It's true that he can be a maddeningly vague thinker about a lot of things, but I'm comletely with Lakoff on this one. You don't have to be Derrida to acknowledge that words carry baggage from one dictionary definition to another, and that this linguistic messiness can be exploited politically.
Lakoff first presented his theories about politics and family metaphors in Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't, where he set forth the idea of the family metaphor for politics and the different ways that conservatives and liberals conceptualize the family and therefore conceptualize politics. In the last third of the book, he tries to argue that liberalism is better than conservatism because the liberal idea of ideal family structure is empirically better than the conservative one. I wrote a short review of the book on my blog, a while ago, including reasons why his argument for liberalism doesn't hold up.
Wasn't the ultimate liberal conception of the family the post-revolution Bolshevik initiative to create the community-as-family? No child addicted to a single mother; truly the child of the community, the state?
Oh, you postulate another liberal idea of family structure?
I guess that's what makes the liberal-conservative angle so uninteresting here...
For a dissenting view on the second Lakoff piece, check out this post by John Holbo.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-16-03 2:12 PM
It's true that he can be a maddeningly vague thinker about a lot of things, but I'm comletely with Lakoff on this one. You don't have to be Derrida to acknowledge that words carry baggage from one dictionary definition to another, and that this linguistic messiness can be exploited politically.
Posted by Bob | Link to this comment | 09-16-03 2:23 PM
Lakoff first presented his theories about politics and family metaphors in Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don't, where he set forth the idea of the family metaphor for politics and the different ways that conservatives and liberals conceptualize the family and therefore conceptualize politics. In the last third of the book, he tries to argue that liberalism is better than conservatism because the liberal idea of ideal family structure is empirically better than the conservative one. I wrote a short review of the book on my blog, a while ago, including reasons why his argument for liberalism doesn't hold up.
Posted by Anthony | Link to this comment | 09-17-03 8:00 PM
Wasn't the ultimate liberal conception of the family the post-revolution Bolshevik initiative to create the community-as-family? No child addicted to a single mother; truly the child of the community, the state?
Oh, you postulate another liberal idea of family structure?
I guess that's what makes the liberal-conservative angle so uninteresting here...
-Magik "I was raised by a wolf pack" Johnson
PS, Aroooooo
Posted by Magik | Link to this comment | 09-18-03 1:00 AM