Notes Toward a Minor Sociology

Sociology as Major and Minor Literatures

When considered in Deleuze and Guattari’s larger oeuvre, the minor takes on a broad significance, representing a “line of flight” from the major (literature, institutions, knowledges, etc.). To treat mainstream sociology and the sociological canon as a literature in Deleuze and Guattari’s usage presents some initial challenges. While represented primarily through language (but also tables, graphs, and, more popularly, photography or film), sociological literature is largely meant to convey research findings, thought, and knowledge rather than to affect through sensation. And yet, the most memorable sociology is often the most affecting. Marx and Engels’s cry of indignation in the Manifesto of the Communist Party continues to inflame and reverberate over a 150 years since its publication. The Souls of Black Folks is as poetic as it is sociological. Some of sociology’s best ethnographies read with all of the intimacy and pathos of a great novel. And Erving Goffman’s sociology is sometimes so witty that one cannot resist laughing out loud.

We must remember too that sociology’s origins are philosophical, including the classical liberalism of John Locke, Smith and Ricardo, and J. S. Mill; the empiricism of David Hume; and the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx and his followers among others. Even as sociology increasingly defined itself as a science, its philosophical underpinnings have remained its guiding—if only tacitly acknowledged—impetus. After all, empiricism is rather meaningless without situation in a larger theoretical and historical context. Nonetheless, sociologists have developed sophisticated methodologies for studying social life sometimes in attempt to mimic the same unbiased, reliable, and scientific manner as a physicist or biologist would study the natural world. ² This is not to say that all sociologists practice or even endorse scientific positivism; however, a general preoccupation with methodology belies a kind of anxiety around disciplinary legitimacy.

I argue that sociology as it is actually practiced today is in fact a unique hybrid of literature, philosophy, and science. For Deleuze and Guattari (1991/1994), art (including literature), philosophy, and science all deal with the common problem of confronting chaos, albeit through different means respectively: affect and sensation (art), concept building (philosophy), and defining of functions and referential propositions (science). As they put it, “the three disciplines advance by crises or shocks in different ways, and in each case it is their succession that makes it possible to speak of ‘progress’” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p. 203). As a hybrid of literature, philosophy, and science, sociology does not fit neatly into Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of minor literature. However, given that they understand art, philosophy, and science to be different modes of dealing with similar problems, the concepts of major and minor literature can be extended to think about philosophy and science in addition to literature.

What, then, is major sociology? Enlightenment notions of the progressive accumulation of knowledge continue to guide normal science (in Kuhn’s sense) including much of contemporary sociology. In the context of this essay, sociology might best be seen as a discipline perpetually seeking legitimation precisely by defining major sociology for itself, a problem that has been theoretical, methodological, and institutional. I will address these historical facets below, but for now, I will highlight two milestone texts. First, Emile Durkheim’s The Rules of Sociological Method, and in particular the proposition of social facts, is pivotal. By defining social facts as measurable things that are external and thus observable to individuals, Durkheim laid the foundations for the social scientific study of society and what would become the major epistemological stance in sociology: The social world is knowable through empirical validation. The other milestone text for the establishment of major sociology was Talcott Parsons’s The Structure of Social Action wherein he sought to theorize a comprehensive and universal theory of society. Although Parsons has been thoroughly critiqued since this time (especially for his overemphasis on social order), the mandate to outline an overarching and generalized theory of social life continues to be major sociology’s objective, from Parsons to Habermas to Luhmann to Giddens. Moreover, it seems that many critical theoretical projects such as feminist sociology, critical race theory, or the sociology of knowledge tend to become “domesticated” in so far as they are de-radicalized and absorbed into the “real” problem of general social theory. ³ In other words, many attempts at deterritorialization within sociology eventually become reterritorialized.

