Knodt - Habermas Luhmann Controversy

Toward a Non-Foundationalist Epistemology: The Habermas/Luhmann Controversy RevisitedAuthor(s): Eva KnodtSource: New German Critique, No. 61, Special Issue on Niklas Luhmann (Winter, 1994), pp. 77-100Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488622Accessed: 11/03/2010 05:04

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Toward a Non-Foundationalist Epistemology: The Habermas/Luhmann Controversy Revisited

Eva Knodt

La manifestation de la philosophie n'est pas le bon sens, mais le paradoxe.

Gilles Deleuze1

I In a recent reply to his critics, Jiirgen Habermas summarizes what is at

stake in the controversy surrounding his work as follows:

These [positions] are philosophical answers to the unavoidable experience of modernity; when they are sharpened into the opposition between relativism and absolutism, an unmediated confrontation emerges between pure historicism and pure transcendentalism. At that point the failures of both positions become clear: the one side carries the burden of self-referential, pragmatic contradictions and paradoxes that violate our need for consistency; the other side is bur- dened with a foundationalism that conflicts with our consciousness of the fallibility of human knowledge. No one who gives this situation much thought would want to be left in this bind.2

1. Gilles Deleuze, Difference et repetition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976) 293.

2. Jiirgen Habermas, "Questions and Counterquestions, " Habermas and Modernity, ed. Richard J. Bernstein (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1985) 193.

77

78 The Habermas/Luhmann Controversy Revisited

Whether or not this is a fruitful way of phrasing the issue, Habermas certainly does not want to be "left in this bind." His work is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to synthesize historicism and transcendentalism in such a way as to preserve what he believes is the truth of each position. He does agree with "contextualists" - a label under which he groups together, often in rather indiscriminate fashion, poststructuralists, neopragmatists, and non-foundationalists of all sorts - that the "linguistic turn" has made pure transcendentalism in the Kantian sense impossible. Reason as linguistic reason is in the final analysis always historically and culturally situated. At the same time, however, he refuses to accept what he thinks are the potentially dangerous, self-refuting consequences of such a position, and therefore seeks to preserve a notion of enlightened modernity by grounding reason as "procedural," i.e., "communicative rationality" [Verfahrensrationalitdt], in the very structure of language itself. As a "reconstructive science" that makes explicit the assumptions implied in the self-reproductive mechanisms of what Habermas refers to as the "lifeworld" [Lebenswelt], his theory of communicative action makes four strong claims: (1) Its normative demands concerning the nature of rationality are, if not transcendental, at least universal in the sense that they must be logically presupposed by anyone engaging in verbal communication [Diskurs]. (2) It is both a descriptive-explanatory and normative-critical theory, which is to say that it not only serves as a framework for the systematic integration of existing, and the initiation of new empirical research programs in sociology and other reconstructive human sciences,3 but is also able to account for the pathologies of postindustrial western societies in such a way as to suggest a redirection rather than an abandonment of the emancipatory project of the Enlightenment.4 (3) The theory is self-referen- tially consistent, i.e., able to account for itself without contradiction. (4) The theory is "open" in the sense of being subject to falsification and in need of further "indirect testing" (TCA2, 399).

In the following essay, I wish to reexamine these claims in light of a systems-theoretical perspective. I argue that the theory of communicative action, together with the discursive reality it describes, constitutes

3. Jiirgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action 2: Lifeworld and Sys- tem - A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 1987) 397. Hereafter cited parenthetically as TCA2 within the text.

4. See Thomas McCarthy's "Translator's Introduction," to The Theory of Commu- nicative Action 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon, 1984) vi.

Eva Knodt 79

an autopoietic system in the sense in which Habermas's long-time opponent Niklas Luhmann uses the term.5 My contention is that the universalizingtendency of what Habermas calls discourse is an effect of the "operational closure" of a system that observes itself from within its own perspective and thereby conceals its contingency.6 If this argument holds, the first three claims above can be reanalyzed as self-descriptions of the system's recursive operation, whereas the last claim needs to be qualified in view of Luhmann's contention that systems are incapable of operating beyond their own boundaries.7 With regard to Habermas's discourse theory, this means that, considered as an autopoietic system, it is self-validating and irrefutable on its own grounds. To the extent that the theory of communicative action incor- porates a principle of falsification in the form of a counterfactual communicative a priori (the ideal speech situation) into its founding postulate, the theory is capable of transforming every act of refutation into an indirect affirmation of itself. The trouble is that once the systemic operations of discourse are identified with rationality itself, it becomes virtually impossible to formulate a critique of the former that would not be self-refuting. Critiques of modernity from Nietzsche to Lyotard amply illustrate this dilemma: in order to state their position these critics are forced to appeal to the very principles of discursive rationality they call into question, an inconsistency their opponents are quick to point out.

I do not wish to review the postmodernism debate in detail here, but rather to focus on the point where it seems to break down.8 It strikes me as a peculiar characteristic of the controversy that the accusation of performative contradiction is made almost exclusively to score points for Habermas against his critics, and that on those rare occa- sions when this move is reciprocated it appears to remain without

5. Niklas Luhmann, "The Autopoiesis of Social Systems," Essays on Self-reference (New York: Columbia UP, 1990) 1-20. For a straightforward introduction to Luh- mann's work, see Dietrich Schwanitz, "Systems Theory and the Environment of Theory," The Current in Criticism: Essays on the Present and Future of Literary Theory, eds. Klay- ton Koelb and Virgil Locke (West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1987) 265-94.

6. Niklas Luhmann, Ecological Communication (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity, 1989) 109. Hereafter cited parenthetically as EC within the text.

