Educational research in a postmodernity of resignation: A cautionary corrective to utopian resistance This work is being undertaken with the support of a grant from the Australian Research Council. Richard G. Bagnall Associate Professor of Adult & Vocational Education Griffith University Nathan, Qld 4111 Paper presented at the 1994 Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education ABSTRACT The paper develops from the premise that our several and collective realities may be taken as being and becoming increasingly postmodern in nature. Postmodernity is seen as culture that is self-consciously informed by an understanding of: the interpretative nature of human perception; the contextualised and fragmented nature of belief and being; and the de- differentiated and generalised nature of contemporary communication. Two opposing currents of postmodernity are recognised: one of resistance and one of resignation. Analytical attention to date in educational research has tended to focus on the former. As a counter to that utopianism, the present work seeks to elucidate the nature of educational research in a postmodernity of resignation. It is suggested that such research would be characterised by its: immediacy, ephemerality, superficiality, fragmentation, changeability, non-progressiveness, anti- intellectualism, crude instrumentalism and marketisation. Educational research as a vocation would be suffused with uncertainty, insecurity, demoralisation and self-interest. In tradition modernist conceptions of alternative research approaches, a postmodernity of resignation is seen as favouring ideographic over nomothetic, inter - or multi-disciplinary over disciplinary, eclectic over traditional, political over apolitical, and objectifying over participative research. In other respects, there are contradictory indications within it, particularly with respect to whether the research would tend to be grounded or paradigmatic, hermeneutic or empirical-analytic, historicist or universalist, qualitative or quantitative, and action-based or descriptive. THE PROJECT The purpose of this and cognate analyses of mine is to identify and characterise the implications of postmodernity for lifelong education, particularly that undertaken in the adult years - not only for the practice of education, but also for research in the field and the training of its practitioners. This work is motivated by the belief that, regardless of the extent to which contemporary sociality Following Bauman (1991a:35) I am using the term `sociality' here in preference to the modernist `society'. exhibits postmodernist qualities, it is contingently inevitable that it will become essentially postmodern in the foreseeable future. Unless, that is, it mysteriously regresses into a dark age of ignorance and technical atavism, or unless it transcends its present potential for self- awareness to enter a presently unimaginable epoch that is importantly beyond the postmodern. The inevitability of an all- pervasive postmodernity I see as arising from postmodernity's centrally epistemological nature: its grounding in the ways in which we understand ourselves and our realities. The crucial particularities of those understandings are facilitated, sharpened and heightened by contemporary communications technologies, and to that extent they are ontologically dependendent upon those technologies. However, the important point here is that the postmodern condition is, first and foremost, a change in our understanding, particularly in our understanding of the nature of understanding; and it is a change which may not be as readily reversible as opponents of postmodernity might wish. The derivative practical understanding of communicative technologies is even more doubtfully reversible (Baudrillard, 1983; Vattimo, 1992). Having declared that postmodernity is essentially epistemologically grounded, it must nevertheless be acknowledged that the postmodern mood is notoriously difficult to characterise. Conceptions of it are correspondingly wildly different among different observers, critics and apologists. One oversimplified, but nevertheless illuminating, way of distilling out some of that diversity is to recognise two major opposing currents of postmodern meaning: on the one hand, a postmodernity of resistance, a positive, constructive, adversarial postmodernity of critical opposition to the status quo; on the other hand, a postmodernity of resignation, a negative, passive, compliant acceptance of the inevitability of the status quo. These two currents have been variously recognised and articulated by, for example, Foster (1983) and Lash (1990). Other scholars of the postmodern condition have inclined towards the recognition of one stream or the other - either a postmodernity of resignation (e.g.: Baudrillard, 1983; Bell, 1980; Eagleton, 1985; Habermas, 1981; Jameson, 1991; Lyotard, 1984; Newman, 1985), or a postmodernity of resistance (e.g.: Ahmed, 1992; Connor, 1989; Giroux, 1990; Kemmis, 1992; Said, 1984; Smart, 1992; Stanage, 1990; Westwood, 1991). The recognition of these inclinations as currents of meaning should be seen more as a matter of narrative, analytical and critical convenience, than of oppositional contestation. The two currents, although importantly opposing and contradictory, should, indeed, be seen as contemporaneous expressions of different features of the postmodern condition. Nevertheless, analysis and argument are facilitated by a more singular focus. Indeed, my own work to date in this genre has focused attention on a postmodernity of