ABSTRACT
Fifthly, then, dialectic sees concrete social phenomena as part of a complex of relations. This
complexity, appears to be a mess of things where everything is related to everything else chao-
tically (Marx, 1986, p. 37). To ‘rise’ then from this chaotic abstract totality to the concrete, dia-
lectic first abstracts the social phenomenon from this totality along the lines it really is
practically abstracted by acting human subjects. Next, the activities of those who really consti-
tuted this practical abstraction and the relations between this and other abstractions should be
historicised in order to concretely show how this abstraction came into being in the first place
and how it is concretely related with other abstractions. This notion of dialectical totality
rejects Hegelian forms of expressive or genetic totality (Luka´cs, 1971), whereby the social
whole is organised around and express a central unifying principle-the so-called central con-
tradiction of capitalist production between the forces and relations of production. Nor does it
resemble an autopoietic system that reproduces itself self-referentially (Luhmann, 1982;
Waltz, 1979). Both systems-theories and expressive notions of totality propose close and self-
reproducing systems and deny the subjective capacity of agents to act. A hermeneutically
informed dialectical notion of totality, on the contrary, is based on the ‘situational consciousness
of acting individuals themselves’ (Habermas, 1976, p. 139). This ‘situational’ nature of human
activity provides the context of analysis from the vantage point of the ‘acting individuals’. In this
sense, theory building is also situational praxis.
