Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej, Tom XX, Numer 1, 2024
https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8069.20.1.02

Kamila Biały ^*

University of Lodz, Poland
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4933-3570

Piotr F. Piasek ^*

Central China Normal University
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0707-4435

On Social Emergence: A Non-Dichotomous Approach to Qualitative Data Analysis^[1]

O wyłanianiu się tego, co społeczne. Niedychotomiczne podejście do jakościowej analizy danych

Introduction

In this article, we want to address the topic of social emergence, which already includes a reference to the sociology (the becoming of social elements and wholes) as well as to phenomenology, whose epistemology we use here to broaden the sociological view. We define this epistemology as non-dichotomistic, and contrast it with a dichotomist one. Dichotomism is an approach in which smiliarities and differences are already given in advance and are in constant contextualized circulation. In non-dichotomism, however, similarities emerge, so their existence is preceded by a common ontic zero point of non-differentiation and pre-unity. There have been attempts in the social sciences to transcend the dichotomy described (e.g. Callon, 1986; Touraine, 2014); against these attempts, we propose to formulate a ‘third option’ which seems interesting due to its inspiration in phenomenology and Gestalt psychotherapy.

The introduction of the category of contacting is understood on the one hand as the process of emerging figure and/from the ground (Gestalt psychology) and, on the other, as pre-subjective forces of intentionality and responsiveness operating in this background (phenomenology). It is an expression of an onto-epistemological turn from what has already been quantified (divided and researchable or measurable) into what was previously comprehensive and acquires similarity only at a later stage. On the basis of sociology, such perspective can be realized not only theoretically as a dry consideration, but also in practice by conducting research and analyzing empirical material. In this work, we use the non-dichotomist approach in a strictly sociological way, looking at the empirical material and describing the picture of the social found in empiricism, as well as trying to explore the possibilities of such understanding.

Sensitivity to the wholeness of experience, the inclusion of issues that guide the understanding of the entirety of feeling and corporeality, as well as emphasis on the importance of the category of primeval unity or the primeval need for resonance can all be found in the works of Hartmut Rosa. The concept of resonance developed by him refers to a wide interest in non-dichotomist issues, the field issues in the humanities (the aforementioned philosophy, but also anthropology and sociology), and clinical practice (Gestalt psychotherapy and psychoanalysis). The non-dichotomist perspective is a kind of response to modernity with its favoring of the individual, individual agency, the progress of reason, and, especially in this current phase, being characterized by unprecedented acceleration on such a scale, chaos of multitude, diversity, and the accompanying uncertainty or, as Rosa put it, the fear of the world becoming silent (Rosa, 2019: 307–380). As we describe it in more detail in another text presenting the tool of a narrative interview about present life, the non-dichotomist perspective invites one to undirected self-talk in the present and, even more, to being in the here-and-now of what emerges in the moment of speaking. The researcher leaves space for the narrators and listens to the narration whilst limiting themselves to taking care of the narrators’ comfort in order for them to let go of the discipline of speaking (reason) and sail into the unknown. They register the changes of topics, settling and allowing the narrators to judge them in the only appropriate way in this open situation. Being attentive to the process of being with the narrators and the narrators being with the story, the researcher focuses less on the individual content, successive recurring figures of the spoken word, and more on the background, slowing down, waiting, and empathizing with this situation. It is from this existent, undifferentiated (but felt) background that the key figures of contact will emerge over time, including, in particular, aspects of the subjectivity of the narrators.

In this article, we present the next step in detail, namely the method of analyzing the empirical material based on non-dichotomist epistemology. It is worth noting that the empirical material in question is used more loosely to illustrate – what is here at stake – a theoretical and methodological perspective, and doing so in a more speculative than systematic mode. We will be trying to capture what is not obvious – namely, the process of emergence. For this purpose, we use the category of contact, the process of contacting, which is realized as intentionality and responsiveness at the ontic level. Both dimensions, which are actually inseparable from each other, are respectively directed at others, at what is “outside”, and acceptance of what is alien and incorporation of the outside into what is your own. In fact, the understanding of contact in the distinction between inside and outside, one’s own and alien/other is already individualistic thinking, supporting the post-Cartesian substantive order Cogito ergo sum. Following the late Merleau-Ponty and his interest in pre-phenomenality, we believe that the division into analytical atoms is grounded in the differentiating hiatus, which we propose to consider not as a rupture, an “ontological void”, but relationality, as such hiatus is a property of being itself, about which the author writes that “it is spanned by the total being […] of the world” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968: 148). In our understanding, what is pre-phenomenal applies to the emotional and sensory layer based on two vectors: the intentional and the responsive. In Merleau-Ponty’s language, the two-fold orientation in contact can be grasped in a non-dualistic way in the obverse and reverse of touching and being touched, seeing and being seen, speaking and being spoken. Merleau-Ponty was interested in the primal layer of experience and, at the same time, in the primal structure of being, which led him to introduce a category to define the primal differentiation that can be recognized in experience itself, at the base of perception. This differentiation is referred to as “distance” (hiatus), the mutual relationality of my “I” and the world. Merleau-Ponty did not take this as an epistemological thesis only; he thought that the correlation of the subject with the world would be lost. Due to the fact that the basis of perception recognizes not only the epistemological but also the ontological distance, it became possible to link the two sides together. Thus, the statement from the level of perception research entered the layer of statements about being itself (hiatus as a property of being): “But this hiatus between my right hand touched and my right hand touching, between my voice heard and my voice uttered, between one moment of my tactile life and following one, is not an ontological void, a non-being: it is spanned by the total being of my body, and by that of the world” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968: 148). What we are dealing with when studying perception is a field of various “appearances”. While experiencing cognition, we do not face unequivocal negativity that would be implied by the gap between the cognisor (subject) and the world (object) surrounding him/her. One ‘appearance’ is always replaced by another: another ‘appearance’ disappears after a while, but not into nothingness, but for another ‘appearance’ – this is the author’s famous ‘il y a’, i.e. something that is is already something (Merleau-Ponty, 1968: 88). Hence, it can be concluded that ‘appearances’ occur on the surface of the cognition of the world. The surface of cognition is the common ground for the overlapping of both sides of the cognitive process.