7. Luhmann, "Autopoiesis 13. 8. For a review of the debate from a Habermasian point of view, see Manfred

Frank, Die Grenzen der Verstdndigung: Ein Geistergesprdch zwischen Lyotard und Hab- ermas (Frankfirt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1988).


force.9 That this should be so testifies, if anything, to the power of convention and nothing more.10 For if it can be shown that any attempt to ground a concept of rationality, whether one locates its ground in the constitutive powers of a transcendental subject or in a linguistically based notion of intersubjectivity, is fraught with as many logical difficulties as the critique of such projects, then the triumphant gesture of point- ing out the paradox in an opponent's argument will lose its edge and reveal itself as mere rhetoric. More importantly, such a demonstration would necessitate a radical rethinking of the terms in which the postmodernism debate has been carried out over the past few decades and force both sides to confront the sense of exhaustion this debate has produced. As a result, the focus could shift from the abstract choice between reason and emancipation on the one hand, and an incoherent, self-refuting relativism on the other, to an investigation of what James L. Marsh calls the

particular "strategies of evasion" each position uses to conceal its own constitutive paradox.11

Luhmann's work suggests a redirection of current debates along precisely such lines. His call for a systematic rethinking of the relationship between cognition and paradox within the framework of a constructivist

epistemology represents perhaps the most rigorous attempt to challenge the binary structure of classical logic and its prohibition against paradox.

9. The paradigm for this type of argument was established by Habermas in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1987), and has since become a predictable component of any defense of modernity (hereafter cited parenthetically as PDM within the text). Cf. Frank, Grenzen; James L. Marsh, "Strategies of Evasion: The Paradox of Self-referentiality and the Post-moder Critique of Rationality," International Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1989): 339-49; Martin J. Matustik, "Habermas on Communicative Reason and Per- formative Contradiction," New German Critique 47 (Spring/Summer 1989): 143-72; and the polemical exchange between John Rajchman and Richard Wolin in New Ger- man Critique: John Rajchmann, "Habermas's Complaint," New German Critique 45 (Fall 1988): 163-91; Richard Wolin, "On Misunderstanding Habermas: A Response to Rajchman, New German Critique 49 (Winter 1990): 139-54; and Rajchman's "Rejoinder to Richard Wolin" in the same issue 155-61.

10. Martin Jay, "The Debate over Performative Contradiction: Habermas versus the Poststructuralists, Philosophical Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment, eds. Axel Honneth et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1992) 261-79. Jay argues that the self-referential nature of language makes paradox unavoidable, but he stops short of demonstrating this through a rigorous analysis of paradox in Haber- mas's own work. Nor does he attempt to link the poststructuralist critique of logical consistency with recent systems theoretical research that explicitly focuses on problems of self-reference and paradox.

11. Marsh, "Strategies of Evasion" 339.

Eva Knodt 81

Following Luhmann's suggestion that there is no use of binary codes without paradox,12 I argue that the persuasiveness of Habermas's position and the attraction it still exerts on many of today's intellectuals are the result of sophisticated strategies of "undoing paradox" [Entparadox- ierung], strategies that prove overall more effective than those of his opponents. After analyzing the most significant of these strategies, my argument will focus on systematically confronting Habermas's notion of communicative rationality with Luhmann's "logic of observation" in order to examine the epistemological implications of their positions. Such a renewed confrontation between Habermas and Luhmann is long overdue. Since their initial encounter in the early 1970s,13 the terms of the postmodernism debate have increasingly shifted from a political to an epistemological level. It is now widely recognized, due in large measure to the philosophical intervention of deconstruction, that the political question of what a social theory can and ought to accomplish under the conditions of late capitalism is inextricably intertwined with epistemological issues concerning the nature of language and western rationality. This shift, whether or not it is justified, has undoubtedly complicated matters on the level of political discussion. If I bracket the political dimension of the debate for much of my argument and concentrate on epistemological concerns, I do not wish to foreclose political discussion, but to problematize what theorists following Habermas tend to construe as a simple alternative between an emancipatory social philosophy and a politically suspect social technology.14

II

According to Luhmann, autopoietic systems "generate and realize the network that produces them and constitute, in the space in which they exist, the boundaries of the network as components that participate in the realization of the network."15 Their mode of self-reproduction is thus characterized by the principle of recursivity: "they not only produce and

12. Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1992) 173. Hereafter cited parenthetically as WG within the text. Translations are my own.

13. Jiirgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie: Was leistet die Systemforschung? (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1971).

14. Thomas McCarthy, "Complexity and Democracy: The Seducements of Systems Theory," New German Critique 35 (Spring/Summer 1985): 27-53.

15. Luhmann, quoting H. Maturana, "Autopoiesis 3. Hereafter cited parenthetically as AU within the text.


change their own structures," but "everything that is used as a unit by the system is produced by the system itself' (AU 3). Recursivity accounts for the system's operational "unity," that is, its ability to maintain its integrity vis-a-vis an overcomplex environment. However, this autopoietic closure does not imply closure at the level of the system's structure. On the con- trary, operational closure is a condition of structural openness, and vice versa (AU 12). This means that systems are sensitive to stimuli from the environment - they "do not create a material world of their own," but presuppose "other levels of reality" (AU 3) - while at the same time, their capacity to respond to such external stimuli is restricted by their system-specific codes: "The system processes information but it takes responsibility only for the action part of this process, not for the information." It is part of "the world" while simultaneously "operating within a 'world' of its own" (AU 7). In Luhmann's view, then, systems theory focuses on the problem of "how autopoietic closure is possible in open systems" and seeks to formulate the "limiting conditions for the possibility of components of the system" (AU 12).

Given Luhmann's account of autopoietic closure, what does it mean for a system such as Habermas's discourse theory - assuming that this theory does indeed constitute a system in Luhmann's sense - to describe itself as open and in need of further indirect testing? On Habermas's own account, it is the hypothetical nature of a reconstructive theory of rationality which requires it to continually validate its universalist claims through confrontation with empirical and other reconstructive sciences. Given today's "fallibilistic consciousness," this amounts to a demonstration of "coherence among different theoretical fragments" (TCA2 399). The theory's need for validation through debate explains Habermas's engagement in the public controversies surrounding his work. In numerous replies to his critics, he has demonstrated his readiness to revise his theory by clarifying his concepts, refining his distinctions, retracting some claims, and modifying others. At the same time, he has increasingly incorporated results from other reconstructive sciences such as linguistics, cognitive and developmental psychology, sociology, and most recently, systems theory. Thus, the growing success of critical theory during the past decades - if success is to be measured in terms of increased scope and integrative force - suggests the notion, cherished by Habermas for obvious reasons, of theory-building as a gigantic collaborative enterprise undertaken in the spirit of open rational debate and mutual understanding.

