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NEW COMPARISONS IN WORLD LITERATURE

Postcolonial Modernity
and the Indian Novel
On Catastrophic Realism

Sourit Bhattacharya
New Comparisons in World Literature

Series Editors
Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee
Department of English
Comparative Literary Studies
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK

Neil Lazarus
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
New Comparisons in World Literature offers a fresh perspective on one
of the most exciting current debates in humanities by approaching ‘world
literature’ not in terms of particular kinds of reading but as a particu-
lar kind of writing. We take ‘world literature’ to be that body of writing
that registers in various ways, at the levels of form and content, the his-
torical experience of capitalist modernity. We aim to publish works that
take up the challenge of understanding how literature registers both the
global extension of ‘modern’ social forms and relations and the peculiar
new modes of existence and experience that are engendered as a result.
Our particular interest lies in studies that analyse the registration of this
decisive historical process in literary consciousness and affect.

Editorial Board
Dr. Nicholas Brown, University of Illinois, USA
Dr. Bo G. Ekelund, University of Stockholm, Sweden
Dr. Dorota Kolodziejczyk, Wroclaw University, Poland
Professor Paulo de Medeiros, University of Warwick, UK
Dr. Robert Spencer, University of Manchester, UK
Professor Imre Szeman, University of Alberta, Canada
Professor Peter Hitchcock, Baruch College, USA
Dr. Ericka Beckman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Dr. Sarah Brouillette, Carleton University, Canada
Professor Supriya Chaudhury, Jadavpur University, India
Professor Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick, UK

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15067
 Sourit Bhattacharya

Postcolonial
Modernity
and the Indian Novel
On Catastrophic Realism
Sourit Bhattacharya
School of Critical Studies
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK
School of Critical Studies
University Gardens
Glasgow, UK

New Comparisons in World Literature

ISBN 978-3-030-37396-2 ISBN 978-3-030-37397-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37397-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Cover image: © Deepak Kumar/EyeEm, Getty Images ID: 713868639

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 The book is dedicated to my parents:
Sushil Bhattacharya (Baba) and Chhanda Bhattacharya (Maa)

Thank you for believing in me.

 Acknowledgements

This book is based on my Ph.D. thesis. So, let me first acknowledge my

immense gratitude to the Ph.D. supervisors at the University of Warwick,
Neil Lazarus and Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee. They did not only guide
the thesis to fruition, but have continued to motivate me with their sug-
gestions and counsel even after the completion of the thesis—especially
during the limbo between the thesis and the book when I was unsure if
I could turn the thesis into a book. Here, I would also acknowledge my
debt to my Ph.D. examiners, Priyamvada Gopal and Graeme Macdonald,
and the anonymous reviewers of the book manuscript who have enriched
the material with their sharp and astute commentary.
My sincere thanks also go to the staff and resources at the Univer-
sity of Warwick Library, the British Library, the Bodleian Library at Ox-
ford, the National Library in Kolkata, to a number of good people who I
have met in and around Warwick and IIT Roorkee, and who have offered
me at times their invaluable academic insights, and at other times the
much-needed food and talk breaks. Alphabetically with their surnames:
Somak Biswas, D. Bharat, Shrikant Botre, Senjuti Chakraborti, Paulo de
Medeiros, Thomas Docherty, Demet Intepe, Nagendra Kumar, Vijay Ku-
mar, Nick Lawrence, Waiyee Loh, Angus Love, Divya Rao, Emanuelle
Santos, Aditya Sarkar, Martin Schauss, Sakshi Semwal, Kamalika Sengupta,
JungJu Shin, Michael Tsang, Rahul V., and Rashmi Varma. Sincere thanks
to colleagues at my current institution, University of Glasgow, especially
to Nigel Leask, Willy Maley, and members of the Postcolonial Studies

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

reading group for the excellent conversations and insights. Special thanks
to Priyanka Basu, who has helped me with documents as well as with
good food and company in London, and to my Leeds friends, Saira Fa-
tima Dogar and Jivitesh Vashisht for their hospitality, affection, and com-
panionship. Special thanks also to Lara Choksey and Joseph Shafer for the
wonderful discussions and for sharing comradely joys of academic failure
during the Ph.D. and post-Ph.D. days.
Finally, a few close people. I would like to thank my extended family,
my grandmother (my late Thakuma), my uncles (Jethu and the late Mejho
Jethu, who loved me so much), aunts and cousins (Boroma, Mejhoma,
Dadan, Fuldi, Chhordi, and my little sister, Payel), my elder brother
(Dada) and his wife. My special thanks also to my parents-in-law (Baba-
Maa) and my brother-in-law (Bhai). Their blessings and love enrich me
every day. A lot of love for my long-time friend and a stellar academic
himself, Arka Chattopadhyay, whose scholarship and solidarity have mo-
tivated me in so many ways; to Anuparna Mukherjee, for her friendship
and faith in my work; and to my childhood friends, especially Rajasree
Das and Chirantan Kar for the much-needed laughter.
This book, let alone my higher studies, would have never been possible
without the support and love that I have received from my parents. I do
not know how they manage to place so much faith in me. I still remember
as I was boarding the taxi for my flight to Britain to start my Ph.D. (which
was also my first flying experience), my parents were unsure as to whether
I would be able to talk to them for over a year. Strange is the nature of
parental love. No thanks are enough here.
For Arunima, whom I have known for more than a decade now, and
who is more a genuine friend than a wife and partner, I have only love
and gratitude. There have been occasions when I have wanted to aban-
don literary studies in order to do something “more” meaningful. She has
managed to convince me every time, through her deep interest in litera-
ture and the arts and through her critical faculties, that a lot can be done
through and with literature.
I would also thank the series editors of New Comparisons of World Lit-
erature for recommending my work and the editorial people at Palgrave,
especially Ms. Vicky Bates and Ms. Rebecca Hinsley, who have been so
kind, patient, and efficient with my work.
Grateful acknowledgements are also due to the publishers who have
allowed me to reuse some of the earlier published works. These works
have been duly revised. Parts of Chapter 2 appeared first in the article
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix

