Dromi_Illouz.pdf on MORAL Sociology

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Recovering Morality: Pragmatic Sociology and Literary Studies

Shai M. Dromi

Eva Illouz

New Literary History, Volume 41, Number 2, Spring 2010, pp.351-369 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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New Literary History, 2010, 41: 351369

Recovering Morality: Pragmatic Sociology andLiterary Studies

Shai M. Dromi and Eva Illouz

Recent decades have witnessed the rediscovery o the moraland ethical dimensions o literary texts. Under the impetus othe growing interest in the works o Emmanuel Lvinas and the

criticism promoted by philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum andRichard Rortywho conceive o literature as a site or the ormulationo ethical dilemmas1literary scholarship has turned towards ethics.This movement, which rst gained prominence in the mid-1980s, wasundoubtedly a response to the ormalism o structuralism and post-structuralism. Questions o otherness, o singularity, o the relation oethics and aesthetics, o universalism and responsibility became increas-

ingly pertinent or literary scholars as dierent as Wayne C. Booth andJ. Hillis Miller, leading the discipline towards a new concern with themoral dimensions o texts and o reading.2

A turn towards morality has also been evident in various brancheso contemporary sociology. Departing rom the dominant paradigmso rational choice theory, on the one hand, and critical theory on theother, sociologists have elaborated new and insightul ways o account-ing or the moral dimension o social lie. Through his interpretation

and revitalization o mile Durkheim, sociologist Jerey Alexander hasunraveled the undamental role o social goods and evils in modernsocieties, demonstrating the centrality o morality in the eruption andmanagement o public scandals, in practices o inclusion and exclusion,and in the very underpinnings o democratic lie.3 A dierent perspec-tive on morality was developed by Michle Lamont, who demonstratesthe ways in which social groups construct moral boundaries betweenthemselves and others and view their morality as a valuable resource with which they preserve their uniqueness and sel-worth.4 Further

endeavors in the sociology o morality include examples rom elds asdiverse as urban sociology and economic sociology.5 These sociologists,o course, do not share a single, uniorm understanding o morality, yetwhat is common to all these approaches is a recognition that the moraldimension o social lie is irreducible to other categories.


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new literary history352

Despite their parallel concerns, there has been very little dialogue be-tween the two disciplines o sociology and literary studies on the role otexts in articulating moral points o view. This is apparent in the dierent

uses o the terms morality and ethics, conventionally contrasted instandard philosophical accounts, the rst reerring to universal impera-tives, while the second addresses more culture-specic questions o theormation o the good character and the good lie. Despite the obviousanity o sociology with culture, sociologists, who belong to the disciplinechristened by Durkheim as la science de la morale, have tended to usethe terms moral or morality to designate the normative constraintson behavior. But the question o terminology and the debate between

universalists and ethics-oriented philosophers should not obscure theact that both share an attempt to move away rom standard theorieso power and oppression and rom totalizing concepts such as ideol-ogy, habitus, or discourse, while retaining an exemplary concernwith the moral dimensions o texts, what texts say about what we oweto each other. While the various oshoots o Marxian, Gramscian, andeminist approaches to texts and culture have been immensely useulin highlighting the social underpinnings o literature and its role inrelaying ormations o power, these perspectives now threaten to para-

lyze cultural inquiry by relying on mechanistic distinctions between thepowerul and the oppressed.

The purpose o this article is to oer tools or studying the ways inwhich literature as a social practice enacts and perorms moral evaluation.A novel which exposes the reader to a sense o injustice or to a dilemmaand which imbues these dilemmas and injustices with emotional value isnot only a work o ction but what we may call a critique, a discourse de-nouncing the violation o common norms and values. Similarly, responses

to a novel voiced by scholars, reviewers, and lay readers are oten im-bued with a concern or morality and should not be deconstructed butrather studied at ace value as moral claims about social arrangements. When debating the inclusion o a controversial novel in high-schoolcurricula, when championing or deploring the prolieration o works oone popular genre or another, when denouncing a book or its genderpolitics, actors make claims and justiy them using generalizable logics which pertain to the common good. Recognizing that literary works(both classical and popular) can serve as critiques and that readers (o

all types and classes) can and oten do serve as critics, this paper seeksto develop a new direction or the sociology o literature, one whichexplores the ways in which moral claims are expressed, evaluated, andnegotiated by texts and through texts by readers.

In making this argument, we turn to the new French pragmatic sociol-ogy, represented in a large part by Luc Boltanski and his collaborators,


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353recovering morality

Laurent Thvenot and ve Chiapello, who address questions o howagreement is achieved among parties whose claims draw upon confict-ing logics, the conditions under which a particular argument carries

weight, and when this argument will be reuted or disregarded. From thissociological perspective, morality is a set o repertoires o justication,not ironclad rules about oughts. We view ctional characters, writers,readers, and critics as social actors endowed with moral competence,who are able to articulate and respond to controversies using dierentarguments and to ormalize critiques o existing social arrangements.Actors switch between dierent logics o justication, thus making theeld o moral justication multivocal and confictual, and not a set oethical and normative injunctions, as is oten supposed in Aristotelianand Kantian intellectual legacies.

