, and present-at-hand
differentiating logic or class divisions of the social relations of production, which
produces the variability of actions and practices in cultures, social structures,
or social systems. All four types of actions, the drives of the body and residual
past consciousnesses, structural reproduction/differentiation, and actions resulting
from the deferment of meaning in ego-centered communicative discourse, are always
present and manifested in a social structure (which is the reified ideology via ideological
apparatuses, their social class language game, of those who control a material resource
framework) to some degree contingent upon the will and desires of the economic social
class that controls the material resource framework through its body, language, symbols,
ideology, ideological apparatuses, and social relations of production. They choose,
amidst the class division of the social relations of production, what other meaning
constitutions and practices are allowed to manifest themselves without the Beings
of that practice facing alienation, marginalization, domination, or death.
In sum, phenomenological structuralism posits consciousness to be the by-product or
evolution of subatomic particles unfolding with increasing levels of abstraction.
Subatomic particles, via the Higgs boson particle, gave rise to carbon atoms, molecules
and chemistry, which gave rise to DNA, biological organisms, neurons and nervous systems,
which aggregated into bodies and brains that gave rise to the preexisting consciousness
of the subatomic particles, bodies, and languages. In human beings, the indeterminate
behavior of subatomic neuronal energies that produced the plethora of consciousnesses
and languages in the neocortex of the brain gave rise to ideologies, which in turn
gave rise to ideological apparatuses and societies (sociology) under the social class
language game or language, ideology, and ideological apparatuses of those who organize
and control the material resources required for physical (embodied) survival in a
particular resource framework. So contrary to Karl Marx’s materialism which posits
human consciousness to be the product of material conditions, the logic here is a
structural Marxist one. That is, the aggregated, atomic, mature human being is a body
and neuronal drives that never encounters the (ontological) material world directly.
Instead, they encounter the (ideological) world via structures of signification, which
structures the world or a particular part of it through the body, language, ideology,
and ideological apparatuses, i.e., social class language game, of those whose power
and power positions dictate how the resources of that framework are to be gathered,
used, and distributed (means and mode of production).
Phenomenological Structuralism Diagrammatically
Hence phenomenological structuralism agrees with the structurationists that in the
constitution of society the individual elements incorporate the structure of the ideological
whole and gets differentiated by the relational logic of that whole. My understanding,
unlike that of the traditional structurationists, attempts to provide an analytical
tool to explain and examine the relation of the “others” within the totality who do
not, however: the relationship between “the individual elements [, who,] internalize
[and recursively reproduce,] the structur[ing ideology] of the whole,” and those who
as a result of their ready-to-hand, unready-to-hand, and present-at-hand stances vis-à-vis
the drives of their bodies, residual past consciousnesses of recycled subatomic particles
or through self- reflection or phenomenological meditation in the unready-to-hand
and present-at-hand mode of encountering the structural terms of a society conceive
of, or choose among, fully visible “alternative” ways of being-in-the-world, which
they attempt to exercise in the “totality.”
