baecker - 2008 - form and forms of communication(2)

8/8/2019 Baecker - 2008 - Form and Forms of Communication(2)

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Dirk Baecker, Form and Forms of Communication

3. In Society

3.1 Expecting Expectations

Sociologically speaking, perhaps the most remarkable circumstance in connection with

the phenomenon of communication is that people can communicate not solely for the

sake of communicating. The principle formulated by Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson

does indeed apply, to the effect that, as soon as we are dealing with two organisms in

their environments and in a mutually related form, that is, with mutual perception, we

cannot not communicate (Watzlawick/Beavin/Jackson 1967: 51). But it equally holds

good, that we cannot just communicate; we have to communicate about something at the

same time. Of course, there are elaborated techniques of communicating only

communication, as developed, above all, in group therapy. Yet they are, just as in thecase of meditation, a form of consciousness where consciousness perceives only

consciousness, virtuoso performances, which derive their meaning from, among other

things, making the normal case visible by going to the exterior of form and trying out the

contrary. The general rule is that, now formulated in the cybernetic tradition, we cannot

communicate without simultaneously communicating that we are controlling as we

communicate (with surprising consequences to match), or again, formulated in our

models conceptual mode, that we cannot stipulate degrees of freedom, if we have not

introduced them in the first place.

The step from the general model of communication to applying and testing it

sociologically is hence a step from the singular of communications form to the plural of

its forms. As soon as we communicate, we find ourselves engaging with particular forms

of communication, the special nature of which is incomparably more conspicuous than

the forms general nature, so that it is accordingly difficult to observe communication as

such, or respectively, to observe it alongside the circumstances we have to deal with in

each case, noting also that we are engaged in communicating.

Nonetheless, the forms with which the following intends to deal are forms within the

form of communication, or respectively forms taken out of the form, as GeorgeSpencer Brown formulates it for the case of his general calculation. Regardless of which

concrete form is of interest in what follows, we are dealing fundamentally with a form of

introducing and stipulating of degrees of freedom in the context of a combination of

indication and differentiation. We shall see that the form of communication plays with

various possibilities of much rather focussing freedoms spaces for action or alternatively


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of much rather emphasising stipulations and to that extent offers a wide spectrum

between emphasising spontaneity, on the one hand, and ritualisation, on the other. With

each individual form, it is always a question, however, of both, of introducing and

stipulating degrees of freedom, so that the result of engaging with one form always

means tying one to the other in the sense of Ronald D. Laings pinpointedly accurate

parables (Laing 1970). Whoever participates in communication is engaging socially,

regardless of whether through fleeting mutual notice at the bus stop, a collegial exchange

at work, watching the television with the family or reading poems alone.

The first of the forms we want to present here serves as a bridge between the general

form of communication and its concrete forms. At the same time, it is simply the

structure, that aims at concrete structures, individual themes of communication, therefore,

yet in its general nature makes sure that every concrete structure can be swapped for

another concrete structure, depending on the history of communication. This, the first of

the forms derived from form and general structure, is expectation. It is patently not

possible, so runs the thesis in this context, to engage in communication, without attaching

to it an expectation about what we are getting involved in. More acutely formulated, it is

not even possible to engage in communication, without attaching certain expectations

about what we are getting involved in. That does not have to mean that we attach certain

intentions, goals and interests to communication, but it does mean, in any case, that we

have, depending on the communication, an idea of what offers of behaviour we are going

to be involved with and what behaviour of our own is opportune and what is not. We

accept an expectation, as we engage with a communication and we look to see

subsequently what has become of it and how far it determines what is possible in

engaging with it. And from the beginning, the expectation is effective in a moderated

state; it can be amplified and weakened, emphasised and denied, shifted conspicuously or

inconspicuously and is, in this manner, already a stipulation of the degree of freedom, the

introduction of which is here the point.

An expectation becoming effective happens as a rule so peripherally that we scarcely

notice it. We enter a church and lower our voices, we greet our guests for dinner and

involuntarily become a notion jollier, we get to work and seem a touch more determined.

