Affect, Relationality and the ‘Problem of Personality’  

Oleh:

Blackman, Lisa

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Theory, Culture & Society vol. 25 no. 1 (Jan. 2008), page 23-48.
Topik: becoming ¦ cultural inscription ¦ hypnosis ¦ William James ¦ mass psychology ¦ personality ¦ suggestion ¦ Gabriel Tarde
Fulltext: 23.pdf (384.81KB)

Isi artikel

This article will consider the vitalist turn within sociology and social theory in the context of the emergence of the psychological sciences at the turn of the last century. One aspect of the revitalization of social theory characteristic of this ‘turn’ has been a renewed interest in the problems of affect, sensation and perception. The centrality of affect and perception is often framed through the writings of a number of key 19th- and early 20th-century philosophers, sociologists and psychologists, including Gabriel Tarde, Henri Bergson, William James and George Simmel. This article will consider the complex forgettings and elisions which arguably are characteristic of this revival through an interrogation of the ‘problem of personality’ that was formulated by William James, the 19th-century pragmatist philosopher and psychologist. This problem was framed through James’s interest in matters psychic, spiritual and psychopathological. The concept of ‘suggestibility’ that formed the backdrop to James’s writings on mysticism and the psychological is one that has largely been forgotten, lost or dissolved into something else in recent work that tries to revive something of the traditions that once took ‘suggestibility’ as a serious object of study. Although the importance of suggestion to contemporary social theory has been argued by a few commentators, its importance for breaking down the separation between the psychological and the social has not been given adequate attention. The reinvention of psychological matter for social theory is proposed as an important component of vitalism, if it is to effect the transformations in rethinking the social which have been firmly placed on the sociological and cultural agenda.

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