Georg Simmel and the disciplinary imaginary PDF
Preview Georg Simmel and the disciplinary imaginary
s Georg Simmel and the Disciplinary Imaginary s Georg Simmel and the Disciplinary Imaginary Elizabeth S. Goodstein Stanford University Press Stanford, California Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2017 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. This book has been published with the assistance of Emory University. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Goodstein, Elizabeth S., author. Title: Georg Simmel and the disciplinary imaginary / Elizabeth S. Goodstein. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016037992 (print) | LCCN 2016038968 (ebook) | ISBN 9780804798365 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503600737 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503600744 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Simmel, Georg, 1858-1918—Influence. | Philosophy, Modern—20th century. | Philosophy and social sciences. | Social sciences—Philosophy. | Money—Philosophy. Classification: LCC B3329.S64 G66 2017 (print) | LCC B3329.S64 (ebook) | DDC 193—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037992 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/13 Minion s Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix Prologue: Modernist Philosophy and the History of Theory 1 part i: cold cash and the modern classic 1. Introduction: Simmel’s Modernity 15 Marginality at the Center: Georg Simmel in Berlin, 15 Modern Culture and the Problem of Disciplinarity, 25 Disciplining Simmel, 35 Simmel’s Philosophical Modernism and the History of Theory, 48 2. Simmel as Classic: Representation and the Rhetoric of Disciplinarity 52 A Modern Classic?, 53 Simmel’s Self-(Re)Presentation, 61 Simmel’s “Formalism,” 66 Form in Context: Theorizing Culture, 78 Modernist Identity and the Self-Overcoming of Relativism, 83 3. Memory/Legacy: Georg Simmel as (Mostly) Forgotten Founding Father 96 Simmel in America: The Disciplinary (Pre-)History, 96 Discipline/History: Theorizing Misrecognition, 104 Rereading Misreading: “Simmel” in America, 113 Styles of Thought and the Rhetoric of Disciplinarity, 121 Disciplining Culture, 125 part ii: philosophy of money as modernist philosophy 4. Style as Substance: Simmel’s Modernism and the Disciplinary Imaginary 137 Reading Simmel’s Philosophy of Money, 140 Simmel’s Philosophical Modernism, 146 Rethinking Thinking: Culture, Relativism, and das Geistesleben, 156 5. Performing Relativity: Money and Modernist Philosophy 168 From a Psychology to a Philosophy of Money, 172 Money in Action: Value, Life, Form, 179 Money, Representation, and “the Cultural Process,” 186 Money and Metaphysics: Relativism as Modernist Method, 199 vi Contents 6. Disciplining the Philosophy of Money 211 A Disciplinary Rorschach: Early Responses to the Philosophy of Money, 212 The Philosophy of Money as “Social Theory,” 221 Interdisciplinarity before Disciplines: Simmel’s Phenomenology of Culture, 226 Metaphysical Relativism and Modernist Praxis, 234 part iii: the case of simmel 7. Thinking Liminality, Rethinking Disciplinarity 249 Method and Change: Thinking Liminality, 249 Beyond the (Philosophy of the) Subject: Thinking Relatively and the “Problem of Sociology,” 259 Laws, Norms, and the Relativity of Being, 272 Form, Figuration, and the Disciplinary Imaginary, 278 Canonization Reprised, 284 8. The Stranger and the Sociological Imagination 296 Reading Simmel: Appropriation by Fragments, 300 Rereading Rereading: Estranging the Stranger, 306 Becoming Social, Figuring Strangeness, 310 Disciplinarity and the Cultural Process, 321 Epilogue: Georg Simmel as Modernist Philosopher 331 Simmel in Strasbourg, 337 Select Bibliography 347 Index 359 s Acknowledgments Every book bears the traces of a life. I thank my friends, family, neighbors, and col- leagues who have supported, sustained, and challenged me in and through the many permutations of a project that has occupied me intermittently for a great many years. This book would not exist had I not had the excellent fortune to find my way to Emory’s Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, where I enjoyed unparalleled intel- lectual freedom to pursue interdisciplinary research and teaching. I am especially grateful for the support of Robert Paul and the late Ivan Karp, admirers of Simmel who brought me to Emory in 1999, and for the wisdom, kindness, and unwaver- ing solidarity of Kevin Corrigan and Sander Gilman, who demonstrate that the life of the mind is truly worth living. I thank all of the students who read and reread Simmel and thought with me as I found my way through to what really mattered. Special thanks go to Zak Manfredi and to Jean-Paul Cauvin, who survived reading the Philosophy of Money in just two weeks and went on to teach me so many things. Now that the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts is no more, I am grateful to have found a congenial new home in Emory’s English