And if we do not, we communicate that we are not collaborating in a way then to be

defined more closely or found out, as may be.

We describe an expectation as a structure, because this concept corresponds to Alfred

Korzybskis reflections, as it posits that there are no isolated processes, events or objects

in the world (we then would not know anything about them; they would inhabit another


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world) and hence directs each of these phenomena to its possible relations to another

phenomenon (Korzybski 1958: 55ff.). Observing the structure of something accordingly

allows examining a phenomenon for what it is not, yet for what it has in common with

others. That is always only possible hypothetically, tentatively, experimentally and

riskily, but it is possible. To avoid falling into the structuralist trap, we only have to take

care not to confuse this structure with the actual reason for a process, an event or an

object. The concept of structure only provides that traces of one thing lie in the other,

where one relates to the other through the game, as Jacques Derrida says (1970), and not

perhaps through a mutual or even directed determination. This concept of structure

corresponds sufficiently with the concept of form, which allows more exact examining of

the structure of one as indicating similarities and differences in comparison with the other

while reaching back to differentiating one thing from another.

An expectation always stands in the context of expecting to be disappointed, however

strongly or weakly this moment may indeed be marked in the particular case, and with

that, because we cannot not expect, in the context of exchange for another expectation.

An expectation is a structure on the hop, but a structure nonetheless. It defines itself in

differing from its possible disappointment, but does not perhaps use the disappointment

not to expect anything any more, but to expect something else, including the possibility

of expecting nothing. We can set down the corresponding form as follows:

That says nothing other than that expectation determines itself in a communicative

context by differentiating itself from its disappointment and uses the reflection on this

possible disappointment for determining itself through the differentiation from itself, that

is, from possible other expectations. Reckoning with disappointment is the

differentiation, which allows defining an expectation.

In a communicative context, this becomes acute in at least four respects.

Firstly, we ought not to confuse observing expectations in communications form with

observing them in the form of consciousness. What expectations perform in

communications form is, in consciousness, probably performed by attention (Markowitz

1986: 10f., 61f., 110f.), in as far as this is also a structure, which allows undertaking a

definition and at the same time leaving open, whether a definition can be maintained on


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both sides, on the consciousness side, which can be distracted and nevertheless, if even in

favour of attention to something else, thinks further, and on the object side, which really

does not merit so much attention or some other sort of attention from what we had

imagined. We are deliberately leaving open what role expectations play for

consciousness, in order instead to underline all the more obviously that the structures of

expectation dealt with by communication are expectations of communication, which

make reference to observing consciousness engaged in communication but simply not

identical with this consciousnesss possible expectations itself or with sorts of attention.

In fact, emphasising this is important, because secondly it has, since Talcott Parsons,

concerned so-called complimentary expectations (Parsons/Shils 1951; Parsons 1964).

Communication does not merely mean that participants engage in it with expectations,

however much that may be the case. On the contrary, communication means, above all,

that each of these expectations is besides expecting what the other expects. When people

enter a church, they expect that the priest expects them to behave piously in some way or

other, however multifarious, modifiable and susceptible to civilising this expectation

expected by the priest may indeed then turn out to be. That is, not least, the reason why

so many styles of belief do indeed differentiate themselves, allowing the priest in

question to offer, respectively, different frames for projecting a definite notion of what he

may indeed expect. In a school, teachers expect that the pupils expect from them that they

will teach them something. That is all that enables them to appear as authoritarian or,

respectively, antiauthoritarian and to make offers to the pupils, which make clear to them

what is expected of them. There are not a few teachers, who, not long after retiring,

cannot imagine any more how they were able to control and to fascinate twenty to forty

pupils, as they do not know anything of the structure of complementary expectations,

which came to their aid communicatively, and have all their life attributed being able to

do it to their personal capabilities, not least in order to keep going. A fine example from

Parsons (1964: 330) describes the communication between a doctor and, in this case, a

female patient, both of whom have to know exactly what they expect of each other,

namely neutral, practical treatment and examination even in the case of intimate

touching, in order to be able then, through minimally varying their behaviour, by a

somewhat stronger hand pressure, a somewhat longer look, to test if there is eventually

anything to be gained by believing the other has other expectations as well, which can be

perhaps exploited to shift the context of the medical treatment to that of a sexual affair.

