All understanding is necessarily reductive abstraction

Evidence

It is, of course, the case—as “culturalism” argues—that, in historical reality, practices do not appear neatly distinguished out into their respective instances. However, to think about or to analyze the complexity of the real, the act of practice of thinking is required; and this necessitates the use of the power of abstraction and analysis, the formation of concepts with which to cut into the complexity of the real, in order precisely to reveal and bring to light relationships and structures which cannot be visible to the naive naked eye, and which can neither present nor authenticate themselves: “In the analysis of economic forms, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assistance. The power of abstraction must replace both.” Of course, structuralism has frequently taken this proposition to its extreme. Because thought is impossible without “the power of abstraction,” it has confused this with giving an absolute primacy to the level of the formation of concepts—and at the highest, most abstract level of abstraction only: Theory with a capital “T” then becomes judge and jury. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 199 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

But language emerges; we do name and talk about things, whether in error or not; and the rationalizing procedures of the eighteenth century led Rousseau to try to “understand” (or “explain”) this situation by genetically or historically deducing a stage in which it was not yet present: “The repeated contacts between man and various entities, and between the entities themselves, must necessarily engender in the mind of man the perception of relationships” (Rousseau, quoted in AR155). Such relationships — first, comparisons (“large, small, strong, weak”), and then number itself — mark the birth of true conceptualization and abstraction; or, if you prefer, of an abstraction that grasps itself as such (unlike nomination, which still purports to respect the particular, and not to compare). Sheer conceptual relationship would then seem to wash back over the particular and convert it into a series of equivalences or identities: you cannot, in other words, evoke the quantitative differences between two entities (this tree is larger than that one) without having somehow posed their equivalence (or their resemblance), at least in that respect. The reign of the name therefore ends at that point, and that of the word, the concept, the abstraction, the universal, begins. DeMan will, of course, now crucially identify this transformation as the operation of metaphor. The concept implies some preliminary decision about the resemblance of a specific group of entities among themselves (we call them henceforth men, trees, armchairs, or whatever). Yet on that level of the preliminary decision, the entities have nothing in common with each other; they are all distinct existents, and therefore, at that virtually prelinguistic moment, to “compare” two distinct “blossomers” is as outrageous a linguistic act as to describe “my love” as a “red, red rose.” — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 507 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Understanding means tracing the known back to what defies explanation; Semiology’s arbitrary signifier-signified link underpins reductive explanation; Abstraction is the essential instrument for revealing structures invisible to direct observation — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 199 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Abstraction is the essential instrument for revealing structures invisible to direct observation #qualifies (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 199
• Conceptual abstraction is itself a metaphorical act because it posits resemblance among distinct existents #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 507
• Understanding means tracing the known back to what defies explanation #expands (0.80)
• Freeing from particularity requires dwelling with the concrete instead of abstract negation #contradicts (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1558
• Knowing assimilates its object without destroying its in-itself structure #contradicts (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1353
• The actualist State-as-superior-entity theory reduces individuals to abstractions #exemplifies (0.80)
• Semiology’s arbitrary signifier-signified link underpins reductive explanation #exemplifies (0.75)
• The general will shows how abstraction artificially arises from particularity #complicates (0.75)
• Husserl’s phenomenology reified abstractions by forgetting consciousness’s productive role #exemplifies (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2271
• Pure knowledge without a viewpoint is self-contradictory #complicates (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 836