Eva Knodt 83

Yet invoking the principle of fallibility in the context of a coherence-oriented theory of rationality nonetheless raises the question of what could count as a refutation of that theory. As I shall argue below, the idea, as well as the practice, of validation through debate are ultimately self-validating in the sense that they tend to repro- duce precisely what the theory of communicative action anticipates as their result: coherence and consensus. It is crucial that from within the system's perspective, the circularity of its own operation remain invisible. As a "self-referential system," it is necessarily a "totalizing system," which, since it is "universally competent, . . . includes all exclusions" (AU 7). This totalizing tendency becomes a problem, however, when Habermas confronts opponents who, unlike his sympathetic critics, do not share the conviction that a new universal consensus is either possible or desirable. In this case, the system as a whole is challenged on the level of its constitutive selectivity. From radically different points of view, poststructural- ism and systems theory have questioned the adequacy of simple systems in accounting for the complexities of postindustrial western societies on both the symbolic and the institutional levels.16 From these perspectives, Habermas's project appears as a last, desperate effort to control, restrict and domesticate the irreducible heterogene- ity of language games in the name of a single game called "rational argumentation."7

The attempts to formulate a critique of this project are, however, ham- pered by notorious logical difficulties, especially when articulated in the form of a critique of ideology that aims at exposing the latent discrepan- cies between the stated intent of a particular discourse and its actual operation. It is tempting to reveal the ideological motives behind the notion of a "discourse oriented toward mutual understanding" by point-

16. For a critical assessment of recent trends in modem science and philosophy, see Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984). For an explora- tion of affinities between systems theory and deconstruction, see Robert Platt, "Reflexiv- ity, Recursion and Social Life: Elements for a Postmodern Sociology," The Sociological Review 37 (1989): 636-67, and Drucilla Cornell, The Philosophy of the Limit (New York: Routledge, 1992).

17. William Rasch, "Theories of Complexity, Complexities of Theory: Habermas, Luhmann, and the Study of Social Systems, German Studies Review 14 (1991): 70.


ing "triumphantly at what goes on behind its back."18 Along such lines, Rainer Nagele turns Freud back upon Habermas's reading of Freud, David Wellbery detects a "return of myth" in the very act of disavowing the mythical,19 and Jacques Derrida, in a long footnote to a recent epilogue to Limited Inc evokes the "ethics of discussion" in order to accuse Haber- mas of violating the most fundamental principles of academic discourse.20 But the argument centered on performative contradiction, a powerful rhetorical weapon in the crusade against the erosion of conventional codes of logic and discursive reasoning, remains strangely ineffective when invoked against these very codes. As Matustik puts it, Derrida is "philosophically wrong" even if he is right in his objection against Hab- ermas's communicative practice:

Precisely because one and the same Derrida can show that Haber- mas in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity might be a poor reader of Derrida, this same Derrida participates, albeit unwill- ingly, in Habermas's performative argument [which] establishes that Derrida's words and his actual performance involve him in self-contradiction.21

To phrase the issue in somewhat more general terms: even if it can be shown that Habermas's communicative practice is in fact contaminated by unconscious, mythic or irrational motives, and that therefore a clear- cut distinction between strategic and communicative action cannot be maintained by the very discourse that postulates this distinction as fundamental, such a demonstration proves nothing whatsoever against Habermas's insistence on this distinction per se. Nothing at least beyond the trivial recognition that the empirical conditions of verbal exchange tend to be contaminated by asymmetrical relationships, strategic motivations, personal interests and the like, and that therefore discourse is distorted most of the time. Habermas has never explicitly denied this claim, although he seems to allow for ambiguity on this point. Precisely because he defines

18. Rainer Nigele, "Public Voice and Private Voice: Freud, Habermas, and the Dia- lectic of Enlightenment, Reading After Freud: Essays on Goethe, H6lderlin, Habermas, Nietzsche, Brecht, Celan, and Freud (New York: Columbia UP, 1987) 69.

19. David E. Wellbery, "Nietzsche - Art - Postmodernism: A Reply to Jiirgen Habermas," Stanford Italian Review 6 (1986): 79.

20. Jacques Derrida, "Toward an Ethic of Discussion," Limited Inc, trans. Samuel Weber and Alan Bass (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1988) n9. Hereafter cited parenthetically as LTD within the text.

21. Matustik, "Habermas on Communicative Reason" 145, n4.

Eva Knodt 85

communicative rationality - i.e., the type of rationality he sees as distinguishing discourse geared toward mutual understanding from the purposive rationality [Zweckrationalitdt] constitutive of strategic behav- ior - in terms of a counterfactual, he can admit that we have to put up with "'unpurified' discourse" ['verunreinigten' Rede] (PDM 323) and at the same time insist that we could not even recognize it as impure if we did not always presuppose the conditions of an ideal speech situation:

In fact, we can by no means always, or even only often, fulfill those improbable pragmatic presuppositions from which we never- theless set forth in day-to-day communicative practice - and, in the sense of transcendental necessity, from which we have to set forth. For this reason, sociocultural forms of life stand under the structural restrictions of a communicative reason at once claimed and denied (PDM 325).

Given the counterfactual nature of Habermas's concept of communicative rationality, it is easy to see why the argument centered on performative contradiction becomes ineffectual when it is turned upon his own discursive practice: every possible performative contradiction is already anticipated, embraced, and neutralized within a theory of rationality that is designed to neutralize paradox. Such a theory dif- fers from subject-centered theories of rationality that operate on the basis of the model of reflection and a strictly tautological concept of reason. According to such theories, reason is defined by a set of rig- idly defined exclusionary rules in relation to which the status of any given utterance can be unequivocally determined to be either rational or irrational. Paradox arises when, in the wake of the "reflexive turn" of the Enlightenment, these theories are called upon to legitimate themselves in terms of the very distinction that underlies their operations. They have to show that the distinction between the rational and the irrational is itself a rational distinction, which cannot be done except at the price of infinite regress or paradox.

