The Fall of Public Man

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What has emerged in the last hundred years, as communities of collective *personality* have begun to form, is that the shared imagery becomes a deterrent to shared action. Just as personality itself has become an antisocial idea, collective personality becomes group identity in society hostile to, difficult to translate into, group activity. Community has become a phenomenon of collective being rather than collective action, save in one way. The only transaction for the group to engage in is that of purification, of rejection and chastisement of those who are not "like" others. Since the symbolic materials usable in forming collective personality are unstable, communal purification is unending, a continual quest after the loyal American, the authentic Aryan, the "genuine" revolutionary. The logic of collective personality is the purge; its enemy, all acts of alliance, cooperation, or United Front. Broadly stated, when people today seek to have full and open emotional relations with each other, they succeed only in wounding each other. This is the logical consequence of the destructive gemeinschaft which arose when personality made its appearance in society." In middle age, Sennett says he has returned to his political roots. "I started out in the 60s when it was pretty fevered on the left. And then I moved right in reaction to all the bullshit of the counter- culture. I got fed up with that anti intellectualism, the rejection of serious ideas, of serious art and the measurement of reality by psychological categories of the moment, an emphasis on immediate gratification." The trade-off between greater psychic absorption and lessened social participation can easily be mistaken as a psychological issue itself. It could be said that people are losing the "will" to act socially, or that they are losing the "desire." These words as pure psychological states mislead because they do not explain how a whole society could lose its will together, or change its desires. *They further mislead in suggesting a therapeutic solution, to shake people out of this self-absorption--as if the environment which has eroded their social will and transformed their desires might suddenly welcome changed individuals with open arms.*” Dulong R., 1992, « Dire la réputation, accomplir l’espace », Quaderni. Communication, technologies, pouvoir, 18, pp. 109-124. Accès : https://www.persee.fr/doc/quad_0987-1381_1992_num_18_1_974. I agree with the author that this is a fair standard by which to judge empirical social studies like his own. However, I find that he does not fully meet the standard he sets out for itself. The "logical connections" he establishes between the various elements of his story simply are not always fully convincing. Thus, for example, Sennett suggests that "mass-production of clothes, and the use of mass-production patterns (...) meant that many diverse segments of the cosmopolitan public began in gross to take on a similar appearance (...)." As a result, according to Sennett "the stranger [became] more intractably a mystery." (p. 20) I cannot say I totally buy into this "logical connection" which glosses over the fact that even in a society where clothing is mass produced, it is by no means more difficult than before to guess one's social class by their appearance. As any reader of 19th century literature will know, all it takes is attention to specific, small but by no means totally hidden, markers. Other explanatory factors invoked by Sennett also remain somewhat obscure. Thus, for example, he points to "secularism" as one of the main drivers behind the Victorian notion that "appearances in public, no matter how mystifying, still had to be taken seriously, because they might be clues to the person hidden behind the mask." (p. 21) Even after multiple readings of the passages in the book which try to link the two phenomena, I must admit I still fail to fully grasp the connection.

Sennett ran the institute with the writer Edmund White, and its first fellows included Susan Sontag, Joseph Brodsky, Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault. White later wrote the experience up in his book Caracole as the "chat shop". Sennett says, "We did chat but we also supported a lot of starving intellectuals." It was in the mid to late 80s that Sennett also published three novels, The Frog That Dared To Croak, An Evening With Brahms, and Palais Royal, which were undertaken partly as a way "of recovering my word craft". urn:oclc:878524934 Republisher_date 20120901075410 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20120828181245 Scanner scribe12.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Source Mauss M., 1938, « Une catégorie de l’esprit humain : la notion de personne celle de “moi” », pp. 333-362, in : Mauss M., Sociologie et Anthropologie, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1970.Furthermore, Sennett describes how interacting with others on an impersonal basis can lead to people becoming expressive and open, whereas when people come to need to interact on the basis of a personal connection, sectarianism and closed mindedness often result, as personal connections usually imply connections with the like minded. To demonstrate this, several sections of the book are devoted to comparing public life in London and Paris at different points in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sennett favorably points to practices that existed to build an impersonal public sphere, such as forms of dress that drew attention from personal characteristics, that he claims lead to greater sociability than social practices that depend on emotional interconnectedness. C’est bien parce que le champ sémantique du concept de « réseau » est celui de la simple connexion qu’il permet de mêler humains et non-humains. Mauss M., 1925, Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2007. Plusieurs comptes rendus notent avec ironie que les réflexions de R. Sennett reflètent son propre m (...) Pécqueux A., 2005, « Un témoignage adressé. : parole du rap et parole collective », C ahiers de psychologie politique. Revue d’information, de réflexion et de recherche, 7. Accès : http://lodel.irevues.inist.fr/cahierspsychologiepolitique/index.php?id=1166.

