play and cultural memory

Aesthetics, Play, and Cultural Memory: Giddens and Habermas on the Postmodern ChallengeAuthor(s): Kenneth H. TuckerSource: Sociological Theory, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Jul., 1993), pp. 194-211Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/202142Accessed: 08/05/2009 14:51

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Aesthetics, Play, and Cultural Memory: Giddens and Habermas on the Postmodern Challenge*

KENNETH H. TUCKER JR.

Mount Holyoke College

This essay examines the response of Habermas and Giddens to postmodern criticisms of modernity. Although Giddens and Habermas recognize that the "totalizing critique" of poststructuralism lacks a convincing analysis of social interaction, neither of their perspectives adequately addresses the postmodern themes of aesthetics, play, and cultural memory. Giddens and Habermas believe that these dimensions of social life are important; yet they remain underdeveloped in their approaches. This essay explores the theoretical consequences of aesthetics, play, and cultural traditions for social theory, drawing on the pragmatists, the psychoanalyst Winnicott, and early critical theory. The aesthetic and playful moments of experience must be recast in terms of social theory to avoid the solipsism so often characteristic of postmodernism. The essay ends by suggesting how the theories of Habermas and Giddens could benefit by a closer consideration of these issues.

Postmodernism has not been universally well received within sociology. Its reception has been marked variously by enthusiastic acceptance (Lemert 1992; Seidman 1992), mocking and hostile rejection (Collins 1992), and more reasoned dismissal (Antonio 1991; D'Amico 1992). Yet the ways in which postmodernism and sociological theory might enrich one another have rarely been examined. In this essay I address this topic by examining the sophisticated critiques of postmodernism advanced by Giddens and Habermas. I demonstrate how their approaches to cultural innovation can be improved by taking postmodernism seriously but refashioning it as social theory. Giddens and Habermas recognize that

poststructuralist themes are important; yet they do not theorize them well, largely because of their respective rationalization models.

This essay begins with a summary of Giddens's understanding of modernity and postmodernity, followed by an evaluation of his theoretical project. Giddens's criticisms of

postmodernism point to his own relatively weak theory of intersubjectivity. Then I discuss Habermas's critique of postmodernism. Habermas rather hastily rejects postmodernism; he does not incorporate some of its valuable insights into his perspective. The essay turns next to an examination of Habermas's and Giddens's limited analyses of aesthetics, play, and cultural memory. Here I explore some alternative approaches, including those of the

pragmatists, that of the psychoanalyst Winnicott, and the early critical theory of Benjamin. I conclude by reconsidering the theories of Giddens and Habermas in light of these criticisms, and discuss how their conceptions of cultural creativity might be enriched.

The contemporary postmodern temper owes much, at least indirectly, to Derrida's (1987) use of the metaphor of play; this is tied to his masterful demonstration of the inevitability of temporality and otherness within consciousness that a logocentric culture tries to deny.

* Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the meetings of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interactionism, Cincinnati, August 1991, and of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, August 1992. I wish to thank Sherry S. Tucker, Stanley Aronowitz, Karen Remmler, and several Sociological Theory reviewers for their comments. I would like to especially thank Ron Lembo. Our conversations helped me formulate many of the ideas of this essay.

Sociological Theory 11:2 July 1993 ? American Sociological Association. 1722 N Street NW, Washington, DC 20036

AESTHETICS, PLAY, AND CULTURAL MEMORY

According to Derrida, there can be no transcendental subject, no conceptual essences. Only the play of difference between words in the process of signification creates meaning. Yet Derrida's analysis remains fixed, or fixated, on the text-it is necessary to move from the play of signifiers to the significance of play. By following Huizinga's (1955) lead in his seminal work Homo Ludens and analyzing play as a cultural activity, one can free it from its literary prison. In the process, not only play but other poststructuralist themes, such as undecidability, antifoundationalism, and the like, can be grounded in social interaction, and their concrete implications for social life can be illuminated.

GIDDENS: MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY

According to Giddens, the sociological tradition often has misconstrued the social actor positivistically. This impoverished view of the subject is reinforced by static theories of social structure and history. Therefore this tradition cannot account for the creativity inherent in social life. Given this critique of sociological theory, Giddens is sympathetic to many postmodern themes. He realizes that poststructuralist criticisms of the subject necessitate a reformulation of agency in social theory (though he does not dispense with the subject). Giddens also sees that understanding depends on context because different forms of social life may not be able to translate easily into one another. The Parsonian question of order should be rethought in terms of "time-space distanciation" (Giddens 1990, pp. 14-15), because this dimension shapes the very nature of modem institutions. Finally, Giddens, like Foucault, believes that an active and creative power facilitates social action rather than repressing it (Giddens 1979, 1987).

Giddens also accepts postmodern claims that the foundations of knowledge are unreli- able, that there is no inherent progress in history, and that new social movements are raising qualitatively novel issues about social life (1990, pp. 45-46). He believes that postmodem criticisms of modernist rationality are largely accurate. A "providential" concept of rationality developed in the wake of the Enlightenment, but this reason only mirrors the divine Providence of absolutism that the Enlightenment criticized. The foundations of this providential rationality have been deconstructed convincingly by many thinkers since Nietzsche (Giddens 1990, pp. 48-49).

Despite his favorable comments, however, Giddens believes that postmodernist theory cannot effectively explain the social world. The poststructuralism of Derrida and Foucault has not been able to hermeneutically grasp the intersubjectivity of everyday life. By emphasizing the centrality of text and linguistic conventions, postmodernists cannot account for the complexity of social practice or comprehend the centrality of reflexivity in this practice (Giddens 1979).