Habermas correctly identifies the "reflexive turn" as the essence of a modernity consumed by the need for Selbstvergewisserung [self-assur- ance] and plagued by problems of philosophical legitimation and self- grounding (PDM 16). Instead of taking the crisis of modernity as evi- dence for the bankruptcy of the entire project, however, Habermas advocates what he believes to be a solution to the problem of legitimation by proposing that we abandon the paradigm of reflection in favor


of a concept of intersubjectivity constituted in and through the communicative practice of discourse. The historical narrative of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity presents this move in terms of a "return" to a more genuine, more emancipatory "counterdiscourse" buried at the very heart of the Enlightenment (PDM 26-29). Consid- ered as a theoretical move, however, the paradigmatic shift toward intersubjectivity involves two separate steps which serve to undo paradox in the philosophy of reflection and its subject-centered concept of reason. First of all, the rational/irrational distinction is displaced onto the level of the social, where it reappears in the disguised form of an opposition between system and lifeworld, which are two forms of social differentiation distinguished by their respective mode of reproduction, techne and praxis. While the system's operations are gov- erned by the imperatives of system-internal purposive rationality, the lifeworld, according to Habermas, reproduces itself through the medium of a discursively constituted intersubjectivity guided by the principles of validation and truth-as-rational-consensus. Secondly and most importantly, the shift toward intersubjectivity involves a dialecti- cal reconceptualization of reason that circumvents the paradox of self- grounding by relocating and subsequently neutralizing it within the formal structure of a self-validating discursive practice that no longer requires a foundation external to its own operation.

Habermas recognizes that in order for the lifeworld to maintain its integrity over and against the system, the traditional assumption of a substantive (positive, tautological) concept of rationality is no longer necessary.22 Nor is it imperative that strategic interests be absent from discourse. All the lifeworld needs for the constitution of an intersubjec- tive rationality is the minimal requirement that such interests be subor- dinate to considerations of truth and validity, or, more accurately, that the possibility of their subordination cannot be denied.23 Stripped of all substantive content, reason survives under the conditions of a postmodern sensibility in the form of a "practical hypothesis" which contains

22. Richard Wolin argues that Habermas's procedural concept of rationality responds to the failure of the Frankfurt School to salvage rationality's substantive, utopian content. See his "Critical Theory and the Dialectic of Rationalism," New German Critique 41 (Spring/Summer 1987): 23-52.

23. On the ideological implications of the undeniability postulate in modem hermeneutics see Benjamin K. Bennett, "Performance and the Exposure of Herme- neutics," Theatre Journal 44 (1992): 435.

Eva Knodt 87

strong elements of undecidability. On Habermas's own account, the ideal speech situation is "neither an empirical phenomenon nor a mere construct," neither a "merely regulative principle in Kant's sense" nor an "existing concept in Hegel's sense; for no historical reality matches the form of life that we can in principle characterize by reference to the ideal speech situation. The ideal speech situation would best be com- pared with a transcendental illusion were it not for the fact that ... this illusion is also the constitutive condition of rational speech."24 In the face of such massive ambiguity, the problematic paradox of legitimation dissolves, if only because there is no longer any conceivable external perspective a legitimizing meta-discourse could occupy. Nor is there any need for such a discourse. To the extent that universal pragmatics still harbors legitimizing ambitions, they can be fully satisfied by an internal elucidation of the recursive operations of a self-validating discursive praxis that supplies its own foundations.

But Habermas's solution to the problem of legitimation is bought at a price. Paradox reappears in the guise of an undecidability proposition at the heart of his theory: reason assumes the paradoxical structure of what Luh- mann calls an "actualized inactuality" [des aktuellen Inaktuellen] (WG 106). According to Luhmann, paradoxes indicate systemic blockages that must be resolved in "non-logical (creative) ways." To "unblock" the system it is necessary to introduce a distinction, such as that between present and future (WG 716).25 The "constitutive illusion" of Habermas's ideal speech situation does just that: it simultaneously evokes and conceals its paradoxical structure by virtue of a neutralizing dialectic which allows it to unfold temporally. Reason is both what it is and what it is not. Reason is what it is by virtue of what it has not yet become but cannot deny it will become without denying itself. Even if reason were to deny itself, such a gesture, just like other "mistakes, crimes, and deceptions" would eventu- ally reveal itself to the happy "few who are in the truth" as being not "without reason" [vernunftlos] but as mere "blindness" [Verblendung], that is, as a "manifestation of the inversion of reason" (PDM 324). In truly Hegelian

24. Jiirgen Habermas, "Wahrheitstheorien" (1972), Vorstudien und Ergdnzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984) 180-81; quoted here in the English translation from Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jirgen Habermas (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1981) 310; emphasis added.

25. On temporalization as a preferred strategy of undoing paradox, see Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft 103-07.


fashion, the dialectic of intersubjectivity leaves no room for any radical contradiction or dissent that could not be twisted into a manifestation of the very striving for the goal of rational consensus it purports to negate.

III Or does it? The answer to this question depends, I suppose, on what

we mean by room for dissent. The critic may well have to resign her- self to the fact that her efforts to turn Habermas's own communicative practice against his theory have miserably failed. In the debate over performative contradiction, Habermas always appears to have the final word. But if this is so, what does this victory tell us about the nature of the debate? Does it testify to the power of communicative reason or does it indicate, as Luhmann suggests, a structural weak- ness in the argument of opponents who thematize "latent structures" or "unintended side-effects" but can neither explain "the status of this shadow-world" (EC 113), nor account for the conditions of "struc- tured autopoiesis" that enable their own critical insights (EC 25)? While we can direct the argument from performative contradiction against Habermas's discursive practice, it is more difficult to challenge the legitimacy of this argument on theoretical grounds. Once we understand the dynamics of the debate over performative contradiction as an inevitable result of the self-referential closure of Haber- mas's theory (and of the system within which we observe its operations), we have gained a different perspective on our own critical performance. The question is still what can count as a refutation of Habermas's theory, but we no longer pose this question, nor search for an answer, within the conceptual alternatives prescribed by this theory. Rather, we engage in what Luhmann calls "second order observation," a theoretical investigation that can analyze an observation based on the "operative distinction" [Leitdifferenz] between lifeworld (normative integration) and system (functional integration) with the help of yet another distinction, such as, for example, the distinction between system and environment (WG 68-121). We have placed ourselves, in other words, on a level of theoretical abstraction where it is possible, from a position yet to be clarified, to gain insight into both the recursive operations and the structural limitations of a system that observes itself and its environment with the help of a binary code (system/lifeworld) rooted in the classical rational/irrational distinction.