resistance, rather than one of resignation, in an effort to identify the constructive, emancipatory and critical features of postmodernist education (ref. Bagnall, 1994 a & b, in press a-d). What that analytical focus has therefore failed to do is to draw sufficient attention to those implications that arise within the resignation current of the postmodern condition. As a contribution to the redressing of that imbalance, my purpose in the present work is to identify the implications of a postmodernity of resignation for the conduct of research in the area of education, particularly adult education. `Research' here is seen as that sort of activity in which we engage for the purpose of illuminating and informing a category of phenomena and actions: education in the present case. By `education' is meant activities conducted for the purpose (at least partly) of facilitating or enhancing learning, in the present case more particularly that learning undertaken by adults. My concern here is with realities, particularly those in educational research: not just concrete realities but also (and more importantly) those imagined, perceived, envisaged, avoided, sought after or denied. In other words, it is with alternative possible worlds or alternative possible states of affairs. The present study is essentially philosophical or metatheoretical in approach, in that it speculatively analyses the implications for research in (adult) education of a particular conception of postmodernity. Its analytical perspective is modernist in origin, but postmodernist in sensitivity, leaving open the question of the extent it is in itself exemplary of modernist or postmodernist realities. It is, in any event, self-consciously limited by its immersion in the object of its illuminatory efforts. The paper proceeds by firstly outlining the general conception of postmodernity that underpinned the analysis. The emphases of a postmodernity of resignation are then sketched and used as the basis for identifying features of an educational research field that is responsive to such an epistemic context. Some concluding points are finally drawn together on the indicated emphases that might be appropriate to that field. POSTMODERNITY The general conception of postmodernity upon which this analysis is based has been articulated elsewhere (e.g., Bagnall, in press d). In it, postmodernity is seen as culture that is self- consciously informed by an understanding of: (1) the interpretative nature of human perception; (2) the contextualised and fragmented nature of belief and being; and (3) the de- differentiated and generalised nature of contemporary communication. The conception of `culture' here is a broad one - encompassing any given set of constructed realities, either perceived or postulated. It therefore encompasses not only the traditional products and frames of artistic and intellectual endeavour, but also all other realities of a contrived nature, including human action itself. By the interpretative nature of perception is meant the embeddedness of all perception in belief. In other words, the focus is on our inability to separate fully what we perceive to be the case from those frameworks of understanding, expectation and subconscious figuration that we bring to any act of perception. Given the irremediably normative nature of those frameworks, we are unable, also, to separate entirely matters of fact from matters of value. The contextuality and fragmentation of belief and being pertains to the cultural embeddedness of knowledge and being, and the lack of any firm foundation constraining their form and purpose. All belief (including `knowledge'and meaning) is seen as being grounded in the perceptual and linguistic frameworks through which it is mediated. It is therefore contingent upon, relative to, the contexts of its generation. Since those contexts lack any heteronomous legitimation in universal foundations of truth - such as reason, nature or the will of God - they tend to be heterogeneous or pluriform. Belief is therefore fragmented among that potential infinity of epistemic contexts. It lacks any overall coherence and is suffused with contradiction. Ironical, deconstructive, sceptical, even cynical criticism pervades, but it lacks any standard, norm or vision from which it may be drawn into a coherent, consensual, constructive and progressive unity. Utopian visions, and the ideologies which they foster, are reduced to irrational conventions, all of which may be revealed under selective deconstructive criticism to be hollow, if not anti- social or destructive in some sense. The contingency of all belief thus diminishes the modernist status of reason and rationality, both in the legitimation of belief, and as a determinant of sane behaviour. In such an epistemic context, the egalitarianisation of claims to what is true, good or beautiful is recognised as leading to the fragmentation and the de- differentiation of modernist ‚lite intellectual and artistic culture. With this self-conscious contextualisation of belief there is a profound loss of autonomy and authority in the intellectual and the artistic realms. This loss is facilitated by the pervasiveness of electronic communication: its accessibility to both passive observers and active articulators. There is a blurring of crucial modernist distinctions between the scholarly and the common, the informed and the ignorant, the high-brow and the low-brow, ‚lite and mass culture. Not only are their epistemic foundations problematised, but the distinctions are continually ignored and