“Colonial Governance, Disaster, and the Social in Bhabani Bhattacharya’s

Novels of the 1943 Bengal Famine” in Ariel: A Review of International
English Literature, 47.4 (2016), 45–70. © 2016 The Johns Hopkins
University Press and the University of Calgary. Reprinted with permission
by Johns Hopkins University Press; and in the book chapter “The Ques-
tion of Literary Form: Realism in the Poetry and Theatre of the 1943
Bengal Famine.” Reprinted/adapted by permission from [Springer Na-
ture]: [Palgrave Macmillan] [The Aesthetics and Politics of Global Hunger]
by [Anastasia Ulanowicz and Manisha Basu, editors] (2017). Part of
Chapter 4 was adapted to the book chapter “ The Margins of Postcolonial
Urbanity: Reading Critical Irrealism in Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Fiction”
in © 2016 from (Postcolonial Urban Outcasts: City Margins in South Asian
Literature) by (Umme Al-wazedi and Madhurima Chakraborty, editors ).
Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, a division
of Informa plc. Many thanks for the permission.
 Praise for Postcolonial Modernity
and the Indian Novel

“In this urgent and compelling study, Sourit Bhattacharya makes a

case for reading catastrophe—famine, insurgency, political terror—as the
hermeneutic lever with which to unlock the complexities of aesthetic form
in Indian postcolonial fiction. His admirable historical contextualization
and careful analysis of novels from six decades following Indian indepen-
dence suggest a harsh, unforgiving realist commitment within both mod-
ernist and postmodernist narrative, producing the poetics of ‘catastrophic
realism.’ Bhattacharya’s book should be required reading for students of
postcolonial fiction.”
—Supriya Chaudhuri, Professor Emerita, Jadavpur University, India

“This is an original book that offers a welcome discussion of liter-

ary realism within a postcolonial context. It explores the possibilities of
constructing a new perspective on literary history centred around catas-
trophic events throughout the 20th century. Bhattacharya’s detailed and
engaging readings will undoubtedly make an important contribution to
the postcolonial revision of modernity, and the role of literature within
the dynamics of history.”
—Dr. Eli Park Sorensen, Assistant Professor of English,
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
and author of Postcolonial Studies and the Literary:
Theory, Interpretation and the Novel (2010)

xi
 Contents

1 Modernity, Catastrophe, and Realism in the Postcolonial

Indian Novel 1
The Historical Context: The Theory of Modernisation and
Modernity 3
The Dialectic of Crisis and Event 8
The Dynamics of Realism: Understanding Form and Mode 14
Writing the Indian Postcolonial: Framing Catastrophic
Realism 19
History and Temporality: Outline of the Chapters 26
References 36

2 Disaster and Realism: Novels of the 1943 Bengal Famine 41

The 1943 Bengal Famine: History and Thought 41
Understanding the Form of Disaster: Interrogating Famine
and Realism 44
Bhabani Bhattacharya’s So Many Hungers!: The Disastrous
Decade and the Analytical-Affective Mode 50
Amalendu Chakraborty’s Ākāler Sandhāne: Metafictional
Mode of a Post-Famine Postcolonial Society 65
References 90

3 Interrogating the Naxalbari Movement: Mahasweta

Devi’s Quest Novels 97
The Naxalbari Movement: History and Politics 98

xiii
xiv CONTENTS

Representation of the Movement and the Form of Critical

Irrealism 101
Mahasweta Devi’s Naxalite Novels and the Use of Quest Mode 106
Linear Plot and Non-linear Action Time I: Dreams
and Dialogues in Mother of 1084 109
Linear Plot and Non-linear Action Time II: Dialogue and
Memory in Operation? Bashai Tudu 118
The Interventionist Narrator 127
The Non-death of the Insurgent 131
References 150

4 The Aftermath of the Naxalbari Movement: Nabarun

Bhattacharya’s Urban Fantastic Tales 157
The Movement and Its Aftermath 157
Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Fiction: The Lumpenproletariat
and Urban Fantastic Mode 158
The Dialectic of Rational and Irrational I: Spatial
Unevenness in Harbart 163
The Dialectic of Rational and Irrational II: Urban Filth
in Kāngāl Mālshāt 175
References 196

5 Writing the Indian Emergency: Magical and Critical

Realisms 201
The Emergency: Authoritarianism, Violence,
and Representation 202
Allegorising the Emergency: Salman Rushdie’s Magical
Realism 209
Critical Realism I or Realism from Above in Nayantara
Sahgal 216
Critical Realism II or Realism from Below in Rohinton
Mistry 226
References 255

6 Conclusion 261
References 267

Index 269
 CHAPTER 1

Modernity, Catastrophe, and Realism

in the Postcolonial Indian Novel

On 15 August 1947, India gained formal independence from British colo-

nial rule. On the eve of independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, who would soon
be India’s first Prime Minister, stated in a now famous speech: “Long
years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we
shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substan-
tially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India
will awake to life and freedom.”1 However, the country’s awakening from
slumber, from the long histories of colonialism and imperialist subjection
to socio-economic and ideological freedom, was not and could not be a
smooth one.2 The decade of the 1940s saw several enormous moments
of national crisis—the Second World War, the 1943–1944 Bengal famine,
the communal riots in 1946–1947, and the 1946 naval mutiny in Bom-
bay, just to name a few. The year of independence was bloodied with grue-
some violence due to the partition of the colony into two countries, India
and Pakistan. In the decades that followed, India would have wars with
China and Pakistan, would encounter wide internal discontent surround-
ing language and caste issues, and agitations from peasants, students and
the working classes on issues of food shortage, unemployment, inflation,
and poverty. In the 1970s, these crisis conditions would be aggravated
by a corrupt Congress Party stewardship led by Indira Gandhi which, in
order to save its own image and political priorities, would declare a state
of internal emergency in the name of safeguarding democracy from chaos.

