Jeffrey C. Alexander on the Theatricality of Social Life: Deepening the Hermeneutics of Cultural Sociology

Abstract

This article provides a critical examination of the cultural sociology developed by Jeffrey C. Alexander, focusing on his view of the theatricality of social life. The argument is that, while Alexander’s perspective do engage in a highly significant valuation of the performative dimension of social and political life that matches his strong program in cultural sociology to add a reflexive turn to cultural production in general, his views on theatre and politics remain somehow limited in their efforts at reaching the symbolic structures that are constitutive of these domains. In using a structural hermeneutics to define the analytical core of his methodology, Alexander loses sight of a more dialectical hermeneutics able to tackle the significant transformations affecting those symbolic structures, and exhibited by both avant-garde theatre and media infused mass democratic politics.

From Author to Network: The Coming of Age of Civil Sphere Theory

“…Finally, CST is the product of a scholar who is not only prolific, but whose protean ideas take contemporary social theory in many directions beyond a distinctive theory of civil society, including work on narrative and genre, performance, cultural trauma, and iconicity. All are conceived as aspects of the strong program in cultural sociology; but how should we see them (Côte, 2021(Côte, , 2023)? Should they be approached as various intellectual currents to be taken solely on their own terms, discrete strands of theorizing?…”