In Giddens's view, the contemporary ubiquity of reflexivity makes useless the distinctions between modem and postmodern eras. The deconstructive impulse so prevalent in postmodernist approaches is the logical extension of the reflexivity of a radicalized modernity, wherein reflexivity is inseparable from the reproduction of social relations. Social practices are examined constantly and are reformed in light of new information about them (Giddens 1990, pp. 38-39). In modernity, the rapid pace and scope of change and the separation and recombination of time and space in social life are bound to this reflexivity.

Because of the "juggernaut" that is modernity, social relations are in flux; they must be reembedded constantly in new contexts. Despite continual change, individuals attempt to create a stable identity. Thus the control of time becomes a central problem in the modern world. As the future is severed from the past, the future must be directed or, in Giddens's phrase, "colonized" (1991, p. 111). Yet the reflexivity of modernity makes this task

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difficult because criteria external to moder institutions, such as tradition, are increasingly irrelevant in the formation of identity.

According to Giddens, change is inherent in modernity. The flexible subject is always incorporating new cultural and social experiences into his or her identity through the reflexive monitoring and rationalization of action, wherein people "maintain a continuing 'theoretical understanding' of the grounds of their activity" (Giddens 1985, p. 5). Cultural creativity thus is a part of the moder human condition. Yet in order to engage in such "creative living", the modem subject needs a secure emotional and cognitive basis from which to operate (Giddens 1991, pp. 41-42).

The constant change and instability of modernity generate a sense of anxiety. Drawing on Goffman, the ethnomethodologists, Erikson, and Heidegger, Giddens argues that people must develop trust if social relations are to exist across time and space. Trust is tied to a sense of ontological security, which is a belief in the continuity of self-identity and the reliability of social life. This sense of stability, rooted in the infant's relationship to his or her caregivers, is originally emotional rather than cognitive, and is grounded in the unconscious (Giddens 1990, pp. 92-97). Feelings of ontological security are made concrete through social routines, which integrate reflexively monitored social life with patterned interaction across time and space. In this context Giddens examines opening and closing rituals, turn taking in conversation, tact, and body position. Such activities sustain routines over time and space, allowing the creation and recreation of rules and resources. Cultural innovations can emerge only from such a social psychological foundation (Giddens 1985, pp. 72-73).

Despite Giddens's insightful analysis of social life, his theory has several flaws. Many of these problems are tied to his reliance on Heidegger's philosophy for an explanation of the problem of time in social theory (Joas 1987). This approach undercuts Giddens's attempt to bind the creation of meaning to the concrete situation of the agent. Giddens develops his theory of ontological security in tandem with Heidegger's view that the finitude of human existence and the embeddedness of individuals in a changing time generate anxiety, which must be confronted. Ironically, however, Giddens's incorporation of themes of time and context results in an essentialist subject. He posits an ahistorical category of subjectivity, based on universal psychological needs (security). This essentialist subjectivity also is demonstrated in Giddens's concept of agency: he assumes that an inherently creative agent produces and reproduces social structure. All action radiates from, and must be explained in terms of, this "noble, almost Promethean" subject-center (Bryant 1992, p. 146). In postmodern terminology, Giddens has reintroduced the typical Western philosophical search for a firm foundation, for a "home," on which to build a constitutive subject (Boyne 1991; Connolly 1988). Further, such an agent, searching frantically for a secure identity, does not act aesthetically and playfully, for he or she finds indeterminacy frightening.

Giddens possibly could answer this critique with a strong theory of the intersubjective and normative constitution of the subject. As critics state, however, he separates subject from object, action from structure, thus opening a gap between the social world and the agent (J. Alexander 1992, p. 2; Habermas 1982, p. 268). The creativity of such a subject often translates into instrumental action. Because the individual encounters an alien world and an uncertain future, which generate existential anxiety, meanings develop in response to his or her needs rather than from an intersubjectively established and self-reproducing linguistic realm. Giddens believes that language controls a chaotic reality, making it conform to our needs. Dews's criticisms of Adorno's theory of language thus are applicable

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to Giddens; both thinkers regard "language as directly dissecting and deforming reality, rather than as being the means whereby subjects communicate to each other about a reality which is nevertheless preserved in its non-identity" (Dews 1987, pp. 227-28).

Thus Giddens undercuts possibilities for collective cultural innovation. He does not examine how different cultural orientations, developed in diverse contexts, can promote or deny capacities for creative social action. When he does attempt to account for cultural change, he turns to social movements. Giddens views new social movements as major forces for "utopian" social change, which advocate normative ideals about the good life. Yet because he neglects intersubjectivity and cultural context, his analysis of these movements has an ad hoc quality. He believes that truly innovative social movements must offer the possibility of changing the fabric and texture of human relationships. Overcoming inequality is not liberation; such an "emancipatory" politics must "be linked with life politics, or a politics of self-actualisation" (1990, p. 156). Yet Giddens does not adequately theorize how and why this politics might arise. As critics argue, such a perspective requires a strong, socially grounded normative theory of interacting subjects (J. Alexander 1992; Bryant 1992). Giddens's severance of the present from the past also makes normative innovation problematic because it leaves no place for an elaboration of collective memories that could provide cultural resources and ideals for life politics. Further, his self-conscious, cognitively oriented agent seems unlikely to experiment playfully with new forms of sociability. This subject, it seems, might find a politics of self-actualization anxiety- producing rather than fulfilling or liberating.

HABERMAS: MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY

In many ways, Habermas presents a more insightful critique of postmodernity and a more compelling theoretical alternative than does Giddens. Though Giddens stresses the centrality of reflexivity and intersubjectivity, he does not analyze how rational conciliation between agents occurs within interaction. In Giddens's later work, he is absorbed so deeply by the flux of modem life that intersubjective consensus becomes almost impos- sible. According to Habermas (1989a), a differentiated rationality develops in the context of public spheres and informs contemporary interaction. Habermas's theory of social action can account for disturbances of intersubjective consensus.

