Theorizing the Social Through Literary Fiction: For a New Sociology of Literature

Abstract

When analyzing literary fiction, most cultural sociologists still accept the well-established boundaries between the literary and the sociological, thus leaving literature stripped of its aesthetic qualities. Instead, I propose a new approach that focuses on the process of meaning-making as it occurs within the interaction between the reader and the novel in a given socio-historical setting. This allows analysts to capture those aspects of understanding social experience which are usually ‘lost in translation’ between fictional and sociological genres. My major claims are that, first, when referring to social experience, both sociological and literary texts employ aesthetic devices to mediate understanding for the reader. Second, within the literary genre, the understanding of social experience relies much more on the emotional engagement of the reader through a reading process facilitated by these aesthetic devices. Third, to benefit methodologically and epistemologically from the lyrical understanding of social experience mediated by literature, cultural sociologists must be particularly sensitive to the subtlety and ambiguity of meanings mediated by the aesthetic. The methodological advantage gained is the analysis of deeper cultural meanings grounded in, yet also going beyond, an emotionally and existentially experienced social reality, which is intersubjectively shared and filtered by various groups of readers and cultural intermediaries. The epistemological advantage gained by overcoming the assumed inferiority of literature is that cultural sociological research unlocks a whole new area for understanding the meanings of social life, especially its non-discursive dimensions. The research model I propose for a new sociology of literature adopts the landscape of meaning concept developed by Isaac Reed in combination with the aesthetic structuralism of Czech linguist Jan Mukařovský. This model will be demonstrated through an interpretive analysis of the Czech novel Sestra (published in English as City Sister Silver) by Jáchym Topol.

Simmel and Shakespeare on Lying and Love

“…The article is built through an interdisciplinary dialogue between sociological theory (predominantly a close reading of Simmel's key works on lying, secrecy and secret societies) and literary-historical scholarship on the early modern period. We read the sonnet as a kind of social theory in itself, with its own view on lying and love, which places our article in line with recent efforts in this journal towards creating a more mutualistic approach to sociological engagements with literature (Barnwell, 2015;Váňa, 2020).…”

Maintenance work: Interrogating the sociology of art

“…The artist explains their practice by giving their own description before sociologists and art sociologists theorize or create analytical tools to bring the art closer to sociology. In the sense of (Váňa, 2020a, p. 8; Váňa, 2020b, p. 193) treatment of literature, sociology should investigate art in a symmetrical, dialogic way with the art (the artists, art practice…) itself 11 . Even though, in the end, the art must be presented in the ways graspable for sociology, this can be done “without translating [the art] into sociological discourse” (Váňa, 2020a, p. 8; Váňa, 2020b, p. 193).…”

“…In the sense of (Váňa, 2020a, p. 8; Váňa, 2020b, p. 193) treatment of literature, sociology should investigate art in a symmetrical, dialogic way with the art (the artists, art practice…) itself 11 . Even though, in the end, the art must be presented in the ways graspable for sociology, this can be done “without translating [the art] into sociological discourse” (Váňa, 2020a, p. 8; Váňa, 2020b, p. 193). Instead, sociology can refer about art by borrowing from art’s own means of expression.…”

“…For further development of the field, I suggest the sociology of art needs to catch‐up with the recent tendencies happening in art by placing the empirical focus on the participatory‐based practices in participatory art—and furthering a discussion towards different avenues of research. I claim the art practice has the potential to speak for itself in ways that the sociology of art can grasp without fully “translating” the artist's voice into sociological discourse (Váňa, 2020a; Váňa, 2020b). The following sections will first, outline recent tendencies in the sociology of art in relation to the art practice, second, outline the “social turn” happening in art towards participatory‐based art practices, and third, to explore sociologists, who focus on a methodology that allows for the art practice to talk for itself in the analysis on the work of art.…”

Continuity in Discontinuity: The Recurrent Motif of Cultural Autonomy in the Development of Czech Sociology of Culture

“…The following very selective list of publications and topics gives an indication of the breadth of the research interests of cultural sociologists in the Brno department: a special issue on cultural sociology in the journal Sociální studia / Social studies (Szaló and Marada, 2012), a special issue of SČ on the cultural sociology of the city (Ferenčuhová et al, 2013), the memory of places (Szaló, 2017), collective memory and urban spaces (Oláh, 2013), the discourses of migration (Jaworsky, 2016), political performances (Binder, 2017), iconicity and materiality (Bartmański, 2015), post-Communist political discourse (Pospěch, 2020), and the sociology of literature (Váňa, 2020). With the exception of the last author, the sociology of the arts remains a Cinderella specialty even in Brno (but see Szaló's (2010) afterword to Bourdieu's The Rules of Art).…”