It is crucial here to point out that sociology is hardly monolithic, and that there is a great deal of variety in not only the kinds of topics studied but also the avenues by which sociologists arrive at their topics of interest. Yet, even amid this diversity, certain presuppositions—be they methodological or theoretical—dominate the field. For example, one goal of sociologists is to identify patterns in social life, but we often neglect to consider what actually constitutes a pattern or to question the categories we assume to be patterned. This is a philosophical question as much as it is a methodological one. Moreover, the distribution of professional rewards (tenure track positions, publications in top journals, research grants) favors adherence to these epistemological norms that are largely dictated by sociologists trained at a dozen or so graduate programs. Thus, “major sociology” references in part a self-replicating and sometimes insular epistemology and professional practice.

While scientific empiricism and generalizable social theory constitute sociology’s major “language,” minor sociology refers to a political epistemological program for social and cultural studies at a historical precipice characterized by accelerating change and new and worsening social problems. The proliferation of informatics and robotic technology, new forms of domination and control, deepening inequalities, unpredictable climate change, political and religious extremism, xenophobia, and unending war characterize the current moment—and are all problems that seem to confound the social sciences and the “parochialism” that inhibits a robust public sociology. ⁴ I do not aim necessarily to correct or rehabilitate sociology’s dominant methodological and theoretical commitments; indeed, many sociological approaches will be obviated by entities with greater technological capital (Google for instance) or have already been folded into apparatuses of surveillance, marketing, and health management to name a few. If sociology is approaching an epistemological singularity, then minor sociology presents an attempt to think—or more nearly to un-think—sociology’s past and future. ⁵

Philosopher Erin Manning (2016) describes the minor as that which is “cast aside, overlooked, or forgotten in the interplay of major chords” (p. 1). Minor sociology too must involve inquiry into some of sociology’s overlooked figures, neglected texts, and marginalized intellectual threads. Indeed, the very condition of possibility for a dominant major sociology is the marginalization of the minor. Of course, inquiry into sociology’s epistemological foundation is not new, and many influential texts have demonstrated the necessity for such inquiry (see, for example, Ferguson, 2004; Gordon, 1997/2008; Morris, 2015). I follow the lead of these and other scholars who seek to think about sociology and its canon in critical, creative, and nuanced ways to sketch out a preliminary understanding of minor sociology that is resistant to ossification—particularly at a moment in history in which dynamic social thought is so necessary. As Manning observes, the minor gesture invents novel ways of perceiving and speaking, and thus new “sites of dissonance” and political imaginaries. Minor sociology pushes the limits of major sociology’s “language”—its theories, its methods, its presuppositions—and in doing so expands what sociology is and does. Minor sociology embraces the speculative and playful as it takes seriously what sociology can be for the 21st century.

Below I examine three kinds of epistemological marginalia in the history of sociology. I am here not only to unpack the relationship between the major and the minor in sociology but more importantly to demonstrate minor sociology’s relevance today and the possibilities it presents for the field. This is not a comprehensive study. Rather, I aim to examine what makes each of my three examples minor to tease out some common themes. Certainly, many thinkers, works, and intellectual traditions might fall under the heading of minor sociology—the public sociology of Jane Addams, phenomenological sociology, Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share—but I have chosen here to consider the work of a marginalized thinker—Gabriel Tarde; a marginalized intellectual tradition—psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic sociology; and finally, a neglected work by Georg Simmel (1990/2011), his magnum opus The Philosophy of Money. I argue that each of these examples (albeit in very different ways) presents modes of thinking through the social that operate in counterpoint or even opposition to the major.

The Minor Sociology of Gabriel Tarde

Easily the most overlooked figure from early sociology is Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) who famously battled with Emile Durkheim over the quintessence of sociology, and of course it was Durkheim who prevailed. In part, Durkheim’s sociology with its emphasis on social solidarity and measuring populations was better suited to the emergent biopolitical agendas of the state and capital. Nonetheless, Tarde’s social thought was effectively obliterated from the canon particularly in the United States. While Durkheim was interested in large-scale representations and general laws, Tarde began from the opposite position: from the infinitesimal. Building on Leibneitz’s philosophy of the monad, Tarde theorized that everything emerges from the infinitesimal—from an atom to a brain cell to the psyche to the individual human to relationships and groups to institutions and so forth. For him, Durkheim presupposes what in fact needs to be explained, that is society itself. In other words, Durkheim confuses cause and effect. Whereas Durkheim posits society as the source of norms, culture, and beliefs, Tarde examines minute associations, and how norms, culture, and beliefs are produced, reproduced, and change at every level, including the very smallest of variations. Tarde (1895/2012) explains, “these tiny beings which we call the infinitesimal will be the real agents, and these tiny variations which we call infinitesimal will be the real actions” (p. 11). The social world operates not through fundamental laws but through imitation, variation, and invention. “Society” then is just an abstraction and nonscientific. And the groupings and categories upon which we typically rely in sociology (e.g., men and women, cities, schools, nation-states) cannot just be assumed in Tarde’s sociology; rather, we must attend to the ways that these entities emerge, mimic, and modulate. Otherwise, sociological knowledge becomes merely descriptive at best and tautological at worst.