Nevertheless, Habermas shares many of Giddens's reflections on modernity and postmodernity. Like Giddens, he regards modernity as an unfinished project. Modernist assumptions have not exhausted themselves; they still sustain contemporary social practices. Also, both thinkers argue that a type of rational reflexivity replaces tradition as the main form of coordinating action in the contemporary world. Finally, for Habermas as for Giddens, theorists must return to quotidian social practices to correct the textual orientation of poststructuralist thought. Habermas believes that the rationalist core of everyday language can yield universal insights. Communicative rationality, grounded in the lifeworld, promotes innovative social action and cultural creativity.

Habermas places postmodernism in a grand narrative reaching back to the eighteenth century, in which poststructuralists are "cloaking their complicity with the venerable tradition of counter-Enlightenment in the garb of post-Enlightenment" (Habermas 1987a, p. 5). He pursues this strategy by returning to Hegel, Kant and the origins of modern consciousness, and the earliest criticisms of modernist rationality, found in Nietzsche.

Habermas is especially interested in Nietzsche as a figure whose radical criticisms of Enlightenment rationality foreshadow many contemporary postmodernists. Nietzsche sees

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the sovereign rationality of the transcendental subject as a form of control, manifesting a will to power. He does not believe that modernists can rationally ground social life and organization; such an attempt misconstrues the nature of reason. According to Nietzsche, reason can only exclude; it cannot reconcile. A more promising answer to the human predicament, he believes, lies in the insights of aesthetics. Art provides a gateway to Dionysus, the other of reason, outside all cognition and morality. For Nietzsche, embracing aesthetics breaks the stranglehold of reason on modernity (Habermas 1987a, pp. 94-96).

Habermas sees several of these Nietzschean strands continued in contemporary poststructuralist criticisms of modernist rationality. He is not satisfied with what he views as these "totalizing" dismissals of modernity; he argues that Heidegger and Derrida remove the critique of reason from history and society, and place it in the realm of Being and texts. Their devaluation of social processes promotes mystification because the critique of

rationality is not tied to societal changes that create social problems. Like Giddens, Habermas states that poststructuralism is not grounded in the experience of people; it ignores the pragmatic and consensual dimensions of everyday interaction (Habermas 1987a, p. 197).

Habermas argues that Foucault, despite his sensitivity to history, also explains social order and socialization as effects of power, and that he reduces the ambivalent character of modernity to a single dimension. This perspective contains no possibility for self- determination and solidarity. For Foucault, history has no continuity, and ruptures in discourse make the past of little use for the present. Thus people can learn little from their experience (Habermas 1987a, pp. 287, 319).

According to Habermas, the deconstructionists have not distanced themselves sufficiently from the "philosophy of consciousness," the centrality of the transcendental subject, that they criticize so passionately. They return to an ultimate position that grounds their philosophy, whether it be power, Dasein, or archewriting. They conceive of Western rationality as an instrumental orientation that can only objectify and dominate the world. Insofar as the deconstructionists discuss alternatives to domination, they tend to locate them in aesthetic experience. The real political dangers of such an irrational aesthetic turn are exemplified in Heidegger's Nazism. In Habermas's view, neither the philosophy of consciousness that characterizes much of the Western philosophical tradition nor the deconstructionist critique is adequate to theorize the nature of modem life or account for its dynamism. He believes that a new paradigm is needed, which posits the centrality of mutual understanding in generating interaction and ties this process to cultural creativity.

Habermas sees himself in the traditions of the young Hegel, Marx, and Schiller because they provide a clearer understanding of the historically situated nature of rationality and community than do Nietzsche and the poststructuralists. Like Habermas, they agree that "the social bond-that is, the community forming and solidarity building force of un- alienated cooperation and living together-ultimately decides whether reason embodied in social practices is in touch with history and nature" (Habermas 1987a, p. 304). Habermas rethinks this approach in the light of a theory of social action tied to pragmatic linguistics. He believes that the use of rationality in social life involves confronting problems that are posed by the world. We learn that some solutions are better than others; such solutions are thematized in traditions embodied in the transmission of culture and scientific progress, and are used in forming collective solidarity and individual identity. These processes coincide with the differentiation of the system practices of politics and economics from their original lifeworld context. The rationalization of these realms makes the creation of solidarity and identity dependent on the raising and resolution of validity claims through argument (Habermas 1984, 1987b).

Habermas rejects the postmodernist view of a logocentric rationality, regarding it as



responsible for the "pathologies of modem life." For Habermas, many social problems arise from the extension of a one-dimensional, instrumental type of reasoning into everyday life. This illegitimate hegemony of administrative rationality results in the colonization of the lifeworld. Possibilities for the noninstrumental generation of new solidarities through communicative action are threatened, as is the protection of old identities. Habermas argues that the colonization of the lifeworld results in a "damaged totality" that is responsible for modem social and psychological problems and for undemocratic forms of social life. Yet communicative action never can be extinguished; its claim to universality and common understanding points toward democratic interaction and solidarity building. New social movements play an important part in continually revitalizing communicative action because they are vehicles by which new cultural ideals enter public discourse. An enriched public discourse in turn promotes new debates about validity claims, which encourage social and cultural innovation (Habermas 1987b).

AESTHETICS, CULTURAL TRADITIONS, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Habermas and Giddens rightly criticize the postmodernists for an inadequate theory of intersubjectivity and an overliterary approach to social life. Habermas's understanding of intersubjectivity, however, is too one-sidedly rational, while Giddens's insufficiently social theory of agency tends toward instrumental action. Neither thinker emphasizes undecidability in interaction; further, they have difficulty in grasping the affective and aesthetic aspects of social solidarity and the role of cultural traditions and collective memory in creating social and cultural identity.