I

Sociology is primarily interested in the issue of the reproducibility of various types of order: symbolic, interactive, or institutional^[2]. Our proposal, on the other hand, wants to see the becoming of the world and people not only and not primarily as a reproduction of the existing ways of being and acting, but as the emergence of order, for which this reproduction is treated as a necessary moment of novelty; new ways of being and acting. In this sense, it is contrary to the usual logic of social sciences, where priority is given to the conditions of reproduction (and their exploration), while emergence is considered less constitutive (and legitimate for study) – as something ephemeral and chaotic, not subject to rules, regularities, and regulations (Biały, Piasek, 2022).

In the example of biographical research, which will be of interest to us as a point of reference in this article, the basic form of reproduction can be indicated, namely the constant re-creation of dichotomous categories of thinking, as the foundation for research and explanation. In this particular field, emphasis is primarily put on the relationship between various macro-structural (formal and institutional) properties of processes and phenomena in various areas of the world of everyday life at the level of practices and interpretations that organize the course of biographies. Thus, they refer primarily to the scope and manner of the biographical rooting of one’s own experiences in the socially-dominant framework of activities and interactions. This means focusing on the level of manifestation of the macro sphere in the biographies of individuals, and this is also the research practice of biographical sociologists. The other side of this “relationship” process, i.e. the structuring of social processes by the subjects themselves, is only mentioned. Thus, even biographical sociology turns to the study of these manifestations of macro-determination rather than the grass-roots manifestations of agency. Biographical research on social change (e.g. a specific change, such as the political transformation in Poland) does not capture the process of transformation itself, nor does it describe this dynamic, but, rather, it compares the manifestation (recreation) of various types of order in different historical moments on the basis of the difference between one point and the next.

In the following analysis, we wish to abandon both the account of structural agency and the description carried out in terms of emphasizing individual agency. Both these views are a manifestation of a dichotomous attitude that we try to transcend. Agency, considered from the point of view of institutions or from the point of view of individuals, remains one-sided and subordinates what is opposite to one of these two centers. Each situation, including the one of conducting interviews, is possible to consider in the equivalence of mutually interacting components, but distinguishable not so much ontologically, but epistemologically, i.e. in a certain analytical description of the components of the ontological unity. Thus, it is not about the ontological pluralism of Latour’s actants, which would be an example of looking at a situation in which dichotomy becomes totalized. For this French anthropologist, this means the constant mutual influence of actors who remain actors, i.e. they are individualized in their own politicized causative force. Latour, in his perspective of ontological pluralism, looks for mutual influence and coupling between what is diverse. His response to the dichotomous subject-object pair is the expansion of conceptual categories with additional oppositions, such as reproduction, metamorphosis, or habit, with their respective hiatuses and trajectories (Latour, 2013). However, we are not so much guided by the search for pre-categorizing alternatives that would still remain in the spirit of Cartesian opposition, supplemented with additional dualisms; rather, we want to look at what precedes these categories and how they emerge. Thus, it is about certain ur (primordiality) of the beginnings, the very emergence of the multitude. Rather, the opposite would be the original ontological non-differentiation, which epistemologically would consist of such elements as the researcher and the narrator, but also the research tool and any other institutional constellation present in the situation. Each of the elements of the situation bears traces of institutions, but in the perspective presented here, these elements – in the phase of association – are harnessed in the alternating processes of situational intentionality and responsiveness, which open the horizon of possible (and impossible) consequences and are only partially determined by what is structural and institutional. Phenomenologically speaking, locating themselves at the level of the interior of the situation, the differentiating individuals face an “infinite demand”, formulated by the opposite strangeness, separated by an impassable difference, which, however, does not separate one from the alter ego so much as connects with it/them.

Field theories and researchers of the atmospheres of space, places, or events go even further than Latour in exploring the underlying (pre-)emergence (Griffero, 2016; Böhme, 2017). Here, we can assume a certain gradation of the radicality of the way of implementing the description, which is guided by reaching what was originally not differentiated. Thus, there are two poles of the study of the field: the first, still dichotomous, where it is assumed that there are identified actants in the field that only influence each other^[3]; the second, which we wish to pursue, where researchers look at the situational emergence of properties. This division into two poles, marking a continuum on the axis of which various researchers taking up the notion of field can be written, reflects the dual nature of the relationship to the field. Relationality in the field has its (1) layer of ontological process and direct immersion in processual experiencing and feeling; and (2) a layer of linguistic expressiveness and linguistic probing of this process. At the ontological level, feelings are not feelings of an individual, but feelings of the field, feelings of contact, fundamentally non-autonomous. Only the individual can convey them, the field itself does not use language. But in this sense, the ontological field can be felt, the undifferentiated can be felt. The field, in its epistemological superstructure, usually loses its dexterity and ossifies in an attempt to reflect the living process in the existing concepts and to adjust emergence to what is linguistically available to the researcher. Even if they bend the language, they still struggle with the matter of the word, for the sake of its historical and social conditioning, devoid of graceful plasticity. The description, self-isolating in the process of experiencing the situation, gains precision and saturation with cultural categories, identity frames of the existing elements of perceiving the world (objects, positions, roles, institutions). But this description can never fully coincide with the living matter of experience from which it springs. It has its source there, but it is a hostage to the internal structures of thinking genres, such as cause-and-effect reasoning or diachrony, more on which below^[4]. However, the very possibility of feeling the background of the situation and experiencing it allows one to talk about it and improve the description of the processes of emerging field figures. Owing to this, a researcher listening to a narrative interview, although obviously deprived of access to the full range of relational tensions in this process of listening, cannevertheless capture the present relational figures. Just as during the interview, the statement itself can only be treated as a background for the emergence of the core of the ongoing process (its figures); the same linguistic definition and categorization imposed on the narrator’s and researcher’s statements are the background for the process of listening and experiencing this event, which is made present in the recording. It should also be added, following what has already been indicated above, that both these planes are equivalent and equally important. The term “background” should not mislead us into downplaying this (epistemological) component.