Post-structuralist theory has recognized this fundamental problem and has influenced social thought across many disciplines. “People are different from each other,” Eve Sedgwick (1990) famously states in Epistemology of the Closet, a foundational text in queer theory (p. 22). That people are different is an obvious fact but one that consistently seems to elude sociology. A contemporary example from the sociology of gender is instructive here. Sociology has long relied on the binary categories of man/woman and masculine/feminine to study gender—categories that are intimately bound to similarly binary notions of heterosexuality/homosexuality. The category “transgender” became an important political tool for individuals and activists who understood gender and gender identity to be far more complex and multifaceted than the man/woman taxonomy allowed. Even as the classification “transgender” became institutionalized in various ways (from the academy to social services to everyday parlance), the people who adopted the label and to whom it was applied continued to recognize and practice variation rather than uniformity of gender expression. And as David Valentine has shown, many people who might be classified as transgender do not in fact identify with the category but rather understand themselves through an amalgam of gender and sexuality (Valentine, 2007).

In spite of the variation and difference implied by the term transgender, social science and other disciplines advanced the category cisgender to distinguish transgender people from nontransgender people. ⁶ Several problems arise: For one, the category unwittingly reifies the gender binary by contending that there are those who identify as man or woman and those who do not. In doing so, the term cisgender effectively erases the gender variance that trans-identified people have fought for decades to get recognized. While the category cisgender solidifies our basic understanding of the social constructedness of gender and can certainly be useful as a kind of placeholder, actual people identify, practice, perform, and understand gender in infinite ways. In other words, the introduction of cisgender as yet another sociological taxonomy does little for describing actual social phenomena or types. From the perspective of Tarde’s sociology, the category cisgender is a tautology: There are cisgender people because we have defined cisgender in this particular way. Or in the language of Deleuze and Guattari, “cisgender” represents a reterritorialization of gender categories that had been deterritorialized by “transgender.”

In recent years, Bruno Latour and proponents of Actor Network Theory have revived interest in the work of Gabriel Tarde. ⁷ But why characterize his work as minor sociology? Aside from being a marginalized sociologist, Tarde’s social theory is isomorphic to the present. Change and variation—not unity and stability—define the current moment. Consider examples from the economy: Economists and social theorists increasingly recognize the role that emotions and affect play in economic decision making, from an individual feelings to influential investors’ confidence or fears to surging nationalisms. ⁸ Chance events such as a severe storm or a death in the Senate can have a ripple effect throughout the economic sphere, disturbing business plans and outlooks, currency markets, and overall production and consumption. Or consider algorithmic data analysis. A minor change to an algorithm can affect what news we see on our computers, initiate a shift in a political candidate’s platform, or influence the decision to buy or sell a house. Indeed, companies such as Netflix with access to “big data” have found that demographic data such as age, geography, and gender play little role in predicting taste. Rather infinitesimal variation within particular social groups has proven to be more meaningful than differences between groups (Morris, 2016). As big data and algorithmic computing exert increasing control over our lives and institutions, familiar sociological categories need to be re-thought in ways that account for the infinitesimal.