Eva Knodt 89

I want to argue that Derida's evocation in Limited Inc of the ethics of discussion aims beyond a mere critique of latencies at precisely this theoretical level.26 It is an ironic gesture that masks a quite serious question: how well can universal pragmatics account for the fact that Habermas is incapable of following his own rules? Or, to be more precise, that his theory provides no criteria by which to decide with certainty whether at any given instance someone is acting communicatively or strategically. By implicating Haber- mas in his polemic against Searle, Derrida's rhetorical gesture reinscribes the question of Habermas's critical7performance within the general problematic of a "theory of accidents."2 Here, the teleology governing a consensus-oriented concept of discursive rationality is disrupted at the level of concept-formation, where a series of selections and exclusions constitute rationality in the form of an idealized notion of standardized speech. Der- rida, in other words, is in agreement with Luhmann (the differences between deconstruction and systems theory notwithstanding) that theory must be able to explain what Habermas merely accepts as a given: the structural limitations of an ideal of rationality which, in a profoundly paradoxical way, is always operative [in Anspruch genommen] and yet never fully operating [dementiert]. Derrida, of course, cannot escape these limitations - the set of conditions for the impossibility of doing so is precisely what is at stake in this debate - for his critique must (in the strong sense of a transcendental necessity) articulate itself within, and thus can always be taken to affirm, the discursive realm Habermas defines and delim- its as rational: the level of discourse where universal validity claims are explicitly raised, contested, and redeemed by argumentation.

If I emphasize here the affinities between deconstruction and systems theory, I do so in order to highlight an aspect of Derrida's philosophical enterprise often overlooked by his critics: his theoretical concern with complexity.28 Unfortunately, by framing his project as a deconstruction of occidental metaphysics, by remaining preoccupied with language and rhetoric, and last but not least by maintaining a deliberately ambiguous

26. Needless to say, Matustik misses this point precisely because he observes Derrida's discursive performance from within the field circumscribed by Habermasian discourse. A different reading of the Derridean project (to which I am indebted here) is suggested by Rodolphe Gasche, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1986).

27. Denis Kambouchner, "The Theory of Accidents," Glyph 7 (1980): 149-75. 28. Derrida, Limited Inc 119. See also N. Katherine Hayles, Chaos Bound: Orderly

Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990) 176.


rhetorical stance, Derrida himself has played a major part in obscuring the theoretical significance of his work. In particular, his emphasis on the debilitating rather than enabling effects of paradox has encouraged the misleading but widely popular view of deconstruction as a new version of epistemological skepticism, a view which in turn has called forth the entire range of classical arguments against skepticism.29 That things are not quite as simple has become evident in domains of inquiry where paradoxes similar to those deconstruction has observed in the realm of language arise in the attempt to deal with "tangled hierarchies," nonlogical contradictions, undecidables, and complexities of all sorts. Luhmann's social theory draws on the methodologies which have addressed such problems in scientific disciplines as diverse as evolutionary biology, information theory, and logic, and applies them to the study of cultural phenomena (society, language, and history). This theory has proven far more difficult to refute than the theories of Habermas's poststructuralist contenders. Charges of irrationalism or self-referential inconsistency simply rebound in the face of a theory backed by a philosophically sophisticated epistemology that places the problem of self-reference at the center of its concerns and, in doing so, redefines the standards and criteria that define our conventional understanding of theory. To pose the question of knowledge in a self-implicating fashion, that is, from within the system of science [Wissenschaft],

has so far been considered a forbidden action. The demonstration of circular reasoning was tantamount to a death sentence. Above all, concepts and theories are not allowed to reoccur within their own object realm. If we want to overcome the current stagnation at this point, we need to modify this judgment, or give up the attempt altogether. The conclusion is: a prohibition must be transformed into a methodological bottleneck [einen methodischen Engpafi]. The rule that circular reasoning and related fallacies are to be avoided must be replaced by a rule that tolerates theories which can afford self-reference (WG 71-72).

Habermas, of course, does acknowledge the problem of self-reference- as did Hegel before him - and, like Hegel, he chooses to resolve this

29. M.H. Abrams, "The Deconstructive Angel," Modern Criticism and Theory, ed. David Lodge (New York: Longman, 1988) 265-76; Michael Morton, "Verum estfactum: Critical Realism and the Discourse of Autonomy, The German Quarterly 64 (1991): 149- 65; and, of course, Habermas's own account of deconstruction in The Philosophical Dis- course of Modernity 161-210.

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problem by unfolding its paradoxical implications within the speculative framework of a temporalized dialectic. The lifeworld/system distinction and its corollaries are conceived in terms of the self-diremption of an original "ethical totality" which in turn serves as the telos for a redemp- tive social practice that articulates itself in the synthesizing medium of a discursive intersubjectivity (PDM 28-29). For Habermas, communicative reason, albeit no longer grounded in the subject, remains an essentially reconciling, unifying force. In sharp contrast to the tradition of speculative philosophy, systems theory starts with difference as a primitive notion. Observing systems constitute themselves in and through the operation of producing information. In order to do so, they follow the injunc- tion: "Draw a distinction!"; for instance, between good and bad, rational and irrational, immanence and transcendence, or, for that matter, system and environment. The resulting information articulates a certain normative focus, a built-in asymmetry, by virtue of its selective nature. Accord- ing to Luhmann, any such use of binary codes for the purpose of information processing generates a paradox: the system cannot see the unity of the distinction underlying its own operations as a form that produces both sides of the code. Moreover, on the level of "naive" (first- order) observation, it cannot even see that it does not see what it does not see. The operational unity of the system cannot be observed from within the system. In order for this blind spot to become visible, a second-order observation is required that can take the form of either self-observation (in which case the operating distinction is applied to one side of itself and thus reemerges within the system's own boundaries),30 or of an observation of the system's operations from the point of view of yet another system. Second-order observation desynchronizes the paradoxical simultaneity of observation and operation by distinguishing the observed system's distinction.31 This operation takes time. The crucial point is that second- order observation neutralizes the paradox implied in an observation, but - and this distinguishes Luhmann's logic of observation from both Hegelian dialectics and traditional forms of ideology critique - it knows

30. Borrowing from the operational logic of George Spencer Brown (who has become something of a cult figure in systems theoretical research), Luhmann refers to this phenomenon with the term "re-entry"[Wiedereintritt]. On re-entry as a strategy of undoing paradox see Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft 74.