As we wrote above, we are interested in the search for a description of the emergence of the social. In our opinion, however, it is not worth looking at the emergence of novelties while neglecting the already successfully studied reproduction. The appearance of emergence, if treated situationally, holistically, and also processually, is always complemented by reproduction. Thus, if we use the method developed from this approach to analyze narrative interviews, it leads us to a shift of emphasis to relational wholeness, owing to which the existing manifestations of individual, atomistic trajectory mechanisms of the fearful self (which we usually deal with in biographical sociology) can gain the functionality of a stage in the process of emergence of new qualities within individual selves. On the other hand, what appears as a causative being in the world, being presented and reproduced as such, will encounter, sooner or later, appropriate situational support and cracks of impotence and helplessness whose previous invisibility/shadowing becomes visible/clear and; in this sense, it constitutes an extended and more comprehensive mode of the existence of the Self^[5]. It is also worth noting, this is a simple consequence of the former, that it is not about any falsification as opposed to the authentic being of the individual. Both the trajectory mechanisms of the first case and the agency of the second case are as self-contained and significant as the opposing modes. Using the metaphor of an image from Gestalt psychology (more on which we write below), we can say that the background and the figure are equally important. Against the background of the rigidity of fears, a figure of new qualities, agency, etc. appears and, against the background of activism and agency, a figure of impotence appears. Both these components could not exist without each other.

The emergence of new qualities of being, which, in the context of a narrative interview situation, is a process of deepening and expanding awareness, is based on the assumption about the situationality of intentionality and responsiveness, i.e. about the ontically relational aspect of every action and the basic relationality of the contacting process (as the subject of sociology). This places the researcher looking at the empirical material into facing the challenge of empathizing with emergence, in which individual selves are lost in favor of situational responsiveness and intentionality. It is a challenge to look at (deepening) consciousness processes non-dichotomously, confusing the perspective focused on what is personal. Focusing on the elements that we perceive as coming from the individual self leads, in the bosom of sociological analysis, to the reproduction of the above-mentioned orders. To see this “what?” and “how?” emerging within the interview situation, it is necessary to abandon thinking that aspects of responsiveness and intentionality come from a specific self; the self of the researcher or the self of the narrator. They are, rather, structural features of being, i.e. they refer to the ontic level rather than the epistemological level in the case of the latter, and are related to the reproduction of what is social.

The introduction of order can also be opposed to the introduction of what is alien, as Bernhard Waldenfels (2011) wrote. The introduction of alien is giving voice to the destabilizing ambiguity that is already present, but often functions silently, inhibited by the reproducing order; the introduction of alien is allowing the emergence of novelty. “The coherence of sense and the canon of rules are thus not bypassed but interrupted by the evidence of that which happens to us and forces us to respond. […] For phenomenology, this means the need to turn against itself, to resist the euphoria of sense which would dull it like it dulls other philosophies of sense” (Waldenfels, 2011: 32).

This is called the pathic dimension, i.e. the dimension of something that happens, imposes, goes beyond individuality, as well as beyond socio-cultural determination by a specific system of knowledge or a system of values. Introducing the category of pathos as an unusual event that happens to someone and always bears traces of alien, of alien influence, allows Waldenfels to break the subject-object opposition. Pathos as the opposite of apathy, indifference, and the lack of difference, goes beyond traditional causality and intentionality. Someone to whom something happens is a subject in a non-modern sense; he/she is subjected to a certain experience of what Waldenfels calls a form of passivity, but of passivity understood as an alien ego (“I”), not the opposite of activity. Pathos and the answer to them constitute one and the same experience (Waldenfels, 2011: 28–29). They are not disjointed wholes, only time separates them, leaving room for a learning response by being touched (by an event). Pathos does not so much make us think as it forces us to think; it disrupts existing networks of meanings, violates the system of rules, and, thus, decontextualises the event. Phenomenology, both contemporary of Waldenfels and that of Merleau-Ponty, is characterized by a search for an increasingly fundamental level of experience that would legitimize the ontological status of the sphere of phenomena. Merleau-Ponty himself, in connection with the concept of “distance” that he introduced, strove to approach the specificity of being in such a way that it would rely on the unity of its sensual and logical, rational aspects present in the original, initial differentiation. Instead of using existing and inadequate categories, such as being-nothingness, thing-perception, etc., he introduces the category of “visible-invisible”; the invisible is not simply something that does not exist for seeing, but creates another dimension of the world: “It is therefore not a de facto invisible, like an object hidden behind another, and not an absolute invisible, which would have nothing to do with the visible. Rather it is invisible of this world, that which inhabits this world, sustains it, and renders it visible, its own and interior possibility, the Being of this being” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968: 151).

The phenomenological concepts we use – intentionality and responsiveness – are directly related to the pair of concepts of figure and background developed within Gestalt psychotherapy (the latter being derived from Gestalt psychology, cf. below). The logic of the emergence of a figure in a constant relationship with the background is something different from the logic of the dialectical development of the synthesis through the cancellation of thesis and antithesis. The above statements, describing a certain totality, may be mistakenly perceived as inscribed in the dialectic process of the development of being, which is opposed to the otherness (das Anderssein). So, it is not about Hegelian logic, but about development perceived in terms of figure and background. The background functions as a constantly changing environment, on the basis of which the figure operates within a certain rigid scheme of consciousness (cf. Jacobs, 2017), somehow coping with what is constantly changing in the environment. By the principle of inertia, the figure reproduces itself. However, in the field of the development of the figure-ground relationship, new information appears, which, despite being unable to be included, affects the figure whilst remaining suspended in the background. In the development of the figure-background relationship, a critical point is reached when the background is saturated with novelty to such an extent (taming it and settling in it) that the figure loses its operational power. Then it is absorbed into the background, from which a new figure emerges. If we take wholeness as the analytical point of reference, then it can be said that despite the epistemological differentiation of identity within the interview situation, we are dealing with association as a fertile void, the void as a background, to use the same pair of terms from which the figure of contact emerges. The stiffened and reproduced figure is the scheme of being/action/relationship introduced by the researcher as well as the narrator. These are the patterns of attitudes and beliefs, affective desires and aversions and the self-interpretation of the research tool performed by both of these groups. However, the form of relationship imposed by an interview about the present (the unorthodox variant of biographical interviews we propose) helps to break down these initial rigidities toward the incorporation of novelty. As the statement develops, which is also the development of the relationship, what is intentional and responsive at some point becomes more important than the elements of the reproducing, stiffened figure. Then, the reproducing pattern is destroyed and a new figure is born, and an unpredictable novelty comes to the fore.