Ater briefy reviewing the main points o pragmatic sociology andits relation to the sociology o morality, we examine its relevance to thesociology o literature by exploring the place o ction as critique inthe moral discourse o civil society. We claim that the role o ction incivil society is twoold. Firstly, novels serve as critiques in their abilityto ormalize and dramatize generalizable logics o evaluation and toelicit debate by pointing to the inadequacies o, and clashes between,

such evaluative logics in the everyday lie o their characters. The novel,thereore, may be viewed as part and parcel o the ormation o civilsociety in that it requires the simultaneous exercise o compassion orthe suering o imaginary characters and the consideration o the moralimplications o that suering. Secondly, the reading publiccommonreaders, popular reviewers, and high-brow criticsorm their own cri-tiques o a novel, in praise or in denunciation o its content, its orm, orits perceived intent. Critiques then, whether voiced by authors through

the mouths o the characters they create or by readers and reviewers,constitute the exercise o morality in the public sphere in that theyexpress the concern o the speaker with what he or she perceives to bethe greater good o society.

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Since the sociology o popular culture is a well-trodden eld, what is

the value o introducing this new paradigm? Our contribution to thiseld should be understood against the general tendency o sociologistso culture to analyze culture as orever entangled in webs o power anddiscourse, beingso to speakthe dependent variable to be unpackedand analyzed by the critic over the heads o largely unaware and uncriti-


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cal lay readers. In contrast to pragmatic sociology, with its emphasison the critical capacity o the social actor, critical theoryin the ormo postcolonial, eminist, or neo-Marxist studieshas oten proved im-

permeable to the moral claims o lay actors and texts, either ignoringthem or subsuming them under the broad category o ideology (andits various intellectual oshoots).6

This reluctance to address moral claims has a number o reasons.One is epistemological and has to do with the act that cultural studieshave been plagued by the hermeneutics o suspicion. As Rita Felskicogently put it: Drawing its energies rom the political commitments oproessors and students, it [the hermeneutics o suspicion] seeks to read

against the grain and between the lines, to subject seemingly sel-evidenttruths to merciless questioning and vigorous critique. Its strategy is oneo relentless deciphering, o pressing below surace distractions to laybare meanings. A spirit o disenchantment hovers over the practice osuspicious reading, a desire to slay alse gods by exposing arts complicitywith oppressive social arrangements.7 An epistemology o suspicion, byits very nature, cannot take seriously the explicit moral claims o texts.A second reason has to do with the widespread confation o morality with coercive ideological structures, shared by gender, Marxist, and

postcolonial theorists. By and large, throughout the twentieth century,both sociology and psychoanalysis have viewed morality as a orm oalse consciousness, repressing the working class or disciplining the ego.These theoretical rameworks have thereby dissociated themselves romone o the most consistent concerns o lay actors in daily lie: namely,who is right and who is wrong, what is just and what is unjust, and howdierent moral claims can be reconciled. The scholastic distinctionbetween texts and lie, aesthetics and the everyday, is oblivious to the

act that critique is a universal capacity shared by actors in various ways.While several notable exceptions to this tendency exist, such as ElaineShowalter and Elizabeth Lunbecks studies o psychiatry and o the waysin which it redened symptoms o social upheavals as individual neurosisand hysteria, morality in these studies remains coupled with power. 8 Thisis due to the act that once the sociologist creates an analytic dichotomybetween oppressed and oppressors, the claims and deeds o the lattergroup (in this case, psychiatrists) become inherently alse and deceitulwhereas the protests and complaints o the ormer group (in this case,

patients) are correspondingly considered to be genuine. The result is anasymmetrical explanation, one which evaluates evidence oered by vari-ous parties and institutions according to dierential sets o criteria.

Pragmatic sociology, by shiting our attention rom underlying struc-tures to a close reading o how social actors (as readers, authors, or crit-


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ics) understand such structures in their own terms, criticize them, andeectively communicate the meanings o their critiques via moral claims,allows us to recover the critical capacity o these actors. In reerring to

moral claims, we mean neither a claim o the Aristotelian variety aboutthe nature o the good lie, nor a Kantian claim about the universalityo moral maxims. Rather, we argue that social actors (real or ctional)voice critiques in the name o values, ideals, and repertoires o justica-tion that are presumed to be universally shared. Where critical sociologysees positions in elds o power being deended through distinctions, orhegemonic ideologies being ercely guarded, pragmatic sociology revealsa critical competence shared by actors located in dierent institutions.

The methodological implication o this symmetry is that the researchercannot and should not create distinctions between genuine and alseclaims, but rather ollow closely the ways in which actors create suchdistinctions and challenge one anothers claims. This understanding al-lows or the radically divergent moral stances voiced by authors, readers,or critics to be regarded symmetrically; the pragmatic sociologist givesall sides o a controversy equal weight and thus reveals the aesthetic andnarrative mechanisms which actors use in order to make moral claimsand to render their critiques powerul and eective.

The Pragmatic Sociology o Justication

The new French pragmatic sociology, in its various orms, was devel-oped in the 1980s by theorists such as Luc Boltanski, Laurent Thvenot,Bruno Latour, Cyril Lemieux, Philippe Corcu, Claudette Leaye, andothers.9 A shared assumption o pragmatic sociologistsemphasized

especially by Boltanski and Thvenotis that actors have a universalcapacity to argue about just and unjust arrangements, a capacity tocriticize and to move between dierent ways o arguing about thesearrangements, and a capacity to deend their position using evidenceor tests. Because ordinary actors care a great deal about justice, theywill requently engage in conrontations with others when their sense ojustice is disturbed. Rather than being strategic, calculating, and whollysel-interested, as sociology has oten portrayed them, actors tend to usearguments which aim at having general validity, make use o an array o

cognitive operations to evaluate situations, and assess the size (grandeur)o other actors. They do so by using principles o equivalence, that is,instruments to evaluate, compare, hierarchize, and arbitrate betweenconficting situations and principles.