In all of the above examples, we can trace large-scale social phenomenon back to an infinitesimal variation and cascades of mimesis and modulation (Tarde 1890/2014). We begin to see society not as a single entity but as infinite associations both loose and strong. Tarde (1895/2012) writes,

Diversity, and not unity, is at the heart of things: this conclusion, in any case, follows for us from a general remark which a simple glance at the world and at the sciences allows us to make. Everywhere an exuberant richness of unheard-of variations and modulations springs forth . . . and yet in no case do the forces or laws which we are used to calling principles have variety as a term or as their goal. (p. 45, emphasis added)

Sociology tends to privilege sameness over difference—so much so that we lose sight of the variety and richness of social life or that we are compelled to find sameness where it does not in fact exist. To be clear, I am not suggesting we do away with Durkheim’s theories and replace them with Tarde’s. The point of minor sociology—including the work of Gabriel Tarde—is to consider what theory can do, what novel ways of analyzing the social it opens, what unstudied phenomenon it illuminates, and in doing so, it also presents the conditions for new political imaginaries.

Psychoanalytic Sociology

Psychoanalysis and sociology have had a turbulent relationship. While the Freudian tradition enjoyed popularity in American sociology from the late 1940s through the 1950s, references to Freud have virtually disappeared from the discipline since that time except usually in a disparaging way (Cavelletto & Silver, 2014). Lynn Chancer and John Andrews have discussed the numerous institutional, epistemological, and theoretical reasons for this curious “divorce” of psychoanalysis from American sociology, curious as psychoanalysis is embraced more widely in British, Australian, and European sociology (Chancer & Andrews, 2014). For one, sociology’s commitment to positivistic science ensured a secure position for the discipline in the academy. Historical sociologist George Steinmetz contextualizes sociology’s methodological positivism within Fordism and the Cold War: Surveys and statistical models could be used to study anything from consumer tastes to public opinion, ensuring the smooth functioning of the economy and a stable social order not to mention significant monies from the state (Steinmetz, 2005). Sociology became, at that time, in short, a science of the state for the state, and psychoanalytic theory had little place in such a research program. Indeed, as sociologist and psychoanalyst Catherine Silver shows, many sociologists of the time became increasingly paranoid about psychoanalysis’ influence on sociology, dismissing it as mystical, poisonous, and even dangerous—a paranoia that echoes Cold War fears and anxieties (Silver, 2014).

Another objection to psychoanalysis is that it begins with the individual and moves outward to the social. As Chancer and Andrews (2014) state, “The realms of the psychic and the psychoanalytic are perceived as too intent on prioritizing the individual and individualized, the subjective and the sui generis, to be properly sociological” (p. 1). And yet many key concepts from the major canon—for instance, collective consciousness and collective effervescence, ideology, and disenchantment—imply reciprocity between individual psychic and social dynamics. Moreover, some of sociology’s significant theorists throughout the 20th century employed Freudian ideas (often prominently) in their work including the Frankfurt School theorists, Talcott Parsons, Louis Althusser, Philip Reiff, and Nancy Chodorow. But aside from these few examples and some others, psychoanalysis has largely been pushed to the margins of the discipline, or we might say that sociology has repressed its intellectual affinity to psychoanalysis. ⁹

As with Tarde, there are signs of renewed interest in psychoanalytic theory among sociologists. I place psychoanalytic sociology under the heading of minor sociology because it can scrutinize aspects of social life that major sociology is ill-equipped to study: desire, the irrational, the chaotic, the aggressive—in short, the unconscious. Theodor Adorno (1993/2000), for example, argued that American sociology’s inability to seriously grapple with the irrational had rendered it (in part) “cow sociology”—at once authoritative and pacifying, and above all lacking critical muscle. Psychoanalytic theory offers a rich vocabulary for understanding psychodynamic and psychosocial processes including the irrational; it also complicates our very notions of “individual” and “society.” From the perspective of psychoanalysis, the individual is a fundamentally social category and thus never a completely autonomous agent: The individual represents not only various social inscriptions but also individuations of social experience that manifest as sexuality, identity, and emotion. As Adorno (1993/2000) observes, “the more unreservedly one grasps the individual as a self-contained and dynamic entity, the closer one draws to that in the individual which is really no longer individual” (p. 113).