This “mechanical” relationship can be expressed diagrammatically (see Figure 1), and
is an adaptation of Stephen Slemon’s (1995) description of colonialism’s multiple
strategies for regulating Europe’s others (Slemon, 1995, pg. 46), and the way I see
it, whether in my usage of it or Slemon’s slightly different depiction, it is a macro,
at the societal level, extrapolation of Hegel’s and Marx’s master/slave dialectical
power model, which would proceed along line A1, since we both suppose that our respective
concepts (colonialism for Selmon and society, culture, structure, what have you, for
me) are ideological or discursive formations constituted through power relations.[3]
The general understanding, within a phenomenological structural understanding of the
constitution of society and practical consciousness, is that individual actors or
network of solidarity or cultural groups (irreducibly “mediating” situated subjects),
represented by lines “A” and “B” on the diagram, are relationally socialized within
society—its semiotic field or predefined and predetermined lexicons and representations
of signification (at the bottom of the diagram) i.e., the field of socialization “and
its investment in reproducing and naturalising the structures of power” (Slemon, 1995,
pg. 47)—through “ideological apparatuses” (at the top of the diagram) controlled by
socialized institutional regulators (“As”), power elites or those in power positions,
who recursively reorganize and reproduce the rules of conduct (which appear to be
natural and commonsensical) of the social structure, which in modern times represent
an ideological flanking for the protestant/capitalist economic subjugation running
along line “A1.” Where in the first instance (A) there is encountering of the rules
of conduct of the society at the preontological ready-to-hand mode of encountering,
there is adoption or internalization (the Structurationist view) on behalf of the
individual or network of groups of the prescribed understanding of the representations
and practices of the semiotic field, i.e., the recursively organized and reproduced
rules of conduct which are sanctioned. In the second (B), the individual encounters
the facts and values of the world in either unready-to-hand or the present-at-hand
mode, and through a form of phenomenological meditation on the structural terms (i.e.,
norms, values, prescriptions and proscriptions of power) that presuppose their existence,
conceives of, or chooses among other or fully visible alternatives (other “Bs” discriminated
by the social structure), a different understanding (, i.e., practical means, arriving
from the drives of the body, unconscious drives of recycled subatomic particles, or
through the deferment of meaning in ego-centered communicative discourse) of being-in-the-world
; or as in the case of racism, sexism, and classism is prescribed a structurally differentiated
unalterable subordinate role based on the relational binary logic (rules for inclusion
and exclusion) of the semiotic field of those in power positions (“As”). In this structurally
differentiated mode the encountering is always either at the ready-to-hand or unready-to-hand
mode of encountering, in the latter because something, discriminatory effects of the
totality, is wrong in allowing the social actor to partake in the rules of conduct
of the society. So regardless if they accept or reject the rules of conduct, they
are still classified by the power elites as (Bs).
The socialized individuals or groups (“As”)—socialized in the “constitutive power
of societal apparatuses like the church, education, etc., and the constitutive power
of fields of knowledge [, which stems from the semiotic field,] within those apparatuses”
(46)—possess the potential to become, if they so choose, power elites and as such
institutional regulators (at the top of the diagram), who subordinate through the
manufacture of consent. Now to maintain power, those who become regulators (some “As”)
must address “B’s” signification, which relationally undermines (it gives social actors
an “alternative” form of being-in-the-world), as well as define, delimits, and stabilizes
the predefined lexicons and representations of signification that is the society’s
semiotic field. In other words, their (“Bs’”) interpretations or structurally differentiated
identity in relation to “A’s” reject the singularity and realism or naturalism attached
to the representations and meanings of the social field, while at the same time helping
to constitute it by defining, delimiting, and stabilizing the field, i.e., “B’s” interpretation
in relation to “A’s” helps to define, because it is not, “A’s” interpretation. Hence,
the “As” must negotiate, appropriate, and reinflect “Bs” interpretive-practices into
the semiotic field in order to delimit, their own; this is done, or has been done,
up to this point in the human archaeological records on the constitution of society,
by having them (“Bs”) remain outside the field, by dismissing their interpretive-claims,
in which case the field justifies their permanent outsider status (oppressed or discriminated
against minorities, i.e., marginalized “other”).
The “Bs,” for the most part, can either accept (if their gaze is upon the eye of power—“As”—for
recognition as a structurally differentiated “other,” i.e., a class-in-itself) their
appropriation, the rationale the institutional regulators (“As”) prescribe to their
(“B1s’”) interpretive-practical consciousness which legitimates it as a representation,
or they (“B2s”) may choose (by averting their gaze as a class-for-itself) to remain quasi-outsiders if the meaning disclosed by the dominant institutional regulators is not
in accordance with their own, or a previously discriminated subculture’s, interpretive-practical
understanding of the signifiers of the social structure. Regardless of what choice
they (“Bs”) make, however, they, “Bs,” because the validity claims the institutional
regulators provide for their (Bs’) understanding validates their existence to start
with, constantly attempt incorporation and acceptance, either, as a “class-in-itself,”
pushing for integration as a structurally differentiated “other” (hybrid) who recursively
reproduce the rules of conduct of the social structure (“B1s’”); or separation (“B2s’”), as a “class-for-itself,” for their own rules of conduct which are sanctioned
by the power elites of the subculture. The former is the position of the bourgeoisie’s
of once discriminated against groups, such as blacks, women, etc., in contemporary
postindustrial Protestant capitalist societies seeking to partake as an hybrid other
in the social class language games of the society.
