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The way of the social: from Durkheim’s society to a postmodern sociality

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, dariusz{at}ualberta.ca

This article investigates the meaning of the ‘social’ based on Durkheim’s philosophy of society as a ‘collective representation’. I argue that the social, the way Durkheim formulates it, is an abstract sign for reality, a metaphor, which operates on the level of language. Because of this fact, the ‘social’ is from the start limited in its functionality as a descriptor, but it also contains within its own linguistic form, in its word, the possibility of renewal and renaming that is the unique force inherent in language. I propose that this origin of the social operates according to the ‘spirit of postmodernism’, which constitutes a common response to modernity, by what later differentiates itself into the currents of sociology and postmodernism.

Key Words: Durkheim • language • modernity • postmodernism • society

History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 18, No. 3, 17-33 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0952695105059304


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