In their seminal work On Justifcation, Luc Boltanski and LaurentThvenot arrange these principles o equivalence into what they call cits,


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or worlds o evaluation.10 These worlds are systems o logics which areused to establish what is to be considered worthy in a repertoire o evalu-ation, allowing actors to evaluate the merit o a person, an object, or an

abstract value. Moreover, each logic excludes and disqualies all othermethods o evaluation, allowing a person to be deemed worthy in onecitand unworthy in another. Each citspecies the relevant categoriesor evaluation, the adequate methods or establishing worth, and theexpected investment o a person in achieving a high measure o status.For example, a critique ormed according to the criteria o what theauthors describe as the civic citevaluates its object according to its con-duciveness to good citizenry, to universalism, and to the common good.

Conversely a critique based on the domestic citwill consider its object inrelation to amilial values, raternity, and tradition. Equipped with thesetools, individuals bring into public their deliberations over questions oworth: Did someone receive a promotion because o their creativity andoriginality? Because o their industriousness, or their charity?

Pragmatic sociology is thereore rst and oremost a sociology o con-troversies, o moments o dispute, that are openly visible to actors. Theocus on controversy, rather than consensus, stems rom the act thatwhile members o a society share certain norms, values, narratives, and

scripts, their joint social lie is strewn with uncertainties about the basiccharacteristics o their interaction. Uncertainties, as Latour identiesthem, may exist at all levels o social engagement. Actors may disagreeabout the nature and boundaries o the group they belong to, aboutthe goals o their actions, about the types o objects relevant to theirinteractions, about what constitutes a act and what constitutes an empiri-cal science. Thus, within a wide array o dierent rames o reerence,controversy is a key ocal point or the sociologist, allowing actors to oer

accounts o their own rames o reerence. As Latour puts it, Insteado taking a reasonable position and imposing some order beorehand,[this approach] claims to be able to nd order much better aterhavinglet the actors deploy the ull range o controversies in which they areimmersed . . . . The task o dening and ordering the social should belet to the actors themselves, not taken up by the analyst. This is why,to regain some sense o order, the best solution is to trace connectionsbetween the controversies themselves rather than try to decide how tosettle any given controversy.11

At the same time, controversies and their resolutions are oten stabi-lized by texts. In the work o Boltanski and Thvenot each citis ormal-ized in a range o texts, both canonical and current, and is exempliedand studied in managerial texts as well as in works o political philosophy.Thus, the logic o the market citis demonstrated by Adam Smiths The


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Wealth o Nations, the charismatic citby Thomas Hobbess Leviathan, thecivic citby Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and so on. This, o course, does notimply that all able discussants must have read this somewhat dicult

series o works. While the rules and characteristics o particular citsare demonstrated clearly and lucidly in philosophical texts, they arealso voiced in some orm or another by speakers o various class andeducational backgrounds on a daily basis.12 Thus, while Boltanski andThvenot do not make explicit methodological ormulations, we cangeneralize their methodology to suggest that texts can serve as platormswhich ormulate citsand moral critiques, and at the same time to suggestthat readers o various class backgrounds can appropriate and utilize

such texts as exemplars o a specic critique.In relation to the sociology o literature, then, we would like to considerhow critique operates in literature, rst in the text itsel and second inits readers. The rst level o analysis is interested in the ways ctionalcharacters address issues o real-lie injustice and invoke the moral emo-tions o readers. Many orms o critique tend to devalue moral readings otexts, viewing them as less sophisticated than purely aesthetic responsesor, worse, as eliciting ideological structures that literary scholars wouldlike to dismantle. However, by giving us accounts o characters wrongully

evaluated or valued in radically dierent ways in dierent contexts, atext can communicate the unairness o equivalent situations beyond thetext. Thus, by appealing to the less sophisticated moral responses oits readers, a ctional text articulates an explicit moral claim. Pragmaticsociology, by reusing to dierentiate between the moral competence oauthors and their readers, enables us to view them as belonging to thesame world o moral assumptions and repertoires, with the possibilitythat some novels will stand out because they are better able to ormulate

the assumptions o an emergentcit.Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabincan serve as an outstandingexample o how a controversy can be brought to lie through the wordso ctional characters, as a novel published at the time o one o theercest controversies in the history o the United States. Abolitionistspromoted their cause in the antebellum North by presenting slavery asa threat to democracy13a moral concern in itseland, in the case oStowe, to Christianity. Countering the claims that the Southern economywas reliant on slavery, Stowe juxtaposes the relatively benign personal

relations o some slave owners with their slaves and the universalisticChristian promise o salvation against a market logic that allowed hu-man beings to be bought and sold. Uncle Tom, as a loved and respectedslave in a southern household who is sold to pay the rising debts o hismasters, can be read as Stowes critique o antebellum conceptions o


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Arican-American personhood, having a quasi-amilial relationship withhis owners on the one hand, while being subject to the market citandthus treated as a commodity on the other.

Similarly, in Little Evas amous dying words, the promise o Christiansalvation is extended toward slaves, subjecting them and their masters tothe same universalistic logic o evaluation: You must be Christians. Youmust remember that each one o you can become angels, and be angelsorever.14 Salvation is here equally available to members o all races. AsStowe hersel claimed in a subsequent publication, The last and bitterestindignity which had been heaped on the head o the unhappy slaves hasbeen the denial to them o those holy aections which God gives alike

to all.