31. On the distinction between observation and operation, see Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft 77-78.


that it can do so only by generating a new paradox on the operational level of its own observation.

Because the difference between system and environment is irreducible for any given system, including the theory of complex systems, no meta- language can delimit a field of observations without exclusion. Since he is implicated in this field,

the observer of the observed system operates simultaneously from the outside and the inside. He constantly changes positions. He observes it from the inside as if it were from the outside; and he specializes in finding a perspective from which he can see what the observed system is unable to see (such as: the failure of all justifi- cations) but at the same time he wishes to establish connections within the system [im beobachteten System anschluflfdhig zu operi- eren] and therefore must accommodate himself to the autopoiesis of this very system. If he cannot supply foundations, the least he can do is proceed in scientific [wissenschaftlich] fashion (WG 363).

If Derrida tends to mystify his own critical position as the impossible glimpse into a monstrous exteriority beyond the horizon of metaphysical closure,32 Luhmann adopts the opposite, and arguably more effective, strategy of trivializing his status as an observer of observations. There is nothing ominous about an observation that distinguishes itself from another observation, be it metaphysics, science, or Habermas's "discourse," simply by virtue of its use of a distinction other than the one employed by the observed system. That the difference between first and second-order observation also involves a relationship of mutual implication between the two certainly complicates matters but does not present an insurmountable obstacle as long as it is taken into account:

[T]he second-order observer must be able to establish a linkage with first-order observations. In this regard, he is and remains part of the same system of recursive observations of observations, no matter what the difference between the distinctions he uses, and no matter what his interests may be in refutation or correction, in demystification, enlightenment, or critique of ideology. Whoever observes participates in this system - or he does not observe. There are no exempt positions. (WG 86)

32. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Balti- more: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976) 5.

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Nor can such a second-order observation be accused of the type of logical fallacy Habermas condemns in what he calls "totalizing critiques of reason," unless one accepts as binding the conventions of a strictly binary logic that prohibits paradox on the basis of the classical tertium non datur. But then, who says that we ought to accept this dogma?

What unites Luhmann with postmodern critics of Habermas such as Lyotard and Derrida is the contention that the binary logic of classical ontology is exhausted. Just as Luhmann's logic of observation operates with more than two values in order to handle problems of self- reference,33 Derrida calls for "another logic" which, to the extent that it is able to account for the conditions of (im)possibility of classical logic, "no longer depends entirely on it" (LTD 117). Given the irreducibility of paradox, these thinkers suggest that theory abandon its old dream of seeing the world as a whole from a god-like perspective, and focus instead on world complexity as a problem, which, if it is thematized, can only be comprehended in terms of a network of inter- locking, non-hierarchical, and horizontal observations that can never be unified into a totalized observation without blind spots (WG 368).

The paradoxical structure of observation, and the constitutive blindness of systems, are thus both a blessing and a curse. While they make possible internal system differentiation, any such increase in internal complexity is bought at the price of an inevitable reduction of complexity. Even a theory that explicitly thematizes complexity as the problem of problems does not escape this paradox. The very notion of complexity, as Luhmann admits, contains "an encapsulated paradox; for the concept designates as a unity what it intends as a plurality" (WG 364). Complexity, therefore, cannot be observed without reduction, from which it follows, as William Rasch points out, that it is impossible to define complexity without contradiction.34 As an "all-encompassing claim about complex systems," such a definition would have to assert that such claims cannot be made:

It is as if some observer has jumped over the meta-level of objec- tive (neutral, total) perspective to a meta-meta-level from which it is possible to see that no meta-level exists. An observing system observes itself failing to observe itself fully. . . . The system acknowledges this and thereby gives the paradoxical impression of

33. Elena Esposito, "Paradoxien als Unterscheidungen von Unterscheidungen," Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbriiche: Situationen offener Epistemologie, eds. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1991) 37-38.

34. Rasch, "Theories of Complexity".


having at last fully observed itself as a system that cannot be fully observed.35

The point is that such paradoxes are not intrinsic properties of a phenomenon called complexity, but arise when an observational system (i.e., a psychic organism using language) is included into its definition, an inclu- sion which inevitably blurs the boundary between simplicity and complexity.36 Complexity, in other words, is the product of an observation that chooses to focus on complexity. It is thematized, "if one observes with the help of this distinction [between element and relation]. If not, then not. We are therefore not constantly dealing with complexity, but an observer can at any time thematize complexity, and today, the conditions for such a thematization are favorable" (WG 364). Which is to say that there is always the possibility of reducing by choice what, from the point of view of a simple system, is registered as a disturbance.

From a systems theoretical perspective, then, the integrative force of Habermas's discourse is nothing but its ability to reduce complexity by neutralizing potential disturbances. Just as it is incapable of registering the subtle differences between Derrida's "non-idealizable infrastructural archsyntheses" and ordinary concepts,37 it will always construe challenges to its own code, whether from the point of view of a more comprehensive system or of non-standard forms of logic, as variations of the standard speech act "I assert that p," the form of which is then taken as an affirmation of the system's universality ("you are doing exactly what I told you all language does"), while the content of the proposition p is rejected as self-contradictory, i.e., "irrational." In the name of communication and tolerance, Habermas can thus dispense with entire intellectual traditions - the mere presence of self-referential paradox in Nietzsche, Adorno, or Foucault is enough to disqualify them - while at the same time, Habermas's own research program keeps expanding in its attempt to integrate ever more areas of interdisciplinary inquiry into a coherent whole.