Habermas (1986) is sensitive to these issues; yet he cannot reconcile them with his evolutionary approach. He recognizes that the erasure of historical continuity, as embodied in symbols and monuments, carries heavy costs. Speculating that a discourse ethic which lacks the power of memory could result in a "meaningless emancipation," Habermas sympathetically discusses aspects of Benjamin's work in several contexts (Habermas 1983, p. 158; 1987a). In his famous intervention in the German historians' debate, he implicitly recognizes the tie of collective memory to the formation of social identity. In his criticisms of conservative historians' attempt to rehabilitate the legacy of National Socialism, Hab- ermas (1989b) calls for a kind of Benjaminian anamnestic remembering with the victims of Nazism. Yet such culturally specific and affective components, although central to this notion of collective memory, remain outside the purview of his theory. Habermas refuses to question his rational, evolutionary approach. He argues consistently for a discursive model of social action, so that "even if natural signs lack authors who give them meaning, still they only have meaning for interpreters who are masters of language" (1992, p. 108).

This position has consequences for Habermas's conceptualization of social change. In particular, his discussion of Durkheim shows the limits of his rational historicism. Ac- cording to Habermas (1987b), Durkheim implicitly recognizes the "linguistification of the sacred," which transforms the aura surrounding sacred places and symbols into the mundane practices of argument about validity claims. Yet he does not address Durkheim's (1965) analysis of "collective effervescence" as a source of new ideals and social change. This experience of intense collective life is clearly extrarational; it has aesthetic and playful connotations. Such negligence is by no means accidental: taking collective effervescence seriously would problematize Habermas's rational, evolutionary theory of social change, forcing him to view it as crucially involving new forms of sociability and symbolism.

Yet Habermas (1987b, p. 392) implicitly recognizes this central role of sociability and of "grammars of social life" in his exploration of new social movements, as does Giddens in analyzing the concern of such movements with self-actualization. Yet because neither

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thinker grounds a theory of aesthetics or playfulness in social life, or theorizes a complex notion of collective memory, they cannot grasp the extent of the potential for cultural creativity embodied in these movements.

As this discussion of new social movements shows, Habermas and Giddens believe that social solidarity and social change involve more than rational interaction. In fact, Haber- mas, despite his reservations about art, turns to aesthetics as a major source of new social meanings. Similarly, Giddens's analysis of the "return of the repressed" in everyday life demonstrates that an extrarational grasp of social processes is necessary. Yet neither author can account adequately for this dimension in his theory.

These problems can be seen in Habermas's concept of communicative action. As Seel (1991) emphasizes, Habermas has not explained adequately how the differentiated validity spheres of modernity can be interrelated in practice. According to Seel, people must distinguish types of rationality before rational discourse is possible. Further, they must be able to change perspectives from one rational sphere to another. Such a capacity for flexible, interrelational judgment, Habermas admits, "is anchored in a practice which pre- dates argumentation." Habermas states that communicative theory cannot account for such a practice; it cannot grasp "whether a given form of life allows more or less space for trends towards an undamaged, correctly spent life to this faculty of judgment, even if we cannot conceptualize such in terms of a theory of argumentation" (Habermas 1991, p. 226).

In light of these criticisms, not only does interaction involve a fundamental undecidability that precedes argument; in addition, there may be a nonlinguistic component that allows us to engage creatively in social action. Insofar as Habermas discusses such issues, he employs aesthetics, which represent the realm where true creativity can take place. Yet this seemingly central arena for innovative cultural change is underdeveloped in his theory. Ever fearful of a postmodern dedifferentiation of modernity to aesthetics, Habermas views art as a sphere of rationality distinct from moral and scientific reasoning. Aesthetic innovation and creativity occur through "the decentering and unbounding of subjectivity," which make the artist aware of what has been lost and repressed in modernity. The artist freely constructs new conceptions of experience, different ways of opening ourselves to "our speechless contact with reality" (Habermas 1985, p. 201). If art is to contribute to cultural innovation, it must be incorporated into individual and collective life. At least potentially, then, aesthetics can provide utopian criteria for the critical judgment of a way of life (Habermas 1985).

Yet Habermas does not explain how such activity might occur. Art, as the realm of the experimental, is the locus of creativity; yet it can enter individual and social identity only from the outside. Aesthetics remains an exceptional aspect of human experience because Habermas does not show how it might be grounded in everyday life. Like that of Giddens, his view of modernity marginalizes playful and expressive aspects of interaction that are central to cultural creativity. Both Habermas and Giddens distinguish radically between the prosaic tasks of coordinating social action and the literary or aesthetic sensibility of poststructuralism; the latter often is castigated as the remnant of an avant-garde separated from everyday life. Yet such a chasm between the mundane and the artistic blinds these authors to ways in which nonrational or extrarational aesthetic and/or playful activity can emerge from quotidian social action.

This marginalizing of artistic experience as extraordinary is all the more puzzling when we consider that the expansion of mass media and consumerism has brought avant-garde images and styles into everyday life in the West. This "aestheticization of everyday life," whether viewed positively or negatively, is an integral part of the contemporary cultural and social terrain (Bell 1976; Featherstone 1992). Such a mass-mediated cultural context makes problematic the clear and simple distinctions between rationality and aesthetics,



and reinforces claims that all judgments involve an expressive moment. Further, had Habermas and Giddens analyzed modem mass culture in depth, they might have taken more seriously the complexity of modem experience that defies rational categories.