© The Author(s) 2020 1

S. Bhattacharya, Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel,
New Comparisons in World Literature,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37397-9_1
2 S. BHATTACHARYA

The present book looks at the turbulent period of the first thirty years
of Indian history after independence, between 1947 and 1977. It does
not read these years as isolated from what came before because of the
historical rupture of independence. To the contrary, it seeks to under-
stand how the economic and political crisis in the late-colonial period
shaped the social conditions and cultural values in the postcolonial after-
math. It reads late-colonial as a temporal marker denoting roughly the
second quarter of the twentieth century, shortly before the formal end-
ing of colonialism. Although independence is the nominal break between
the late-colonial and the postcolonial, the book argues through a reading
of a longer framework of historical crisis and catastrophe, of structures of
domination and acts of resistance that there is hardly a notable conceptual
or categorical break there. Rather, this whole period appears as a time of
crisis-in-continuity.3
The main framework of this book is built around literary works of
the three catastrophic events—the 1943–1944 Bengal famine, the 1967–
1972 Naxalbari movement, and the 1975–1977 Indian emergency. Catas-
trophe is understood to be “an event causing great and usually sudden
damage or suffering.”4 While the term has been recurrently used for
environmental issues, I use catastrophe here to mean a historical event
resulting in tremendous violence and damage of human and nonhuman
lives. I argue that the above-mentioned events are “historical catastro-
phes” as they are linked with the long-term agrarian and food crisis in
India which began from mid-nineteenth century onward with the British
colonial changes in agriculture, irrigation, and revenue laws. They have
made tremendous impact on life and living in postcolonial India. My
understanding of modernity in this book arises from its relation with
the colonial-capitalist modernisation programme and its (historical) catas-
trophic repercussions in the postcolonial period. I employ an original
method of reading long-term crisis and its link with catastrophic events
here. Drawing variously from Louis Althusser, Fredric Jameson, Shahid
Amin, and Veena Das, the book argues that a historical event is as much
a crystallisation of a long-term socio-historical crisis as it is an inter-
active amalgamation of different contemporary spatio-temporal events.
Although these events have emerged from a particular crisis and led to
related events, they are specific in their nature, character, and orientation.
The book further contends that their specificity and relatability can be
best understood by the aesthetic and fictional techniques of memorialisa-
tion and representation that they have given birth to. A close reading of
 1 MODERNITY, CATASTROPHE, AND REALISM … 3

these fictional techniques, the book posits, can offer us enabling insights
into the deeply connected yet highly heterogeneous histories of Indian
postcolonial modernity.
The main contention in the book is that novels have represented the
relationship between crisis and events through an innovative use of real-
ism. While realist form has been used to address the immediate socio-
economic crisis and the dynamics of postcolonial optimism and disillusion,
a number of highly experimental and diverse modes have been employed
to reproduce the deep impact and the specific nature and orientation of
the events. I show here that the choice of these modes which range from
melodramatic, metafictional, quest, to urban fantastic, magical realist, crit-
ical realist, and others (many of which are conventionally understood as
anti-realist or non-realist) is deeply historically shaped. Their experimen-
tal condition is marked as much by the form and nature of the events as
by the proximity of the novels to them. Because my focus in this book
is to study through the diversity of realist modes the orientation and
function of catastrophic events and related socio-economic crisis, I group
these modes around the events themselves and argue for different sets of
realisms coming out of them, such as “disaster realism,” “critical irreal-
ism,” and “emergency realism” in the postcolonial context. Together, I
read these realisms as catastrophic realism, which I argue is the aesthetic
fabric of catastrophe-prone, crisis-ridden vulnerable condition of life and
living in postcolonial India.

The Historical Context: The Theory

of Modernisation and Modernity
In Modern India (1983), Sumit Sarkar tells us that the process of mod-
ernisation in India began in the nineteenth century, as the British started
to systematically “underdevelop” India through deindustrialisation and
the commercialisation of agriculture in order to turn the flourishing
world market of cotton into a raw material for export to Britain.5 After
Britain’s restriction on export to India in 1843, factory-machines for
cotton production were imported, and agriculture was further commer-
cialised with irrigation, railways, and the telegraph. Bishnupriya Gupta
adds that although there was commercialisation of agriculture, irrigation
was limited to particular sectors. It did not help the development of the
agricultural sector as a whole. The turn to cash-crop production included
priorities given to tea, jute, coal, and other profitable resources over those
4 S. BHATTACHARYA

of the foodgrains.6 And, as economic historians such as Amiya Bagchi

have argued, there was a strong case of racial discrimination in colonial
policy, where the native industrial class’s entry into the production mar-
ket was limited. Bagchi also reasons that the shift away from manufactur-
ing (handicrafts and small-scale industries) to agriculture and cash crops
brought down India’s GDP and curbed its growth.7 The modernisation
of industries and agriculture contributed significantly to an unequal and
uneven system of growth that made India, though a stable economy even
during the mid-twentieth century, into an irredeemably poor one. The
consequences were seen in a number of disasters in the late nineteenth
century. As Sarkar writes, “The colonial structure, as a whole […] consti-
tuted a ‘built-in-depressor’ for India’s agrarian economy. The most obvi-
ous indication of this lay in the series of disastrous famines, in the 1870s
and again in the late 1890s, the latter wave coinciding with the ravages
of plague – while twenty years later even influenza managed to kill off
millions.”8
What these studies indicate is that colonial modernisation always and
by definition occurs in the “catastrophic” mode. The Bengal famine, with
which my chapter readings begin in this book, has direct links with the
changes in agricultural production, modernisation, and industrialisation
in the colony. The Second World War, accompanied by climactic condi-
tions, corruption among traders, and the operation of speculative capital,
aggravated the situation. The post-famine society saw increasing depriva-
tion, oppression, and eviction of the peasants by the landed elite. This
resulted in the Tebhaga Movement (1946) in Bengal, which was part
of a series of social movements in late-colonial India.9 Tebhaga was fol-
lowed by a longer armed struggle by the peasants of Andhra Pradesh
against the Nizam and the Indian armed forces, known as the Telan-
gana Uprising (1947–1952).10 These insurgencies were organised by the
peasants’ and workers’ fronts of the Communist Party, which was also
instrumental in organising food movements in the cities in late 1950s
and early 1960s. The crises in food and agriculture were escalated by
inflation. Jawaharlal Nehru’s death and Indira Gandhi’s rise to power in
the mid-1960s marked a shift in politics, especially in her heavy commer-
cialisation of agriculture through the Green Revolution project which had
the effect of making already rich farmers even richer. Gandhi’s economic
reforms failed to address the wide uneven development in rural India, the
unending peasant oppression, the new nexus between the landed elite,
 1 MODERNITY, CATASTROPHE, AND REALISM … 5