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By relocating the slave rom the context o the domesticor themarket citto the civic cit, the ctional character o Eva directly gives thistension literary orm. The controversy regarding the worth o slavesas amiliar and sometimes loved members o a household, as potentialcandidates or salvation, as commodities to be bought and sold at will,or as equal members o societyand the struggle o the characterswith these competing denitions call attention to the larger injustice othe social order. O great importance here is the act that, rather thanrefecting a Christian ideology o the righteous white man, oras Ian

Watts classic claim would lead us to believean ethic o individualismand authenticity, Stowes novel explicitly calls or solidarity and socialresponsibility, and as such may serve as one o the most powerul moralclaims against slavery in American literature.

It remains to be seen how ar such moral conrontations overlapwith, or even constitute, what narratologists call a complication in theplot. A plot complication, or example, is requently a result o an ob-ject being dislocated rom one citto the other: what might have been

previously thought o as belonging to the domesticor to the market citis now addressed through another world, such as the civic cit, or viceversa. A controversy, then, is any such dierential understanding o theworth o an object, value, or person, voiced by dierent parties in thetext but responding to similar tensions and disagreements about valuein the context in which the text was written. As Alexander notes in hisdiscussion o the role o ctional media in communicating the valuesand ideals o the civil sphere, I ctional writers were indeed deeplyaected by the deprivations o economic, racial, and amilial lie, they

were responding not only to actual situations outside o themselves butto their own inner desires, as members o the civil sphere, to speak onbehal o oppressed groups to society at large. Through their ctionalwork, in other words, they gave voice to the idealized aspirations o civilsociety itsel.16


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*****

Our second level o analysis reers to the ways in which readers o

various classesrom common readers to academic criticsevaluate,criticize, or justiy the moral value o a text or a genre. The value oliterary works is oten perceived by readers as intricately connected tomorality. A novel may be intellectually or aesthetically challenging andthus seen as honing the mental capacities o the reading public; it maybe seen as proane and harmul to that same public; it may questionwidely held assumptionsin lie or in artand be politically important;it may support racial or gender stereotypes and be condemned as rep-

rehensible. Such questions and criticismso concern to inquisitors,authoritarian regimes, and liberal critics alikeare an inseparable parto reading. The pragmatic belie in a universal critical capacity impliesthat, since moral claims are not only elements o ideological ormationsbut are expressed by actors who are capable o perceiving injustice andcriticizing it, a readers criticism o a text is important to the sociologistregardless o his or her class, education, or training in literary criticismand whether or not it succeeds in persuading others. In this view then,moral judgment is not an anomalous reaction to literature but, on the

contrary, a natural one, that is, one that responds to the moral compe-tence o texts and their authors.

This last point is crucial: a pragmatic account upholds the principleo symmetry, according to which all sides o a controversywhether ornot they have succeeded in persuading others, whether they deendpuritanical principles or progressive onesare to be treated equally,drawing on the same presuppositions about their common capacityto uphold and deend a moral principle, a cit. This principle o sym-

metry has been developed in the sociological study o the productiono scientic knowledge, which argues, particularly in the work o DavidBloor and Latour himsel, that a scientic inquiry or experiment can-not be regarded as governed by one logic i it succeeds and by anotheri it ails. Rather than dismissing scientic ailures as irrelevant or thesociology o science (because such ailures must have been caused byinaccurate measurements, aulty procedures, or human bias, whereasscientic successes ollow a teleological logic), the sociologist o sciencemust see both success and ailure as equivalent in the social process othe production o knowledge. Latour has taken this idea a step urtherin his principle o generalized symmetry, according to which the actionso humans and nonhumans (microbes, computers, electrons, et cetera)should not be seen as inherently opposed and should be described insimilar ways.17 Along the same lines, critiques elicited in a controversy


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are revealing or the sociology o morality, regardless o whether or nottheir assumptions have prevailed. One moral position (or example,the Comstock laws, intended to enorce the suppression o vice by

those interested in censorship) cannot be explained as ideology whileanother moral position (such as a eminism or postcolonialism inter-ested in counteracting oppression) is understood as inherent truth ornonideology.

Literary scholar Wayne C. Booth once complained that too manyethical critics have assumed that their whole task is to damn what is evilor to expose other critics as incompetent or immoral or ailing to doso.18 But aesthetic critics are no less interested in acts o damnationthan ethical critics, as they oten construe the perceived shallowness osimplistic orms o representation as impinging on the intellects o stu-dents and readers. Critical scholarship is no less a moral crusader thanComstock; debates over conceptions o obscenity among nineteenth-century legislators are now transormed into controversies over therepresentation o women and minorities in arts and literature. All thesedierent perspectives are moral in that they share a concern with thepublic good and draw upon a general logic in order to determine thecorrect course o action. Controversies over the moral nature o texts

take place both in the halls o academia and in political, economical,social, and domestic settings: parents discuss the reading materialssuitable or their children; publishers question the merits o the worksthey are evaluating; reviewers champion or censure; scholars analyzeand debate. The ercer the controversy, the richer the grounds or thesociologist o critique.