Communicatively, we do not simply expect that something else is possible perhaps,

but we rely on expectations of expectation and on these being modifiable by the


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suggestion of other expectations. If the other does not engage with the expectations we

offer as available to them, we withdraw again and did not in our doubt expect at all that

the other could expect anything. Then the somewhat stronger hand pressure, the

somewhat longer look were chance, a personal idiosyncrasy of the particular doctor or

whatever, in any case something innocuous. Whoever thinks anything else in this

connection, has already engaged with the possibility of other expectations.

Our third aspect is that this subtlety of expectations of expectation relates to the fact

that it has to manage without a solid reference point outside of the particular modifiable

situation. It is indeed not only expectations but also expectations of expectation that are

structures in the sense, that they make it possible to indicate something they are not and,

to that extent, to try out for itself an ordering, which has still got to maintain itself. But

they have to do all this themselves in the framework of a reference of their own to be

justified in the situation, not in the framework of an exogenous guarantee assuring what

is to be expected in what situation for what reasons. That is why sociologists speak of

institutions (Schelsky 1970; Meyer/Rowan 1977), of arrangements, which make mutually

attributing a consensus on certain ways of behaving, on intentions and considerations

possible, and which can then be so treated as if they were given. But communication can

only decide in the situation and only for itself, if we can put it that way, with which

institutions it will engage.

A radical formulation for this outward insecurity of communication is the theorem,

likewise developed by Talcott Parson, of double contingency (Parsons/Shils 1951: 15ff.;

Parsons 1964: 89ff.), which, in his case, explicitly takes the place of the theorem of the

struggle of all against all formulated three hundred years earlier by Thomas Hobbes in

Leviathan (1651). Sociality, according to Hobbes, means having to reckon with the worst.

Sociality, according to Parsons, means not knowing what we have to reckon with and

hence relying on culture. Niklas Luhmann would then suggest replacing the reference to

culture with the reference to chance and time (Luhmann 1995: 105f.; see Baecker 2001b:

133ff.).

In any case, this means the following: when two observers, individuals, persons of

whatever (we have to keep that open here, but will come back to it) meet, they are in the

situation of not knowing what (including: which expectations) is to be expected from the

other. One of them could hence do this, but also something else (simple contingency); the

other could do that, but likewise something else (double contingency). In this situation,

the one waits for the other to do something, start something, whilst the other does the

same. Both wait for the other to declare themselves and hence open up a differentiation.


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Nothing happens. The behaviour of both, from attitude to direction of gaze, is fixed by

not allowing themselves to be fixed on anything. The situation becomes increasingly

onerous, because people do not, in fact, renounce communication whilst waiting, as this

is already communication, mutual perception. They are communicating about not

communicating with each other, because neither of the pair knows how they could begin.

When this theorem became known in the 1950s, people liked to discuss it using the

example of the communication of two strangers in a train compartment.

Here once again, the decisive point is also that the communication is not blocked by

anything, but blocks itself. Nothing happens, because what is being communicated is that

each of the pair is waiting for the other, in order to receive an indication of what can

actually be expected in and from a communication between the two of them. That is, as

it were, the primal situation of the social, primal situation, because nothing else is

happening here but the social itself. Group therapies, particularly the so-called training

group (Kasenbacher 2003: 142ff.), like to exploit this, in order to make experiencing the

social itself possible. Obviously, people anticipate beneficial effects from it. The primal

situation is experienced as a problem demanding a solution. For this reason, Parsons

speaks of the problem of double contingency. This problem is identical with the

indefiniteness of communications, which reflects on itself. It is the indefiniteness in the

face of every differentiation, which people cannot tolerate, but which they have to learn

to tolerate, if they want to be in a position to observe, so to speak, communication in pure

form.