A common way of eschewing serious engagement with the psychosocial is the claim that “norms are internalized” as if internalization is a self-evident phenomenon. A key psychoanalytic insight is that mental life lacks unity and is more usually marked by ambivalence. If we accept that internalized norms and beliefs are fundamentally ambivalent and contradictory, we are better able to investigate, for example, why social groups often act against their own interests or in opposition to professed beliefs. Moreover, just as psychoanalytic theory allows us to understand the individual as a dynamic social category, it also helps us to think of institutions as having a kind of dynamic psyche in so far as they represent sedimentations of multiple, collective unconsciouses. ¹⁰ Such a position is not at odds with sociological theory, just underdeveloped (especially in American sociology). Drawing on Durkheim’s sociology of knowledge, Mary Douglas argues that institutions function and evolve through shared categories of thought, endowing them with a capacity to “think,” remember, and forget. Given this, psychoanalytic concepts can lend insight into institutional dynamics that are neither functional nor dysfunctional but nonetheless elude sociological analysis. Jennifer Doyle, for example, imbues her analysis of college campuses and sexual assault with the psychoanalytic language of trauma, repression, and fantasy to elucidate how such institutions understand themselves as simultaneously safe and dangerous spaces—an institutional ambivalence that echoes the ambivalence of the individual psyche (Doyle, 2015).

In the present political context, psychoanalytic theory provides compelling explanations for the resurrection of authoritarianism and increasing xenophobia. From the psychoanalytic perspective, love and hate are part of a single psychic dynamic that creates a unique bond among individuals and groups. Israeli sociologist Niza Yanay (2013) draws on this insight to interpret her ethnographic work on group dynamics among Jewish and Arab students. For her, “The psyche and the social always operate in tandem and form who we are as subjects and who we are as a society . . . The psyche cannot be understood outside the bounds of language, and society, likewise, cannot be understood without taking into account the ways in which we as individuals use language, explicitly or implicitly, expressed or repressed” (Yanay, 2013, p. vii). In similar vein, psychoanalysis provides power tools for examining the contradictory workings of nationalism including the growing visibility of White nationalism. Edward Said observes, “Freud’s profound exemplification of the insight that even for the most definable, the most identifiable, the most stubborn communal identity . . . there are limits that prevent it from being fully incorporated into one, and only one, Identity” (Said, 2004, pp. 53-54). Here, the Freudian perspective compels us then to study not only how nationalism functions through identification, narcissism, and numerous group minds but also how the fracturing of identity paradoxically intensifies nationalistic feeling.

The Social Logic in Simmel’s Minor Major Work

Georg Simmel is a peculiar figure in the sociological canon. Many of his most famous essays such as “The Stranger” and “The Metropolis and Mental Life” continue to be widely read and admired. Simmel’s sociology was also influential in early American sociology. And while his place in the canon is assured, he is not recognized as one of “the big three” of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, whose work represents the intellectual foundation for the field. Part of the reason for this omission is that Simmel is perceived as not having developed a comprehensive theory of modern society and that his social thought is overly focused on the micro level. And yet Simmel’s magnum opus—The Philosophy of Money—remains largely neglected by sociologists even while it provides the underlying theoretical basis for the more famous essays.

Marx convincingly demonstrates how the capitalist mode of production transforms money as a means of exchange into a commodity and end in itself, such that production is oriented not toward satisfying needs but rather capital accumulation. Simmel’s project in The Philosophy of Money lacks Marx’s systematic analysis; indeed, at first glance, it appears idiosyncratic or disjointed. However, the scope and breadth of Simmel’s thought here is startling. Not an analysis of capitalism but of the modern “money economy,” The Philosophy of Money considers the consequences of Marx’s insight into a number of spheres including the psychological, the emotional, the aesthetic, and the cultural. He states,

Money, by and large, is most influential in those parts of our life whose style is determined by the preponderance of objective over subjective culture . . . In some respects, money may be compared to language, which also lends itself to the most divergent directions of thought and feeling. Money belongs to those forces whose peculiarity lies in a lack of peculiarity, but which, none the less, may colour life very differently because their mere formal, functional and quantitative nature is confronted with qualitatively determined contents and directions of life, and induces them to generate qualitatively new formations. The significance of money for the style of life is not negated but enhanced, not refuted but demonstrated by the fact that it favours both possible relations between the objective and subjective mind. (Simmel, 2011, p. 510)

In short, money and the money economy inaugurate a way of life albeit a contradictory and indeterminate one.