One example o such a controversy concerns the status o the sen-timental novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as a genre

that has elicited a wide array o objectionsrooted in dierent argu-ments and representing a variety o moral positions. As Jane Tompkinsnotes, the nineteenth-century indictment o sentimentality was ramedin moralistic and religious terms, that is to say, sentimental works oliterature were seen to cause their readers to lapse rom strict adher-ence to religious and moral principles and to epitomize a nascent massculture oriented toward indulgence and sel-absorption.19 In these earlycriticisms, the domestic citthe realm o the amily, kinship, and loveiscriticized in the terms o the civic cit, which prizes public responsibil-

ity, civic conduct, and a republican contribution to the good o society.For example, concerns were voiced by proslavery critics about what wasseen as a misrepresentation o the South in Uncle Toms Cabin, ramedin compelling dramatic prose. Critics eared that the novel, with its vastcirculation, will do innite injury. Its dramatic power will have no other


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eect upon the country than to excite the anaticism o one portionand to arouse the indignation o the other.20

What was, or nineteenth-century critics, an anxiety about moral tur-

pitude in the civic sense was transormed in the twentieth century intoa concern with intellectual degeneration. For example, some o themodern indictments o sentimentality are less concerned with moralstandards and more preoccupied with the notion o inauthenticity.Indeed, James Baldwin vehemently denounced Uncle Toms Cabins sen-timentality; he saw in such sentimentality the ostentatious parading oexcessive and spurious emotion, [which] is the mark o dishonesty, theinability to eel; the wet eyes o the sentimentalist betray his aversion

to experience, his ear o lie, his arid heart and it is always, thereore,the signal o secret and violent inhumanity, the mask o cruelty.21 Viaan interesting detour, Baldwin claims that the excessive solicitation omoral emotions in Stowes novel leads to a denial o the very experi-ence which gives rise to those moral emotions. As this view became aprevalent one, [T]wentieth century critics have taught generations ostudents to equate popularity with debasement, emotionality with ine-ectiveness, religiosity with akery, domesticity with triviality, and all othese, implicitly, with womanly ineriority.22 The degenerative infuence

o sentimentalism was no longer seen to lie in its provocation o ill-blood but in its perceived aesthetic ineriority, its subversion o deep,intellectual debates by turning toward sentiment rather than reason.This concern can be ramed as belonging to the cit o inspirationthato creativity, originality, and thoughtulnesswhich is threatened bybanality and shallowness.

While civic concerns remain in late twentieth-century criticism, theyare relegated to the representational level in concerns over gender roles

and racial stereotypes.23

According to one critic, or example, the lastingeect o Stowes masterwork on popular American culture dwars thato the slave narrative. With its extraordinary synthesizing power, UncleToms Cabin presented Aro-American characters, however derivativeand distorted, who leaped with incredible speed to the status o literaryparadigms and even cultural archetypes with which subsequent writersblack and whitehave had to reckon . . . Although Stowe unquestionablysympathized with the slaves, her commitment to challenging the claim oblack ineriority was requently undermined by her own endorsement o

racial stereotypes.24 Interestingly, while questions o literary representa-tion are at the heart o the matter or these latter critics, the concernsraised are wider ones regarding the eect o such representations onpopular attitudes toward women or Arican-Americans, making theirposition no less moral than Comstocks concern with lasciviousness.


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Connecting Readers and Texts

At rst glance, an approach that considers morality through the lens

o ormalized logics and controversies may seem incapable o incorpo-rating the emotional aspect o criticism and appear to be promotinga rationalistic and calculated view o literature. Critique, however, is asintimately connected to emotions as it is to morality, and acts as the keylink between texts, readers, and social lie. The connection betweenemotions and morality is hardly a new insight or sociologists, as one oDurkheims central claims in his later work was that strong emotionalstatesstates o eervescence, to use his termare constitutive o the

moral codes held by a society, perhaps the most undamental o whichare good and evil.25Critique, too, is at its core emotional. It nds its motivation in the criti-

cal moment, the moment in which, as Boltanski and Thvenot argue,people, involved in ordinary relationships, who are doing things together. . . and who have to coordinate their actions, realize that somethingis going wrong; that they cannot get along any more; that somethinghas to change.26 This moment is both refective and emotional: Theperson who realizes that something does not work rarely remains silent.

He (or she) does not keep his eelings to himsel. The moment when herealizes that something does not work is most o the time the momentwhen he realizes he cannot bear this state o things anymore.27 Whilepragmatic sociology does not inquire into the emotional nuts and boltso moral action or denunciation, its emphasis on aect concurs withrecent developments in moral psychology, and in particular with thesocial intuitionist approach, which sees emotionsrather than logicalreasoningas lying at the heart o moral judgment.28

Emotions, in other words, are not just a matter o purely bodily re-sponses, but involve both physical stimuli and cognitive recognition. Aslm scholar Nol Carroll claims, Emotions require cognitions as causesand bodily states as eects. Moreover, among the cognitions that are es-sential or the ormation o emotional states are those that subsume theobjects o the state under certain relevant categories or conceive o saidobjects as meeting certain criteria.29 For Carroll, ctional genres directthis process by instilling an emotional state in their audiences. Emotionscall our attention to those aspects o the situation that are pertinent byselectively guiding perception to the eatures o the stimulus that aresubsumable under the criteria o the reigning emotional state.30 Thus,emotional engagement with the world o ctional characters providesboth the impetus or criticism and the evidence to support that critique.Being emotionally engaged with depictions o suering or injustice


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andmore importantlyconveying that engagement is a key eatureo moral critique. In journalism, politics, and social activism this entailsnot only reporting what distant social injustices one has seen, but also

how this injustice has aected the reporting actor. It is the latter whichmakes the mere statement o acts into a moral claim, creating a bondo commitment between the actor and the distant other. In ction, itis the character who can serve as that distant suerer, and the recruit-ment o the readers emotions in the depiction o such a characterssituation is what makes the critique oered by the novel into a moralone. Fiction, in act, may be better equipped to do this than nonc-tion through its greater reliance on dramatization and appeals to the

readers imagination. Following Adam Smith, Boltanski suggests that theaculty o imagination rendered necessary by the generalized spectacleo distant others can serve as a source o social bonds, ed by and inturn eeding moral sentiments. Through the imaginative exercise ocompassion, a orm o social solidarity without communitarian loyaltyand exclusiveness is made possible, because the spectator, in order to beapproved by others, must adopt what Smith called an impartial attitude,the capacity to examine onesel rom the standpoint o an outside anduninvolved spectator.

