Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann - The Social Construction of Reality
19.02.2024
Next sociological reading. Read some of this as part of my sociology syllabus already, but it was intersting enough and relevant enough to my essay on schizoidity and society that I will read the whole work now.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE IN EVERYDAY LIFE
19.02.2024
If I ever learn German, I will probably have to properly engage with the German term for "common sense". It is used a lot by the authors already, and I remember a paper I read analysing the phenomenological experience of psychosis used Blankenburg's conception of this term as it relates to psychosis (I should perhaps read Blankenburg's writing on this). Of course as there s an initial phenomenological basis to this book, it's no surprise to freuently encounter the term of "world" as well, although that's a term I'm more likely to consider in my philosophical essay than my sociological one. Still, both those essays are thematically connected and serve as initial attempts at articulating particulatar aspects of a general schizoid theory I am developing.
"Closest to me is the zone of everyday life that is directly accessible to my bodily manipulation. This zone contains the world within my reach, the world in which I act so as to modify its reality, or the world in which I work."
And when this zone of everyday life is already pre-composed by a certain order and by this compostion demands certain bodily manipulations, is dissociation from one's body any surprise? Previously as well the authors describe the "shock" of moving between realities; the car crashes in Crash and Tetsuo represent this kind of shock in which one moves from the reality of socially structured (disciplined, to use the Foucaultian term) everday life to a deviant reality.
"While I am capable of engaging in doubt about its reality, I am obliged to suspend such doubt as I routinely exist in everyday life. This suspension of doubt is so firm that to abandon it, as I might want to do, say, in theoretical or religious contemplation, I have to make an extreme transition."
Given I've been thinking about schizoidity in terms of suspension, I will need to hold onto this quote. Could one argue that the schizoid experience exists within this suspension, whereas the normal experience exists in the suspension thereof (the forgetting of this doubt), and that is is existing within this suspension which allows, ultimately, the "transition" therefrom? Later in this paragraph: everday reality explained through the metaphor of a car mechanic. My theoretical pursuits are haunted by automobiles (cf. above on car crashes):
"Suppose that I am an automobile mechanic who is highly knowledgeable about all American-made cars. Everything that pertains to the latter is a routine, unproblematic facet of my everyday life. But one day someone appears in the garage and asks me to repair his Volkswagen. I am now compelled to enter the problematic world of foreign-made cars. I may do so reluctantly or with professional curiosity, but in either case I am now faced with problems that I nave not yet routinized. At the same time, of course, I do not leave the reality of everyday life. Indeed, the latter becomes enriched as I begin to incorporate into it the knowledge and skills required for the repair of foreign-made cars."
To be compared with Goffman's description of social roles:
"... the others with whom I work are unproblematic to me as long as they perform their familiar, taken-for-granted routines - say, typing away at desks next to mine in my office. They become problematic if they interrupt these routines - say, huddling together in a corner and talking in whispers."
One who does not identify with one's social role may have a de facto problematic relationship with reality.
There is now a description of the "reality" of the theater as rather strictly demarcated by the rising and falling of the curtain; there is much, much to be said about this in comparison to Artaud. I will have to keep this in mind when I read his artistic theory. The following writing on language as distortion of more finite provinces of meaning as well. This book is turning out much more fruitful that I could ever have hoped.
The very end of the first chapter mentions the possibility of disorientation through a car crash. I am haunted by the automobile.
Description of face-to-face interaction as the most real. Remote contact undoubtedly connected with modern feelings of unreality. Worth considering also what has been described of the other being perceived as more real than myself, as myself requires reflection (would be interesting to compare this with Laing's Self and Other once I have read that, although who knows when that will be).
They write of the possibility of breaking through a certain "type" (social role) in interaction. Retreat from interaction: as much an attempt to avoid breakng a role (discpline) as it is a disidentification from it? Humanity: the most abstract and therefore most anonymous typificaton?