What Simmel offers is nothing short of a social logic of modern society at the turn of the 20th century. Not an explanatory theory of social cause and effect, a social logic describes a generalized way of knowing and being in the world, an underlying force or tendency that shapes possible (or impossible) socialities and knowledges at a given period in history. I liken a social logic to Foucault’s (1970) episteme, which is “the way in which a culture experiences the propinquity of things, how it establishes the tabula of their relationships and the order by which they must be considered” (p. xxiv). For Simmel, the money economy accelerates the rate of change in the “content” of life—not just economic well-being but also lifestyle, individual and collective values, and modes of thinking—such that older forms of aesthetics and politics are destabilized and reconfigured, or disappear altogether. By establishing this social logic that emerges from the ubiquitous money economy, Simmel is able to demonstrate affinities among such disparate topics as the development of fashion, moral attitudes about prostitution, and the romanticism of landscape painting to name just a very few.

For many sociologists, the notion of a social logic might seem too abstract or ephemeral to be of any real use in the practice of sociology. Yet, social life itself is today increasingly abstract and ephemeral, a theme theorized by Paul Virilio, Zygmut Bauman, Anthony Elliot, and Richard Sennett to name a few. Consider the recent Knowledge LTD: Toward a Social Logic of the Derivative by the late Randy Martin (2015). Not unlike Simmel’s examination of money, Martin shows how the logic of financial derivatives has infiltrated social relations in myriad ways, from economic policy making to contemporary politics and social movements to emergent aesthetic forms. In the financial world, the derivative exploits uncertainty and minor differences for profit while hedging the risk entailed by such uncertainty and minor differences, effectively making “the future actionable in the present” (Martin, 2015, p. 5). By banking on the unknowable, derivatives exacerbate the very market volatility they were supposedly established to circumvent, which in turn creates new variables, new uncertainties, and the expansion of derivatives markets. In similar fashion, Martin demonstrates how this logic (of exploiting uncertainty, difference, and volatility) has reshaped contemporary social life by deriving identities, publics, interest groups, and other social formations from single attributes or individuals. The identification of social problems or public issues, for example, derives from the private interest of nongovernmental organizations (NGO) or wealthy philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gates. Political identities seem increasingly imposed around individual attributes (race, gender, sexuality) while policing and surveillance identify attributes of potentially criminal or “at-risk” populations. Nonetheless, derivative socialities can re-aggregate in unexpected ways, opening up potential bonds that are ad hoc and improvisational such as the Occupy Wall Street movement

Of course, any number of social logics may be at work at a given time and place. But this is not the point. The value of thinking and practicing sociology in terms of social logics is that it allows us to draw connections between numerous phenomena in ways that do not rely on models of cause and effect, discrete levels of analysis, or a single temporality. Rather than forcing the social world to fit our categories and theoretical models, social logics help us to develop a realist account of the social while still enhancing our insights into social structure and processes. The necessity for this approach is twofold: For one, the rapidity of technological change and the vast, ever-accumulating amount of information available to us through networked mediums increasingly render much sociological research moot before it is completed and much less published. Situating empirical work (which is inherently in the past) within a larger social logic (re)introduces speculative thinking into sociology, a theme I return to below. Second, an emphasis on social logics facilitates conversations within an increasingly specialized discipline and indeed beyond the discipline. As Gayatri Spivak (2005) forcefully argues, disciplinary fear in both the humanities and social sciences has stalled the production of “planetary” and transformative knowledge and writing. ¹¹ A theoretically and methodologically capacious (rather than axiomatic) sociology can contribute to a truly visionary epistemological and political project.

