Society of Singularities. Andreas Reckwitz
what respects can social entities acquire a cultural quality? To answer this question, it will be necessary again to fall back on cultural theory and its sensitivity to cultural singularities, which I would like to apply to my sociological analysis of the social processes of culturalization. It is possible to distinguish five features or qualities that qualify objects, subjects, places, events, and collectives as valuable and affecting cultural entities: the aesthetic, the narrative-hermeneutic, the ethical, the creative, and the ludic quality. These pertain to all singularized entities. Objects, for example, can develop an aesthetic quality; they can be attributed an ethical quality; their primary content can be narrative and hermeneutic; they can be creative objects, or the objects of play. They can possess just one of these qualities or combine several of them together. The same is true of singularized places and events, subjects and collectives. These qualities are assigned or denied through practices of valorization, and they manifest themselves affectively. It is possible to provide some structure to this sequence of five qualities if we proceed from the assumption that, as far as cultural praxis is concerned, we are always dealing with two dimensions: with sense (or meaning) and sensibility (or sensuousness). On the one hand, cultural entities have a meaningful aspect: they describe, narrate, explain, and justify. On the other hand, they possess a peculiar sensuous dimension to the extent that they address our sensory perception in a particular way. Many cultural theories have foregrounded either the one or the other quality of culture and have therefore understood it either hermeneutically or aesthetically. It would be best, however, to think about them together.
The meaningful quality of culture has frequently been associated with myths, religious beliefs, or world views. On a more fundamental level, this is really a matter of the narrative-hermeneutic quality that objects, places, events, subjects, and collectives can acquire. The sensuous aspect of culture can in turn be described as its aesthetic quality. With their narrative-hermeneutic quality, cultural entities provide narratives about the world of nature and society, about the past and the future, about people, things, and gods. At issue here is understanding the context of the world and the place of the subject within this context.17 With their aesthetic quality, cultural entities present themselves as objects of intensified sensory perception. The aesthetic can be associated with the imaginary – that is, with the capacity to imagine alternative worlds or things beyond what can be perceived by the senses.18 When singularities happen to be performative, it is usually in these two ways. The singularized objects, places, events, collectives, and subjects that I have discussed above and that will continue to concern us throughout this book are always aestheticized and/or hermeneuticized in a variable manner. This is just as true of travel destinations and religious communities as it is of food, internet profiles, bodies, events, cities, nations, and media products. The inherent complexity and inner density that such things develop may be structured on a stronger aesthetic basis or on a stronger hermeneutic basis, or both aspects can be defining to the same extent.
Both in its narrative-hermeneutic and its aesthetic-imaginative quality, the praxis of the cultural sphere reconfigures the structures of everyday practices and (especially) instrumentally rational practices in a fundamental way. This applies equally to the status of representations of the world and to the status of sensory perceptions. In the pragmatic world of everyday life (and all the more so after the formal rationalization of activity), both representations and perceptions possess the (instrumental) character of information claiming to depict reality. Over the course of their rationalization, representations and perceptions acquire a sort of cognitive structure and serve the thrift-driven understanding of reality with the goal of making the natural or social world as efficient and orderly as possible. The praxis of culture does not provide any information of this sort but rather creates interpretive contexts (that is, stories) that are meant to depict the world (individual biographies, political history, cosmological structures, etc.) in all its complexity. Such stories can be told by places but also by events, communities, and objects – from works of art to consumer products. Something analogous is also true of sensory perceptions. The praxis of culture is not concerned with producing neutral perceptions of an informational nature; the aim here is rather intensive perception in all sensory dimensions and for its own sake. Any social entity can be the object of such aesthetic perception. In general, it can be said that information requires utility and a function, while narratives and aesthetic perceptions require value. Information is emotionally impoverished and objective; narratives and aesthetic perceptions mobilize affects.
In addition to these two basic qualities – the narrative-hermeneutic and the aesthetic – there are three further cultural qualities that, though related to the first two,19 nevertheless have their own independent character: the ethical, the creative, and the ludic. All three can in turn apply to all entities – that is, to objects, subjects, places, events, and collectives. That these can acquire an ethical quality may at first come as a surprise. After all, is the ethical not a dimension of normative rationalization? The answer is no, and this has to do with the distinction between morals and ethics. In short, it comes down to the fact that the index of morals belongs to the logic of (normative) rationality, whereas the index of the ethical belongs to the logic of culture.20 Morality is part of the social logic of the general to the extent that its principles and imperatives have a generally valid and universal character and can (therefore) serve as the basis of a normative system. It is strictly anti-affective and its principles can be followed without any ifs, ands, or buts – unemotionally and, if necessary, even reluctantly. The ethical, on the contrary, is part of the social logic of the particular and is related to ways of life as a web of practices that are regarded as intrinsically good by their participants. The ethical does not apply to everyone but rather occurs as a dimension of singularization in the form of individual ethics and particular-group ethics. In extreme cases, it can sanctify the good and, unlike morality, it is typically imbued with a narrative or aesthetic quality. In this sense, not only can subjects and collectives acquire an ethical quality – objects, events, or places can become ethically charged bearers of the good as well.
Let us turn now to the quality of creativity. Above, I maintained that production represents an essential bundle of practices within the social logic of singularities. This does not only create unique entities, however, but can itself be regarded as singular – that is, as something that has its own intrinsic value and as something that affects participants. This intrinsic value belongs to the creative process as such.21 In this sense, if it has an intrinsic structure, this is not a matter of mere “production” but rather a praxis of creation in which elements are arranged in a way that results in innovatively or artistically perfected forms. The contemporary term “design” covers at least one aspect of this creative practice. The second is that it involves dealing with materialities (that is, materials and media of various sorts) and dealing with idealities (with symbols or narratives, for instance). Under certain circumstances, such practice can be interpreted as expressive, as the expression of the subject (or also a collective) in an object, but it can also be dramatized in a singular creative act or have the character of a subtle and quotidian reproduction.22
Finally, there is the quality of the ludic – of play and the playful. In the medium of play, non-ordinary worlds are realized that follow their own self-imposed sets of rules and open up their own realms of possibility. The spectrum of ludic practices ranges from strictly regulated rituals and competitions to the openly playful and purely exploratory. Every cultural entity creates a world of its own, but those with a pronounced ludic quality involve a world in which a co-player can actively enter and be engaged in events from moment to moment. Games possess an open logic of activity and experimentation that generates a unique sort of tension. They are not burdened by the pragmatics of daily life or rationalized processes. In short, play is the praxis par excellence in which culture demonstrates its ostensibly useless excess in opposition to the rational world.23 It ranges from the individual game object to the playful event and the ludic collective.
Narrative, aesthetic, ethical, creative, and ludic qualities are not inherent to objects, subjects, places, times, and collectives; the latter only gain these qualities within the social logic of singularities, with its valorizations and de-valorizations. Individual entities are instilled with these qualities – or not. On the macro-level,