political heads, and the police, etc. As the old problems of deprivation and
oppression continued, peasants in Naxalbari rose in arms in 1967. The
uprising continued for five years until brutally crushed by the state. Soon,
Gandhi, unable to tackle the crisis in agriculture, employment, inflation,
and economy, and fearful of the rising dissatisfaction with her govern-
ment, declared a state of emergency to coercively “discipline” the post-
colonial public and to pave the way for “neocolonialism” in the name of
development. Indian postcolonial democracy now entered a new phase of
state authoritarianism and regimentation. Ranajit Guha wrote a fiercely
critical essay on the emergency measures. In an argument similar to what
Frantz Fanon wrote in “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” in the
late 1950s, Guha contended that true democracy never actually existed
in India because decolonisation did not destroy the old colonial state,
but only transferred interest and power from the British ruling bodies
to the Indian ruling classes. The artificial and state-imposed version of
democracy lost credibility when, five years after the liberation of India
from colonial rule, the Nehruvian government brutally crushed a peas-
ant movement which demanded landholding and better crop share rights
in Telangana. The dead body of democracy was clearly buried in the
state’s autocratic-repressive acts in the Naxalbari tribal-peasant uprising.
The emergency, thus, was not a radical break from a culture of democ-
racy, as the passive opposition would say: “It [wa]s [rather] the realization
by the ruling classes, acting through the government of the day, of the full
potential of the violence of a state which they had themselves conceived
of and set up as hostile to democracy.”11
These aspects of catastrophe, violence, and resistance, produced by
capitalist modernisation and bourgeois political dominance in the post-
colony, are read here as the social condition of modernity in post/colonial
India.12 Here my use of the term “modernity” draws critically on Fredric
Jameson’s use of it. In A Singular Modernity (2005), Jameson writes that
modernity is “the new historical situation, modernization [i]s the process
whereby we get there, and modernism [i]s a reaction to that situation
and that process alike, a reaction that can be aesthetic and philosophical-
ideological.”13 Modernity as a historical situation is “new” because older
feudal and tribal economic modes have been dismantled, because meth-
ods of capitalist accumulation never seen before have arisen, and because
innovations in technology and machinery have emerged (like the observa-
tions in Indian colonial context above). Here, Jameson is careful enough
6 S. BHATTACHARYA

to use the word “situation” in a Sartrean sense to suggest the contin-

gency and limits of a particular situation and the desire to break free
from the dominant frameworks and to achieve social freedom.14 Moder-
nity as a historical situation retains within its framework this dialectic of
dominance and resistance, and is not to be understood in liberal terms,
as “progress.” However, Jameson’s framework of break and continuity
does not allow this dialectic to be understood through a periodisation of
shorter periods, which is key for my theoretical framework.
At an early point in his book, Jameson defines break and continuity
as twofold movements sharing a dialectical relation. Historical continuity
is the “insistent and unwavering focus on the seamless passage from past
to present [which] slowly turns into a consciousness of a radical break;
while at the same time the enforced attention to a break gradually turns
the latter into a period in its own right.”15 The consciousness of conti-
nuity gives birth to the radical consciousness of breaks and consequently
of periodisation. Jameson here has a longer history in mind, in which
he finds two radical breaks, namely the ancients with their pre-modernity
and the European Renaissance with its pre-modernity. What marks this
second break and the consequent periodisation is the capitalist mode of
production, which proceeds to subsume historical differences under a uni-
lateral logic of global accumulation. For Jameson, these two breaks are
not gaps or discontinuities in the Foucauldian epistemic sense. These are
new paradigms that have dissevered most of their connections from pre-
vious ones. He writes:

[F]or if the break is initially characterized as a perturbation of causality as

such, as the severance of the threads, as the moment in which the continu-
ities of an older social and cultural logic come to an incomprehensible end
and find themselves displaced by a logic and form of causality not active in
the older system, then the renewed and mesmerized contemplation of the
moment of such a break, as it begins to detect causalities and conferences
not previously visible to the naked eye is bound to expand that break into
a period in its own right.16

In this longue durée framework, Jameson finds aesthetic modes to be

“transitional” in character. Speaking mainly of the capitalist mode of pro-
duction, he writes that a new economic mode results in a new historical
consciousness and a new temporality. But very much like the paradigmatic
nature of economic modes, where the existence of other modes either lies
 1 MODERNITY, CATASTROPHE, AND REALISM … 7

hidden or is at their nascent stage, aesthetic modes also contain many tem-
poralities. Taking after Étienne Balibar, Jameson posits that in periods of
great economic and social transition, these different temporalities reveal
their coexistence in the form of differential aesthetic techniques, which
constitute the axis of modernism.17
While I agree with these formulations, my point is that, moments or
events of extreme historical crisis that shape the experience of moder-
nity—such as famines, social movements, brief dictatorial regimes, or
coups—do not necessarily suggest a constitutive break or result in a his-
torical consciousness formative of a new period. However, these events
do give birth to new aesthetic modes in order to adequately represent the
specificities of the historical catastrophes, crises, conjunctures, and con-
texts. Indeed, as I will show, sometimes multiple modes—even ones that
seem contradictory on the surface, such as the gothic and the social real-
ist—are juxtaposed in a literary work which is based on a catastrophic
crisis and is predominantly realist in form. I will argue that the general
modern condition of catastrophe and crisis, produced by historical/global
factors or by neocolonialism in India, calls for a broad realist framework,
while the specific/local conjuncture of a crisis like famine or political
uprising inspires the use of specific modes.
This reading of post/colonial modernity, shaped by historical crisis and
catastrophic events, is important for the context of my book for two main
reasons. First, unlike Jameson’s longue durée framework, I am focusing
on a shorter time frame, namely the late-colonial and postcolonial period.
While the crisis in Indian agriculture, as I have argued above, had a long
history of British commercialisation, events like the famine or the political
uprising were conditioned and shaped significantly by the immediate and
escalating crises in politics and history, such as the Second World War (for
the Bengal famine), militant Leftism (for the Naxalbari movement), and
the rise of an opposition coalition party (for the emergency). Even if we
view this period of forty-odd years of post/colonial modernity (1930s–
1970s) in terms of the long twentieth century, the historical conditions
of imperialism, capitalism, and colonialism, and the practices of political
resistance to both the British and the bourgeois native, are so overpower-
ing that the entire post/colonial time frame can together be called a break
and one long period in Jamesonian terms.18 On the other hand, we will
need an elaborate theorisation to understand the historical specificities
and crisis conjunctures of the post/colonial period. Second, although all
these catastrophic events share a common link with food and agricultural
8 S. BHATTACHARYA

crises, they are also different from each other in type, nature, and char-
acter. A famine or starvation may have led to a peasant uprising, which
may then have been followed by repressive state action, but these are all
constitutively different kinds of events. A famine and an agrarian-based
political uprising may include wide scenes of violence, but the immediacy
and immensity of a famine are not comparable to the long deprivation,
dispossession, and violence against peasants by the landed elite, or to the
violence produced by guerrilla warfare waged by tribal-peasants. These
different catastrophic events constituting Indian postcolonial modernity
ask for different modes of expression, which in turn shape the form of
realist representations. I will argue in this book that these historically and
culturally specific modes, in their late-colonial South Asian/Indian con-
text at least, are able to capture the tensions between the global and the
local, between the European-colonialist shaping of uneven modernity and
the national/specific responses to it, and between domination and resis-
tance. In order to understand this aesthetic-historical matrix of modernity,
we will need a theorisation of crisis and event in the Indian post/colonial
conjuncture.

