Single-cell resistance in the timespace of kairos
Max Forte has produced for his Open Anthropology blog an impressive meditation on the scope for solitary action in a world system facing possible breakdown. I was moved by it to comment on his approach as a variation of ‘self-in’the-world’ and on the analogy with a writer working alone:
This is a great piece, Max. I have been thinking for a while about how we might incorporate a perspective we might label ‘self-in-the-world’ into more explicitly sociological models of collective existence. I have drawn on Heidegger’s late metaphysics (solitude, world and finitude) and Gandhi (each of us is unique and a part of humanity), for example. Your profound meditation on the single cell in the world system, taking off from Wallerstein, hit a lot of buttons for me and I am grateful to you.
At the risk of saying what is obvious, we have not yet transcended the division between structure and agency because our thinking is not dialectical enough. I spend a lot of my time writing alone in a Paris chambre de bonne. Like any writer, I ask who my audience might be and the answer I find is increasingly ‘myself’. At first sight, this appears to be a sort of solipsism, but in a real Durkheimian sense, I believe that society is with me when I write. After a lifetime of social engagement in many parts of the world, if I am to satisfy my own inner ear, I must assuage all or most of my formative experiences in society as I have internalized them.
This too is something I find in your brilliant essay.
Hey Keith,
I’m very interested to learn more about this difference between structure and agency, and why you think we still act on this perceived difference.
You are saying that there is no difference between structure and agency, but that we yet have to come to terms with this. This sounds like quantum physics where there is no difference between space and time, yet they form something called spacetime.
Or it reminds me of Goldman Sachs which was allowed to make vast profits by making trades that took milliseconds between request and confirmation, instead of the minutes or hours others have to bear.
Do you mean that our actions influence the structure with such immediacy that there is no longer any difference between what we do and what we cause?
I like to think that since a long time the structures we depend on every moment of every day – if for no other purpose than to keep our sanity – have become untraceable, that is unable to determine their outlines and architectures. Because of this we have to go through life with an approximation of these structures because we have a strong need to look at life and society as coherent and sensible. Sensible meaning not just appropriate but also detectable, knowable, discernible; that is their coherence is believed to be perceivable if we would care to look closer.
Take care
Steven