At the same time it is not, in fact, the case that this problem of double contingency

only appears at the start of a communication and then never again. On the contrary, it

seems to be the rule that people begin to communicate with each other in a fully defined

situation and only then do moments materialise, in which the previous expectations of

expectation are exhausted and no new ones appear, without people maybe being, for that

reason, already prepared to end the communication and go away. That is something about

which those situations concerned with initially crossing a threshold to a certain trust can

sing a refrain, for instance, when leading up to business of the more demanding kind, to

intimacy or also to belief. The problem of the double contingency accompanies

communication, never leaves it and is solved repeatedly and, depending on

circumstances, in various ways, however much organisations, marriages, confession, or

interviews with politicians, of example, also develop rituals of solving the problem,

which can be invoked almost as needed.


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Now Parsons thinks, it would be culture, understood as, for the social, the external

horizon of values and corresponding norms of what is right and what wrong, which

enables the solving of the problem of the double contingency. And in actual fact, it does

seem that there was indeed a time when people knew how to behave as a stranger in a

railway compartment, as a husband to a wife also in instances of, as it were, dropping out

of the marriage, or as a teacher to a pupil, before the latter began to learn. It is equally

certain that this knowledge, about how to behave adequately for a situation, about the

correct offers of behaviour and the incorrect intrusions within the various cultural

frictions between the generations, the sexes and the backgrounds, tends to dissolve itself,

however much fundamentalist of all kinds try to mitigate against it. It is certain in

addition, that, in any society, people cannot assume any more that they can rely on a

culture given to society out of some horizon or other. In cultural comparison, every

society learns that it has itself, its own customs, norms and prejudices to thank for its

culture and not, for instance, some nature of things, however inscrutable. With the

descriptions of correct behaviour that is the actual drama the differentiations, which

kept these descriptions stable, also dissolve themselves, without people believing that

they even actually knew them (Geertz 1973: 142ff.).

According to Luhmann, solving the problem of the double contingency cannot,

therefore, already exist exclusively in culture, which only has to be invoked in every

problematical situation. Cultivated behaviour can actually exacerbate the problem, just as

much as deliberately treating cultural expectations casually. So the mechanism allowing

respective problems to be solved has to be more generally, at the same time self-

referentially and more strongly related to the resources of the given situation. Luhmann

deduces that chance and time will solve the problem. Something happens; a bird flies past

the railway compartment window and one person tries a friendly smile, the other a piece

of chocolate. A particular narrative of interaction develops, however minimal it may be,

and we become increasingly sure about the sort of expectations of expectation we are

handling. We keep the disappointment of possible other expectations to ourselves or we

otherwise wait to see, if the further narrative of interaction will sometime or other offer

reference points for trying out feeding in again these other expectations about attributing

the particular complementary expectation.

It is obvious that the way interactively developing communications depend on chance

and their own narrative tends to reinforce the cultural uncertainty of correct and incorrect

behaviour rather than weaken it, because we can experience so many different things and

are directed towards finding the differences interesting, rather than the similarities. We


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can, therefore, reckon with situations involving double contingency being, in times of

cultural uncertainty, both more often noticeable and routinely covered up as well. to the

point where we can begin wondering, if these routines do not constitute a new form of

culture. Reflections of this kind lead to combining Parsons solution with Luhmanns

and, on one side, continuing to regard it as a solution to the problem of double

contingency, albeit, on the other, only as a solution among others and as a solution, which

does not refer to a resource endogenously given but in each case endogenously open to

contesting all over again.

Finally, the fourth and, in our context, last aspect, where the structure of expectations

of expectation is critical in communication and for it, is the possibility of describing

feelings as constructions arising from the amplification of expectations into demands, and

this both in the case of expectations being confirmed and in that of them being

disappointed. Whilst expectations are normally either disappointed or confirmed, and we

can then decide if we retain them and reinforce them normatively, expectations can, in

particular situations concerning the mobilisation of individual or collective effects of

solidarity, be boosted into demands, which are anchored in the participating individuals

as feelings. At least in this way we can collate those reference points towards a sociology

of emotion, which are to be found variously with Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann

(Parsons 1977: 218f., 247ff.; Luhmann 1995: 269f., 274f.; Stenner 2004; Baecker 2004).