Looking non-dichotomistically at what is happening, we ask ourselves an alternative to the already explored research question, namely: what is the need of the situation? Describing a situational event and the development of the situation, we exclude individual free will which can be replaced with the thought of the process of following something new, following novelty. After all, this is not a total, essentializing erasure of free will from reality – because will is lost in meeting novelty – but in the dichotomous position of the ego-centered view we can still describe situations as characterized by individual motivations^[6]. The pathic dimension refers to a situation where specific field forces act and call for a response, resonance, but it is up to the individual to submit to it (which is referred to in the literature as radical autonomy) (cf. Critchley, 2012). This does not change the fact that individuals are regarded here as functions of these extra-individual intentions, which in relation to the pathic dimension means that pathos is not a choice. The self is not a structure but a process that emerges in a given situation – these forces remain in motion before individual subjects are differentiated and defined.

II

In this part, we present the practical application of theoretical and methodological issues already described elsewhere in this volume (Biały, Pasek, 2024), as well as in the previous part of this article. As empirical material, we will use an interview with Elizabeth, aged about 40, working in a state cultural institution in a managerial position, married with two children. It was carried out as part of the Opus 14 research grant, part of which was the construction of a research tool of an interview about the present, based on the classic tool of an autobiographical narrative interview. The basic analytical categories that make it possible to capture the specificity of this tool are the notions of “figure”, “background”, “intentionality”, and “responsiveness”, as well as “process of contacting” and “field”.

Below we present the initial fragment of the interview, where the researcher explains its specificity. Elizabeth is asked to provide a spontaneous statement about her current life, in which she is to tell what comes to her mind on this subject and how it comes and appears. This initial phase we call ‘pre-contact’^[7]. Using the categories of “figure” and “background”, we can say that in the pre-contact phase, before the figures are created, we are dealing with their non-differentiation, within which work with the background takes place. It means setting the boundaries of contact, framing it, and translating this abstract nomenclature into concrete empirical material; as such, the initial conditions of the interview situation are defined and a request for a statement in the desired form is formulated, to which the narrator responds.

Well, as I said, this is not your ordinary sociological interview. It’s just more of a free expression.
– Hm.
About what comes to mind about your current life. It can be different things, different issues, cases, problems that have been appearing recently and come to the fore. But also some emotions and feelings about it. Ideas, whatever comes to mind. The point would be for you to give yourself a moment when I’m done talking. If something comes to mind, you would start talking about it, this thought will somehow run out, then another will appear. If I want to ask something, I will either ask it immediately or make a note of it.
– So we’re assuming a monolog?
A monolog to which I will possibly ask questions. But, rather, please don’t rely on me here [laughs].
– Okay.
I’ll have three more specific questions at the end, but like this one we already have, so to speak, they will exhaust the material here. I am recording everything so…
– Shall we begin?
Yeah.
– [clears throat]
If you would also give yourself such time to breathe and calm down, what, what comes up about your current life. Ah!
– Hm?
I have a few more things to say formally.
– Hm.
That I will change all the data.
– Hm.
If I need something later, I’ll cut out a fragment of your statement, if we later write an article on this subject, based on previous interviews, it will be generalized somehow: age, place of residence, etc. will be changed. Somehow it was so close that you couldn’t identify it. The grant is implemented by the institute, by the Institute of Philosophy of the Professor Paweł Pieniążek and Dr. Kamila Biały work there together with me. And I think that’s it, do you have any more questions about what I said?
– No, we’ll see to what extent I am able to build a longer story. We’ll see. Okay. My current life is comfortable. I am at a good moment in my life, both privately and professionally. I have to introduce myself, therefore, I work in a public, budgetary institution dealing with cultural activities. Enough, right? Because you don’t need such details, do you?
No no no. No no no no no.
– Okay. I have been working in this institution for 15 years. I have been dealing with, actually from the beginning of my work in this place, in the same place. But at the same time, I constantly have a lot of current, new challenges, new tasks, new projects, which means that I am not tired of such repetitive work, on the contrary, sometimes the rush of new projects can be quite tiring. But this is the place I am also thinking about in the coming years, as a place of work. This also results from the my studies. In September, i.e. half a year ago, in September 2021, I started doctoral studies, an implementation doctorate, i.e. a combination of cooperation, cooperation with my home institution.
Hm.
– With the University, the PhD is supposed to be about oral history. This is my new project, a project that I’ve been interested in for several years, so it all came together wonderfully. I’m also here after the first semester of classes. I approached them with great anxiety, but now I see that it is to be done, it is to be combined and it is also incredibly developing and gives other perspectives in life. So it’s professional, it’s education and I have to mention one more thing, about private life. I am a mother of two children.
Hm.
– Four and eleven years old. And this is also actually the first uh… moment, the first year when the children are old enough for me to do some other activities than just working in the mode of, well, being on standby and taking care of the children. It is known that when we talk about such present life, we are very affected by things that are happening here and now, i.e. the economic, social, and political situation, I mean events, because we are talking on March 14, several days, 19 days, probably, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We are all also full of fears, whether this world that we have somehow managed to create […] will not disappear. That is, whether we will not be affected by the war as much as our neighbors from the East. Whether, whether this life that we have just weaved, in which we have settled, will not drastically change in a second. Well, this is such a point and a cause for concern. When I think about my family, I think about my parents, who are self-sufficient for now, they don’t need my support yet. But I also think of my husband’s parents who are no longer self-sufficient and care is needed there. But this, this also gives you a sense of the quality of life, you know what? In such a world with nature, well, according to the rhythm of the surroundings, the rhythm of time that life determines. This is also something new than the eternal chasing from project to project, from task to task, you are in such a race for many years. And then other things come that just make you slow down, look differently, look more broadly, this, this is what is happening.
Hm.
– [drinks] Excuse me, you have to somehow direct me, because it will be very difficult to tell this story without at least such interrupting questions, such supporting ones.
I understand, I understand, but also at the very beginning I would like to see how the story develops without my questions. If necessary I will, of course, ask questions.
– Hm, Okay.
However, how, if you feel that a topic ends and emptiness appears for a moment, then we can sit in silence for a few seconds, that’s okay.
– [laughs]
And just wait, I think something will come up, if, if you still feel that you need a question, then, then I will ask.
– And how interested are you? Do any of these elements of life interest you more than others?
No no. Rather, we want to follow the narrator and see what he/she is interested in, how his/her story about his/her present life unfolds. Yes, how these issues flow into one another, etc.
– Okay, it’s still here and now, we’re in the week when my and my colleague’s from the institution book is being published. So right now it’s a pretty hectic and busy schedule. And this is also the result of our three, three or four years of work. That is a big challenge and a big undertaking, we are just at the very end. I think about it with some satisfaction, but also a question – what next? Because when I start to think about myself, if I have to characterize what it looks like, apart from the fact that I’m maybe quite chaotic, but also, [coughs], maybe it’s also due to the fact that I’m multi-tasking.

