CRITICAL SOCIAL RESEARCH

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© Lee Harvey 1990, 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2023, 2024

Page updated 8 January, 2024

Citation reference: Harvey, L., [1990] 2011, Critical Social Research, available at qualityresearchinternational.com/csr, last updated 8 January, 2024, originally published in London by Unwin Hyman, all rights revert to author.

A novel of twists and surpises

5.3 Contradiction
Contradiction is the classical Marxist approach. It is encoded in the Engelian notion of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Cockburn, for example, takes this as axiomatic arguing that all phenomena contain their opposites and that the form of the contradiction determines the nature of the synthesis. Westwood sees contradictions as inherent within the particular form of oppressive social structure that operates at any historical moment. In her research it is the inherent contradictions of women's lives under conditions set by patriarchal capitalism.

In both cases ideology plays a central role. It is ideology that serves to conceal contradictions and it is ideology that renders myths natural. Ideology itself is transparent. It has to be made to appear. While ideology is taken for granted and equated, subconsciously, with common (non)sense the contradictions remain as anomalies and the myths as stereotypes. Only as ideology is revealed is the deconstructive-reconstructive process enabled. That is, the anomaly is linked clearly to the structural forms through which it operates by being shown to legitimate those historically specific forms. Thus the anomaly becomes a contradiction; an analytic concept that binds essence to totality. Similarly, a stereotype is transformed into a myth once the ideology that renders it natural is revealed as legitimating and reproducing oppressive social structures.

The process of dialectical analysis, though, requires more than an abstract and empty thesis on the nature of (dominant) ideology, it needs to materially ground ideology by locating it in particular practices. Vague abstract notions of capitalist ideology, of patriarchy or racism are as unacceptable to critical social research as a means of deconstruction as the taken-for-granted abstractions of non-critical social research. One might, for example, begin with the abstract notion of patriarchy as an organising principle but it must be seen as empty and in need of filling, of being made concrete.

Westwood, for example, looks at the contradictions in the lives of women factory workers. She considers 'anomalies' that are manifested in the women's collusion in their own oppression. She does not simply propose some abstract concept of patriarchy (or capitalism or racism) as somehow responsible for this. Instead, in transforming the anomalies into clearly visible contradictions she looks at specific practices in the light of structural processes. So, for example, the celebration of marriage, which is central to the collusive process of patriarchal domination, is seen as sensible in the light of access to (male) economic resources. Thus the contradiction between the resistance to capitalist patriarchy (embodied in the celebration of marriage) and the collusion (embodied in marriage itself) not only becomes apparent in itself, when thus empirically grounded, but also provides the focus for deconstructing the nature of working women's lives. Contradictions become the pivot through which Westwood is able to dig beneath the surface of the lives of women factory workers.

Willis does much the same in his analysis of the resistance of 'the lads'. The lads are able to penetrate educational ideology and yet indulge in forms of resistance that effectively enables capitalism to reproduce exploited unskilled labourers. This anomalous situation is transformed into contradiction when working-class culture is examined. Working-class culture provides a critique of capitalism that is only partial. Working-class culture is not wholly oppositional but, in its reification of labouring, its sexism and its racism, it absorbs and re-produces dominant ideology.

It is important to remember that using contradiction as the focus of deconstruction is not simply about spotting an anomaly and building an elaborate theory around it to explain it away. Contradictions emerge through dialectical analysis. An anomaly remains an anomaly until it is transformed. It becomes a contradiction as the result of a dialectical process that relates the historically specific anomaly (for example, accepting the housewife role while finding the tasks tedious) to the social structure (job market, nursery provision). This requires the revelation and clarification of the ideological processes at work (capitalist patriarchy) through specific articulated presuppositions (the nurturing role of women, women working for 'pin-money') that legitimate the contradiction. So contradiction is not just there waiting to be discovered but itself emerges as the result of dialectical analysis, a shuttling back and forth between anomaly, structure and ideology. Contradictions are not to be explained away nor are they the end in themselves but provide the focus for the whole deconstructive-reconstructive process that reveals the real nature, and ways of working, of oppressive social structures.

That this is the case is perhaps best attested to by looking at Cockburn's study. Hers appears to be a hard-line assertion of the centrality of contradiction. She argues that everything contains its own contradiction, that the nature of the contradiction determines the synthesis, and that contradictions are the goal of her research. It thus seems that she denies that revealing contradictions is a dialectical process. Further it implies that she sees contradictions as in themselves the sufficient outcome of the research rather than as the focus for deconstruction. But, of course, she is not denying this at all. Just because all phenomena contain their own contradiction does not mean that discovering them is straightforward. She is not simply suggesting that the contradiction is empirically or theoretically apparent. While phenomena contain their own contradiction, discovering it is not like flipping over a coin and seeing the obverse, the contradiction is concealed behind an ideological screen. It is a dialectical task to reveal the contradiction, as her study of print compositors shows. Similarly, while contradictions are the 'goal' of her empirical work they are clearly not the end in themselves but provide the basis for a full dialectical deconstruction of the making and remaking of the lives of the skilled craftsman.

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