The Dialectic of Crisis and Event

In her book Critical Events (1995), Veena Das defines events as those
that share relations with several institutions “moving across family, com-
munity, bureaucracy, courts of law, the medical profession, the state
and multinational corporations,” and bring about new modes of action
redefining traditional categories of knowledge production.19 She takes
from Francois˛ Furet’s notion that the French Revolution was the event
par excellence as it “instituted a new modality of historical action which
was not inscribed into the inventory of that situation,”20 and proceeds to
critically read the events of the Partition, the Sikh militancy, the Bhopal
gas disaster and others focusing on the violence perpetrated on socio-
economically, sexually, and religiously marginal bodies and communities.
She finds that over time, victim communities have emerged as powerful
political actors, both in terms of declaring their representative authority
over their voices and bodies through an antagonistic politics against the
state, and consolidating the communities’ power through the memori-
alisation of the pains and sufferings of the members.21 Das’ main inter-
est here lies in recovering the individual voices, which have been either
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Title: Social organization

A study of the larger mind

Author: Charles Horton Cooley

Release date: January 5, 2024 [eBook #72636]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's sons, 1909

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by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIAL

ORGANIZATION ***
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
 BOOKS BY CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Social Organization; a Study of the net,

Larger Mind $1.50
Human Nature and the Social net,
Order $1.50
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

A STUDY OF THE LARGER MIND

BY
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

AUTHOR OF “HUMAN NATURE AND THE SOCIAL ORDER”

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1911
 Copyright, 1909, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Published April, 1909

 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

To E. J. C.

WHOSE INFLUENCE IS A CHIEF

SOURCE OF ANY LITERARY
MERIT IT MAY HAVE
 PREFACE

Our life is all one human whole, and if we are to have any real
knowledge of it we must see it as such. If we cut it up it dies in the
process: and so I conceive that the various branches of research
that deal with this whole are properly distinguished by change in the
point of sight rather than by any division in the thing that is seen.
Accordingly, in a former book (Human Nature and Social Order), I
tried to see society as it exists in the social nature of man and to
display that in its main outlines. In this one the eye is focussed on
the enlargement and diversification of intercourse which I have
called Social Organization, the individual, though visible, remaining
slightly in the background.
It will be seen from my title and all my treatment that I apprehend
the subject on the mental rather than the material side. I by no
means, however, overlook or wish to depreciate the latter, to which I
am willing to ascribe all the importance that any one can require for
it. Our task as students of society is a large one, and each of us, I
suppose, may undertake any part of it to which he feels at all
competent.

Ann Arbor, Mich., February, 1909.

 CONTENTS

PART I—PRIMARY ASPECTS OF ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER I

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

PAGE

d an Organic Whole—Conscious and Unconscious Relations—

Does Self-Consciousness Come First? Cogito, Ergo Sum—The
3
Larger Introspection—Self-Consciousness in Children—Public
Consciousness
CHAPTER II

SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND—(CONTINUED)

ral Aspect of the Organic View—It Implies that Reform Should
Be Based on Sympathy—Uses of Praise and Blame—
Responsibility Broadened but Not Lost—Moral Value of a 13
Larger View—Organic Morality Calls for Knowledge—Nature of
Social Organization
CHAPTER III

PRIMARY GROUPS
aning of Primary Groups—Family, Playground, and
Neighborhood—How Far Influenced by Larger Society—
23
Meaning and Permanence of “Human Nature”—Primary
Groups the Nursery of Human Nature
CHAPTER IV

PRIMARY IDEALS
ure of Primary Idealism—The Ideal of a “We” or Moral Unity—It
Does Not Exclude Self-Assertion—Ideals Springing from
Hostility—Loyalty, Truth, Service—Kindness—Lawfulness— 32
Freedom—The Doctrine of Natural Right—Bearing of Primary
Idealism upon Education and Philanthropy
CHAPTER V

THE EXTENSION OF PRIMARY IDEALS

mary Ideals Underlie Democracy and Christianity—Why They Are
Not Achieved on a Larger Scale—What They Require from
51
Personality—From Social Mechanism—The Principle of
Compensation
PART II—COMMUNICATION

CHAPTER VI

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION

aning of Communication—Its Relation to Human Nature—To
61
Society at Large
CHAPTER VII

THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION

-Verbal Communication—The Rise of Speech—Its Mental and
Social Function—The Function of Writing—Printing and the 66
Modern World—The Non-Verbal Arts
CHAPTER VIII

MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT AND ANIMATION

aracter of Recent Changes—Their General Effect—The Change in
the United States—Organized Gossip—Public Opinion,
80
Democracy, Internationalism—The Value of Diffusion—
Enlargement of Feeling—Conclusion
CHAPTER IX
 MODERN COMMUNICATION: INDIVIDUALITY
e Question—Why Communication Should Foster Individuality—
The Contrary or Dead-Level Theory—Reconciliation of These 91
Views—The Outlook as Regards Individuality
CHAPTER X

MODERN COMMUNICATION: SUPERFICIALITY AND STRAIN

mulating Effect of Modern Life—Superficiality—Strain—
98
Pathological Effects
PART III—THE DEMOCRATIC MIND

CHAPTER XI

THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

rowness of Consciousness in Tribal Society—Importance of
Face-to-Face Assembly—Individuality—Subconscious Character
of Wider Relations—Enlargement of Consciousness— 107
Irregularity in Growth—Breadth of Modern Consciousness—
Democracy
CHAPTER XII

THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION

blic Opinion as Organization—Agreement Not Essential—Public
Opinion versus Popular Impression—Public Thought Not an
Average—A Group Is Capable of Expression through Its Most
Competent Members—General and Special Public Opinion— 121
The Sphere of the Former—Of the Latter—The Two Are United
in Personality—How Public Opinion Rules—Effective Rule
Based on Moral Unity
CHAPTER XIII

WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE

e Masses the Initiators of Sentiment—They Live in the Central
Current of Experience—Distinction or Privilege Apt to Cause
Isolation—Institutional Character of Upper Classes—The
135
Masses Shrewd Judges of Persons—This the Main Ground for
Expecting that the People Will Be Right in the Long Run—
Democracy Always Representative—Conclusion
CHAPTER XIV

DEMOCRACY AND CROWD EXCITEMENT

e Crowd-Theory of Modern Life—The Psychology of Crowds—
Modern Conditions Favor Psychological Contagion—Democracy
149
a Training in Self-Control—The Crowd Not Always in the Wrong
—Conclusion; the Case of France
CHAPTER XV

DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION

e Problem—Democracy Should Be Distinguished from Transition
—The Dead-Level Theory of Democracy—Confusion and Its
Effects—“Individualism” May Not Be Favorable to
Distinguished Individuality—Contemporary Uniformity— 157
Relative Advantages of America and Europe—Haste,
Superficiality, Strain—Spiritual Economy of a Settled Order—
Commercialism—Zeal for Diffusion—Conclusion
CHAPTER XVI

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT

aning and General Trend of Sentiment—Attenuation—
Refinement—Sense of Justice—Truth as Justice—As Realism As 177
Expediency—As Economy of Attention—Hopefulness
CHAPTER XVII

THE TREND OF SENTIMENT—(CONTINUED)

ure of the Sentiment of Brotherhood—Favored by
Communication and Settled Principles—How Far Contemporary
Life Fosters It—How Far Uncongenial to It—General Outcome
189
in this Regard—The Spirit of Service—The Trend of Manners—
Brotherhood in Relation to Conflict—Blame—Democracy and
Christianity
PART IV—SOCIAL CLASSES

CHAPTER XVIII

THE HEREDITARY OR CASTE PRINCIPLE

ure and Use of Classes—Inheritance and Competition the Two
Principles upon which Classes Are Based—Conditions in 209
Human Nature Making for Hereditary Classes—Caste Spirit
CHAPTER XIX

CONDITIONS FAVORING OR OPPOSING THE GROWTH OF CASTE

ee Conditions Affecting the Increase or Diminution of Caste—
Race-Caste—Immigration and Conquest—Gradual
Differentiation of Functions; Mediæval Caste; India—Influence 217
of Settled Conditions—Influence of the State of
Communication and Enlightenment—Conclusion
CHAPTER XX

THE OUTLOOK REGARDING CASTE

e Question—How Far the Inheritance Principle Actually Prevails
—Influences Favoring Its Growth—Those Antagonizing It—The
229
Principles of Inheritance and Equal Opportunity as Affecting
Social Efficiency—Conclusion
CHAPTER XXI

OPEN CLASSES
e Nature of Open Classes—Whether Class-Consciousness Is
Desirable—Fellowship and Coöperation Deficient in Our Society 239
—Class Organization in Relation to Freedom
CHAPTER XXII

HOW FAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OF OPEN CLASSES

personal Character of Open Classes—Various Classifications—
Classes, as Commonly Understood, Based on Obvious
248
Distinctions—Wealth as Generalized Power—Economic
Betterment as an Ideal of the Ill-Paid Classes—Conclusion
CHAPTER XXIII

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS

e Capitalist Class—Its Lack of Caste Sentiment—In What Sense
“the Fittest”—Moral Traits—How Far Based on Service—
Autocratic and Democratic Principles in the Control of Industry
—Reasons for Expecting an Increase of the Democratic 256
Principle—Social Power in General—Organizing Capacity—
Nature and Sources of Capitalist Power—Power over the Press
and over Public Sentiment—Upper Class Atmosphere
CHAPTER XXIV

ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS—(CONTINUED)

e Influence of Ambitious Young Men—Security of the Dominant
Class in an Open System—Is There Danger of Anarchy and
273
Spoliation?—Whether the Sway of Riches Is Greater Now than
Formerly—Whether Greater in America than in England
CHAPTER XXV

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ILL-PAID CLASSES

e Need of Class Organization—Uses and Dangers of Unions—
284
General Disposition of the Hand-Working Classes
 CHAPTER XXVI

POVERTY
e Meaning of Poverty—Personal and General Causes—Poverty in
a Prosperous Society Due Chiefly to Maladjustment—Are the
290
Poor the “Unfit”?—Who Is to Blame for Poverty?—Attitude of
Society toward the Poor—Fundamental Remedies
CHAPTER XXVII

HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES

nditions Producing Class Animosity—The Spirit of Service Allays
Bitterness—Possible Decrease of the Prestige of Wealth—
Probability of a More Communal Spirit in the Use of Wealth— 301
Influence of Settled Rules for Social Opposition—Importance
of Face-to-Face Discussion
PART V—INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER XXVIII

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL

e Nature of Institutions—Hereditary and Social Factors—The
Child and the World—Society and Personality—Personality
versus the Institution—The Institution as a Basis of Personality
313
—The Moral Aspect—Choice versus Mechanism—Personality
the Life of Institutions—Institutions Becoming Freer in
Structure
CHAPTER XXIX

INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL—(CONTINUED)

ovation as a Personal Tendency—Innovation and Conservatism 327
as Public Habit—Solidarity—French and Anglo-Saxon Solidarity
—Tradition and Convention—Not so Opposite as They Appear
—Real Difference, in this Regard, between Modern and
 Mediæval Society—Traditionalism and Conventionalism in
Modern Life
CHAPTER XXX

FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION

e Nature of Formalism—Its Effect upon Personality—Formalism
in Modern Life—Disorganization, “Individualism”—How it
Affects the Individual—Relation to Formalism—“Individualism”
342
Implies Defective Sympathy—Contemporary “Individualism”—
Restlessness under Discomfort—The Better Aspect of
Disorganization
CHAPTER XXXI

DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY

and New Régimes in the Family—The Declining Birth-Rate
—“Spoiled” Children—The Opening of New Careers to Women
356
—European and American Points of View—Personal Factors in
Divorce—Institutional Factors—Conclusion
CHAPTER XXXII

