Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 00:31:07 -0800
From: Hagen Finley <hagen-AT-violet.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Phenomenal Sociology


        I feel a need to preface this posting with a brief introduction,
which is doubly injurious because already the posting itself shows a blatant
disregard for the internet attention span. However, the risk that this essay
might appear to be exactly what it is - reading notes for a seminar -
compels me to offer some justification for submitting it to the list.
        I just completed my B.A.'s in philosophy and sociology at Berkeley
and while I maintenance my apprehensions over graduate schools I am
fortunate enough to be participating in Loic Waquant's course on Structure,
Subject and (In)Subordination. One requirement of the class is to post our
considerations on the weeks reading before the session. I have hesitated to
submit any of these notes until now because it seemed somewhat sophomoric to
burden the list  with considerations oriented to class work - even if that
class work is directed  toward the theories of  Wacquant and  Bourdieu.
However,  this weeks discussion of phenomenology lead me to assert that the
structure of consciousness collapses into the structure of society. Although
I think this reading of Bourdieu is defensible, I thought it would be
interesting to see what others on the list had to say.



"The mind is a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make
their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite
variety of postures and situations." (p. 253 Sect.VI of Book I)

        Hume=92s famous metaphor characterizes mental life as a kind of
theater in which perceptual encounters perform before us presenting a
=91infinite variety" of scenes and dramatic denouements. Hume argues that
consciousness is nothing more than the juxtaposition of  these perceptual
vignettes.
        In direct contrast to Hume=92s focus on the players, Phenomenological
Baseline focuses its attention on the architecture of the theater. Shutz=92s
objects of inquiry are the structures of consciousness which transcend the
successive coruscation of sensible images. Hence, even though the perceptual
actors continue to enact their drama on the stage of consciousness,
phenomenology=92s transcendental reduction implores us to  ignore the natural
perspective of the audience and look to how the gestures and evocations of
the  players elaborate the  veiled mechanisms of the mind. (Schutz 58-59).
Even when Shutz discusses the Life World, one gets the impression that the
theater of consciousness remains static while the social world is enacted on
the stage.
        Although there are a variety of analytic trajectories afforded
within the overall phenomenological geometry, I am interested in exploring
the epistemic angle - how we make sense of our perceptions.  To develop that
inquiry I will consider three depictions of the theater of consciousness. My
argument is  that the apparently superficial drama on the stage of
consciousness ultimately constitutes the real structure of consciousness -
that the structures of consciousness reflect the structures of the social life.

Kant

        For Kant, the stage of consciousness is logical. His condensed
argument is that the three dimensionality of the theater is constituted by
the concepts of space and time. He argues that neither time or space
actually exist empirically, that is, we can=92t get at them directly through
perception - we can=92t see pure time or pure space. Therefore, our sense that
there is time and space must be the product of innate mental constructs -
representations which are embedded in our reasoning prior to any empirical
experiences we may have. If space and time constitute the architecture of
the theater, the stage is the what Kant calls the "understanding." The
understanding applies predicates to subjects and constructs elaborate truth
tables which ultimately allow us to conceptualize the objects that are given
to us via perception.

"The capacity (receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode
in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility. Objects are
given  to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us  Intuitions;
they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise
concepts." (p65 A19/B33)

        For example, let=92s imagine that our "sensibility" gives us an apple
as an object. Merely by entering the theater of consciousness the apple is
situated temporally and spatially. According to Kant, when we first notice
the apple it is nondescript, we don=92t recognize it as an apple, we only
notice that something is there. To make sense of that something, first start
attaching categorical predicates to it: Is it an object? True.. Is it
square? False. Is it a sphere? True. Is it blue? False.  And this subject
predicate continues until all of the true predicates, (e.g. red spherical
fruit) yield the concept "apple".
Thus we can see that Kant has built a transcendental edifice - a translucent
theater of ideality in which experience plays no real part in our
comprehension of the world.