Because much o the semiotic analysis o media and literary textsis based on the Saussurean assumption that the relationship betweenreerents and their signs is arbitrary, it treats the image o suering as acultural code, just like any other cultural object. In this semiotic view, thesuerer is a bundle o signs circulated by and or particular institutional,commercial, or political interests (in Barbie Zelizers work or example,it serves the agenda o the photojournalist).31 Boltanskis approach tothe representation o suering stands at the opposite corner in that the

reerentthe suererconstrains the codes through which he or she isrepresented. That is, the relationship between the suerer and signica-tion is not viewed as arbitrary. The question what does it mean? is notaddressed as a semiotic question pertaining to the codes, conventions,and symbols by which suering is made to signiy, but rather as a ques-tion which pertains to the nature o social bonds in civil society. Whatdoes it mean? is replaced by what in the representation o sueringexerts a bond between the suerer and the spectator o suering?suggesting that the representation and signication o suering are not

arbitrary but rather heavily constrained by moral imperatives and bonds.To be receivable, the image o suering must respond to and navigatebetween a complex array o moral demands. The work o representingsuch suering is not best understood as a semiotic process: rather it isthe result o a compromise between conficting moral exigencies.


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Because suering hinges upon the moral organization o the socialworld, it is both unstable (precisely because it is constantly open to attackand criticism) and stabilized in the orm o what Boltanski, reviving the

Aristotelian notion, calls topics. The word topic, he writes, should beunderstood in the sense o ancient rhetoric, that is to say as involvinginseparably both an argumentative and an aective dimension. Speechhere is aected and it is especially by the means o emotionsthat we canconceive o the coordination o the spectatorseach o whom is also aspeakerand consequently the transition rom individual speech andconcern to collective commitment.32 Aristotle originally conceived othe topic as an argument in support o a given conclusion which is con-

strued out o the existing opinions or belies o the public. Topoiare therhetorical places out o which such arguments are ormed and underwhich they can be categorized. In order to bridge the gap between amere statement and a wider commitment, a topic must simultaneouslydraw upon the object in question and on the widely held belies o thecommunity. Making onesel present in the text o an argument, a liter-ary work, or another orm o artistic expression by letting the audienceknow how one eels becomes a means o expressing ones moral sense,in the hope o moving others toward a commitment.

Conclusion

The sociology proposed by Boltanski and Thvenot may seem toabandon one o the main vocations o the discipline, namely to criticizeactors and social practices. This, however, would be a supercial readingo their sociology because implicitly contained in their work, especially

the later work o Boltanski on capitalism, is the notion that institutional-ized practices o interpretation may mufe and co-opt ordinary critiqueso unjust economic systems. I we want to hold onto critique withoutsubjecting social lie to overly broad constructs such as ideology ordiscourse, what would such critique look like?

A sociology o critique oers an account o the various ways in whichsocial actors object to, resist, or deend their positions. It accounts orthese ways, however, by taking seriously the actors own words. While thework o Boltanski and Thvenot does outline six o the most prevalent

logics o justication in contemporary western society, these are in noway nalized or oppressive, as actors have the ability to adapt codes andormulations and to seek out elaborate and innovative ways o expressingtheir concerns. Furthermore, other cits can and have been elucidated bysociologists, and their validity and applicability to various social settings


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can be evaluated only by showing how they are received by the actorsthemselves.33 Thus, not only does this approach not abandon the criticalvocation o sociology, it in act wholeheartedly embraces it, albeit on

new terms and with a shit in ocus.The attention moral philosophers have given to the powers o lit-erature in recent decades and the corresponding attention o literaryscholars to the ethical dimensions o literature serves as an impetusor our project, but it also departs rom these models in its ocus andits goals. Ethical literary criticism is best geared toward a perceptiono literature as a eld which ought toinstill certain ethical sensibilities,such as an acceptance and inclusion o others, a responsibility or the

common good, or a development o a personal ethical perception. TheLevinasian tradition, or example, has taken the question o Othernessand o responsibility into the realm o the aesthetic (while oten ailingto acknowledge, as critic Robert Eaglestone points out, Levinass owncomplex relations to representations in his early works).34 The status othe Otherwhether as a creation o the text or as its creatorhas beenamously problematized by Derrida, provoking urther discussion o theways in which reading and responsibility are intertwined.35 Applicationso this approach have been extended to the relationship o literary texts

and ecologyexploring the notion o nature as a radical Other and otexts as a means or its incorporation.36 Another notable approach toliterary ethics is oered by Martha Nussbaum, who sees literature asthe most appropriate site or the process oethical theorizingdue to itsability to address ethical issues outside the constraints o ormal argu-mentation and to engage the emotions o the reader. Literature, andthe classics in particular, are or Nussbaum o tantamount importanceor the creation and maintenance o a good society, one governed by

reason and universalist sensibilities.37

This notion o literature as a siteor the cultivation o moral capacities is shared by Wayne C. Booth in hisThe Company We Keep. Booth argues that careul appraisals o narrativeswhich are inseparable rom ethical and political concernsand theirrelationships with readers makes it possible to assess the dierentialethical value o specic narratives.