DISORGANIZATION: THE CHURCH

e Psychological View of Religion—The Need of Social Structure—
Creeds—Why Symbols Tend to Become Formal—Traits of a
372
Good System of Symbols—Contemporary Need of Religion—
Newer Tendencies in the Church
CHAPTER XXXIII

DISORGANIZATION: OTHER TRADITIONS

order in the Economic System—In Education—In Higher Culture
383
—In the Fine Arts
PART VI—PUBLIC WILL

CHAPTER XXXIV
E FUNCTION OF PUBLIC WILL Public and Private Will—The Lack
395
of Public Will—Social Wrongs Commonly Not Willed at All
CHAPTER XXXV

GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL

vernment Not the Only Agent of Public Will—The Relative Point
of View; Advantages of Government as an Agent—Mechanical
Tendency of Government—Characteristics Favorable to
402
Government Activity—Municipal Socialism—Self-Expression the
Fundamental Demand of the People—Actual Extension of
State Functions
CHAPTER XXXVI

SOME PHASES OF THE LARGER WILL

wing Efficiency of the Intellectual Processes—Organic Idealism
—The Larger Morality—Indirect Service—Increasing Simplicity
and Flexibility in Social Structure—Public Will Saves Part of the 411
Cost of Change—Human Nature the Guiding Force behind
Public Will
ex 421
 PART I
PRIMARY ASPECTS OF ORGANIZATION
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
 CHAPTER I
SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND

