What Margarete and I argue in Fatal Forms is simply that for Simmel,
as an exemplifier of the modernist tradition, a socal form (a form
can be thought of as a "grammer" or "framework" for interaction) always
occurs in tandem with it's oppositional form.
Where there is freedom, there is constraint, for example.
The play between the forms is the place where interaction occurs.
This is Goffman's "negotiated order," which we explored
reading Sociology of the Absurd.
The postmodernist sociologist Jean Baudrillard, on the other hand,
argues that in the current technological culture, that technology,
particulary the media, have become completely intertwined with our
everyday life. Technology has come to be what Simmel said it could not,
a form that exists in isolation with no binary. Baudrillard calls this a
"fatal strategy"
because he's French and he can. We called it a "fatal form" becuase,
following from Simmel,
a singular form allows no interaction. Hence it's fatality. This is why
postmodernists are alway going on about the "death
of the social."
The question for us, then, is what are the implications
of this fatality for symbolic interaction (the activity, not
the perspective).
Made it worse, didn't I?
Jon
Jonathon S. Epstein "Call it deconstruction.
Department of Sociology There is no room
Wake Forest University inside a box."
Winston Salem, N.C. 27109 King's X
(910)-759-5447
epstein@wfu.edu
Rocklist@sun.soci.niu.edu
"Will work for tenure"!!!
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~rocklist/jepstein/jepstein.html