Abstract
In this compact and brilliantly written book, Peter Baehr offers a fresh contribution to an old epistemological problem: what are the cognitive operations through which we develop explanatory statements on the course of the social world? How can we construct knowledge about previously unknown things? The author shows that one of the main tools at hand is unmasking, an operation both central in any type of critical theory and in everyday life. Unmasking is based on a presupposition: social agents are either comedians who hide their feelings or dupes who do not know what moves them behind their backs. Social scientists’ main task is to tear the mask, the veil, the lie, or the misrecognition that is at the very principle of social life. The explanation of behavior amounts to a form of accusation: you are not what you claim to be; you play a role in society behind your persona (mask in Latin). More than a method, unmasking is a style, a way of writing about the world as well as a theory of the social, largely unquestioned by its users, but which orients most of the cognitive frames at work in critical theory. The main trap would be to use a form of unmasking strategy to unmask the unmasking style: Baehr’s rigorous demonstration elegantly avoids it and makes use of a form of sociological irony that is quite uncommon in our community. I find it much needed, since it allows us to distance ourselves from the grandiloquence of critical discourse, which allows us to consider ourselves as the masters of the debunking game.
Peter Baehr divides his book into three parts. The first offers a short genealogy of the unmasking style. Here, central notions are scrutinized, as they constitute the basis of the critical explanatory attitude: ideology, illusion, false consciousness, and collective misrecognition. The social world is grounded in misunderstanding; the social scientist’s task is to understand what is not understood by agents and to reveal the truth to agents themselves. This is a demiurgic endeavor permitted by the power of the critical eye. It gives us an unconditioned mastery of interpretation; our knowledge is encapsulated in our way of looking at the world. We do not need to justify it. It goes without saying. The critical attitude has deep roots in history. Unmasking techniques are not only a signature of sociological modernity, but a set of tools used in social life to destroy people’s credibility. Baehr develops an interesting typology of unmasking gestures: Weaponization is the first: unmasking puts us in an agonistic world. Reduction and positioning disqualify the locutor as expressing the ideology of her or his group. Inversion allows the critical theory to see, for instance, interest where disinterestedness is claimed, even when the agents are perfectly sincere. Deflation is less obvious: it is defined as ‘the move that shifts the ground of an opponent’s position (step one) by explaining it away (step two). Step two makes continued argument unnecessary for the attributor and impossible for its target’ (p. 25). Unmasking has a target: emancipation. The social sciences’ objective is always the liberation of minds confronted with their illusions and misunderstandings. As Adorno wrote, it is about ‘moving from somnambulistic, unfree, determined dependent, passive persons into awakened, aware, active independent ones’. This is the basis of any critical theory, a progressive liberation from social determinations. The last type identified by Baehr is hyperbole or excess: unmasking leads to intemperance. Here again, Adorno and Horkheimer are the perfect example of an unmasking style gone astray (the entertainment industry becomes totalitarian; in America, there is no difference between a man and his economic fate). The typology is put at work in a historical chapter mainly devoted to the ‘unveiling’ of religion in the time of Enlightenment and French Revolution. Baehr thinks that ‘to Rousseau and Jacobin militants, a mask symbolized enmity and infamy. It hid moral turpitude’ (p. 46). Modernity will be less moral and claim a more scientific attitude toward unmasking.
The scientific turn is expressed by Marx; historical materialism changes unveiling attitudes into scientific tools. This is the reason why Baehr devotes a whole chapter to the Marxian template, since it contains most of the elements of the unmasking style up to the present: false consciousness, misrecognition, concealed determinations, commodity fetishism. Here, we can find a more sophisticated version of the unmasking types identified in the first chapter. Baehr makes a distinction between Jacobins and Marxists, despite family resemblances: the formers think that a ‘true heart has nothing to hide’; the latter consider that they should not bother with morality (p. 66). There is clearly a qualitative jump between Robespierre and Lenin. One could object that Marx’s thought cannot be reduced to its unmasking dimension. Even his writings on religion are less reductionist than they may appear. His contribution to historical understanding and to the analysis of capitalism is not totally enclosed in a merely debunking frame.
Baehr ends the first part by a reassessment of the concept of illusion. Here again, Marx is at the center of the investigation. Taking social entities as illusions, even when they are long-lasting and well-established, prevents us from analyzing their dynamics and their functions. When Durkheim wrote that religions were never mere illusions but should be considered as social facts, he disqualified the mainstream statement according to which religions were irrational fancies. In this way, he was much more of a sociologist than Marx, who used the concept of ideology to avoid analyzing the reasons and motives that lead people to believe. Freud goes even further in the Future of an Illusion. Religion becomes a pure fiction. Baehr is right when he points out the weakness of a thesis that deletes the object before any investigation. Bourdieu’s concept of illusio is also targeted by the author. Here, he seems to miss the point: illusio is valued by Bourdieu insofar as it expresses ‘the feeling for the game’, a precondition to engage into any type of social game.
The second part of the book is devoted to sociology. Baehr examines sociologists who are ordinarily considered as strong opponents: Pareto cohabits with Boltanski and Aron, while the Marxist template seems to reign over the social sciences as well as over wider culture. This is perhaps the least convincing part of the endeavor. The book is far too short to offer a unified theory of unmasking attitudes in contemporary sociological cultures. We should distinguish at this point between the very general statement according to which ‘any science is about the concealed’ (‘il n’y a de science que du caché’, Gaston Bachelard) and the unmasking style as such. We would need an epistemological clarification; it is true that the domination of the unmasking style in critical theories prevents us from making efforts to understand the world as it is. Many of the authors analyzed in the book give their answers as soon as they ask the questions. Most of the time, they do not need any form of empirical verification or falsification. There is undoubtedly an overemphasis of theory in the critical attitude, as shown in the Frankfurt School, particularly in its American moment. The chapter devoted to Peter Berger and Luc Boltanski is pleasant to read, but it not always easy to understand the argument. The authors are hardly comparable. The first links sociology to a form of cosmopolitism that debunks the parochialism inherent to any form of local social life. The second, whom Baehr aptly sees as extremely contorted, tries to reintegrate critical theory after a long detour due to his contestation of Bourdieu’s version of critical theory. Are we ‘back in the land of the Marxian template’ (p. 125) as Baehr claims? It is not sure.
The third part sketches a research program. If we agree to think that the unmasking style has become an impediment in our sociological lives, what should we do? ‘I am right, you can shut up’ seems to be the motto of critical theory (p. 129). We have all encountered the problem, particularly with zealous students. Baehr is aware of the cunning of critical reason: has his book unmasked the unmasking style?
The answer is no, both from the author and the reviewer. There is no attempt to reveal the hidden agenda of critical theorists; this is undoubtedly one of the merits of the book. It allows us to get out of, at least for a while, the agonistic field that we are trapped in. However, Baehr does not offer a clear view of a possible alternative. I fully agree with him when he refers to Montaigne and Simone Weil (and more generally literature) to tame the hubris of the unmaskers. Critical theory is characterized by a decisive lack of humility. In this respect, it would be interesting to analyze the complex trajectory of the notion of emancipation. Baehr rightly points out the fact that it is closely associated with the process of unmasking. I would add to the remedy a return to empirical sociology, where findings can be contested and reassessed.
Baehr’s book finds its limitations in its short size and in its often aphoristic style. Nevertheless, it is highly enjoyable and witty, particularly for senior sociologists like me who have been so often unmasked along the road.