For example, the idea that mass culture creates a dreamlike subtext for modem experience has been a recurring theme from Benjamin's early critical theory to Baudrillard's poststructuralism (Baudrillard 1983; Benjamin 1969). In order to adequately conceptualize the role of aesthetics in interaction, one must see aesthetics as something other than an

inadequately formed language. To ground aesthetics in everyday life and socialization, one must develop its ties to play and emotion. Some contemporary sociologists recently have turned to pragmatism for a fuller appreciation of the social, yet indeterminate and affective, construction of intersubjectivity (Antonio 1989; Shalin 1992). Pragmatist notions of self and society, particularly Dewey's (1934) concept of "art as experience," can be complemented by Winnicott's (1971) analysis of infant play and by Benjamin's approach to collective memory. These perspectives not only can highlight the theoretical shortcom- ings of Giddens and Habermas, but also can lead us in some directions worth pursuing.

Although in this essay I do not present an overall alternative theoretical framework, I point to important issues that Habermas and Giddens must confront. A theory of social action that wishes to account for cultural creativity must recognize the role of the temporal, the indeterminate, and the affective in all interaction. The aesthetic moment in the coordination of social action captures this dynamic quality more fully than does a model based primarily on the rationalization of action. This expressive sensibility develops through interaction; it arises largely from our childhood experience of play. Play, like aesthetics, is embedded in cultural traditions and collective memories that bind the present to the past and provide the cultural narratives which inform judgments of social life. These judgments are expressed not only in argument, but also in style, dress, sociability, and the like. Any adequate conception of cultural change must take these dimensions into account; the aesthetic, the playful, and the rational are not separated rigidly.

THE PRAGMATIST CRITIQUE OF HABERMAS

Several sociologists look to pragmatism to counter what they regard as the overrational orientation of critical theorists, and of Habermas in particular. These critiques emphasize the importance of undecidability in all interaction, the novel and emergent character of social life, and the importance of understanding the affective components of solidarity. According to these authors, pragmatist themes can complement Habermas's often sterile rationalism (Antonio 1989; Shalin 1992).

Like many poststructuralists, the pragmatists emphasize the temporal dimension of experience. There exists no universal, stable present from which to judge activity. The flux of experience has emotionally charged, dramatic qualities that escape rational categories. Dewey's (1934) discussion of art is especially apt here because aesthetics provides a sense of form for this rhythmic quality of life. Aesthetic experience is an ongoing discovery and recovery of integration and harmony through participation in a life context characterized by resistance and tension. Aesthetics thus is the struggle to overcome obstacles and reach shared fulfillment-after which a new process of creation begins (T. Alexander 1987). In view of this interplay between harmony and tension, aesthetics captures the indeterminacy of the coordination of social action. Turner summarizes Dewey well:

Because the actual world, that in which we live, is a combination of movement and culmination, of breaks and reunions, the experience of a living creature is capable of

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aesthetic quality. The live being recurrently loses and reestablishes equilibrium with his surroundings. The moment of passage from disturbance to harmony is that of intensest life (1986, p. 38).

We learn to integrate this dramatic and temporal quality into wholes that make sense of situations, often in subtly new ways.

This aesthetic sensibility is not innate. We are educated in our cultural capacities for experience through interaction; the pragmatists, like Habermas and Giddens, believe that we find ourselves in the world and must solve problems while coordinating action. Yet the pragmatists see an important aesthetic moment in this process. Because our experience is shaped and shared communally, our aesthetic sensibility is elicited by others through interaction. Dewey (1934) argues that this process requires sensitivity and empathy as well as rationality. Through interaction, cognition becomes infused with meaning; thought invariably calls forth imagination and feeling because it is an active encounter with the social and natural worlds.

The sociologists' rediscovery of pragmatism in the context of critical theory has not extended the implications of these critical insights into socialization and collective memory; such areas could further problematize, yet also enrich, Habermas's perspective. Sociolo- gists often retain a hostile attitude toward poststructuralism, and thus do not develop the social component of the postmodern metaphor of play and its critique of evolutionary history. Such themes can both add to pragmatist thought and provide further insights into the advantages and problems of Habermas's approach.

SOCIALIZATION AND PLAY

An aesthetic sensibility that develops through interaction has affinities with play. Huizinga notes similarities between art and play, as follows:

The profound affinity between play and order is perhaps the reason why play . . . seems to lie to such a large extent in the field of aesthetics . . . It may be that this aesthetic factor is identical with the impulse to create orderly form, which animates play in all its aspects . . . play is invested with the noblest qualities we are capable of perceiving in things: rhythm and harmony (1955, p. 10).

Art and play provide a dynamic ordering of experience different from the resolution of validity claims through argument. Yet they must be grounded in adult life and childhood if they are to be important dimensions of human experience. Habermas and Giddens overlook the development of an aesthetic and playful cultural creativity because they see socialization in terms of the evolution of rational capacities. Habermas in particular slights this crucial aspect of individual and social identity by relying on the cognitive theories of Piaget and Kohlberg.

Habermas's interpretation of Mead demonstrates his rationalist bias. When examining Meadian socialization theory, he (1987b, p. 34) states that the child experiences his or her parents' expectations as "simply an empirical regularity." Thus Habermas reduces the complex interplay of early child/parent relationships to the complementarity of interest. In his view, any sense of playfulness or indeterminacy is absent in socialization, because the child comes to differentiate between the external and the inner world as his or her cognitive capacities mature (Habermas 1987b, p. 42). Play is simply a stage preceding this cognitive development. This view neglects the ambiguity and undecidability that are so important to Mead's view of human interaction. Mead's notion of sociality, of simul-



taneous being and not-being, of existing in several psychological and cultural "places" at once, ties human interaction to perpetual cultural novelty (1980, p. 47; also see Aboulafia 1986, pp. 19-26). Habermas underplays this moment of emergence in Mead.