Now the authors have introduced signification in the context of objectivation, and I am more inclined to sympathize with symbolic interactionism than I expected to be (but I am fascinated by "signs" in philosophy, after all). Performance as dissociation ("detachment") from subjectivity (of here and now) will be an important pont for me (rather the performer is objectivized).
Here an example of what Artaud would see as the falseness of reality:
"Language is capable not only of constructing symbols that are highly abstracted from everyday experience, but also of 'bringing back' these symbols and appresenting them as objectively real elements in everyday life. In this manner, symbolism and symbolic language become essential constituents of the reality of everyday life and of the common-sense apprehension of this reality. I live in a world of signs and symbols every day."
Also relevant: the reality of everyday life is overcast by the penumbra of our dreams
.
I think it would be worth comparing what the authors write here of the social distribution of knowledge (not in the same distribution for everyone) with disidentification from a social role (requiring knowledge which had to be specifically distributed, and therefore not inherent).
SOCIETY AS OBJECTIVE REALITY
20.02.2024
Man's relationship to his environment is characterized by world-openness
I am going to be forced to read Heidegger whether I want to or not because of how Everywhere he is. At any rate, subsequent observations that man constructs his own nature, or... produces himself
are apt.
This paragraph reads like something out of a Ballard novel:
"The plasticity of the human organism and its susceptibility to socially determined interference is best illustrated by the ethnological evidence concerning sexuality. While man possesses sexual drives that are comparable to those of the other higher mammals, human sexuality is characterized by a very high degree of pliability. It is not only relatively independent of temporal rhythms, it is pliable both in the objects towards which it may be directed and in its modalities of expression. Ethnological evidence shows that, in sexual matters, man is capable of almost anything. One may stimulate one's sexual imagination to a pitch of feverish lust, but it is unlikely that one can conjure up any image that will not correspond to what in some other culture is an established norm, or at least an occurrence to be taken in stride. If the term 'normality' is to refer either to what is anthropologically fundamental or to what is culturally universal, then neither it nor its antonym can be meaningfully applied to the varying forms of human sexuality. At the same time, of course, human sexuality is directed, sometimes rigidly structured, in every particular culture. Every culture has a distinctive sexual configuration, with its own specialized patterns of sexual conduct and its own 'anthropological' assumptions in the sexual area. The empirical relativity of these configurations, their immense variety and luxurious inventiveness, indicate that they are the product of man's own socio-cultural formations rather than of a biologically fixed human nature.'"
Actually, I should perhaps save this for my own artistic project I am planning.
Relevant observation about the biological presuppositions of the self being in place and the self as a recognizable identity being environmentally (socially) produced, including its "psychological equipment". I will need to hold onto this. Reading through this, I get the urge to do as I did in the initial notes I sent to my tutor for my philosophical essay, and create a "montage" of relevant excepts which will allow me to connect various texts and organize these connections, and from there build my sociological essay.
To be considered in the context of Laing's body-self (non-schizoid) and body-world (schizoid):
"On the one hand, man is a body, in the same way that this may be said of every other animal organism. On the other hand, man has a body. That is, man experiences himself as an entity that is not identical with his body, but that, on the contrary, has that body at its disposal. In other words, man's experience of himself always hovers in a balance between being and having a body, a balance that must be redressed again and again."
Also relevant here is Foucault's concept of a docile body as developed in Discipline and Punish, in which the subjective body is made into an object (from something one is into something one has).
If social order is an ongoing, externalizing production, than anyone who disidentifies with the social order is at risk of externalizing social else. "Human being" as requiring externalization—but once it is institutionalized, it then becomes something to internalize.
[accidentally deleted half of my journal because I'm stupid, may redo later]
The chapter on legitimiation seems not particularly relevant to the essay for which I am reading this book, but still quite interesting. Agreed that "knowledge" serves a legitimating function by theoretically preceding that which it was was essentially constructed to legitimate (by god I am insufferable). Admittedly the concept of an all-encompassing "symbolic universe" here is interesting. It seems to me a means of ideological capture so far. I wonder if Berger and Luckmann will include it in their explanation of internalization later.