He was also one of the first writers to predict, again with admirable restraint, the economic and political turbulence that may lie ahead. For, as the chilling last line of the Corrosion Of Character observes, a regime "which provides human beings no deep reasons to care about one another cannot long preserve its legitimacy". However, Sennett also points out deeper problems implicit in this way of thinking. In particular, he describes how the intimate society tends towards de-politicization- if 'impersonal forces' are not emotionally gratifying, then they are not considered important in the way personal things are. A person may not wish to conceive of the position they occupy in a social class hierarchy because that would undermine their 'personality'. This prevents them from acting in concert with others to improve their conditions. Pour J. Bonhomme (2012), c’est précisément l’absence d’un dispositif d’ordonnancement impersonnel d (...) Arendt H., 1958, Condition de l’homme moderne, trad. de l’anglais (États-Unis) par G. Fradier, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1961. The Sennetts lived in two rooms with a bath, but were to some extent isolated from the wider "screaming, laughing, wailing, shouting life" of the housing projects. Playing the cello at six and composing at eight, living in a flat filled with books, the serious young boy could see a way out. "We had a tough time financially, but in the bohemian, radical milieu in which we lived, we were just another family," he says. "It had a curious class composition, this world. Most were Jewish, but it was a cultural milieu, not an ethnic one."A powerful argument for a more formal public culture and a swipe against the rise of a self-indulgent counter-culture' Elias N., 1939, La Civilisation des mœurs, trad. de l’allemand par P. Kamnitzer, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1973. He discusses the complexity and arbitrary nature of signifying acts and displays from contemporary and Victorian times, and how these may lead to neuroses in so many members of society who may attempt to live up to those codes. To say nothing of the damage to those who don't know, or understand, the code by which others are making these judgments.

Brilliant ... One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett's erudition, the reach of his historical imagination, the doggedness of his analysis ... Buy this book and read it. Ironically, it may provide a key to happiness' Richard has the most astonishing ability to re-invent himself. He must be in about his fifth life by now," says the writer and old friend Marina Warner. However, on his private life, Sennett is guarded to a point of gracious stubbornness. He first married in 1968, the marriage being annulled later that year. He says only "I married very young and I divorced young." He was married again between 1974-78. He is more forthcoming on his present marriage to Saskia Sassen, 53, a formidable academic in her own right whom he met in New York in the early 80s and to whom he has been married for 14 years. Sassen, a specialist on the global economy, holds chairs in sociology at the University of Chicago and in political economy at the LSE. Sennett says "Saskia and I write about many of the same things. People imagine our pillow talk is all about the global economy. Well it isn't, well not much." Richard Rogers describes the couple as a "very interesting twosome, overlapping in their interests, but specialising in different areas. They are a powerhouse, but a very nice, humanist powerhouse." PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Fall_of_Public_Man_40th_Anniversary_E_-_Richard_Sennett.pdf, The_Fall_of_Public_Man_40th_Anniversary_E_-_Richard_Sennett.epub

Présentation

Public expression rests upon an idea of “human nature” or “character,” that might be informed by a religious world view, for instance. Personality, which came to replace character, is spawned from an atomistic secular point of view whose belief lies within an immanent interpretation of the world which attempts to grasp an unmediated point of view (this, of course, is a grand illusion…). In a paradoxical way, we put a premium on being able to express your so-called inner self, but this self is constantly isolated and lost since society no longer provides a set of queues which would allow the individual to act politically. What results is a world where the individual is an isolated spectator from their fellow beings, easily swayed and subdued by charismatic moments where, if only for a split second, they “identify” with another. In this society, there is no agency since community is defined as mutual personal disclosure rather than an act where a community produces meaning together, impersonally. The former has no public life—or, rather, public life consists almost exclusively of a set of similar “kinds” of people whose authenticity (are you really our “kind”?) is constantly being put into question—proving authenticity, then, usually comes in the form of an attempt to purify their community. A true public life has little concern for authenticity or purity. What matters is the common impersonal currency of expression. Speaking as one who has read very little sociology, I found this book to be very eye-opening. It made me aware of things I hadn't noticed, and it explained things that I had.