Merleau-Ponty

        Although Merleau-Ponty concurrs with Kant=92s premise that coherence
is based on appeals to internal meanings, he rejects Kant=92s conclusion that
these  referents are made up of  pure ideas. One reason was the sheer
implausibility of Kant=92s account. As intriguing as Kant=92s logical rendering
of concepts from simple sense data might be, its hard to imagine that that
is actually how we actually make sense of our perceptions. As the natural
sciences continued to de mystify the backdrop against which Kant=92s innate a
priori categorical calculus played, the dis juncture between his account and
natural explanation became increasingly conspicuous.
        Merleau-Ponty=92s solution this dis juncture was  to replace Kant=92s
logical categories with somatic categories. According to Merleau-Ponty, our
bodies provide the point of reference by which we distinguish and articulate
the objects in our perceptual field. (Phenomenology of Perception p. 303) An
object is large if it imposes on a large portion of our visual horizon, its
small if its unimposing. Its heavy, If its hard to lift. Its light if it is
easy to lift. Tactility, scent, taste, sounds relate the object to the
mechanisms of perception themselves rendering a sensual image.  Practical
motor experiences relate the object to our behavior rendering a kinesthetic
image. Therefore,  sensori-motor comprehension based on the categories of
practical lived experience is possible without an appeal to a priori
interpretation. Our phenomenological grasp of the object is sufficient to
its comprehension.
        Therefore, when we encounter an apple, it is no longer the case that
we must equate predicates with the subject until a concept of the object
emerges. We comprehend it on the basis of our bodily experiences Now,
instead of an abstraction, our knowledge of the apple is palpable - we know
what its like to reach out and clasp it in our hand, to rub it against our
shirt, to penetrate its skin our with our teeth and flood our mouths with
its sweet pulp. Our experience of the apple is what makes an apple coherent.
        Thus for Merleau-Ponty, the categories of comprehension are the
lived bodily experiences we have of our world. In this manner it is not the
empty stage of the theater which explains consciousness, it is the host of
props and stagings which have accumulated from play upon play which populate
the platform of awareness which explain coherence.

Wacquant/Bourdieu

        If our experiences of the world form the  lived categories according
to which that world is made coherent, it follows that the nature of our
experiences would influence the nature of our consciousness. In this manner
the walls of the theater collapse into the landscape of our social
trajectory. The stage of consciousness just is the succession of experiences
we have within the field of social life:

"Bourdieu proposes that social divisions and mental schemata are
structurally homologous because they are genetically linked: the latter are
nothing other than the embodiment of the former." (Invitation to Reflexive
Sociology p.13)

"=85 the human mind is socially bounded, socially structured. The individual
is always, trapped - save to the extent he becomes aware of it =85 within the
limits of the system of categories he owes to his upbringing and training."
(Ibid., p.126)

        In a sense we have another form of class consciousness - not a
consciousness of our class, but a consciousness from within our class, a
consciousness unfolding on the stage of class experiences.
=09
Shutz

	There are two ways to analyze consciousness. On the one hand, we can assume
that there is an inherent structure to consciousness separate from the
content of consciousness. In this case the objects that populate the stage
of consciousness are seen symbols of social experience which can become the
focus of attentive reflection. According to Shutz, reflection on previous
scenes and dramas reveals features of abstract consciousness which are
embodied by the actors on the stage and the relation of sets and props. What
emerges is a Husserl/Heideggerian distinction between epistemic
comprehension and subjective comprehension. For example. the duree of
subjective consciousness is differentiated from the spatialized, quantified
duration  of objective  measurements of time. Our anecdotal experiences of
time speeding up or slowing down points to what the phenomenologist=92s regard
as an essential feature of consciousness - the continuous "stream of
conscious states" (60).
        On the other hand, one can argue that there is no line which
delineates the structure of consciousness from content of consciousness. If,
as I have argued, the objects that populate the stage of consciousness are
there for a reason - that they function as the touchstones of meaning and
coherence, then the relationships between these don=92t point to a underlying
configuration, they are the configuration.
        Therefore, if we look at the example of the duree of conscious
states, one could argue that the slippage of the increments of time within
consciousness is as much product of our age as it is a indicator of a
inherent mental framework. When time appears to slow down it is generally
because we are bound to some tedious social procedure - we are stuck in
class its a beautiful day outside. When time speeds up it is because we are
put in the position of considering the constraints imposed by the upcoming
social obligation - like trying to get ready for work. Thus, while one can
concede that the inner tempo of consciousness is not the staccato of
measured time, it is not necessarily the largo of phenomenological analysis.
It is more likely that consciousness models the external structures of
social action.
        Shutz approaches this sociological interpretation of phenomenology
in the brief discussion of the Life World we read. We certainly get the
notion that our understanding of our world depends on a host of background
assumptions - many of which will not be noticed until they are
problematized. However, it is not clear from that reading that Shutz has
made the transition from a static consciousness steeped in a social tea to a
more fluid depiction of consciousness in which the actual framework of the
mind iterates into the framework of social life.
        In conclusion, I have argued that the distinction between the
structure of consciousness and the content of consciousness is superficial.
As we have seen in our general consideration of structuralism, the quest for
the what is hidden leads us to overlook what is apparent. The analysis of
the framework implicit in the content of consciousness causes one to ignore
the fact that the actual ordering of the mind is accomplished on the social
plane - that the walls of the  minds theater collapse into the boundaries of
the social field - that the stage  of consciousness is the theater of social
life.
Hagen Finley
Berkeley, CA

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