denied in the babble of contemporary communications, voices, visions and opinions. The identity - the nature and meaning - of the postmodern individual is similarly contingent upon and fragmented among the traditions or discourses within which each individual acts. That identity is, similarly, no more coherent, integrated or consistent than are the discourses of its formation. The autonomous individual of modernity is a myth, realisable only through the appropriation or suppression of identities in conflict with the dominant. Choice and responsibility are recognised as being profoundly indeterminate - complexly embedded in the pluriformity of identity-forming discourses. By the de-differentiated nature of contemporary communication is meant, following Lash (1990), the loss of our ability reliably to distinguish images from objects, representations from reality. In the framework of traditional modernist communicative and linguistic models, there is a breaking-down of distinctions between the objects of discourse (the referents), their linguistic or iconic representations (signifiers), and the denoted content of those representations (the signifieds). With contemporary communications technology, we live in a world populated by images - a hyper-reality of imaginings grounded only indeterminately in any physical reality beyond their immediate being (Baudrillard, 1983; Lash, 1990; Vattimo, 1992). The cultural context in which postmodernist action is embedded may thus be seen as constituting a pluralistic heterogeneity of potentially incommensurable discourses, or patterns of belief and action. The state is therefore denied any a priori substantive grounds for privileging one set of beliefs over others. The principles upon which postmodernist governance are based, therefore become matters to be taken empirically from the pluralistic and shifting cultural context. Those principles may, accordingly, be expected to be no less shifting than the fads and fetishes of the cultural context in which they are immersed: swinging wildly, unapologetically and irrationally between epistemic paradigms. Postmodernity is a transformative, disruptive cultural change from a modernist epoch to a postmodern one. In it, modernity is incorporated, but problematised. It is seen as constituting a cultural force from the 1960s. As an historically periodising epoch following modernity, it self-consciously problematises the epistemological, ethical, social, aesthetic and industrial verities of modernity. In this way, it is quite distinct from historically prior periods of radical contingency in the history of ideas (for which see Bauman, 1987; Docherty, 1990). In its socio-political realisation it embraces a number of related transformative changes, including much that is identified as `post- Fordist' (Edwards, 1993) and `post-industrial' (Bell, 1974) in nature. Postmodernity is seen as being opposed to modernity: the scientific, industrial and social programs, institutions, actions and artefacts generated by the secular humanistic and Enlightenment searches for the universal foundations of truth, morality and aesthetics, in the pursuit of human emancipation from ignorance, injustice and circumstance (ref., e.g.: Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979; Bauman, 1987, 1992; Bell, 1979; Giddens, 1990; Habermas, 1981; Toulmin, 1990). Postmodernity therein includes, but goes beyond, `postmodernism': that contemporary, aesthetic movement against modernism in the arts, including architecture, literature, painting, film and drama (ref., e.g.: Arac, 1987; Docherty, 1990; Hassan, 1971; Hutcheon, 1988; Jameson, 1991; McHale, 1987). `Modernism', then, refers to the largely twentieth century movement of autonomous experimentation and criticism (together with its products) in these fields: the movement which arose in opposition to classicism. While adhering to the classical autonomy and ‚litism of art, it sought to reveal the inner, formal truth behind the superficial appearances, through the triumph of the will over rationality, to the end of establishing an aesthetic justification of life (ref., e.g.: Bell, 1980:275-302; Calinescu, 1977; Lunn, 1982). Postmodernism may thus be seen as a rejection of modernism - not a reversion to classicism, since postmodernism denies the meaningfulness of the classical search for truth, and the autonomy and ‚litism of the enterprise. Postmodernism is, rather, the shifting diversity of aesthetic styles, approaches and products that is associated with the decentred, socially embedded, non progressive, reactive, populist and critical world of art, literature and literary criticism. A POSTMODERNITY OF RESIGNATION Within the foregoing, broad-brush features of postmodernity, what, then, are the more particular features of a postmodernity of resignation? The following 11 overlapping features are posited as together providing the sort of overlay to create a picture of this current of postmodernity. They are not seen as being necessarily of equal importance; nor is the order in which they are here presented of any particular import. Rather, they are selected as features worth highlighting from the foregoing general perspective of postmodernity. The features may be labelled and characterised as follows (with apologies for the apparent neologisms to those of you who are not sympathetic to the postmodernist propensity for such things). 