Toward a Minor Sociology

It should be clear by now that minor sociology is not a cohesive body of knowledge, an alternative method, or just a set of marginalized thinkers. We must also resist the urge to treat minor sociology as simply that which is not mainstream or major. Rather, minor sociology represents an invitation to challenge, critique, and supplement sociology’s well-worn conclusions and modes of inquiry by looking at that which is been pushed to the side. It must also be dynamic and in conversation with the major and with pressing matters of public concern. In many ways, minor sociology is a risky endeavor because the threat of sedimentation or becoming overly rooted to the major always looms. Minor sociology exploits rupture by building and creating in the spaces opened by rupture. At the same time, minor sociology must perpetually deterritorialize knowledge, lest it reterritorialize into the major. To elaborate these points, I will consider two themes that minor sociology introduces.

The first is the theme of speculation—which might activate alarm bells in the heads of many social scientists! However, I argue that some degree of speculation is necessary if sociology is to remain relevant. For one, the sheer speed of social change requires that we think about the future seriously given the information we have at hand. In Silicon Valley, Moore’s Law—the notion that improvements in computing power double every 2 years—has become a guiding truth. How will this affect our lives? Social inequality? Work? As sociologists, we can wait for change to transpire and then study effects and outcomes, but if the rate of technological change is exponential, then our theories and analyses might very well be obviated by entirely different social landscapes. Unpredictable climate change, the advent of robotic technology, nanotechnology, and bio-engineering similarly compel us to speculate about the future or, at the very least, the implications our work might have on future-making.

Interest in the speculative has already entered fields such as philosophy, cultural studies, women’s studies, and others. The editors of The Speculative Turn, a recent collection of essays on the topic, argue that speculation is in fact a realist philosophy:

The activity of “speculation” may be cause for concern amongst some readers, for it might suggest a return to pre-critical philosophy, with its dogmatic belief in the powers of pure reason. The speculative turn, however, is not an outright rejection of these critical advances; instead, it comes from a recognition of their inherent limitations . . . In the face of the ecological crisis, the forward march of neuroscience, the increasingly splintered interpretation of basic physics, and the ongoing breach of the divide between human and machine, there is a growing sense that previous philosophies are incapable of confronting these events. (Bryant, Srnicek, & Harman, 2011, p. 3)

Being attuned to the speculative does not mean tossing aside our study of the past and present but embracing a willingness to understand that the present still contains all of those possibilities that—for whatever reason—were foreclosed in the past. Following the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, we could say that the present is marked by latency (those foreclosed potentials) and by tendency (the signals and foreshadowings of the future to come). An anticipatory consciousness, in Bloch’s usage, is necessary for recognizing both those latencies and tendencies that shape the future. And as Katerina Kolozova (2016) observes, speculative philosophy is also at the heart of feminist theory in so far as it challenges the rational assumptions that underlie Western forms of patriarchy and authority (pp. 9-15).

Speculation is a ubiquitous facet of social life—one worthy not only of study but also of consideration in our practices as sociologists. In similar vein, speculative fiction often contains signs of what the future holds for the simple reason that the people who read and write speculative fiction often work too in fields of science and technology. For example, many of the speculations made in the sci-fi subgenre of cyberpunk in the 1980s and 1990s have since come to pass (such as online networked universes, new forms of surveillance, and computers that utilize bodily movement). In part, this is because the very people who were writing and/or reading this fiction also worked to realize these speculative technologies that, once exotic or fanciful, are now (or will be) commonplace. No wonder then the affinity between sociology and speculative fiction. Both Gabriel Tarde and W. E. B. DuBois wrote science fiction. And science fiction giant Samuel Delaney wrote the now classic sociological analysis of urban change Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. The minor sociology I have sketched above with its interest in the infinitesimal, the unconscious, and social logics provides analytic tools for thinking about the future in fruitful ways.

Related to speculation, virtuosity is another important theme for minor sociology. The Italian Marxist Paulo Virno (2004) says that virtuosity is activity that finds its own purpose in itself. In other words, virtuosity does not aim toward an end product. Minor sociology is virtuosic because it aims to be creative, finding value in the act of thinking about and researching the social in new ways. While this might manifest in blogs, poetry, photography, a reading group, or in traditional academic journals, it is the activity itself rather than the end product that is most important. Virtuosity also describes the capacity to break from convention and the taken-for-granted. Whereas major sociology tends to be instrumental and emphasizes mastery, minor sociology is improvisational and reflexive.

