by Thomas Alkemeyer
About blogging. Between the sociologising of the "little people" (de Certeau) and the "theatrical gaze" (Bourdieu) of the grand narratives
Even before I started writing my first blog entry, a previously rather abstract insight had forced itself upon me as a concrete experience: The format of the blog compels topicality. How could you start a blog on the genealogy of the present without addressing the shameful, disturbing attacks in Paris? It is almost impossible to gauge their significance. We often hear and read that they will prove to be a similarly incisive event as the attacks of 9/11. Now Europe, too, is aware of its vulnerability. That may be true. However, in view of past terrorist attacks, for example in Madrid in March 2004 or in London in June 2005, this assessment also raises the question of attention cycles.
Academic historiography and sociology find it difficult to analyse current events. It is used to going about its business from a temporal and spatial distance - without the pressure to react promptly. It is this "scholastic" distance, the "theatrical view" of the social world (Pierre Bourdieu), that has enabled this form of historicising and sociologising to produce the grand narratives that bring together all possible, selectively recalled particular events and fragments into a unifying overall picture, in which they acquire their meaning and identity in the first place. One can deplore the pressure for topicality emanating from the blog format and see it as further evidence of a compulsion to accelerate that eliminates all leisure as a condition for the possibility of prudence and reflection. Nevertheless, this pressure also makes us aware that other forms of historicising and sociologising always exist alongside academically institutionalised, professional observation and analysis. For example, in the mundane sociologising of the "little people" (de Certeau), which manifests itself in their sociological know-how, their everyday skills, their situational awareness and framing knowledge. Or in the analyses of journalists, who often draw on professional knowledge and scientific patterns of interpretation in order to relate them to a contingent present and thus turn things, events and opinions into a public matter from a certain point of view on an ad hoc basis.
In a stimulating article on "Public Sociology", Thomas Scheffer and Robert Schmidt explore the possibilities of a live sociologythat "mobilises and brings into contact" general and specialist modes of sociologising. live sociologydoes not maintain a 'scholastic' distance from events but exposes itself to them. It does not present results or tell big stories, but raises questions in ad hoc comments, outlines topics, speculates and experiments. It does not claim to provide conclusive interpretations, but attempts to make events accessible to an interested audience by wrestling with complexity in ever new attempts - and with the risk of cancellations - by using theoretical visual aids to see things differently, offering interpretations, stimulating reflection, challenging debate and constantly correcting itself. By not making its objects manageable in advance and refraining from maintaining its sovereignty in grand narratives, sociology makes itself vulnerable. In order not to be swept away by events, to drown in them, to merely go along with them, to parrot them or to fall silent, it requires distancing, but this distancing remains situational. They have to be achieved again and again. liveSociologyoperates on the border, so to speak.
Media formats always formulate expectations regarding the perspective and preparation of the subject matter. The format of the blog makes this unmistakably clear. In this respect, it also prompts a critical and reflective examination of the formatting of knowledge production in the institutionalised practices of universities. And it is possibly a format that virtually invites us to reflexively relate general and specialist forms of historicising and sociologising to each other in such a way that not only does the gap between them narrow, but they also challenge and stimulate each other and thus create their own arena of public (self-)reflection. We will see.
In any case, the format requires flexibility. Its possibilities can only be exploited and tested if its actors expose themselves to their subject matter, 'collect' controversial voices, interpretations and discourses and bring them up, and if they are interested in whether and how these relate to each other, which echo and amplification effects, but also which "scenes of dissent" (Rancière) occur. Of current interest, for example, are the emerging struts between the various "varieties of dogmatism" (Carolin Emcke in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 10/11 January 2015) in Pegida and in Islamist terror. Or between this and the appeals of some politicians and journalists to immediately talk about drastic reforms of Islam. This creates a causal link between religion and terrorist attacks at this point in time, which cannot do justice to the complexity of the matter.
Although the days of the grand narratives seemed to be numbered long ago, they are proving to be extremely persistent. Against the backdrop of modernisation-theoretical figures of thought and self-descriptions that are obviously deeply inscribed in our thoughts and feelings , the Islamic world appears time and again as backward. This othering shows terrorist Islamism as the revenant of a pre-modern barbarism and cancels out any common ground. With the effect that all Muslims are forced - as our guest at the WiZeGG today, Albrecht Koschorke, writes - "to behave in some way towards Islam (and Islamism), regardless of whether they see themselves represented by it or not". It is this compulsion to confess that forms the image of a collective actor that is fundamentally different from 'us' and subjectivises those who confess as Muslims.
This makes the large demonstrations for unity in Paris and many other places around the world in recent days all the more important. They performatively, i.e. not only symbolically but also in reality, realise a unity of differences. A great symbol. But this unity is also imaginary insofar as it temporarily blurs all possible differences. It is probably only a matter of time before they break out (again). The decisive factor will be how a majority deals with them, how they are negotiated, whether competing points of view harden into absolute opposites and whether distances that keep a possible 'in-between' open are transformed into differences that fix the boundaries between those who belong and those who do not.
In order to contribute to preventing the latter, a publicly intervening historicisation and sociologisation requires theoretical and methodological precautions that counteract any invitation to simplification: a genealogy that allows the social to be seen as an open 'game' of forces in which it is itself involved as a counterforce against any polarisation and hardening.
Thomas Alkemeyer, Dr phil. habil., is Professor of Sociology and Sports Sociology at the Institute of Sport Science at the University of Oldenburg.
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