SOCIOLOGY ON THE WAY TO SOCIETY

- Sociology asks what are the ‘aspects’ of society? (from Latin aspectus (“look, sight; appearance”))

- Thinkers of equality (Addams, DuBois, Ambedkar etc.) say: “It would be the gravest error to assume that there is something, one thing, that we could call “society” ... What can be found is sociability. It is (has to be) invented .” (Jaaware 2019)

- Sociability “is about how we conduct ourselves in relation to persons unknown”

- “It is not as if each husband and wife living separately are a family by themselves. Often enough, brothers, sisters and other relations come together under the patriarch’s or his wife’s umbrella, so to say, and settle family issues ... travel to meet each other.”

(Jaaware 2019)

“In segmented sociabilities we obtain a relation of nonrelation: We can trade, exchange, have sex with, “the lower,” and yet not relate to them in any manner”

(Jaaware 2019)

We need concepts to make sense between

+ “what happens” (facts)

+ “what I live through” ( ories)

+ what you live through ( ories)

“Because the sexualization of female identity has not been accompanied by a genuine redistribution of social and economic power and because it has in a way reinforced men’s sexual power over women, it makes traditional patriarchy attractive ... Freedom has both made more widespread and more legitimate experiences of uncertainty, devaluation, and worthlessness .” (2019)

Homo Sentimalis ((ir)Rational Construction of the Emotional Self)

‘right’ conduct of desire

psycholog ts therap ts self-help irituality tradition

Sexual situations “are nonrelationships because at least one of the two sides either lacks an emotional goal or refuses to imagine the future, or both.” (2019))

Durkheim’s 1897 notion of anomie relied a great deal on the example of a new social type of 19th c. France - the single man. “Anomic desire is ... restless, hyper-active, in perpetual quest of something ...” This type had appeared as a warning in literature much earlier - Gustave Flaubert’s ‘Madame Bovary’ (1856). Remade as ‘Maya Memsaab’ (1993) in 20th c. India - something in Emma/Maya’s condition was relatable to Indian audiences now.

Eva Illouz

- Looking for a life-partner: Matching with your ideal ‘emotional’ partner is a way of “ engineer[ing] sociability through emotional compatibility”.

◦ You construct your ideal self textually and visually in your profile.

◦ Through a questionnaire your qualitative “difference [with a stranger] is precisely expressed as magnitude” the likelihood of “a neutral ground”.

◦ Is a high chance of compatibility really a high chance of love? Is making your own profile really the opposite of arranged marriage? What is ‘compatibility’? (2007)

- What do I want? Something casual, to feel desired: Unloving “is about the unmaking of social bonds ... at least one of the two sides either lacks an emotional goal or refuses to imagine the future, or both.” In unloving “choice is exercised both positively (wanting, desiring something), and negatively ( defining oneself by the repeated avoidance or rejection of relationships , being too confused or ambivalent to desire, wanting to accumulate so many experiences that choice loses its emotional and cognitive relevance, leaving and undoing relationships serially as a way to assert the self and its autonomy).” (2019)

Badiou: “In today’s world, it is generally thought that individuals only pursue their own self-interest. Love is an antidote to that ... [Love] takes us into key areas of the experience of what is difference and, essentially, leads to the idea that you can ... construct a world from a decentred point of view other than that of my mere impulse to survive or re-affirm my own identity.” It is not a “pure” experience that confirms my identity and desirability.

* Key Reference: (1) Alain Badiou. In Praise of Love. (2) Eva Illouz. The End of Love . (3) Jacques Ranciere . Why Emma Bovary Had to be Killed