For the sociology o critique, however, the key questions are dier-ent. Popular culture is not studied in order to ascertain the benets ocertain cultural texts or the common good, but to discover the ways in

which radically dierent perceptions o that common good clash witheach other and how they evaluate, criticize, and justiy their positions.Rather than grappling with the place o ethics in literaturewhether,as J. Hillis Miller argues, such an ethics is constituted by the text, orwhether, as reader-response theorists argue, it comes into existence only


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when read38a sociological study can explore the ways in which moralissues are explicitly brought to lie by the character, by the reader, orby the critic. And here it is not only the classics that serve as relevant

examples. Studies such as Janice Radways Reading the Romance havealready demonstrated the importance o novels aimed at the commonreader that were long belittled by high-brow critics.39 A genre such asthe sentimental novel can thereore articulate a critique that is no lessinteresting or the sociologist than the work o Henry James, NathanielHawthorne, or Jane Austen.

The act that pragmatic sociology endows readers o all backgroundswith a critical capacity, eschewing the hermeneutics o suspicion that

characterizes much contemporary cultural studies, does not make itblind to the existence o hidden interests and inequalities. However,the individual actor is just as capable o understanding and criticizingsuch underlying phenomena as the sociologist. The importance o thisepistemological position is especially signicant in the multiculturalcontext o contemporary society, a context in which an abundance osocial groups dened by such actors as gender, ethnicity, and religioncreates a multiplicity o needs and distinct experiences.

Such a change in perspective also creates a new orm o compromise

between microanalysis and macroanalysis. By investigating the interac-tions o individuals, pragmatic sociology departs rom the tradition omacroanalysis in French sociology, without thereby yielding to an absoluteparticularism. Because citsare not only expressed in specic interac-tions but also extend beyond such interactions, this approach remainsopen to a consideration o macrosocial elements which constrict and/or enable the actions o the individual.40

There is a urther advantage to the assumption o the critical capacity

o ordinary actors, namely its openness to being surprised by its ndings.In both qualitative and quantitative sociological research, the method oanalyzing data is established in advance in order to ensure a systematicand coherent research design. When analyzing expressions or conversa-tions, one o the rst decisions to be made is whether speakers are to betaken at their word or whether they are being motivated by underly-ing orces that remain unknown to them. Sociology, however, oers nomethodological truth detector which allows one to determine whethera statement is independently conceived by the actor or engineered by

extraneous actors. The sociologist who chooses the latter option oa hermeneutics o suspicion is orced to interpret any and all expres-sions in terms that are already prescribed. As Latour once remarked,When sociologists o the social pronounce the words society, power,structure, and context, they oten jump straight ahead to connect vast


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arrays o lie and history, to mobilize gigantic orces, to detect dramaticpatterns emerging out o conusing interactions, to see everywhere in thecases at hand yet more examples o well-known types, to reveal behind

the scenes some dark powers pulling the strings.41Choosing the ormer, pragmatic option orces the sociologist to takethe expressions o ordinary actors seriously and at ace value. Admittedly,this choice may lead the researcher astray at times. Not all statementsare transparent; deceit is always a possibility, as are hidden interests andmotivations. However, to turn this insight into a general principle osocial lie, and to engage in data collection and analysis while assumingto know ahead o time what the results o this analysis will be, is to miss

the richness o the studied phenomenon and to subsume its dierentaspects under a single set o categories. Assuming good aith on the parto interlocutors, so to speak, allows the sociologist to be surprised byhis or her ndings, and to truly learn rom the data rather than usingit to demonstrate a preexisting theory.

Yale University

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

NOTES

1 See, or example, Martha Nussbaum, Loves Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature(New York: Oxord Univ. Press, 1990) and Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989).2 For a review o the ethical turn in literary studies see Michael Eskin, Introduction:The Double Turn to Ethics and Literature? Poetics Today25, no. 4 (2004): 55772 as wellas the remaining essays in the issue, and Marjorie Garber, Beatrice Hanssen, and RebeccaL. Walkowitz, eds., The Turn to Ethics(New York: Routledge, 2000).3 Jerey C. Alexander, The Meanings o Social Lie: A Cultural Sociology(New York: Oxord

Univ. Press, 2003); Jerey C. Alexander, The Civil Sphere(New York: Oxord Univ. Press,2006).4 Michle Lamont, The Dignity o Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries o Race, Class,and Immigration(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000).5 See, or example, Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer, Morals and Markets: The Development oLie Insurance in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1983) and M.P. Baumgartner, The Moral Order o a Suburb(New York: Oxord Univ. Press, 1988). Fora review o developments in the sociology o morality see Gabriel Abend, Two MainProblems in the Sociology o Morality, Theory and Society37, no. 2 (2008): 87125 andGabriel Ignatow, Why the Sociology o Morality Needs Bourdieus Habitus, Sociological

Inquiry79, no. 1 (2008): 98114.6 Examples include John B. Thompson, The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory o theMedia(Cambridge: Polity, 1995) and the studies conducted by the Centre or Contem-porary Cultural Studies. For examples see Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and PaulaA. Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies(New York: Routledge, 1992).7 Rita Felski, Remember the Reader, The Chronicle o Higher Education, Dec. 17,2008.