The chapter on legitimiation seems not particularly relevant to the essay for which I am reading this book, but still quite interesting. Agreed that "knowledge" serves a legitimating function by theoretically preceding that which it was was essentially constructed to legitimate (by god I am insufferable). Admittedly the concept of an all-encompassing "symbolic universe" here is interesting. It seems to me a means of ideological capture so far. I wonder if Berger and Luckmann will include it in their explanation of internalization later.
21.02.2024
Specifically, the success of particular conceptual machineries is related to the power possessed by those who operate them.
Here I don't quite agree. The authors have aptly noted the connection between power and knowledge (described at least since Marx's conception of ideology), but I am more inclined to Foucault's formulation of power as something existing rather on its own (in a way more similar even to Durkheim's social facts). I would even take Stirner's position that power possesses as much as it is possessed.
The final goal of this procedure is to incorporate the deviant conceptions within one's own universe, and thereby to liquidate them ultimately. The deviant conceptions must, therefore, be translated into concepts derived from one's own universe.
Above in that very sections, the authors describe this well in the context of therapeutic concepts such as "resistance". Indeed, this applies well to the conceptualization of madness/mental illness in general. Pathologization of undesired behavior is quite easily utilized.
SOCIETY AS SUBJECTIVE REALITY
21.02.2024
The beginning point of this process is internalization : the immediate apprehension or interpretation of an objective event as expressing meaning, that is, as a manif estation of another's subjective processes which thereby becomes subjectively meaningful to myself.
I need to consider this quote in context of the denied subjectivity of totalizing power-knowledge (body as object, etc.). Could "failure" to internalize in this sense be understood as a result of discipline, which requires one's own objectivization? Moreover, could not the disciplinary society's de facto treatment of all it's inhabitants as potential deviants also be a factor here?
Quite enjoyed learning about resocialization, particularly in comparison to secondary socialization. Surprised that we did not really touch on the concept of resocialization in class. Would have been interesting to read on resocialization in comparison to more solitary departures from social reality as well, but that is more beyond the scope of the book.
Agamben's foumlation in regards to Foucault's apparati that now the ordinary citizen is treated as a potential terrorist has much to do with the idea here that the need for therapeutic mechanisms increases in proportion to the structurally given potentiality for unsuccessful socialization
. Really, I think also that the more therapeutic mechanisms there are, the more one is also aware of one's own potential unsuccessful socialization.
"When secondary socialization has been differentiated to the point where subjective disidentification from one's 'proper place' in society becomes possible, and when at the same time the social structure does not permit the realization of the subjectively chosen identity, an interesting development occurs. The subjectively chosen identity becomes a fantasy identity, objectified within the individual's consciousness as his 'real self'. It may be assumed that people always have dreams of impossible wish-fulfilment, and the like. The peculiarity of this particular fantasy lies in the objectification, on the level of imagination, of an identity other than the one objectively assigned and previously internalized in primary socialization. It is obvious that any wider distribution of this phenomenon will introduce tensions and unrest into the social structure, threatening the institutional programmes and their taken-for-granted reality.
Such a description correlates incredibly well with Laing's conception of the dissociated schizoid fantasy self. In such a case schizoid isolation becomes self-replicating, as the potential threat to the social structure become a cause for further isolation. It is also hardly surprising in this context that psychiatric descriptions of this phenomenon deal largely with isolation as a symptom resulting from individual "disinterest" rather than social impossiblities (to acknowledge this would acknowledge the potential for wider distribution, whereas psychiatry must reproduce institutional programs).
Very interesting polemical chapter on psychological identity in this section. I tend already to agree, so I don't have much to say about it, but it is very much worth reading.
The proceeding chapter on "organism and identity" seems a precursor to the theory of biopolitics, even mentioning societal power over life and death. Very proto-Agamben.