Giddens sees little use in Meadian social psychology. Like Habermas, he views the "I" as primarily an effect of language. Following Winnicott, he recognizes that socialization is a process of learning to "live creatively." Giddens, however, immediately assimilates Winnicott's concerns about cultural innovation and the social psychological space necessary for such novelty to the subject's desire for security (Giddens 1991, pp. 41-42).

Yet Winnicott's theory of infant socialization can help ground a theory of cultural creativity in human interaction, thus giving Mead's notions of play and sociality a psychoanalytic twist. The potential for creativity, Winnicott argues, emerges from the child's

developing sense of self, especially in the context of play. His theory of socialization complements the pragmatist approach, offering a theory of intersubjectivity that does not privilege the rational over the playful, but sees them as developing together. As Flax (1990, p. 111) points out, Winnicott's approach posits no essentialist, need-centered concept of human nature.

Winnicott (1971, 1989) writes that infant symbolization represents the excitement of discovery, whereby the baby half creates and half discovers the world, and imagination has not been undermined by the strict separation of inner experience from outer reality. Winnicott argues, as do others in the object relations tradition, that humans satisfy their desires when they establish real relations with other people and with objects. The child's separation from the caregiver need not be solely hurtful; through the child-rearing phase, parent and child learn sensitivity to one another's needs. If the caregiver is adequately empathic to the child's wants (Winnicott calls this "good enough mothering"), a self can arise which is different from, but related to, others. The child learns to adapt to the environment while growing away from, but maintaining a stable relationship with, the caregiver.

The child realizes his or her capacities not only because of the sensitivity of the caregiver's responses; the infant also creates a "transitional space" where he or she can learn to innovate, distinguish and relate inner self and outer reality, and grasp reality as something shared with others. The child develops separateness through this transitional space. Further, a transitional object, such as a teddy bear, allows the child to lessen the strain of integrating inner with outer reality, and thus of learning to symbolize and begin creative living. Through playing with objects, the child can transform his or her sense of self and can develop the creative possibilities embedded in a shared reality. It is precisely the difference between self and other, inner and outer reality, that allows fantasizing and imagination to develop and creates the potential for constantly rediscovering the self.

Thus what is distinctly human is not abstract rationality, but the capacity to relate to objects and others in a sensitive and playful way. Winnicott believes that the child, through interaction with his or her caregiver, learns to relate to objects and people. This devel- opmental process does not follow the logic of language; its logic is captured more accurately by play. Both mind and body are involved. To reduce it to cognitive terms is to misunderstand it.

According to Winnicott, transitional space is the prototype for all cultural "space"- and play is the forerunner of later cultural activity. Cultural creativity and aesthetic sensibility are thus grounded in human development. Winnicott's theory of socialization emphasizes the playful and joyful aspects of interaction that have little place in the rational reflexive approaches of Habermas and Giddens.1

I Flax (1990) and Lembo (1989) develop some interesting applications of Winnicott's ideas. Flax (1990)

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COLLECTIVE MEMORY

Although Winnicott recognizes the social dimension of play, he tends to assume that cultural creativity occurs in a psychologically privileged historical and social vacuum. He does not analyze how cultural traditions structure our social sensibility and influence socialization patterns. Moreover, as Weinstein (1990, p. 117) points out, Winnicott does not investigate the effects of differences in class, race, and sexual orientation on the development of transitional space and objects. He also fails to examine how particular cultural histories shape social identity, and to explore the importance of collective memory in keeping cultural traditions vital. Under these various social influences, cultural innovation can take many different forms. Finally, Winnicott does not examine the conditions contributing to the harmful use of play and art, such as the Nazi "aestheticization" of politics.

Some of these problems can be addressed by turning to members of the early Frankfurt school. Winnicott's discussion of play has some interesting affinities with Adorno's and Benjamin's discussion of mimesis, which can help illuminate the critical social dimension of play. In the work of these authors, mimesis refers to the child's playfulness and joy in imitation, which ostensibly is expunged as he or she becomes a rational adult. Yet this desire for playful mimesis never can be extinguished entirely; it lives an often subterranean existence, providing alternative definitions of happiness in an increasingly bureaucratized society (Adorno 1979, pp. 14-15; Benjamin 1969, p. 159; Dallmayr 1991, p. 93). Benjamin (1969, p. 242), in his discussion of the fascist aestheticization of politics, also realizes that such wishes can be used for destructive ends when not tied to openness and participation.

Especially in Benjamin's view, playful mimesis intersects with collective memories that shape identity formation. Childhood experiences often are shaped and informed by shared urban public spaces and a collective sociohistorical past; history lives on in the objects and images of modem life (Benjamin 1969, p. 158, pp. 261-62; Lass 1988). A common cultural style, an aesthetic construction of self and culture, are central to this process of identity formation. From the cultures of African-Americans to the nationalist identities of East Europeans, a shared cultural history, akin to what Bellah et al. (1985, pp. 152-55) call a "community of memory," often ties people together. In his most radical formulation, Benjamin regards a kind of anamnestic remembering as a spark for revolutionary action redeeming the hopes of a forgotten generation (Benjamin 1969, p. 262). Yet this memory is not always joyful; frequently the collective memories of shared suffering bind a people.