Department, and my warm thanks go to Walter Kalaidjian for his thoughtful support during the recent transition, when Walt Reed’s generosity and kindness have also been more welcome than ever. In a world where sustained projects of the sort represented by this book have be- come most untimely, it is a pleasure to thank those who supported and advanced my work both intellectually and materially along the way. An Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship provided an invaluable opportunity to work in Berlin and Leipzig with the late Klaus Köhnke, whose formidable scholarship and compelling vision of Simmel’s significance have left an indelible legacy. The Humboldt provided a front-row view of the monumental undertaking that was the Georg Simmel Gesamtaus gabe, without which this book would not be thinkable. Years later, a residency at the American Academy in Berlin provided a new impetus to reimagine my project under extremely congenial conditions, and my special thanks go to the Academy and its won- derful staff for all they did to make my stay on the Wannsee so special and so productive. More recently, a residency at Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory af- forded me time and space to rethink this work yet again under changed conditions both local and global. I am very grateful, too, to the wonderful librarians at Emory who have so often gone the extra mile for me. viii Acknowledgments I thank the colleagues here and abroad who have provided opportunities to share and test my evolving vision of Simmel. Kieran Keohane invited me to give a key- note address at a remarkable Social Theory Consortium Conference at University College, Cork. Dan Purdy introduced me to the lively interdisciplinary community at the Max Kade Institute at Penn State. Don Levine invited me to join the party for Simmel’s Lebensanschauung at the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Michael Gardiner and Tilottama Rajan welcomed me at the Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism at the University of Western Ontario. Brigid Doherty brought me into the interdisciplinary conversation about European Cultural Studies at Princeton. Special gratitude goes to Martin Kagel, who inspired new directions by seeing the path I needed to follow before I knew it myself and fi- nally getting me to Athens. Thanks, too, to the readers for Stanford University Press, whose invaluable feedback came at a crucial juncture, and to my editor, Emily-Jane Cohen, for her discerning support. There is not room to thank everyone whose friendship and support has accom- panied and sustained me over the past years, but I can’t imagine how it would have been without Delia Angiolini, Jay Bernstein, David Carr, Petra Coronato, Kari Di- anich, Gabrielle Goodstein, Klio Goodstein, May Goodstein, Sam Goodstein, Peter Hoeyng, Li Jiang, Susan Katrin, Richard Kopffleisch, Kim Loudermilk, Carla Mays, Diane McWhorter, Judith Miller, Helen Nash, Christina Oberstebrink, Rachel Saltz, Dirk Schumann, Birgit Tautz, Pedro Vasquez, Katrin Volger-Schumann, and Cindy Willett. Thank you all very much. The completion of this book is ringed with sadness for those who are no longer here to receive it, including three very different Simmel partisans, Ivan Karp, Klaus Köhnke, and Don Levine. My uncle Eldon and aunt Marian are deeply missed, as is my dear friend Leslie Graham. Most of all, I mourn the loss of my father, Bernard J. Goodstein, whose faith in me never wavered, and who would have rejoiced to hold this volume in his hands. I am so grateful that my mother, May, and brother, Sam, are here to celebrate and to remember. The final years of this evolving project have brought the great joy of joining my life to Klaus van den Berg’s. I thank him for solidarity, kindness, and patience, for good humor and transcendent music, and for all varieties of insight and support. Klaus has thought with me and challenged me, and his help, not least with trans- lating many an opaque passage, has been invaluable in bringing my latest vision of Simmel to the present conclusion. In love, I dedicate this book to the memory of my father, and also to the hope of the future that is dawning even now for the two of us—together, at long last, in one place. s Abbreviations AJS American Journal of Sociology AuS Äesthetik und Soziologie um die Jahrhundertwende: Georg Simmel, ed. Hannes Böhringer and Karlfried Gründer (1976) BdD Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel: Briefe, Erinnerungen, Bibliographie. Zu seinem 100. Geburtstag am 1. März 1958, ed. Kurt Gassen and Michael Landmann (1958) DGS Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie; German Sociological Society GSG Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe, ed. Otthein Rammstedt (1989–2015) IIS Institut internationale de sociologie TCS Theory, Culture & Society (journal) WS Winter Semester (at the Berlin [Friedrich-Wilhelms] University)
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