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8 Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media(New York: ColumbiaUniv. Press, 1997) and Elizabeth Lunbeck, The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, andPower in Modern America(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994).9 Examples include Luc Boltanski,Distant Suering: Morality, Media, and Politics, trans.

Graham Burchell (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999); Luc Boltanski and LaurentThvenot, On Justifcation: Economies o Worth, trans. Catherine Porter (Princeton, NJ:Princeton Univ. Press, 2006); Luc Boltanski, LAmour et la justice comme comptences: Troisessais de sociologie de laction(Paris: Editions Mtaili, 1990); Luc Boltanski, De la critique:Prcis de sociologie de lmancipation(Paris: Gallimard, 2009); Bruno Latour, Reassembling theSocial: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory(Oxord: Oxord Univ. Press, 2005).10 This term has been translated rom the French as worlds o evaluation, regime o jus-tifcationand regimes o evaluation. The terms have been used interchangeably in severalpublications. We use the term Worlds o Evaluation ollowing the 2006 Princeton Univ.Press translation o the book.

11 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 23 (italics in source).12 While in this book the writers reer to six cits, which they claim are the most prevalentin Western society, their number is by no means restricted to six. In more recent publi-cations urther elaborations have been made and more citshave been ormulated. Seeor example Luc Boltanski and ve Chiapello, The New Spirit o Capitalism, trans. GregoryElliott (New York: Verso, 2005).13 Alexander, The Civil Sphere, 271.14 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Toms Cabin, (New York: Random House, 1938), 355.15 Beecher Stowe, The Key to Uncle Toms Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documentsupon which the Story is Founded, Together with Corroborative Statements Veriying the Truth o the

Work(New York: Arno, 1968), 17.16 Alexander, Civil Sphere, 77.17 Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniv. Press, 1993) and David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery(Boston: Routledge andK. Paul, 1976).18 Wayne C. Booth, The Peculiar Logic o Evaluative Criticism, in The Company WeKeep: an Ethics o Fiction(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. o Caliornia Press, 1988), 49.19 Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work o American Fiction, 17901860(New York: Oxord Univ. Press, 1986).20 Edward J. Pringle, Slavery in the Southern States(Cambridge, MA: Metcal, 1852), 7.

21 James Baldwin, Everybodys Protest Novel, in Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle TomsCabin: A Casebook, ed. Elizabeth Ammons (New York: Oxord Univ. Press, 2007), 4956.22 Tompkins, Sensational Designs, 12323 Elizabeth Ammons, Heroines in Uncle Toms Cabin, American Literature49, no. 2(1977): 16179.24 Richard Yarborough, Strategies o Black Characterization in Uncle Toms Cabinandthe Early Aro-American Novel, in New Essays on Uncle Toms Cabin, ed. Eric J. Sundquist(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), 47.25 mile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms o Religious Lie, trans. Karen E. Fields (NewYork: Free Press, 1995).

26 Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thvenot, The Sociology o Critical Capacity,EuropeanJournal o Social Theory2, no. 3 (1999): 359.27 Boltanski and Thvenot, The Sociology o Critical Capacity, 360.28 Jonathan Haidt, The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Ap-proach to Moral Judgment, Psychological Review108, no. 4 (2001): 81434 and Paul Rozinand others, The CAD Triad Hypothesis: A Mapping Between Three Moral Emotions


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(Contempt, Anger, Disgust) and Three Moral Codes (Community, Autonomy, Divinity,Journal o Personality and Social Psychology76, no. 4 (1999): 57486.29 Nol Carroll, Film, Emotion, and Genre, in Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, eds.,Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999),

27.30 Carroll, Film, Emotion, and Genre, 28.31 Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Cameras Eye(Chicago:Univ. o Chicago Press, 1998).32 Boltanski,Distant Suering, xv (italics in source).33 Chiapello and Boltanski, Michle Lamont and Laurent Thvenot, eds., RethinkingComparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires o Evaluation in France and the United States(Cam-bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).34 Emmanuel Lvinas, Otherwise than Being: or, Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis(Boston: M. Nijho and Hingham, 1981). For a detailed discussion o the application o

Lvinas in literary criticism see Robert Eaglestone, Ethical Criticism: Reading ater Levinas(Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1997).35 Jacques Derrida, Psyche; Invention o the Other, in Acts o Literature, ed. Derek At-tridge (New York: Routledge, 1992), 3375. For urther discussion see Derek Attridge,Innovation, Literature, Ethics: Relating to the Other, PMLA114, no. 1 (1999): 2031.36 Hubert Zap, Literary Ecology and the Ethics o Texts, New Literary History39, no.4 (2009): 84768.37 Nussbaum, Loves Knowledgeand Nussbaum, The Fragility o Goodness: Luck and Ethicsin Greek Tragedy and Philosophy(New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001).38 J. Hillis Miller, The Ethics o Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, and Benjamin

(New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1987); Stanley E. Fish, Is There a Text in this Class?: TheAuthority o Interpretive Communities(Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1980).39 Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature(ChapelHill: Univ. o North Carolina Press, 1984).40 See Ilana F. Silber, Pragmatic Sociology as Cultural Sociology: Beyond RepertoireTheory?European Journal o Social Theory6, no. 4 (2003): 42749.41 Latour, Reassembling the Social,22.