1. Presentism: the compression of our time perspective to the immediate present. This involves the loss of both an historical and a future perspective. Both historicity (as the interiorisation of historical events) and historiography (as the transcription of historical events into narrative accounts) are diminished (Docherty, 1990: 7). With them, the importance of tradition as a determinant of human action is discounted. There may, though, be a nostalgia for things past. Historical artefacts are decontextualised and drawn into a mosaic, the pastiche of the present. 2. Surfacisation: the lack of depth, of profundity, and of a concern for its pursuit: in understanding, in commitment and as an ideal. This quality may be seen as applying at all levels of social integration - individual, social and institutional - and in all realms of discourse: academic, spiritual, practical, technical, etc. It constitutes an emptying of meaning, content or substance. 3. Fragmentation: the breaking-up or disintegration of unities - of holistic views, visions, understandings - into discrete and essentially isolated pieces. Each of those pieces is seen as separate from the others, or as connected with them largely indeterminately. There is an overall lack of coherence and of commitment to its pursuit: in individual identity as in social reality. 4. Changeability: the temporal variability, impermanence or ephemerality of realities; the acceptance of such features, and a complicity in their being. 5. Non-progressiveness: a lack of coherence, consistency and clarity as to what constitutes desirable change in the cultural, the human, world. While not denying agreement on particular ideal qualities of what is good, true or beautiful (e.g., on the desire for personal safety, or adequate nourishment), the translation of those ideals into the creation of socially, politically and economically better worlds is seen as being highly problematic. Cultural change then becomes more like the exchanging of one set of problems for another, or of shifting the burden from one group to another. Overall, there is a rather fatalistic and cynical view of change as being progressive only from particular, partisan perspectives. 6. Anti-intellectualism: the rejection of scholarship, of cognitive breadth and depth of perspective, of intellectual and practical wisdom in favour of feelings, responsiveness, direct experience and engagement. 7. Crude Instrumentalism: human action that is motivated by a desire to achieve change extrinsic to the action itself, but change that is understood only superficially and crudely. The contrasts here are between, on the one hand, a concern with change of a phenomenal nature, wherein there is a focus on the intrinsic value of the event, rather than with the extrinsic ends to which it may lead. On the other hand, the contrast is between change that is understood deeply and critically and that which is not so, although the latter may well be very radical in nature. 8. Consumerism: a focusing on the act of acquiring in the creation of realities. The contrast here is with both possession (in the sense of holding and valuing) and creating. In the latter the contrast is also with contributing actively: to the formation of one's own identity, to the creation of a better social reality, or whatever. The emphasis in a postmodernity of resignation is on acquiring goods: reality packages of meaning. In itself it is an active process, but one which is emptied of commitment, of self- involvement and of giving of oneself. 9. Existential Insecurity: the experience of the loss of continuity in one's realities, and the loss of security which that continuity may otherwise afford; the expectation of change that is unpredictable in nature and occurrence, and is beyond one's control. 10. Despair: the loss of faith - in oneself as an agent of constructive change, in society and the state as responsive and caring cultural contexts, and in the purposefulness of human existence. It is a despair based on anomie, a feeling of hopelessness, of lack, and a resigned acceptance of it all. 11. Practical Indifference: the uncaring and fatalistic acceptance of social disparities and injustices, of suffering in others. Whether such indifference is based on a tolerance of difference - as has been argued by Bauman (1991b), or on an uncaring intolerance, its effect is the same: a callous indifference to events which seem to call for rightful intervention. EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH IN A POSTMODERNITY OF RESIGNATION From such a picture of a postmodernity of resignation, what sort of future is there indicated for research in education? One way to address that question is to take the 11 foregoing nodal features and to use them as descriptors of research itself. From such an approach, the following picture emerges. 1. From the postmodernist presentism may be expected research directed to addressing concerns of a relatively immediate nature. The research would, accordingly, be relatively ephemeral in its meaning and relevance. Surveys of opinions, feelings, problems and wants are strongly indicated. 2. From the postmodernist surfacisation may be expected research of a superficial nature - both in terms of the ends that it pursues and in terms of the scholarship that it brings to the task. The objects of research would be seen as events to be questioned, read or observed, and the conceptual tools necessary for the task would be seen as straightforwardly performing those tasks. 3. From the postmodernist fragmentation may be expected the fragmentation of research in discrete projects, for discrete purposes, each separately justified, supported, undertaken and reported. From the problems, interests or concerns driving the research, to its reporting and dissemination, it would be seen and justified not in terms of any overall pattern of understanding or ideology, but as a situated, isolated, immediate reality. 