According to Benjamin, this mode of remembrance entails rethinking the rational foundations of understanding, seeing the world in the context of intuitions sparked in part by childhood experiences and a knowledge of what has been lost in the past. These images and intuitions can be deepened by using an enriched mimetic capacity. Stories and "dialectical images" capture this process more successfully than does discursive argument. Thus, Benjamin believes, traditions of learning based on "high" culture should be displaced by "the utopian tradition of fairy tales, which instruct without dominating" (Buck-Morss

believes that Winnicott offers some fruitful theoretical avenues for feminist thought. She argues that Winnicott's approach avoids Habermas's hyperrationalism as well as the poststructuralist denunciation of reason. This empathic and multidimensional subject can inform criticisms of patriarchy. In the area of mass media, Lembo's (1989; Lembo and Tucker 1990) research shows that many television watchers engage in "image play"; often they do not closely follow the narrative of TV shows, but rather play with the colors, textures, and images of television and reconstruct them imaginatively. These images may spark a short imaginative excursion into their inner world and memories of past experience. Memory and the present, the rational and the playful are not clearly differentiated; through image play, a psychic space is created, which intermingles these categories. A rational model along the lines of Habermas and Giddens cannot tap the playful and multidimensional aspects of this experience.



1991, p. 337). A critical understanding of meaning involves recovering the lost hopes of the past, exploring the playful dimension of childhood, and exploding the reified images of the present.

In more prosaic form, this sense of a shared fate and of cultural belonging provides the resources crucial for holding the present to critical standards, as embodied metaphorically in heroes, heroines, and stories that do not merely replicate the existing culture's self-

understanding. Certainly such memories can be manipulated selectively by groups to justify particularistic and instrumental ends. Yet, as recent studies show, collective memory can provide some continuity with models of acting, and heroes or heroines from the past have a facticity that makes them more than simply raw data for a cynical and narcissistic present (Schudson 1991; Schwartz 1991).

This notion of collective memory problematizes both sociological conceptions of history and poststructuralist criticisms of historical discourse. History is more than the establish- ment of processes of learning that embody pragmatic truth claims, as Habermas argues; it is more than the unimportant prelude to the whirling dervish of modernity, as Giddens would have it; it is not simply another metanarrative that can be plundered at will, as many poststructuralists argue. History, when embodied in collective remembrance, creates a sense of shared solidarity, and provides the symbolic and affective resources that bind communities of memory. Yet these communal traditions cannot simply be applauded in the abstract, because the particular solidarity created by collective memory is always historically contingent. A reified notion of collective memory should not be contrasted mechanically with a "totalizing" rationality. Cultural traditions that are fetishized, and that are not open to dialogue with other belief systems, can be very destructive. For example, reified nationalist and ethnic visions of community can harden into myth, promoting an aestheticized politics that in turn exacerbates geopolitical conflicts (Griswold 1992; Harvey 1989, pp. 209-10).

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

In light of the importance of play and cultural memory, areas of social inquiry neglected or oversimplified by Habermas and Giddens can be illuminated. For example, the new social movements that Giddens and Habermas view as so important in generating social change must not be regarded simply as carriers of discursive cultural traditions. Rather, in Benjaminian fashion, new social movements are "explosive mixtures of aesthetic and political imagination" (Wellmer 1991, p. 33), providing spaces for new forms of cultural expression.

This ludic dimension always has been a part of collective behavior. The festive aspects of many social upheavals, from strikes to demonstrations, are and have been central aspects of social movements' cultural identity (Hunt 1989). Bakhtin (1984) reveals the carnivalesque nature of European popular culture at the time of Rabelais. French historians have discovered the importance of festivals and symbolic practices from the French Revolution (Hunt 1984; Ozouf 1988) to the reunions publiques of the Paris Commune (Dalotel, Faure, and Freiermuth 1980) and the revelry among striking workers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Colton 1969; Perrot 1987). Further, recent research shows that the working-class movements most strongly opposed to capitalism were at- tempting to preserve and extend their communal ties in the face of capitalist destruction (Calhoun 1982; Reddy 1987). The memories of a shared past, whether expressed in the rights of the "free-born Englishmen" or in the traditions of journeymen's associations, helped provide the vantage point for a critical analysis of capitalism (Jones 1983; Joyce 1991; Sewell 1980; Thompson 1963). Such historical remembrance called for a deeper

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understanding of the past, and for a reconstruction of the ideals buried by modernization; they represented a critique of facile theories of industrial progress (Lasch 1991). That Habermas views such movements as inevitably doomed victims of progress based on a

self-reproducing system only demonstrates the one-dimensionality of his theory of social

change (Habermas 1987b, p. 377). Social movements also provide free spaces where new ideas, symbols, and experimental

ways of living can be discovered and elaborated (Arendt 1965; Evans and Boyte 1986). New social movements, like gay and lesbian movements, are as much about playing with new forms of sociability and symbolism as about developing rational programs to stop the

illegitimate rationalization of the lifeworld or to colonize the future. Like workers' and

populist movements of the past, they offer the possibility of breaking into history with

something new and "turning the world upside down" (Hill 1961). In sum, social movements may be understood as "arenas for the formation and enactment of social identities" (Fraser 1992, p. 125). Again, the historical contingency and variability of this identity formation must be stressed and its concrete context must be specified, because movements

drawing on the past can be reactionary. For example, the Nazis used German symbols and traditions to reinforce a particularistic, racist nationalism (Mosse 1975).

THE PUBLIC SPHERE

The concepts of play and collective memory also can complement Habermas's theory of the public sphere. Play satisfies a critical demand for equality that is functionally equivalent to the claim of justice which Habermas sees as inherent in communicative action. Play requires an autonomous space, like a public sphere, where action can take place voluntarily among equals (Aronowitz 1973).

Thus the public sphere is more than a space for rational debate. The politicization of lifeworld traditions, which Habermas (1975) regards as a component of its colonization that frees up potentials for communicative action, also may promote new forms of sociability and playfulness. In view of the aestheticization of everyday life in our mass media-dominated world, patterns of speech, dress, sexuality, and music now are playful arenas of culture that are not merely tangential but central identity-confirming experiences for many people. In fact, popular culture may provide the most fruitful terrain for alternative constructions of social identity (Hooks 1990, p. 31).