As can be seen in the above fragment, the frame of the interview imposes freedom of expression, which makes it different not only from a questionnaire interview, but even from a narrative biographical interview. Entering such a situation forces the differentiation of a new figure, i.e. a way of dealing with the requirements of the situation (response-ability). First of all, the relationally fixed, reproduced figure of contact operates on a situational basis, which, when appropriate conditions are met (working with the background), transforms into a new one, adapted to the requirements of the here and now. The narrator’s statement, in which the previously learned sectors are being reproduced, ordering her situational presence, begins with a description of professional and family contexts, and then refers to the international situation (the war in Ukraine).

In this stiffened figure of contact, social institutions are reproduced, Elizabeth is reduced to a persona, i.e. a social facade of roles, presenting herself as an employee, mother, student, as well as a person with socio-political commitment, adequately sensitive to current issues. In the figure, modern empowerment comes to the fore, expressed in the accumulation of roles that an individual must meet, as well as in a properly sensitive orientation to the current flow of information. To address the above objection that sociology reveals the reproduction of institutions rather than reaching the moments of their emergence, it can be said that the roles present here are already established and function in the mode of reproduction themselves. As the following fragments of the interview, which we will analyze, will show, it is only from them that alternative figures of responses to the situation will emerge.

Looking at the researcher’s attitude, we can also notice the assimilation of a certain rigidity, probably most visible in the fragment when he says: “Aha… […] I have a few more things to say formally.” At first glance, this statement is only an awareness of failure to meet certain formal requirements for conducting an interview. However, taking into account the timbre of the researcher’s voice and his inner feelings (as this researcher is one of the authors of this article), at that moment he suddenly remembered that he had not completed something, that his introduction of the interview frame did not fulfill a certain adequacy. First of all, he emphasized the word “formally”, as if the formal was of great importance in this case. If we assume that an interview about the present is an arbitrary form, modified ad hoc, imposing a fine-tuning to each interlocutor, it can be said that also on the part of the researcher we are dealing with an initial stiffening realized as this “formal adequacy”.

In the analysis of the quoted fragments of the interview, we propose to focus not only and not primarily on what is said, but also, in accordance with the theoretical background, on the consequences of the existence of a fertile void underlining the wholeness of the situation (non-differentiation, in which we are already dealing with establishing contact). It even precedes the openness of the interview formula; it is a primeval place where only a place can locate itself. Intentionality is located in this primeval place which, in this case, is an open interview formula, i.e. a certain self-direction thrown between the researcher and the researched, which causes them to collide with each other in the infinite requirement of responsiveness. The inner-psychic turbulence that such openness establishes happens both on the side of the narrator and on the side of the researcher. As long as the contact is not broken and as long as the researcher and the narrator do not flee from each other in fear of what may happen next, there is room for new figures to appear, emerging from the constantly changing environmental background, i.e. for intentionality and responsiveness.

The generalized background of contact is intentional and responsive openness, which differ from each other in that the former means directing beyond oneself and the latter allowing something to enter oneself; touching and being touched. In this particular case, the situation of an unusual interview formula affects its participants, both the subject and the researcher. Each of them experiences their being, affected in its own way (different in terms of content from the interlocutor), but what is similar in formal terms is the habitual response to the situation described above that goes beyond the familiar standard. This habitual being together in this situation paradoxically allows contact or, more precisely, intentionality to develop further. Apart from reproduced adaptations to the situation, new answers begin to emerge. We observe them both in the subject and the researcher. This is the moment we previously described as background saturation. Even if in this situation it is not full saturation, it allows the situation to take a new turn, at least for a moment, giving support to the potentiality of the emergence of a new figure.

In the fragment quoted above, as well as in the later part of the interview, there is a very clear disorientation of stabilized, rigid operations of referring to a situation going beyond familiar standards. It is primarily about making sure that Elizabeth confirms the adequacy of her words, and at the same time, in general, about the adequacy of her whole self. In response to this, the researcher is supportive, meaning that he supports her statement and the emergence of the figure of contact while expecting what will emerge from the statement. This places both parties under the requirement of improvization, in which the background is saturated, as improvization extends the situation with unplanned data. Elizabeth’s requests for guidance, detailed questions, and the researcher’s supporting answers are a form of staying in constant contact, as was the need of the situation. What on the one hand can be seen as a form of defence, resistance to the interview formula, from a non-dichotomist perspective turns out to be a request to stay in touch, formulated in the face of emerging difficulties. Thus, we are not even dealing with the needs of a specific person who would prefer to give up the whole formula of the interview, but, rather, it is the need of the situation, aimed at a more complete development of figures of contact. The narrator’s statements and responses can be seen in the same, alternatively non-dichotomous, way. If the assurances that the narrator can follow the path she has already chosen, that she does not have to change either the form or the subject of her words, can be interpreted as a simple requirement coming from the tool as a determining instance, then the vitality of the answer would be reduced to rigid reactivity, motivated by an expert sense of duty. However, if we look at the researcher’s assurances as an answer from within the situation, then they can be seen as normalizing the emergence of the alien. It remains in a situational connection with the needs of support and mindfulness, not directly communicated by the narrator.

Below we present a further fragment of the interview, which follows from above. In our understanding, it is different due to the development of the process of a figure’s emergence taking place in it, which we prove below.