4. From the postmodernist changeability may be expected a constant shifting of the research agenda. As the interests and influence of those who drive that agenda change, so too will the agenda itself. The prevailing ideological fetish - whether managerialism, socialisation, work-place training, outcomes- driven training, individual responsibility, humanisation, or whatever - would be expressed in the projects addressed. Since none of those ideological fetishes has any legitimation beyond its own discourse, its acceptance and rejection would be as unpredictable and ill-founded as the cultural context of which it is a part. 5. From the postmodernist non-progressiveness may be expected the loss of an historical and developmental perspective on educational research. Research would be seen as situationalised in particular contemporaneous problems, concerns or interests, rather than as located in a sequence of progressively advancing knowledge pertinent to on-going threads of inquiry and questioning. Educational research, then, would be evaluated not in terms of its contribution to those on-going debates, but rather in terms of its contribution to the context-specific interests, concerns or problems of its genesis. 6. From the postmodernist anti-intellectualism may be expected research that is highly focused on the instrumental problems and concerns of practice, as perceived from the vantage of the prevailing ideological preoccupation. There would be little concern for locating those issues in potentially informing scholarship, or for using such scholarship as a framework for illuminating and addressing the issues. Research preoccupations would, rather, be identified, perceived, understood and addressed as they were immediately experienced. 7. From the postmodernist instrumentality may be expected research focused on the search for solutions to contemporary problems and concerns in education. Those problems and concerns would be seen, interpreted and researched in a relatively superficial fashion. The resulting research output would, correspondingly, be of practical or technical value relatively briefly. Once the preoccupation or fetish from which the concern or problem arose had been replaced by another, the research would be of little value. 8. From the postmodernist consumerism may be expected a much more market-driven research agenda: one in which not only is the agenda defined by the educational consumers, but in which the articulation of these consumer interests is an important part of the agenda itself. The consumers of educational research may be seen much less in terms of the state or the public, and more in terms of particular cultural interests, or employers of educational products. 9. The postmodernist existential insecurity may be expected to encourage a condition of vocational uncertainty and insecurity in the educational research community: uncertainty not only as to the nature of future research problems or projects and the sources of research support, but also as to the very existence of the activity in any recognisable form in the future. 10. The postmodernist despair may be expected to encourage a demoralisation of the research community. In a cultural context of resignation, hopelessness and purposelessness, the maintenance of contrary tendencies in educational research would be unlikely and difficult. 11. Similarly, the postmodernist indifference may be expected to infuse the educational research community. Research in education would be just another activity of self- interest. Values such as those of public service, duty and benevolence, which underlie social action and engagement for the greater good of humanity, would be submerged as ridiculous, pointless and groundless. Another, perhaps derivative, way to address the question of what sort of future emerges from the foregoing picture of a postmodernity of resignation is to evaluate contemporary (essentially modernist) emphases in educational research from such a postmodernist perspective. This is a more problematic approach to the question, since it is not clear just what this current of postmodernity has to say on a number of the contemporarily important methodological distinctions in research. Indeed, it is not clear that it has anything to say about any of them since, in an important sense, they are irrelevant. A postmodernity of resignation may draw upon anything, and it indiscriminately trivialises that which it absorbs. However, putting aside such a strongly cynical view, the following sorts of research emphases, at least, may be suggested as emerging. 1. Ideographic (in contrast to nomothetic), in the sense that the research is concerned with particular events and realities (Howard & Myers, 1990). 2. Inter- or Multi-disciplinary (in contrast to disciplinary), in the sense that, in so far as it may be possible to locate, paradigmatically, any given study, it is likely to span traditional disciplinary boundaries (McCarthy & Fishman, 1991). 3. Eclectic (in contrast to traditional), in the sense that the research approach draws together techniques from a diversity of (potentially incommensurable) methodological traditions (MacGregor, 1992). 4. Political (in contrast to apolitical), in the sense that the research is sensitive and responsive to power relationships and differentials within and impacting upon the event being studied (Walker & Evers, 1988). 