Much of the work that is influenced by cultural studies has taken up these themes

(Johnson 1987). Hebdige (1984) points out that white youth cultures symbolically appro- priate aspects of black culture through style and music. He views the punk aesthetic as a white translation of black ethnicity. Gaines, (1991) for contemporary suburban U.S. youths, and Willis (1978), for British hippies and bike boys, demonstrate that music provides common symbolic meanings and helped create a rhythm of life and an aesthetic of living for these subgroups. Because these cultures are permeable, they are constantly innovating as groups come into symbolic contact with one another. "Style" has become a symbolic code that expresses these new identities. Marcus (1989) shows how punks' music and appearance contributed to an alternative public space for white youths, defined by style as much as by discourse; further, punks were part of a surreptitious, anarchist cultural tradition that has exploded into public consciousness on occasion, from the festivals of the Paris Commune to surrealism. Much the same could be said of rap and its relationship to African-American young people. Rap is a form of "common literacy" for many young black males, which has helped reawaken them to their Afrocentric traditions (Hooks 1990,



p. 27). African-Americans are more self-conscious than the punks; their cultural memories, from Malcolm X to slavery, furnish a critical sense of cultural alternatives.

In sum, the lifestyle experimentation that is so central to the new social movements indicated by Giddens and Habermas develops in part within the context of popular culture's aesthetic appreciation of self and other. Rethinking the dimensions of the public sphere as more than a place where rational interaction occurs, and as more than a place that is threatened progressively by mass culture, can help introduce the cultural studies perspective into critical theory.2

CONCLUSION

In addition to rethinking the contours of the public sphere and social movements, this discussion of play, aesthetics, and collective memory suggests a reconsideration of other aspects of Habermas's and Giddens's sociology. Taking these issues seriously can move these theorists toward a self-conscious reevaluation of their ostensible rejection of foun- dationalism. Specifically, they must rethink the "totalizing" implications of their rationalization models in terms of a more pluralistic approach.

These criticisms do not repudiate some of their central insights. Postmodernism is inadequate in its conception of social interaction, as Giddens and Habermas argue. Further, rational reflexivity is undoubtedly an important component of modernity; in particular, Habermas has captured a central distinction with his analysis of instrumental, strategic, and communicative rationality. His concern about the participatory dimension of interaction promotes a sensitivity to the democratic potential and capacity for renewal and change of different cultural traditions.

Habermas, however, must expand his theory of social action. Instrumental and strategic rationality should be viewed not only as lacking the reconciling dimension of rationality so important to communicative action, but also as expressing a reified rationality shorn of its affective and aesthetic moments. Communicative rationality can be enriched by incorporating these moments into its very structure. Thus it is possible to retain Habermas's valuable theory of the colonization of the lifeworld by instrumental and strategic rationality, and of the blockage of participation in the public sphere by these forms of rationality. The nature of the opposition generated by this process must be rethought, however. Habermas's sensitivity to the possibly irrational consequences of aesthetics has led him to virtually dismiss this realm of experience. Yet new forms of sociability and affective solidarity must be considered vital aspects of cultural resistance. This type of opposition is crucially dependent on collective memories of communal heroes and heroines and on stories derived from the shared experience of a people; often it intersects with the remembrance of childhood. Collective memory thus plays a central role in structuring social identity, and can provide critical standards by which the present can be judged; it cannot be understood in terms of evolutionary rationalism.

Habermas's and Giddens's interpretation of modernity as the search for coherence often obscures the indeterminate and potentially creative dimension of interaction. To grasp this creative moment, one must incorporate into their analyses an aesthetic sensibility akin to Dewey's. Speech acts and rational reflexivity are given meaning by such an aesthetic

2 The cultural studies perspective has several theoretical problems, however. It tends to romanticize the possibilities of change in the present. In addition, this approach lacks a strong concept of collective memory, and does not sufficiently examine the links between psychological and social development.

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capacity. Sensitivity to context precedes the formulation and implementation of moral rules. This pragmatic critique intersects with what Habermas calls his "neo-Aristotelian" critics, who argue that theories inevitably are embedded in particular cultural traditions (Habermas 1991, p. 222). Habermas should recognize the legitimacy of these criticisms, and should abandon his strong claims for linguistic evolution (Taylor 1991).

Process and undecidability must be given an equal place with coherence in analyzing interaction. Any evolutionary model of history or socialization must be regarded with caution because the new is always possible in social life. Given these criteria, Habermas and Giddens should consider a capacity for creative playfulness as an indicator of psychological maturity, in tandem with the ability to think abstractly. This view would introduce a tactile dimension into their theories; Dewey, Winnicott, and Benjamin all discuss the centrality of sensuality, emotion, and the object world in the development of human capacities.

Thus, although rational communication is integral to cross-cultural consensus, the very definition of rationality should be expanded to include respect and appreciation of different cultural styles, the richness of inner life, and the inevitable aesthetic moment in intersubjectivity. Again, neo-Aristotelian themes are important here because communication involves sharing and grasping the meaning of stories and metaphors that may be culturally alien and always are somewhat opaque. Any rational discussion must proceed on this rather fragile basis of cultural negotiation.

Finally, much of the hermeneutic process of understanding that Habermas and Giddens regard as underpinning society should not be reduced to rational interaction, but should be viewed as a search for innovative forms of social life as well. Taking into account these considerations can allow Habermas and Giddens to rethink "how to make our emotions intelligent and our intellect emotionally sane" (Shalin 1992, pp. 274-75) while developing a "rich intersubjectivity" based on "compassionate understanding of difference" (Antonio 1989, p. 743).

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