– Okay, it’s still here and now, we’re in the week when my friend’s from the institution and my book is being published. So here and now it’s a pretty hectic and busy schedule. And this is also the effect of our three, three or four years of work. That is a big challenge and a big undertaking, we are right at the very end. I think about it with some satisfaction, but also a question – what next? Because when I start to think about myself, if I had to characterize what it looks like, apart from the fact that I’m maybe quite chaotic, but also, [coughs], maybe it’s also due to the fact that I’m multi-tasking.
Mhm.
– That due to the multitude of sentences that I have privately and professionally, sometimes they intertwine, I am able to lift them all, but at the same time I break out of these contexts and then I have to come back. I mean, I don’t remember [coughs] for a very long time that I was dealing with one topic at a time. And that can be a bit of a pain. But I don’t think I could have done otherwise.
Mhm.
– Because when I think about myself, I also write here and now. I write some popularizing articles because I deal with cinematography. That’s what I do, too, I read things, I also take photos. And also, here and now, right now, in March, I start thinking about the garden. I mean what to plant? What plants to take care of? How to take care of this closest space so that you can observe, this topic is coming back again, life in its usual cycle, annual action. My everyday life is meeting people, constantly talking to people, setting certain things. Maybe you could also say negotiation. I’m thinking about home. [laughs]
[laughs]
– Such shaping, directing, managing also, because I am a manager in the institution where I work. But I also think about others, about loved ones, but also co-workers, some people who are somewhere nearby, with a lot of cordiality and with such warmth, I think with an understanding look at them, at their needs. I’m trying to bend over it. Maybe it has something to do with motherhood.
Mhm.
– Maybe, maybe with some maturity. Maybe this is also due to some humanistic interests of mine, which means that it is probably not a lie, but really somewhere, somewhere I am interested in the triad of goodness, beauty and truth. [phone sound] Which, sorry, I’ll turn it off maybe. Good, which is somewhere close to me. I’m comfortable and I’m fine with the life I have now. I know that I have already started talking about it, but I emphasize that I am physically in good shape, that is, nothing bothers me, nothing bothers me, I know that for many people this is a very big problem. And mentally I’m fine. Especially on days like today, when the sun is shining, but it doesn’t really matter that much. I’m trying to think about how grateful I am for what I have. And feel this gratitude and try to pass on good things to others and beyond. [drinks] I don’t think about my current life because I’ve been interested in the past for a long time. I am interested in the past in terms of history, events, experiences of other people, i.e. what happened to them, what they experienced. I am interested in people as such, or thanks to these oral histories, where I try to record their experiences, their feelings, their experiences, their work, because very often work defines us and, or otherwise, we are able to talk about work talk without any such fear and putting on masks.
Aha.
– But no, it’s not a big problem for me. I would only like you to be satisfied with the results of this conversation, so that what we are talking about, what I am passing on to you, will be useful for something. I don’t want to take you here, and at the same time, and at the same time, I want to run away, yes. [laughs]
And how could you elaborate on that, because I don’t fully understand it?
– Uh, but I rarely stop like we’re trying now. And I rarely allow myself such a moment of self-reflection. Such focus on the present moment. Even though I do yoga. I do it maybe it’s too much, I’m trying to practice yoga. It’s yoga that requires mindfulness, and that’s something I’m missing. But knowing the lack, I can imagine that someday I will reach the point of attaining peace. We’ll see.
Mhm. Okay, yeah, I understand. This requires learning in yoga.
– [sighs] I’m afraid they’ll tell you things I’ve already told you, but it’s pointless, I wouldn’t want that.
Mhm, mhm. Okay, I’m going to ask you to give me a moment to think about it.
– Mhm.
Nothing really, so I already have a few questions I’d like to ask.
– Mhm. Please ask.
Yes?
– Mhm.

The above fragment differs from the previous one in that the narrator’s statement is much more spontaneous. Of course, objections can still be formulated about the rigidity resulting from the use of the sectoral ordering described above, but it is worth noting that the succession of these sectors is more free, without emphasis on their formal correspondence and relationships between them. Similarly, regarding the content, there may be an objection that the narrator’s statements are quite clichéd, schematic, and not very reflective. However, juxtaposing these two separately presented fragments shows a clear tendency to deepen the statement, presenting itself not so much in the content itself – it is worth refraining from evaluating the emerging thoughts with such a spontaneous statement, in which at first freedom must be cleared anyway from the basic stiffness – into a more spontaneous, flexible form. Looking at the interview through the prism of figure-background logic, one can say that it is a formal analysis, less concerned with the deconstructive revealing of the content.

This spontaneous form, which is a layering of intentional and responsive influences inherent in the situation and between its participants (which were described by us in relation to the previous fragment) in this fragment leads to differentiation: the separation of the subject/subjects, or even subjectivity itself. Elizabeth allows herself, as she says, a moment of self-reflection or, as we would call it, to contact/contacting herself. This contact is not her conscious individual need, it happens against the situational background, it is a response to this (new) situation. In this answer, the content is probably based on elements that are familiar to her and partially self-conscious come to the fore in this answer, but in formal terms it is a complete novelty and a moment of emergence from saturation with what is known (largely egotized and devoid of spontaneity), being touched by strangers. This manifests itself in a changed experiencing of the moment, incorporating feeling into it (and not just operating with the intellect); this feeling is non-dual, it is of the world and also incorporating creativity (excerpt concerning magnolia branch; see more below).

Subjectivity is, therefore, not some property of entities as subjects emerge in contact. If entering a new situation involves the reproduction of accrued and embedded patterns, if a certain intentional and responsive frame is initially formed in contact, then it is hard to talk about individual agency and subjectivity. The latter can occur only in the distinguishing of subjectivity, i.e. in transcending the initial stiffening. The intentional-responsive entanglement connects not only with the environment (e.g. a researcher), but also with oneself. Only when the world is “seen” by us and when we feel its influence, can the direction of the will be determined, agency can be revealed and in this, spontaneous creativity. Subjectivity is, therefore, a kind of figure that always emerges from the background situationally in the second step. The first form of entering the situation is marked by the figure of more or less rigid attitudes operating against the background of familiarized novelties. Only the subsequent entry into the world, when a connection with it is made, allows the separation of subjectivity. Therefore, it does not come from beings, but emerges from a supra-individual situation.

