Abstract
The hypothesis which guides this third chapter is that Tarde’s sociology offers a way to avoid individual-society classic dualism by introducing a third element that exceeds both individuals and societies. We are talking about the notion of the social properly said – or, as Tarde sometimes calls it, the “sociability.” Even though this concept was never fully articulated by Tarde, we can understand it as a plural and heterogeneous field of trans-actions that produce, reproduce and transform societal ensembles. Guided by this hypothesis, and using it to rebuild the conceptual grammar elaborated by Tarde, we will seek to clarify some basic elements of the theory of the individual outlined in various passages of his work. We will also attempt to give an account of his ideas on the masses and the public, in order to propose a rereading of the concept of multitude. Finally, we will analyze the Tardian conception of social change and outline some of its ethical and political consequences for the paradigm of infinitesimal difference.
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Notes
- 1.
Here, the canonical quote is the following:
I have always given it [imitation] a very precise and characteristic meaning, that of the action at a distance of one mind upon another, and of action which consists of a quasi-photographic reproduction of a cerebral image upon the sensitive plate of another brain. If the photographic plate became conscious at a given moment of what was happening to it, would the nature of the phenomenon be essentially changed? By imitation I mean every impression of an inter-psychical photography, so to speak, willed or not willed, passive or active. If we observe that wherever there is a social relation between two living beings, there we have imitation in this sense of the word (either of one by the other or of others by both, when, for example, a man converses with another in a common language, making new verbal proofs from very old negatives), we shall have to admit that a sociologist was justified in taking this notion as a look-out post. (Tarde 1903:14)
However, it is important to underline that this photographic cliché made of beliefs and desires, which is a social example, does not imprint identical images in all individuals. Nobody imitates exactly the model. For Tarde, repetition is always varied, or, more specifically, all repetition is differential and that difference is infinitesimal.
- 2.
Perhaps it is necessary to clarify that the lines in question are not presented to us as teleological – in the habitual sense of this word. There would not be a unique meaning in Tarde’s work which could be transmitted in its purity and “realized” in its most important readers. Rather, one would have to think that each of them reinvents Tarde, putting his texts in relation to other references and contexts, and framing them within their own theoretical projects. Furthermore, each one of these authors is a crossroads of multiple starting and endpoints. From this perspective, Tarde can be considered as a thread in a complex plot. Nevertheless, at least a Tardean inheritance or contamination can be found in all the mentioned authors. If one approaches the problem from a paradigmatic point of view, as we do, then Tarde becomes an eminent producer and representative of the philosophy and sociology of difference that Deleuze and Latour strove to develop. Tarde doesn’t carry out the same role in the psychoanalytic realm. For a productive approach to his legacy in the psychoanalytic tradition, see Laclau (2005). As regards Lacan, it is worth remembering that he knew Tarde, who he mentions in various instances in his writings and who he includes as part of the bibliography of his doctoral thesis (Lacan 1975). However, the extent of the Tardean influence on Lacan’s work still remains to be analyzed.
- 3.
The Marxist concepts of infrastructure and superstructure lack meaning in Tarde’s microsociology. In regards to the great social representations of the Durkheimian type, he acknowledges their existence and importance but considers it necessary to specify the processes of their formation. In other words, their condition as effects, rather than as causes. He also considers that these representations can only live in the individuals who carry them and that emphasizing their exteriority leads to a kind of reification and essentialism he describes as medieval. Regarding the first issue, see Tarde (1901b, 1902b); for the second, see Tarde (2000).
- 4.
It is true, as Joseph (1984) indicates in his classic text on the subject, that Tarde appears optimistic regarding societies of publics. However, it is also true that throughout his work he launched many tirades against journalism and its potential to produce dangerous social dynamics (Tarde 1901a, 1892). Regarding the relationship between multitude, criminality, and violence, see Tonkonoff (2014).
- 5.
These examples not only show the powerful mark left by Tarde on Deleuze’s and Foucault’s thinking (the first one belongs to A Thousand Plateaus and the second to Discipline and Punish). They also indicate the normatively indeterminate character of the concept of invention.
- 6.
An example of this may be Freud’s discovery (or invention?) of the unconscious. And, perhaps, this is why Freud was able to write, referring to the patient his colleague Breuer transferred to him abruptly, and whose treatment was crucial for that discovery: “In that moment Breuer had in his power the key which opens (what Goethe calls) the door of the mothers, but he let it fall. Despite his intellectual qualities, there was nothing Faustian in his nature. Captured by a conventional horror, he escaped and abandoned his patient to a colleague.” Letter from Freud to Stefan Zweig, quoted by Manoni (1969:27).
- 7.
In reference to Foucault, Richard Rorty has stated:
I think, found himself in this position – the position which I have described as that of “the knight of autonomy”. This meant that, whether he wanted to be or not, he was a useful citizen of a democratic country, one who did his best to make its institutions fairer and more decent. I wish he had been able to be more comfortable with that self-description than he in fact was. (Rorty 1992:333)
Deleuze (1994:37) borrows the expression “crowned anarchy” from Artaud’s Heliogabale.
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Tonkonoff, S. (2017). Individuals, Publics, and Crowds. Where Does Social Change Come From?. In: From Tarde to Deleuze and Foucault. Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55149-4_3
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