Thus there are two fundamental paths which are open to “Bs”: first, if they (B) accept
the understanding of (A), regarding their interpretation as an “other,” and seek integration,
as a structurally differentiated “class-in-itself,” they have to give up their interpretive-practical
consciousness, which on the one hand undermines the legitimation of the interpretive
community they are classed with, while on the other hand, legitimating society’s semiotic
field, which has appropriated their (“Bs’”) understanding and representation to substantiate
and delimit their (As’) power position and “practical consciousness.” From this perspective,
the “Bs,” “B1s’”,who accept appropriation, are socialized (institutionalized) and attempt to live
as (“As”), which entail recursively organizing and reproducing, as a hybrid “other,”
the rules of conduct of the society which are sanctioned. Those who do not (the second
path), that is, those in the present-at-hand mode of encountering who reject the rules
of conduct of the society, for their own, “B2s’”, may seek to reconstitute society in line with their interpretive-practical consciousness,
which gives rise to another (warring) structure of signification or form of being-in-the-world,
which, as a segregated categorical boundary or alternative practical consciousness,
relationally and differentially delimits that of the society or social structure,
which they initially constituted.[4]
From the perspective of power, “As,” “Bs’” interpretations, their interpretive-practical
consciousness, are always represented in the semiotic field in order to define, delimit,
and stabilize the power structure. Thus, “Bs” are always oppressed minorities or majorities,
i.e., “others,” in the Hegelian master/slave relationship (A1), who must construct
their identities or consciousness within two or more ideals: that of the social structure
(master’s own understanding of themselves) and what it says of the discriminated against
“other” (the slave). Hence, the “Bs,” as long as their gaze is turned back upon the
eyes of power (vector of motion of “B1s’”) for recognition in the unready-to-hand mode of encountering, which seeks to fix
the status quo for their participation, pose no real danger to the semiotic field,
unless—following the aforementioned second path,“B2s’,”—they should take-up arms against it as a distinct structuring structure, i.e.,
“class-for-itself” or categorical boundary, which has averted their gaze, and are
attempting to preserve or universalize their “alternative” ontology or “practical
consciousness.” This latter position is represented by Islamic fundamentalists contemporarily,
and the African participants of Bois Caiman during the Haitian Revolution.
In other words, in having to construct their (Bs) identities or consciousness by warring
against the ideals of the social structure, which become the relational terms that
defines, delimits, and stabilizes the social structure and that by which all (“As”
and “Bs”) must construct their consciousness, the gaze back upon the eye of power
is a sign of recognition of the validity claims of the social structure, which necessarily
implies that in order to be recognized the “Bs” must attempt to be what they are not,
like “As.” This agential move to be like “As,” however, constrains the variability
of practices, which, as the diagram highlights, can only be maintained if the gaze
of Bs’ (vector of motion of “B2s’”) are averted away from the eyes of power in order to establish another segregated
structuring structure, which celebrates and reproduces the practices’ of their “otherness.”
So long as the aim of “B” is for acceptance into the structure of social relations
that constitute the society, their “otherness” can only be expressed as those (“As”)
who recursively reorganize and reproduce the rules of conduct of the social structure.
For it is only upon the world of existing state of affairs, i.e., the valid norms
and subjective experiences of power, which is taken to be the nature of reality and
existence as such, will they (“Bs”) be admitted into the structure of social relations
that constitute the society, for any other form may undermine the whole of social
relations that is the constituted society.[5]
The Role of Power in the Diagram
Whereas, figure 2.1 demonstrates the action of individual social actors or groups
within “a” reified consciousness, social class language game, that forms the structure
of relations that is their society, figure 2.2 makes evident the actions of social
actors (As), if and when, they become institutional/ideological regulators or power
elites.
