Nell sat alone and stared at a blank page.
She sobbed briefly on the verge of despair and considered giving up. God how she hated reading page after page and feeling unsure about the contents. Long time ago she picked up these books, and many times since did she put them down again shrugging and feeling none the wiser. The words were slippery and uncommitted to clarity, the long arcs of argumentation wiggled like eels through her mind. When the chapter was over, they would leave only a trace of slime.
Putting herself in this position was her own doing. She had to come across as bright and insightful to hold on to Patricia’s attention.
When she got to the chapter on legitimisation, the subject which she already had at best a shaky grasp on, began to feel verily gelatinous.
But she had to try.
The entire book is an experiment in establishing a phenomenological sociology.
The book has three parts:
-
The dialectic behind subjectivity and objectivity - the creation of knowledge as such. Examining the dialectical processes that produce knowledge and reality in a society.
-
How we end up with an objective view on society and the mechanisms causing its persistence. Institutions in a given society are objective realities, but even if a society did not have a name for them, the knowledge pertaining to them is part of a finite province of knowledge. Two subparts:
- How institutions arise. Primitive institutions are like cognitive habits and reflexes. That is their subjective reality. As sedimentation, reification and verbal transfer between generations run their course, institutions gain an objective reality.
- How institutions harden their skeleton through sociological activities that legitimise them. The invention of a body of knowledge that functions as a stabilising bulwark against change. Like all knowledge, it too has an objective and a subjective layer.
-
How we end with a subjective experience that couples us with society.
… But Patricia already knew the entire book and had discussed it with her mates weeks ago.
All she could do was to venture into the dense world of pure cognition. Perhaps something would turn up that Patricia hadn’t seen. A perspective, a key insight, something. Anything!
The problem with having slippery definitions and oblique mentality was the obstruction of thinking. She had to clarify her thoughts. To some degree that meant starting over.
Outside, the wind carried a mist of droplets around everywhere. Ten minutes ago the sun was shining, but the weather changed.
She opened the window as wide as possible and reclined on the bed next to the window. She undressed until she could feel the prickling rain on her skin. Feeling exposed made her think better.
Back to basics. There, right there in the introduction were the definitions she had gleaned over without understanding their overwhelming significance later. She couldn’t see the necessity of the explanation until later in the book when all the questions arose.
Working definitions:
Two fundamental concepts are being examined in the introduction: Knowledge and reality.
Berger and Luckmann tell us that their use of the terms is more than the man on the street would put into them but less than what the philosopher would understand by them.
The
man in the streetdoes not ordinarily trouble himself about what is ‘real’ to him and about what he ‘knows’ […]. He takes his ‘reality’ and his ‘knowledge’ for granted.
The sociologist isforced … to ask … whether the difference between the two ‘realities’ may not be understood in relation to various differences between the two societies.
The philosopher, on the other hand, is professionally obligated to take nothing for granted […]
Working definitions:
They do not define “will” directly, but they will use the word volition as a corollary to the concept of reality.
In a nutshell, to understand “reality” we presuppose “will”. Reality is that which we cannot change merely by will, i.e., without words or actions.
It will be enough, for our purposes, to
define ‘reality’as a quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognize ashaving a being independent of our own volition(we cannot ‘wish them away’)
We easily recognise a traditional trait in Western thought: The separation between inner thought and feelings and something not belonging to our volition.
“Knowledge”, then, pertains to what is “real”. Note how knowledge is the certainty about what is real. What is certainty? A mental state.
[…] and to
define ‘knowledge’as thecertainty that phenomena are realand that they possess specific characteristics.
The substrate of phenomenology is easy to spot. We grasp “reality” by running into something and realising we cannot wish it away. Experience forms the basis for this definition. The speeding ticket remains despite our deepest wishes. The ticket is tangibly real, the law and coercive force of the police are institutionally real.
Likewise, knowledge is the certainty about something being real, not the reality itself. Certainty can be introspected and examined.
Taken further, one must conclude that all subsequent enquiries dealing with knowledge and reality, even later chapters on legitimisation, roles, institutions and symbolic order all must adhere to these rules: The reality of the symbolic order is of the same kind as any reality: It seems to exist independently of my will and cannot be wished away.
Now that she had decided to toil away to link the concepts together, she was surprised to learn that she couldn’t really find a good quote that formed the bridge between language and knowledge. There were some indirect pointers that she would have to contend with.
Language can produce knowledge if typifications are successful.
I encounter language as a facticity external to myself and it is coercive in its effect on me.
[…]
As a sign system, language has the quality of objectivity.
[…]
Language also typifies experiences […]
We can see why typification matters. Language is the fabric of sociology. We react to subjective states, generates language and only if standing waves of typified expressions arise - which typification will make them do - will our words return to us as objectivity, which is what reality is (remember, something that cannot be changed by my own will).
Working materials:
The root mechanism is the dialectic of externalisation–objectivation–internalisation, or to put it differently, how reality arises from what we do and say to how it survives as objective forms to how we or young generations end up discovering it.
Once we come to view knowledge as a biproduct of activity just like kitchen middens of bygone cultures, we can see that what physically survives to be excavated by archeologists corresponds to the objectivated part of the dialectic, just mentioned.
This means that mechanisms or perpetuation should be found in the externalised, objectivated part of knowledge of society. We are in other words searching for processes that can explain why a set of institutions can endure not just years but generations and centuries.
Above and beyond the social knowledge of everyday reality (which has a subjective and an objective part) we are in other words searching for another biproduct of society: Legitimisations (which - as all knowledge has a subjective and an objective part).
She wanted to write so much more, but until she had received just a few precious words from the girl, she was fatigued and lost. Not a single thought about Patricia would verify anything in the entire book. It was as useless as society itself. A painkiller at best.
Time to write an email.
Subject: Before I write more…
Dear Patricia
I must admit I still struggle with the foundational parts.
Each paragraph I read elicits questions that often result from lack of clear grasp of the basic concepts.
While I do not want to turn it into a mathematical treatise, I do think clarity on the terminology is essential.
Can you take another look at my latest notes? They were written yesterday and today, not long ago compared to my old notes.
Wishing you well ♥︎
Nell
Nothing the whole next day, and Nell felt she was falling apart. Discipline kept her reading and working, not hope.
The answer came late at night, so by morning class in Patricia’s timezone.
Subject: Re: Before I write more…
I see where you are going, don’t I ♥︎
First I thought you were trying to punch holes in their theory using some obscure logic. Then it hit me that you are right in establishing an environment where debate flows naturally, and that requires lucid thinking.
You really want to talk with me, don’t you?
I might as well bite. Thanks for reminding me about those basic definitions. I had almost forgotten about them myself. As you say, once we read far enough, we really stop thinking about the definitions as first given and instead latches on to how the words are used in context.
Since reality and knowledge are both given a definition compatible with phenomenology, I agree that so must symbolic order and other legitimations also be compatible with phenomenology.
Have you regretted acusing the authors of clandestinely sneaking in a metaphysical interpretation of reality?
Perhaps you should not regret anything. We are still divided here in class on the matter.
What if we called it “reality-matter” and “knowledge-matter” instead then? Would it be have a theory less metaphysically dependent on degrees of “real”?
“The Social Construction of Reality-Matter”.
“Reality-matter is socially defined.”
Still love talking to you ♥︎♥︎
She went back to bed and opened the window to a night with clear skies. The wind gushed in and quickly chilled everything. Her bedroom was on the second floor of an old house, and she had no scruples sleeping next to an open window.
Patricia’s last words carried her across the river to a foreign land.
•P•A•R•A•D•O•X•