Remember too that minor sociology operates in counterpoint with major sociology. To practice virtuosity is not a willy-nilly exercise in solipsism. In this context, minor sociology invites us to confront our presuppositions not only about what constitutes (or not) “real” sociology but also the reality of the social and cultural world. In this sense, minor sociology is an ontological inquiry into sociological epistemologies. Max Weber recognized long ago that no science—including the historical and cultural sciences—is free of presuppositions. What is sociology for? Who is sociology for? These self-reflexive questions are difficult to answer as sociology is often imbricated and aids in the reproduction of various regimes of oppression. Social theorist Patricia Clough (2010) observes,

In the [post-War] years, sociology has been able both to dismiss and to appropriate the identity-based critiques of representation carried out . . . by critical theorists and cultural critics more often than not located in the humanities. As sociology helped to turn these critiques into multicultural/diversity-oriented and empirically based demographic studies of populations, it at the same time analyzed populations in terms of risk in discourses about immigration, physical and mental health, environmentalism, terrorism, war, detention, and mass incarceration. (p. 631)

These problems may be unavoidable given current institutional configurations that increasingly demand measurable, “results-based,” and applicable knowledge production. Nonetheless, minor sociology aims to create a space for reflexivity, criticality, and playfulness—one that future generations of sociologists might find useful and novel as the field continues to develop and change.

Conclusion

I opened this essay with an example from fiction, and perhaps the reasons for that choice have become apparent. Aside from illustrating an example of major and minor language, the example of fiction also suggests something about the uses of minor sociology. Fiction is inherently speculative. Good fiction transports the reader to another world and presents new, sometimes radically different viewpoints. Fiction ignites the imagination. At some point in their career, most sociologists have introduced students to the sociological imagination and its promise. Yet, now over half a century since the publication of The Sociological Imagination, imagination in sociology seems to be quelled if not punished. Avery Gordon (1997/2008) observes, “For sociology, the fictive is our constituent horizon of error; it is what has been and must be exiled to ordain the authority of the discipline and the truthful knowledge sociology can claim to produce” (p. 25).

One of sociology’s basic yet contradictory concepts is the notion of social constructs, which can be traced through numerous intellectual trajectories. That gender and race are socially constructed is commonsensical; we accept that there is an element of fiction to racial categories, sexual typologies, and the gender binary. Nevertheless, race, gender, and sexuality (among other social constructs) have very real effects in terms of life chances, individual identities, and politics. Sociology takes on the task of uncovering the histories and institutions that sustain these fictions while simultaneously relying on them to conduct research about them. In other words, sociological insight necessitates that we take the fictions that underlie reality seriously to understand them. In Ferrante’s novels, fiction and reality are constantly called into question. As the narrator Lenú’s feelings toward Lila are increasingly ambivalent—oscillating between admiration and envy, love and jealousy, warmth and frustration—readers suspect her version of reality to be unreliable. Even the author of the Neapolitan novels Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym. Readers know very little about the anonymous writer although there are indications that some of the stories in the novels come from her own life. Who is telling whose story? Whose language or voice are we reading?

Deleuze and Guattari (1975/1986) ask,

How many people today live in a language that is not their own? [How does one] make use of the polylingualism of one’s own language, to make a minor or intensive use of it, to oppose the oppressed quality of this language to its oppressive quality, to find points of nonculture or underdevelopment, linguistic Third World zones by which a language can escape, an animal enters into things, as assemblage comes into play? (pp. 26-27)

Minor sociology insists that the notion that sociology is immutable, and that its modes of theorizing and analyzing the social have been perfected is a fiction. Minor sociology does not aim to upend sociology’s major “language”; after all, sociology has given us profound insight into our shared world. Rather, minor sociology presents the possibility of thinking differently about the social, of imagining otherwise. Or as Manning (2016) beautifully puts it,

The minor invents new forms of existence, and with them, we come to be. These temporary forms of life travel across the everyday, making untimely existing political structures, activating new modes of perception, inventing languages that speak in the interstices of major tongues. (p. 2)