Towards a deconstruction of Durkheim: a Derridean reading of "The Rules of the Sociological Method"

• Autores: Tomás Speziale
• Localización: VII Congrés Català de Sociologia i V Congrés Català de Joves Sociòlegs / Sociòlogues: llibre de resums de les sessions dels Grups de Treball, 2017, ISBN 978-84-8424-611-4, págs. 68-69
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In the second prologue from The Rules of the Sociological Method, Durkheim –regarding the rule that claims the consideration of the social fact as things- claims that “Thus our rule implies no metaphysical conception, no speculation about the innermost depth of being” (Durkheim, 1982: 37). Paradoxically, “no speculation about the innermost depth of being” anticipates a handful of metaphysical presuppositions that one can find throughoutthe book.

    Take, for instance, the fact that, for Durkheim, the science can only consider, firstly, the social facts by observing their external characteristics. This rule isn´t an obstacle for the author, because those characteristic are the external sign, the expression of an innermost depth –an essence, a bottom of the social facts- that can only be reached once sociology is already advance.

    If, as Derrida says in Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, the history of metaphysics is the history of the determination of the being as presence, we can hence say that Durkheim´s work, inspite of deliberately trying not to imply any “metaphysical conception”, is still trapped in the looking for a source, a simple origin, a “nature of things”.

    This paper will try, therefore, to read The rules of the sociological Method in a Derridean style, finding and indicating in and through the text those dichotomies that structure the work –for example, thing/idea, bottom/surface; cause/effect, etc. Are not these dualisms related to the strong interest that Durkheim has in finding that essence of the social facts? Thus we will, following Derrida, not discard Durkheim´s work, but read it in a particular way, denouncing every complicity, “every particular borrowing [that] drags along with it the whole of metaphysics” (Derrida, 1970).