5. Objectifying (in contrast to participative), in the sense that the participants in the educational events being studied are seen as objects to be assessed, observed, tested and possibly manipulated (Hall & Kassam, 1989). Other distinctions, though, are less clear, particularly the following. 1. considering the distinction (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) between grounded research (in the sense that the concepts are developed from within the research context) and paradigmatic research (in the sense that the concepts are derived from informing theoretical or interpretative frameworks): the contextualisation of postmodern realities supports a grounded orientation, but the vulnerability of the postmodern mood to the adoption of ideological fetishes indicates a paradigmatic orientation, with the concepts deriving from the prevailing fetish (competency based training or whatever). 2. Considering the distinction (Usher & Bryant, 1989) between a hermeneutic approach (in the sense that the task of research is to explain and interpret educational realities as being grounded in intersubjective meaning) and an empirical-analytic one (in the sense that the task of research is to develop - through accurate observation and valid analysis - veracious descriptive representations of educationally important empirical reality): the expressiveness, phenomenalism and situationalism of the postmodern condition suggests an inclination towards the hermeneutic, but the surfacised and crudely instrumental nature of this current of postmodernity indicates an orientation towards the empirical- analytic. 3. Considering the distinction (Mandelbaum, 1967) between historicism (in the sense that the research criteria and standards are seen as being properly tailored to each educational event as being uniquely and historically determined) and universalism (in the sense that the research criteria and standards are seen as being timeless properties potentially immanent to any educational event): the contextuality of postmodernity indicates an inclination towards an historicist approach, but the presentism of a postmodernity of resignation problematises and diminishes it. The criteria and standards are also likely to be drawn from the prevailing ideological fetishes and applied universally. 4. Considering the distinction (Bogdan & Biklen, 1982) between a qualitative orientation (in the sense that truth and meaning are seen as being appropriately expressed in variable, culturally embedded and situationally derivative concepts) and a quantitative orientation (in the sense that truth and meaning are seen as being appropriately expressed in quantifiable, universalisable concepts): again, the contextuality of postmodernity would seem to favour the qualitative, but the surfacised, crudely instrumental and fetishised nature of a postmodernity of resignation would incline towards the quantitative. 5. Considering the distinction (Carr & Kemmis, 1986) between an action-based approach (in the sense that the generation and use of new meanings are seen as being interrelated aspects of the research) and a descriptive approach (in which the task of research is focused purely on the generation of new knowledge): the contextuality and de-differentiation of postmodernity would suggest an action-based approach, but the objectifying, empirical-analytic, universalist and quantitative tendencies of a postmodernity of resignation indicate the descriptive. SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS The foregoing picture of an educational research field in a postmodernity of resignation contrasts rather starkly with that which emerges from a parallel analysis of a postmodernity of resistance. Certainly, both are seen as inclining towards research that is ideographic (rather than nomothetic), inter- or multi-disciplinary (rather than disciplinary), eclectic (rather than traditional) and political (rather than apolitical). However, whereas postmodernity of resistance inclines towards research that is participative, that of resignation inclines towards objectification. On other comparative features there is greater uncertainty. Whereas the resistant current indicates a grounded, hermeneutic, historicist, qualitative and action-based orientation, that of resignation is much less clear, with much more of a tension between the grounded and the paradigmatic, the hermeneutic and the empirical-analytic, historicist and universalist, qualitative and quantitative, and action-based and descriptive. A postmodernity of resistance education research field has also been characterised (Bagnall, in press c: Ch.12) as strongly reflexively contextualised, indeterminate, expressive, heterodox, phenomenal, critical and de-differentiated. In these features also, there is a rather stark contrast with a postmodernity of resignation research field characterised by a focus on the immediate and the superficial; which is fragmented, shifting, non-cumulative, momentarily functional, conceptually and scholastically weak, and market driven; and in which researchers experience vocational uncertainty and insecurity, and are demoralised and self-interested. In spite of the clear contradictions between these pictures, there is reason to believe that they may both be found in postmodernist field of educational research practice. Assuming a preference for the resistant, one may then seek to ascertain what may be done to enhance its realisation and to diminish that of the resigned. 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