Owing to this rooting in the relationship, Elizabeth can somehow hear not only herself, but also the echo of her own words, which resonate with the tension manifested in her life between the need to stop and reflect and constant readiness and the opening of new topics for action. And although this is a situational tension, it is still realized within this specific subjectivity, this specific connection with the world. In the case of the passage above, it culminates in the words referring to the magnolia branch. The narrator, let us repeat, says:

That’s all that’s on the desk and around. And at the same time, the magnolia branch is such an open topic, whether it will survive or not, whether something will come of it or not. Such an attempt to carve a frozen moment out of reality, it’s interesting. This is difficult. Yeah. [sighing]

Our narrator is surprised by what she experiences and what she says. Expressing the above words, she looks around the office, looking for further topics for the narrative. Her eyes meet a magnolia branch in a small vase. It is also part of her life, probably reminding the narrator of something we don’t know about. However, we have this one piece of information that she is interested in what just happened. She is surprised. This pathos of things, sad-sublime rooting is a deeply experienced feeling of touching the world while being touched by it. Emotional confusion, the ambiguity of feelings that accompany the emergence of subjectivity testifies to the margin of its freedom, which thus receives a field to act, to follow what we defined as alien, or to withdraw. Often with fear of what subjectivity offers: its unpredictability functioning both on the side of our actions in the world and on the side of the world’s influence on us.

The sublimity of a magnolia branch is not only an individual experience, an individual admiration. Already here, in contact with the world, we find what is social. The tension it carries is the tension of the hyper-modern^[8] subject of action, characterized by, for example, Byung-Chul Han. This author diagnoses the transition between the era of the disciplinary society and the society of achievement, in which the motivation to act and, as a result, the compulsion to act results not from the universally required obedience and subjugation, but from the post-subduing possibility. Pure possibility works imperatively, ordering adaptation in ever-accelerating activation (Han, 2015). The activating possibility is operationalized through a certain systemic extension of the horizon of freedom, i.e. by putting it at the disposal of a multitude of alternatives, between which the reproducing subjects of achievement choose. In the case of Elizabeth, such alternatives are the frames of sectoral statements, the variants of which are switched in the initial phase of the narrative. Although they are tight, they give the possibility of continuous operation, of recreating hyper-modern agency. Such a systemic, rigid figure of contact, however, exhausts itself when it encounters the basic aporeticity of facing the demands of the world. There is a kind of short-circuit when the situations cease to be organized with the hyper-modern requirement of reproducing the vita activa modus, hitting the opposite pole vita contemplativa proposed in the formula of the interview. Then the rigid figure of contact breaks, giving birth to the surprising novelty of the confrontation of these two modes, establishing the possibility of choosing between following the reproduction and following the emerging surprise.

Elizabeth’s contact with herself as described above, the emergence of subjectivity and novelty, as well as the confrontation with the conflict present in her life, do not last long. As if the moment of spontaneous emergence was just a moment, a moment of manifestation (figures), and the next moment was already a return to the setting (in what is familiar, tame) background. The contact present in this situation descends to the phase of withdrawal: the narrator demands specific questions that she can refer to, on which she can base and recreate the beliefs she knows about herself and the environment. In this sense, the hyper-modern discourse described above speaks through it. The researcher, in turn, faced with this demand, resigns from sticking to the radically open frame of the interview and starts asking for specifics. The individualized, dichotomized description of this situation presented in this paragraph reflects the withdrawal from something that situationally bound both parties, from a certain “we” as a contact figure, through which this less tame aspect of Elizabeth’s subjectivity, described using the metaphor of a magnolia branch, could be expressed.

Paradoxically, this new aspect of subjectivity can come to the fore when the narrator becomes part of the situation, intentional and responsive flows, and thus is deprived of another, previously dominant aspect of her subjectivity at that particular moment. The balance of the processes of contacting, emerging from the background of the figures, however, consists in the fact that what is new and interesting ceases to be central, there is room for (quiet, because it is taking place in the background) assimilation and integration with the world and with oneself. The transience of the subjectivizing novelty is therefore worth seeing in terms of the balancing of the contacting processes. After the surprise and unpredictability there comes the moment to assimilate what has happened. Thinking dichotomously from the individual’s point of view, this is a search for security, the normalization of novelty. Looking at the situation, what is new is only a slight undulation present in the field, unable to cover the entire background. In order for it to exist as a new orientation, the new possibility available for further manipulation by subsequent figures must be assimilated with the background; therefore, it requires normalization. The novelty in its prime moment of existence lies between degeneration and panacea. In order to continue functioning in the world, it needs this normalization that absorbs it into the background.

The phase of asking and answering questions brings some content, but, in formal terms, related to the process of emergence of figures, it is rather poor in what is “new”. Both the narrator’s and the researcher’s specific being in the world is reproduced, including the interviewee’s habitual thinking about herself and the world, experiencing it, and a certain standard way of being of the narrator and the researcher in an interview situation is reproduced. Such a “poor” background in figures also allows for the mentioned process of assimilation of the novelty. This lasts as long as the situation requires, after which the new piece is ready to reappear. In the next phase of the interview, a game of power is played out between the participants of the situation, for symbolic domination in the situational field, which literally means an “argument” about whose approach is right.

The mentioned “power game” or as we put it in working terms, “argument”, refers to the fact that Elizabeth, due to her work, is a person with experience in conducting interviews. However, they have a different character than a narrative interview about present life. First of all, the difference lies in the search for, as she emphasizes, “very specific information” and, therefore, having quite strict dispositions. This, of course, is a dichotomous definition of what is taking place. Below we describe the contact from a non-dichotomist perspective.

Ah. Well, I also thought that this is the moment when you can feel what the people on the other side feel.
– [laughs]
But probably also the form is completely different and the design is also completely different.
– Mhm. That’s for sure, of course, because I need very specific answers.
Aha.
– For such, it was so, so and so. We used such and such materials. It took place in this or that period. We were dressed in this and that, if anyone remembers.
Mm. Mhm, mhm. Well, we prefer not to narrow this story down and to just listen to what the narrators simply have to say about their lives.
– Mm. To say, because = I have the impression = that we could often make these stories shallow, because we couldn’t predict everything.
– Target, of course, because it’s such a risk.
Mhm.
– So giving direction makes it possible for someone to go and enter this direction, but then they will miss some other important aspects.
Mhm.
– It’s inevitable, I guess.
Yeah.
– Because you only have the moment of this notation from here and now. After all, in an hour I could tell you something completely different.