IV If it is true that the key issue in the postmodernism debate is complexity,

and that complexity is generated by an observation choosing to thematize

35. Rasch, "Theories of Complexity" 76-77. 36. Rasch, "Theories of Complexity" 77. 37. Rodolphe Gasche, "Infrastructures and Systematicity," Deconstruction and

Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida, ed. John Sallis (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987) 5.

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complexity, a choice which, qua choice, necessarily implies a reduction of complexity by virtue of its selective character, then the controversy between Habermas and his critics seems to boil down to the following preference: in order to salvage modernity's emancipatory content, Habermas must insist not only on the categorical distinction between system and lifeworld, but also on the primacy of the latter. Discourse is postu- lated as a privileged normative locus from which the dynamics of functional integration and the system's evolution toward increasing social complexity can, in principle, be criticized and kept under control. Objecting to the special status accorded to the lifeworld in Hab- ermas's social theory, Luhmann proposes analyzing discourse as merely one of the social system's reproductive mechanisms among many other types of communications. In his account, "normative integration" is but a special case of "functional integration" as one particular way of fulfilling system-internal requirements. It can be observed and observe itself in its functioning as a means of reducing social complexity to an underlying simplicity.38 In his defense, Habermas points out that once we give up the normative ideal implied in the communicative practice of the lifeworld, we are left with no standards whatsoever to judge any particular state of affairs. By insisting on the "higher amorality" [hohere Amoralitit] of the functional codes that organize society,39 Luhmann's theory, in Habermas's view, amounts to a cynical affirmation of the status quo. We are left, it seems, with the uncomfortable choice, not - as Habermas would have it - between "pure historicism and pure transcendentalism," but between two apparently incompatible theories, both of which make strong claims to universality: one that promises to preserve our most cherished utopian hopes, and another that claims to provide a "more adequate" [angemessen] understanding of contemporary society capable of accommodating in a most rigorous fashion many of our "postmodern" intuitions concerning, for instance, the status of the subject, the experience of radical contingency, and the irreducibility of paradox. On what grounds are we to choose between them?

While this way of phrasing the question appears to place me on the side of Habermas (by implying that there ought to be legitimate

38. Rasch, "Theories of Complexity" 70-71. 39. Niklas Luhmann, "Paradigm Lost: On the Ethical Reflection of Morality,"

Thesis Eleven 29 (1992): 86. This article was originally given as a speech on the occa- sion of the award of the Hegel Prize in 1988.


grounds for choosing a theory), I cannot deny a strong sense of discom- fort with Habermas's neo-Hegelian attempt to heal the rift between ethics and epistemology that has been the legacy of the Enlightenment since Kant. After all, Luhmann and the postmodernists do seem to have the better arguments (another point for Habermas?). Yet, such a conclusion can obviously suggest itself only if one assumes a comparability of purpose that may in fact be misleading. Does the theory of communicative action represent an instance of what it postulates as its own ground: a voice in the public sphere where modem society supposedly shapes its rational identity and defends it against the threat of colonization by media-steered systems such as the state bureaucracy and the economy? Should the ultimate test of its validity consist therefore "in the possibility of the incorporation of its insights into practically consequential interpretations of social situations"?4? Or is it above all a social theory addressed and limited to a community of specialists and hence to be measured against the cognitive standards of scientific discourse?

Habermas's recent flirtations with systems theory in The Theory of Com- municative Action have not gone unnoticed, and clearly suggest a growing emphasis on theoretical concerns. In order to maintain a competitive edge within the social sciences, Habermas has increasingly appropriated functional analysis for his own purposes, and his critical exposition as a whole has adopted the detached, objectifying perspective constitutive of cognitive rather than practical discourse.41 To be sure, the functional analysis of society as a system is merely meant to supplement, not to replace, the internalist viewpoint of social participants which Habermas continues to postulate as the precondition of such analysis (PDM 299). But the very need for supplementation, as well as its actual effects, cast serious doubt on the possibility of distinguishing between lifeworld and

40. Dieter Misgeld, "Critical Hermeneutics versus Neoparsonianism?" New German Critique 35 (Spring/Summer 1985): 55.

41. Following Thomas McCarthy, Misgeld points out that the very thesis of a "colonization of the lifeworld presupposes a functionalist perspective in the direction of a comprehensive theory of society. As a theoretical abstraction, the system/lifeworld distinction is neither available from an internalist viewpoint, nor is it clear what its practical value might be for the solution of particular social conflicts. However, Misgeld's dismissal of systems theory as an ideology that "conceals the involvement of particular persons, groups, and institutions, and their interests" in the production of social pathologies strikes me as naive, especially in its suggestion that a critical theory ought to single out those "particular individuals and groups that "cause this or that problem (Misgeld, "Critical Hermeneutics 75). On the problem of "causal attribution as a mechanism of complexity reduction, see Luhmann, Ecological Communication 8-10.

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system in terms of these two different methodological attitudes (TCA2 153). The whole burden of Habermas's argument thus rests on the theoretical demonstration that the types of rationality characteristic of these realms are in fact categorically distinct, and that the system's evolution toward increasing internal differentiation remains anchored in, and subordinated to, what Habermas follows Max Weber in calling the "rationalization" of the lifeworld. We have seen how Habermas's attempt to ground a normative concept of modernity in the structure of a linguistically based concept of intersubjectivity leads to undecidability and paradox. By way of conclusion, I will argue that the different conceptual strategies associated with lifeworld and system, to the extent that they represent strictly complementary methodological perspectives,42 are in fact theo- retically incompatible in their conclusions, and that therefore the project of reconciling the normative with the cognitive dimension of discourse in a comprehensive theory of modernity must be considered a failure.