The understanding here is that it is the legal regulations of a society, its “lexicons
and representations of signification,” its rules of conduct that are sanctioned, as
outlined by the power elites, or institutional regulators in power positions, which
represent the objective conditions (social structure) of society that structure social
relations and constitute the materials by-which embodied consciousness is to be cultivated
for the ontological security of the individual. In other words, the general understanding,
within a phenomenological structural understanding, is that individual actors or groups
(irreducibly situated subjects), lines A and B, are socialized within society—its
semiotic field or predefined and predetermined lexicons and representations of signification
(at the bottom of the diagram) i.e., the field of socialization “and its investment
in reproducing and naturalising the structures of power” (Slemon, 1995, pg. 47)—through
“ideological apparatuses” (at the top of the diagram) controlled by socialized institutional
regulators (“As”), which represent an ideological flanking for the economic subjugation
running along line “A1.” The relation between the two runs this way: societal power
operates through a complex relationship between apparatuses (i.e., the law, education,
rituals, family etc.) placed on line “C,” where in the first instance institutional
regulators (“As”)—at the top of the line—appropriate and manufacture, based on what
is already understood, lexicons and representations of signification of individuals
in order to consolidate and legitimate itself as a natural “order” and to reproduce
individuals as deployable units of that order. So, in the first instance, societal
power runs not just through the middle ground of this diagram (A1) but through a complex
set of relations happening along line “C;” and since the argument here is that a function
(i.e., socialized social actor) at the top of this line is employing those representations
created at the bottom of the line in order to make up “knowledges” that have an ideological
function, one can say that the vector of motion along line C is an upward one, and
that this upward motion is part of the whole complex discursive structure whereby
society manufactures individuals and thus helps to regulate societal relations. This
is the first position.
The second position, as the diagram demonstrates, is the downward movement of societal
power, where the institutional regulators of society’s apparatuses are understood
to be at work in the production of a purely unique and entirely projected idea of
the individual, relationally delimited by other fully visible marginalized “alternative”
forms of the individual being-in-the-world. The point this movement, which is inextricably
tied to the first, is trying to articulate is that society is a product of the working
and reworking of reified psychic projections, i.e., ideologies and their apparatuses.
Hence, society has to be understood as a structure or system of power relations in
which those in power positions attempt to structure, via bodies, language, ideology,
ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse individuals toward an unchangeable
unified end.[6] This does not mean that there is no agency, for whom or what acts oppositionally,
in this understanding of the constitution of society, is demonstrated through an understanding
of the movements of lines A and B described above.
Essentially, then, in this phenomenological structural understanding, society develops
from the interpretive-practical consciousness of those (power elites or social actors
in power positions) who maintain control of and integrate its material resource framework.[7] Through this economic and political process, all individual actors (“As” and
“Bs”), unless they choose (as a “class-for-itself” under the auspices of their own
power elites) to establish their own institutions, are socialized in apparatuses controlled
by these social actors, institutional regulators (at the top of the diagram), who
employ their representations, the reified symbolic objects that constitute the semiotic
field (society)—at the bottom of the diagram, in institutions—so as to control, guide,
and incorporate the ambivalence that lies in the act of interpretation (Bhabha, 1995,
pg. 208)—in order to make up and reproduce ideological “knowledges” that maintain
the functioning of the society as a whole.[8] I am arguing that this model, up to this point in the human archaeological research
on societal relations, is a general structure for understanding the multivalent strategies
at work in the reproduction and transformation of societies. Furthermore, it resolves
the issue of agency, which is problematic when one posits ideology or discourse or
psychic processes as constructing human subjects, for who or what acts is clearly
demonstrated in the model through the praxis of the structure (“As”) and anti-structural
elements (“Bs” if they form interpretative communities, “B2s’”, which do not seek incorporation or cooptation).
Discussion and Conclusions
Hence, the logic here is that Karl Marx’s materialism is the product of the first
group of embodied human beings initial encounter with the material world. Upon that
initial ready-to-hand encounter, driven by the drives of the body and impulses of
subatomic particles, two present-at-hand worldviews emerged and became reified via
mode of production, language, ideologies, ideological apparatuses, and communicative
discourse. In a fruitful and bountiful environment, as early humankind encountered
ready-to-hand in Africa prior to their migration elsewhere, a harmonious disposition
towards the world took hold, which was juxtaposed against an antagonistic disposition
arising from a lack of resources, etc., as was found among Europeans who migrated
out of Africa to Europe. According to Cheik Anta Diop (1981, 1988, 1989), as a result
of these experiences African and most people of color on the earth, the Taino people
of the Caribbean, for example, who inherited hospitable environments, shared certain
linguistic and cultural commonalities that formed a tapestry that laid the basis,
present-at-hand, for African cultural unity, which was reified and diametrically opposed
to the European cultural unity that would develop, unready-to-hand and present-at-hand,
in the barren and harsh environments of Europe as early humans migrated out of Africa.