From the point of view of the figure of contact, intentionality and responsiveness are set in motion again and the situation after the normalization phase opens up to new ones. At the individual level, there is clearly a greater focus on each other on both sides, which in Merleau-Ponty’s language can be described as a desire to touch and be touched by the situation. This time it takes place with the growing and more clearly articulated difference between the two sides. The readiness to differentiate seems also to be a function of the situation and this is what is cognitively interesting to us, so paradoxically we are again dealing with a “we” of the situation, with a new relationality, establishing a relationship, which is the basis for arguments and the emergence of different positions. Thus, the tension inherent in the process of Elizabeth’s empowerment is rekindled. Now, however, the emphasis is shifted from the “magnolia branch”, behind which is the need to stop and reflect, to the constantly recurring need in her and her narrative to be framed by the world, with specific questions that she expects from the researcher.

Owing to the non-dichotomist perspective adopted by us, we observe the processes of the emergence of phenomena, which we have repeatedly mentioned here. Such an emerging phenomenon is the process of the narrator’s empowerment, which comes to the fore in specific social settings. The situation of conducting an interview is also such a system. It is important to note that this emergence is not accidental. The need to slow her life down and reflect on it is aroused in Elizabeth. Although it is certainly not in this interview that she is noticed for the first time, this need looks as if it is usually obscured by the reproduction of another need related to accelerating one’s life, packing it with more and more new activities. Perhaps the domination of one aspect of her subjectivity over another takes place in her everyday life; we certainly observe a tendency to reproduce this domination at the level of the narrative. By strengthening this less clear side in the person of the researcher and of the research situation, this side of reflection, self-reflection and (paradoxically) letting go of control, we witness the emergence of a conflict in the narrator. It is to a large extent an internal conflict (she mentioned this in the fragment referring to the magnolia branch), but it is also expressed “outside” – as a conflict of research perspectives represented by Elizabeth: the researcher and the external researcher.

We do not state here what constitutes the quintessence of Elizabeth’s subjectivity, or what is her false consciousness resulting from her entanglement in a hyper-modern reality. Rather, we want to trace this process in terms of emerging differentiation, emphasizing that these aspects of subjectivity are mutually interconnected as changing figures and backgrounds; one displaces the other to the background and at the same time supports the formation of the other as figure. In order for such understanding or such optics in the researcher’s view to be possible, one should home in on the search for what takes place before the differentiation between Elizabeth and the researcher (subject-object), and for the moment of relational bonding that returns each time in a situation which is fertile and pregnant at the same time with further possibilities of differentiation.

Behind the research intention of searching for moments of non-differentiation is the ontological and ethical orientation toward being in a situation, i.e. being social, inviting us to something primal, fluid, and fundamentally reciprocal. However, as we have shown above, the immature being is not unable to endure boundaries, often described from a psychoanalytical perspective, but, rather, the root cause of boundaries and demarcation. Contact contains what is old, habitual, reproducing. Then, intensifying and shifting everything to the background, it reveals something new, something alien or strange but interesting at the same time (magnolia branch) and full of vitality (like communicating one’s difference to a researcher, initiating a conflict of perspectives).

Conclusion

The purpose of the above-conducted analysis of the narrative interview was to develop various themes that emerge when looking at the empirical material from a non-dichotomist perspective, and to present the hermeneutic potential inherent in this perspective. Such an analysis must necessarily be seen in relation to the approach of Fritz Schütze and representatives of his research and analytical school. We fully appreciate the achievements of this German researcher, aware that the optics developed above were made possible owing to his pioneering work. It should be emphasized, however, that by means of what has been said above, we want to reach in a different direction than is usually done in qualitative sociology. The theoretical background developed by us in the first place – whilst also drawing on the achievements of two other giants: Merleau-Ponty and Waldenfels – allowed us to adopt an ontic-epistemological position, orienting us in the right direction of using sociological tools. However, we did not want to remain on the basis of pure theory and decided to develop speculation into empirical analytics so that the non-dichotomous perspective could find appropriate grounding, and we also spoke in a voice of mutually complementary theory and practice.

The empirical material has been used as an illustration of the social emergence of subjectivity. In our understanding, as we have already explained quite extensively above, subjectivity takes on various variants, though always relational variants, whether in direct relationality (Elizabeth’s agency realized in the “quarrel” with the researcher), or in worldly relationality (hyper-modern subjectivity along with its aporias). It does not belong to the individual, and is made possible by the often uncomfortable bifurcation of behind what is reproduced or what emerges, also for the already familiar or for what is new. Let us note that novelty (as well as reproduction) comes from the relational field, so it is not an alienating absolute novelty marking a new epoch. Owing to this, it is a novelty in communication with the world. This connection is clearly demonstrated by the moment of the emergence of Elizabeth’s subjectivity at the point of her reflection on the magnolia branch and, thus, as we have shown, reflection on the basic socialization that is being realized in her and the aporia of this, specifically hyper-modern, socialization. This means that there is no way to separate social context from individual psychology.

The proposed approach also has a significant ethical dimension. Striving to present the research situation in terms of situational contact, intentionality, and responsiveness, we are guided by and at the same time create a vision of a society in which resonance, i.e. being with, is important. As we have shown in the case of the emergence of subjectivity, it is being with the emerging relational bifurcation that allows one to relate to oneself. Being with oneself is mediated by being with the world and others not in alienation, but as founding socialization and worldliness.

Cytowanie
Kamila Biały, Piotr F. Piasek (2024), On Social Emergence: A Non-Dichotomous Approach to Qualitative Data Analysis, „Przegląd Socjologii Jakościowej”, t. XX, nr 1, s. 18–39, (https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8069.20.1.02)

^* Kamila Biały Sociologist (Department of Sociology of Art, University of Lodz), Gestalt therapist; her area of interest is epistemology, methodology, and ethics as pertaining to sociological problems inspired by contemporary phenomenology e-mail: kamila.bialy@uni.lodz.pl

^* Piotr F. Piasek Sociologist and philosopher (the Central China Normal University); his scientific interests include the ontological and epistemological problems of social sciences (phenomenology, systems theories), e-mail: piotr.franciszek.piasek@gmail.com

© by the author, licensee University of Lodz – Lodz University Press, Lodz, Poland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)