Habermas's historical diagnosis of modernity in terms of a "decoupling of system and lifeworld" borrows from systems theory not only the principle of functional differentiation as a fundamental analytical category but its evolutionary framework as well. Within such a framework, the historical transition from "stratified" (pre-modern, hierarchically organized) to functionally differentiated (modern, horizontally organized) societies is conceptualized as an increase in complexity at the level of social organization. In systems theory, complexity designates a difference "between orders of magnitude in which each element can still link up with any other at any time, and those orders in which this is no longer the case." For a society to qualify as "modern" it must have passed the "threshold" of complexity "beyond which only selective (contingent) connections are possible, and structures, because they can change, have to maintain themselves" (WG 364). Complexity in this sense is an evolutionary achievement that is both highly improbable and irreversible. Sys- tems, if left to themselves, tend to become more complex as they evolve over time - barring, of course, any major catastrophe. But social progress, understood as the optimization of performance made possible by systems differentiation, comes at a price. In a functionally differentiated society no system can substitute for any other. It is inconceivable

42. On complementarity see Annetta Pedretti, "Where the Language is the Meta- Language," Applied Systems and Cybernetics. Volume 2: Systems Concepts, Models and Methodology, ed. G.E. Lasker (New York: Pergamon, 1980) 634.


that politics - or morality, for that matter - could take over functions fulfilled by the economy, or vice versa, precisely because individual subsystems operate on the basis of "non-redundant," system-specific codes (EC 109). For the same reason, they must relate selectively to their environment. This severely restricts society's capacity to respond as a whole to crises in other subsystems or to environmental disturbances.

Habermas clearly recognizes that the choice of a systems theoretical framework precludes the idea of a normative center that would allow modem society to form a critical consciousness of itself as a whole and thus take control of its own evolution. He admits that in Luhmann's uni- verse there is "no place" for "the construct of a public sphere [Offentlich- keit] that could fulfill this function," nor for the ideals of autonomy and human self-determination that he hopes to preserve in the notion of an enlightened communication community (PDM 378). What prevents the realization of these ideals is not merely a matter of the technical difficulties involved in public consensus formation, difficulties having to do with empirical restrictions placed on the operation of a discourse by limited memory capacity and temporal constraints.43 Rather, the problem lies in the theoretical incompatibility between mutually exclusive conceptualiza- tions of modernity. While Habermas insists on grounding modem society in the archimedian point of a rationally motivated consensus, the principle of functional differentiation entails the absence of such a center and, by implication, the impossibility of a totalizing consciousness or collec- tive identity [GesamtbewufJtsein] on the model of a transcendental subject or of a linguistically grounded intersubjectivity. Recursivity, the self- referential closure that allows for the reproduction of autopoietic systems, does not entail transparency.44 Luhmann writes:

It contradicts every principle of social differentiation to reestablish the totality of the system within the system. The whole cannot be a part of the whole at the same time. Any attempt of this kind would merely create a difference in the system: the difference of that part which represents the totality of the system within the system vis-a- vis all the other parts. The presentation of unity is a production of difference, thus the intention itself is already paradoxical, self-contradictory (EC 121).

In other words, even if we assume that the practical obstacles could be

43. Habermas and Luhmann, Sozialtechnologie 336. 44. Cornell, Philosophy of the Limit 124.

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overcome and a discursively reached consensus were in fact to be achieved, such a consensus would still "be subject to observation and contradiction" (EC 135) by other subsystems, a "partial phenomenon" that can "represent the whole within the whole" (EC 134) only in the paradoxical figure of re-entry.

Habermas believes that an emancipatory politics is impossible unless it can be grounded in a comprehensive theory of society. He further assumes that functional analysis precludes both such a politics and its grounding: "[I]f modem societies have no possibility whatsoever of shaping a rational identity, then we are without any point of reference for a critique of modernity" (PDM 374). He therefore deems it necessary to combat Luhmann's "methodological anti-humanism" on the level of concept formation by insisting that an emancipatory social theory must "conceptualize modem society in such a way that the possibility of dis- tantiating itself from itself as a whole and of working out its perceptions of crisis within the higher-level communication processes of the public sphere is not already negatively prejudiced by the choice of basic concepts" (PDM 378). To counteract this "negative prejudice," Habermas offers an alternative conceptualization of modernization that acknowledges the modern differentiation of value spheres (science, morality, and art) while promising to reconcile them in the idealized conditions of a discursive practice in which validity claims concerning the truth, correctness, and authenticity of propositions are subject to contestation and rational justification. The rationalization thesis thus insists on precisely what the principle of functional differentiation denies, namely, the possibility that the implicit normative background of society can, and in fact does, become explicit as a whole in the reflexive medium of a discursively constituted intersubjectivity.

The highly ambiguous status of this concept is mirrored in the different type of justification that Habermas provides for it in various contexts. In The Theory of Communicative Action, the system/lifeworld distinction is introduced on strictly cognitive grounds: if we are to gain an adequate understanding of modern society, an exclusive reliance on scientific methodologies misses the normative content of modernity (TCA2 153-97). In The Philosophical Discourse of Moder- nity, by contrast, the insistence on the system/lifeworld distinction clearly amounts to a subordination of the cognitive realm to moral- political imperatives: what ought to be the case takes precedence over


what may, as a matter of fact, be the case. Luhmann, however, objects to this move precisely on theoretical grounds: "if this [goal of a col- lective rational identity] is modem society's ambition, then it cannot be grasped sufficiently, or, if so, it can only be conceived as failure" (EC 134). Of course, one can always reject the consequences of a theory on ethical or political grounds, but in doing so, one is no longer playing the game of theory. In this sense, Habermas's political critique of systems theory is an act of protest against the nightmarish vision offered by "technoscience" of a totally self-regulating machin- ery of blindly operating, semi-autonomous systems in which the aspi- rations of practical reason are reduced to little more than a "functionally necessary deception."45 In this protest, the theory of communicative action constitutes itself as a practical philosophy, which, for better or worse, must repress the contingency of its own selectivity as the condition of its possibility. The system cannot see what it cannot see. But precisely this act of self-centering also acts out, once again, the drama of modernization as differentiation: the unity of theory and practice is ripped apart in the very attempt to reconcile the conflicting demands of reason and the understanding in the idea of a reason that is supposedly not just an idea in the Kantian sense but also an empirical condition of everyday speech. The desire for unity produces difference, and a theory fuelled by such a desire becomes utopian in the literal sense of the word.

45. Habermas paraphrasing Luhmann, quoted form Mary Hesse, "Habermas's Consensus Theory of Truth," Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980) 222.

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