What Diop called the Southern Cradle-Egyptian Model (African): 1) Abundance of vital
resources, 2) Sedentary-agricultural, 3) Gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature with
a spirit of justice, 4) Matriarchal family, 5) Emancipation of women in domestic life,
6) territorial state, 7) Xenophilia, 8) Cosmopolitanism, 9) Social Collectivism, 10)
Material solidarity—alleviating moral or material misery, 11) Idea of peace, justice,
goodness, and optimism, and 12) Literature emphasizes novel tales, fables, and comedy,
emerged, present-at-hand, among the people of color in tropical climates with bountiful
resources. This Southern Cradle-Egyptian Model was diametrically opposed to an unready-to-hand
and present-at-hand Northern Cradle-Greek Model: (European), 1) Bareness of resources,
2) Nomadic-hunting (piracy), 3) Ferocious, warlike nature with spirit of survival,
4) Patriarchal family, 5) Debasement/enslavement of women, 6) City state (fort), 7)
Xenophobia, 8) Parochialism, 9) Individualism, 10) Moral solitude, 11) Disgust for
existence, pessimism, 12) Literature favors tragedy. The European/Greek model, over
time became reified and recursively reorganized and reproduced, present-at-hand, as
the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism under the leadership of Pastors,
merchants, and owners in their encounter with Christiantiy; and the former, African
model, as the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism under the leadership of priests,
priestesses, healers, and elders (oungan, manbo, gangan, and granmoun in the Kreyol language of African/Taino/Haitian Vodou).
Hence unlike Karl Marx, which views the origins of modern capitalist relations of
production via the notion of primitive accumulation, phenomenological structuralism
is in agreement with Max Weber and views it as the product of the (ideological) structures
of signification of European Protestant Christianity, i.e., the Protestant Ethic and
the spirit of capitalism reified via ideological apparatuses based on the mode of
production, which I juxtapose against the African Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism
of the original inhabitants of the earth who, because of their material abundance,
did not develop an antagonistic present-at-hand view of the world as their European
counterparts who experienced hardship in satisfying their basic needs. In other words,
African peoples, and other people of color originally inhabited the earth, ready-to-hand,
in environments with abundance of vital resources. Over time, their tribal and village
leaders developed present-at-hand structural ideologies, Vodou; ideological apparatuses,
villages, Lakous, peristyles, lwa yo, and herbal medicine; and modes of productions, subsistence agriculture, husbandry,
and komes that reified their experiences and formed a tapestry, i.e., social class
language game under the leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, and granmoun yo (elders) that laid the basis for African cultural/structural unity, which was diametrically
opposed to a European cultural/structural unity that encountered, ready-to-hand, a
barren material resource framework.[9]
The latter because they were unable to satisfy their bodily needs in the barren material
resource framework of Europe, in other words, became unready-to-hand and developed
an antagonistic stance vis-à-vis the world, which became reified, present-at-hand,
as the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism when they encountered Christianity
under the leadership, initially, of Pastors and merchants. Hence, what Cheikh Anta
Diop called the Southern Cradle-Egyptian Model (African), which I call the Vodou Ethic
and the spirit of communism social class language game, emerged, ready-to-hand and
present-at-hand, among the Africans, and the Northern Cradle-Greek (European) Model,
or the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game, emerged,
unready-to-hand and present-at-hand, among the Europeans. The latter sought embourgeoisement
and domination, and the former, ounganification/manboification, harmony, balance,
perfection, and subsistence living, both models, or structuring structures, interpellated
individual Beings of their material resource frameworks via different modes of production,
languages, ideologies, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourses. Both
models converged on the island of Hispaniola, at the height of the slave trade and
African enslavement during the eighteenth century, where the enslaved Africans of
Haiti juxtaposed the latter against the former in the attempt to overthrow it on the
island.
Notes
