Explanation and Power

by Morse Peckham

Explanation and Power was first published in 1988. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The meaning of any utterance or any sign is the response to that utterance or this is the fundamental proposition behind Morse Peckham's Explanation and Power. Published in 1979 and now available in paperback for the first time, Explanation and Power grew out of Peckham's efforts, as a scholar of Victorian literature, to understand the nature of Romanticism. His search ultimately led back to—and built upon—the tradition of signs developed by the American Pragmatists. Since, in Peckham's view, meaning is not inherent in word or sign, only in response, human behavior itself must depend upon interaction, which in turn relies upon the stability of verbal and nonverbal signs. In the end, meaning can be stabilized only by explanation, and when explanation fails, by force. Peckham's semiotic account of human behavior, radical in its time, contends with the same issues that animate today's debates in critical theory — how culture is produced, how meaning is arrived at, the relation of knowledge to power and of society to its institutions. Readers across a wide range of disciplines, in the humanities and social sciences, will welcome its reappearance.

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about the nature of power, language, and behavior. Peckham starts with THE interesting pragmatist premise: the meaning of a sign is the response to it. This may seem like a tautology but it's not; Peckham states that language is slippery (predicting and predating the post-structuralists and Derrida) and that language, essentially, is about regulating behavior. The book follows these premises through out the social landscape.

Since meaning is not inherent in the sign, but in response, human behavior itself must depend upon interaction, which in turn relies upon the stability of verbal and nonverbal signs. In the end, meaning can be stabilized only by explanation, and when explanation fails, by force.

His statements about language resemble, to me, late Wittgenstein because he thinks that language has rules that are almost endemic to their structure and these rules are used by us to categorize and divide the everyday world (and this leads us to inscribe these structures into the larger world). His social beliefs mirror Bourdieu and Foucault, in a way, by claiming that social roles and states have to keep their populace under control, and that this means, in modern times, trying to regulate their desires.

At first it seems like a depressing book with "no way out" but at the end he goes into "social transcendence" which is a fancy way of saying that society sometimes fails and creates people who don't "fit in." Sometimes.... hell, most of the time, this is a bad thing (sociopaths, Jim Jones, Hitler, etc.) but sometimes its a great thing that leads to movements that set the larger culture in slightly new directions (which isn't necessarily good, but that's not the point).

The end is practically a guide to cultural revolution. He discusses how culture is produced, how meaning is arrived at, and what is the relation of knowledge to power and of society to its institutions. And then: how those things get broken and re-written.

Fantastic book. One of my favorites.

[Meera Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

dense af but super thought provoking. the structure in the world is just a result of social conditioning and conformity and i guess i never thought about it that much until now. very interesting.

[Paul Gosselin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Discusses sports as form of religion, p. 205 and the arts too p. 206 ( in the context of secularization).