Descriptive

How does that Marx quote go about how you can get the conditions to dance by playing their own tune back to them?

Speaking of conditions: in Conditions of the Working Class in England (why should Karl get all the love?) one of the most memorable parts is when Engels describes how bricks for working-class housing were laid in such a way that they formed very thin walls providing minimal insulation.

This description of the housing conditions may be the most damning statement that could be made about them, and it was not made based on a sophisticated critique of political economy. It’s just bricklaying. But getting at this perspective on the build environment requires closely staring at the walls and perhaps a willingness to be a bit stupid.

If we want our work to provide critique, we often have the idea that it has to proceed from critical concepts that we bring into a situation with us that furnish us with a critical perspective. This can then let others we share that situation with — collaborators, research participants and other interlocutors — feel left out or like the work we’re doing has nothing to do with them. The collaboration will falter and we will instead engage in parallel play. We may then feel like we lack a common language with our collaborators, and there is something to that. But that does not mean that we first have to do “language training” before we can get to work together. We can leave our hobby horses aside and just start from what is there in front of us. Something as boring as a brick wall may be all we need to develop a shared perspective or at least a shared frame of reference.

This is not to say that we should not discuss concepts at all. Even when we are working in a descriptive mode, we do not leave our particular way of seeing behind, and that involves mediation by concepts. But we can let go of the anxiety that being “merely descriptive” will result in our work lacking all critical import.