Mind an Organic Whole—Conscious and Unconscious Relations—Does

Self-Consciousness Come First? Cogito, Ergo Sum—The Larger
Introspection—Self-Consciousness in Children—Public Consciousness.
Mind is an organic whole made up of coöperating individualities, in
somewhat the same way that the music of an orchestra is made up
of divergent but related sounds. No one would think it necessary or
reasonable to divide the music into two kinds, that made by the
whole and that of particular instruments, and no more are there two
kinds of mind, the social mind and the individual mind. When we
study the social mind we merely fix our attention on larger aspects
and relations rather than on the narrower ones of ordinary
psychology.
The view that all mind acts together in a vital whole from which
the individual is never really separate flows naturally from our
growing knowledge of heredity and suggestion, which makes it
increasingly clear that every thought we have is linked with the
thought of our ancestors and associates, and through them with that
of society at large. It is also the only view consistent with the
general standpoint of modern science, which admits nothing isolate
in nature.
The unity of the social mind consists not in agreement but in
organization, in the fact of reciprocal influence or causation among
its parts, by virtue of which everything that takes place in it is
connected with everything else, and so is an outcome of the whole.
Whether, like the orchestra, it gives forth harmony may be a matter
of dispute, but that its sound, pleasing or otherwise, is the
expression of a vital coöperation, cannot well be denied. Certainly
everything that I say or think is influenced by what others have said
or thought, and, in one way or another, sends out an influence of its
own in turn.
This differentiated unity of mental or social life, present in the
simplest intercourse but capable of infinite growth and adaptation, is
what I mean in this work by social organization. It would be useless,
I think, to attempt a more elaborate definition. We have only to
open our eyes to see organization; and if we cannot do that no
definition will help us.
In the social mind we may distinguish—very roughly of course—
conscious and unconscious relations, the unconscious being those of
which we are not aware, which for some reason escape our notice. A
great part of the influences at work upon us are of this character:
our language, our mechanical arts, our government and other
institutions, we derive chiefly from people to whom we are but
indirectly and unconsciously related. The larger movements of
society—the progress and decadence of nations, institutions and
races—have seldom been a matter of consciousness until they were
past. And although the growth of social consciousness is perhaps the
greatest fact of history, it has still but a narrow and fallible grasp of
human life.
Social consciousness, or awareness of society, is inseparable from
self-consciousness, because we can hardly think of ourselves
excepting with reference to a social group of some sort, or of the
group except with reference to ourselves. The two things go
together, and what we are really aware of is a more or less complex
personal or social whole, of which now the particular, now the
general, aspect is emphasized.
In general, then, most of our reflective consciousness, of our
wide-awake state of mind, is social consciousness, because a sense
of our relation to other persons, or of other persons to one another,
can hardly fail to be a part of it. Self and society are twin-born, we
know one as immediately as we know the other, and the notion of a
separate and independent ego is an illusion.
 This view, which seems to me quite simple and in accord with
common-sense, is not the one most commonly held, for
psychologists and even sociologists are still much infected with the
idea that self-consciousness is in some way primary, and antecedent
to social consciousness, which must be derived by some recondite
process of combination or elimination. I venture, therefore, to give
some further exposition of it, based in part on first-hand observation
of the growth of social ideas in children.
Descartes is, I suppose, the best-known exponent of the
traditional view regarding the primacy of self-consciousness. Seeking
an unquestionable basis for philosophy, he thought that he found it
in the proposition “I think, therefore I am” (cogito, ergo sum). This
seemed to him inevitable, though all else might be illusion. “I
observed,” he says, “that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was
false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should
be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, hence I am,
was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt,
however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of
shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the
first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.”[1]
From our point of view this reasoning is unsatisfactory in two
essential respects. In the first place it seems to imply that “I”-
consciousness is a part of all consciousness, when, in fact, it belongs
only to a rather advanced stage of development. In the second it is
one-sided or “individualistic” in asserting the personal or “I” aspect
to the exclusion of the social or “we” aspect, which is equally original
with it.
Introspection is essential to psychological or social insight, but the
introspection of Descartes was, in this instance, a limited, almost
abnormal, sort of introspection—that of a self-absorbed philosopher
doing his best to isolate himself from other people and from all
simple and natural conditions of life. The mind into which he looked
was in a highly technical state, not likely to give him a just view of
human consciousness in general.
 Introspection is of a larger sort in our day. There is a world of
things in the mind worth looking at, and the modern psychologist,
instead of fixing his attention wholly on an extreme form of
speculative self-consciousness, puts his mind through an infinite
variety of experiences, intellectual and emotional, simple and
complex, normal and abnormal, sociable and private, recording in
each case what he sees in it. He does this by subjecting it to
suggestions or incitements of various kinds, which awaken the
activities he desires to study.
In particular he does it largely by what may be called sympathetic
introspection, putting himself into intimate contact with various sorts
of persons and allowing them to awake in himself a life similar to
their own, which he afterwards, to the best of his ability, recalls and
describes. In this way he is more or less able to understand—always
by introspection—children, idiots, criminals, rich and poor,
conservative and radical—any phase of human nature not wholly
alien to his own.
This I conceive to be the principal method of the social
psychologist.
One thing which this broader introspection reveals is that the “I”-
consciousness does not explicitly appear until the child is, say, about
two years old, and that when it does appear it comes in inseparable
conjunction with the consciousness of other persons and of those
relations which make up a social group. It is in fact simply one phase
of a body of personal thought which is self-consciousness in one
aspect and social consciousness in another.
The mental experience of a new-born child is probably a mere
stream of impressions, which may be regarded as being individual,
in being differentiated from any other stream, or as social, in being
an undoubted product of inheritance and suggestion from human life
at large; but is not aware either of itself or of society.
Very soon, however, the mind begins to discriminate personal
impressions and to become both naïvely self-conscious and naïvely
conscious of society; that is, the child is aware, in an unreflective
way, of a group and of his own special relation to it. He does not say
“I” nor does he name his mother, his sister or his nurse, but he has
images and feelings out of which these ideas will grow. Later comes
the more reflective consciousness which names both himself and
other people, and brings a fuller perception of the relations which
constitute the unity of this small world.[2]
And so on to the most elaborate phases of self-consciousness and
social consciousness, to the metaphysician pondering the Ego, or the
sociologist meditating on the Social Organism. Self and society go
together, as phases of a common whole. I am aware of the social
groups in which I live as immediately and authentically as I am
aware of myself; and Descartes might have said “We think,”
cogitamus, on as good grounds as he said cogito.
But, it may be said, this very consciousness that you are
considering is after all located in a particular person, and so are all
similar consciousnesses, so that what we see, if we take an objective
view of the matter, is merely an aggregate of individuals, however
social those individuals may be. Common-sense, most people think,
assures us that the separate person is the primary fact of life.
If so, is it not because common-sense has been trained by custom
to look at one aspect of things and not another? Common-sense,
moderately informed, assures us that the individual has his being
only as part of a whole. What does not come by heredity comes by
communication and intercourse; and the more closely we look the
more apparent it is that separateness is an illusion of the eye and
community the inner truth. “Social organism,” using the term in no
abstruse sense but merely to mean a vital unity in human life, is a
fact as obvious to enlightened common-sense as individuality.
I do not question that the individual is a differentiated centre of
psychical life, having a world of his own into which no other
individual can fully enter; living in a stream of thought in which there
is nothing quite like that in any other stream, neither his “I,” nor his
“you,” nor his “we,” nor even any material object; all, probably, as
they exist for him, have something unique about them. But this
uniqueness is no more apparent and verifiable than the fact—not at
all inconsistent with it—that he is in the fullest sense member of a
whole, appearing such not only to scientific observation but also to
his own untrained consciousness.
There is then no mystery about social consciousness. The view
that there is something recondite about it and that it must be dug
for with metaphysics and drawn forth from the depths of
speculation, springs from a failure to grasp adequately the social
nature of all higher consciousness. What we need in this connection
is only a better seeing and understanding of rather ordinary and
familiar facts.
We may view social consciousness either in a particular mind or as
a coöperative activity of many minds. The social ideas that I have
are closely connected with those that other people have, and act
and react upon them to form a whole. This gives us public
consciousness, or to use a more familiar term, public opinion, in the
broad sense of a group state of mind which is more or less distinctly
aware of itself. By this last phrase I mean such a mutual
understanding of one another’s points of view on the part of the
individuals or groups concerned as naturally results from discussion.
There are all degrees of this awareness in the various individuals.
Generally speaking, it never embraces the whole in all its complexity,
but almost always some of the relations that enter into the whole.
The more intimate the communication of a group the more
complete, the more thoroughly knit together into a living whole, is
its public consciousness.
In a congenial family life, for example, there may be a public
consciousness which brings all the important thoughts and feelings
of the members into such a living and coöperative whole. In the
mind of each member, also, this same thing exists as a social
consciousness embracing a vivid sense of the personal traits and
modes of thought and feeling of the other members. And, finally,
quite inseparable from all this, is each one’s consciousness of
himself, which is largely a direct reflection of the ideas about himself
he attributes to the others, and is directly or indirectly altogether a
product of social life. Thus all consciousness hangs together, and the
distinctions are chiefly based on point of view.
The unity of public opinion, like all vital unity, is one not of
agreement but of organization, of interaction and mutual influence.
It is true that a certain underlying likeness of nature is necessary in
order that minds may influence one another and so coöperate in
forming a vital whole, but identity, even in the simplest process, is
unnecessary and probably impossible. The consciousness of the
American House of Representatives, for example, is by no means
limited to the common views, if there are any, shared by its
members, but embraces the whole consciousness of every member
so far as this deals with the activity of the House. It would be a poor
conception of the whole which left out the opposition, or even one
dissentient individual. That all minds are different is a condition, not
an obstacle, to the unity that consists in a differentiated and
coöperative life.
Here is another illustration of what is meant by individual and
collective aspects of social consciousness. Some of us possess a
good many books relating to social questions of the day. Each of
these books, considered by itself, is the expression of a particular
social consciousness; the author has cleared up his ideas as well as
he can and printed them. But a library of such books expresses
social consciousness in a larger sense; it speaks for the epoch. And
certainly no one who reads the books will doubt that they form a
whole, whatever their differences. The radical and the reactionist are
clearly part of the same general situation.
There are, then, at least three aspects of consciousness which we
may usefully distinguish: self-consciousness, or what I think of
myself; social consciousness (in its individual aspect), or what I think
of other people; and public consciousness, or a collective view of the
foregoing as organized in a communicating group. And all three are
phases of a single whole.
 FOOTNOTES:
[1] Discourse on Method, part iv.
[2] There is much interest and significance in the matter of
children’s first learning the use of “I” and other self-words—just
how they learn them and what they mean by them. Some
discussion of the matter, based on observation of two children,
will be found in Human Nature and the Social Order; and more
recently I have published a paper in the Psychological Review
(November, 1908) called A Study of the Early Use of Self-Words
by a Child. “I” seems to mean primarily the assertion of will in a
social medium of which the child is conscious and of which his “I”
is an inseparable part. It is thus a social idea and, as stated in the
text, arises by differentiation of a vague body of personal thought
which is self-consciousness in one phase and social consciousness
in another. It has no necessary reference to the body.