Feelings of fulfilment intensify confirmed expectations into demands striving after

further confirmation; feelings of disappointment retain demands, and that also when the

basic expectations were disappointed and were possibly even dropped.

It is interesting that feelings only achieve this intensification of expectations into

demands under two conditions, namely, on the one hand, on condition of trying also to tie

in emotionally the complementary expectation of the respective interlocutor and, on the

other, on condition of what we feel hitting on a statement, indubitable because subjective,

on the objective situation we are in. From that, ambivalences as regards attribution can be

gained, which allow leaving it open whether subsequent communications connect with

the person of the other or with their situation. It seems that this is the only way to win

over the respective interlocutor for the feeling, without anything being too definite about

has been gained by such a win. That is because the situation invoking hatred, love,

sadness or joy is just as interesting as the person who reacts accordingly.

In this way, feelings make a differentiation, which opens a space other to that of other

differentiations. Still without knowing exactly what they denote, that is, what

expectations they make possible, they signal an indefinitely definite dealing with


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disappointments, which allows relating the situations resources and the participating

persons resources in such a way that both can be newly coordinated with each other. If

feelings promote solidarity, as Parsons says, then this does not only apply to the

relationship between persons, but also to the relationship between persons and situations.

People can only come to accept things emotionally and can only decide emotionally to

risk something new. That is the case, because, when differentiating feelings, one thing, as

does another, brings new resources into play, which re-actualise the entire narrative of

persons and their situations, without having, therefore, to thematise them as well. To the

intellectual function of conscious thought, that is something uncanny. But it has to rely on

it for this feeling as well.

3.2 Number, Order, Calculus

Expectations of expectation are the structures forming the background to communications

becoming events that count themselves, that is, can be identified and connected. That

communication has happened can be established through the confirming or disappointing

of an expectation of expectation, and that consequently certain connections are more

likely, other less so.

We talk about counting communicative events, because one of the results of research

in cybernetics and systems theory is that the self-organisation of a complex phenomenon

pre-supposes that the phenomenon is in a position to decide among its own units, to count

them and to decide accordingly which further operations are possible and necessary

(Baecker 2003). In this sense, the cyberneticist Warren McCulloch has spoken about how

he engaged with cybernetics theoretical potential by trying to find out how a crustacean

succeeds in directing the growth of its shell, including its spiral and pattern, by adding up

the stage of growth it is in at any given time (McCulloch 2004). Communication is a

process of calculation, which posits that events can be differentiated, in order to separate

and to connect them. Confirming or disappointing expectations provides the scanning and

outlining capable, in this sense, of profiling communicative events

(Watzlawick/Beavin/Jackson 1967: 54ff.; Wilden 1972: 111ff.).

The respective unit of communication capable of being counted as an event depends

on the structure of expectation, as background to observing communication. Here we can

reckon not only in great historical periods but also to the beat of seconds, depending on

whether it concerns the imperial communication of the Roman Empire or the

micromoment management of a particular socially interactive situation (Leifer 2002).


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Beyond that, we can, with George Spencer Brown, talk about countable

communicative events, which establish certain distinctions (for instance: in the empire,

only the power of the centre counts) can be, on the one hand, confirmed by repetition,

on the other, however, can be condensed into the difference they make:

These two expressions denote in Spencer Browns calculations (1972: 10f.), which hedescribes as calculations of quantity. What is meant by that is that distinctions once made

may be repeated without the repetition itself having to make a difference to the distinctio.

We can repeatedly put questions, give instructions, confess our love, or offer money

without the repetition changing anything about the questioning, instructing, loving or

paying. Naturally, subtle observations establishing a difference in the repetition, for

instance, increasing enthusiasm and deepening trust or also growing boredom or

gradually awakening mistrust, are not excluded with these counting processes (Deleuze

1968). But these assume an observing of form which indicates already relations of order

and not only of number. Here at least mathematics and sociology agree that not only what

is extraordinary and subtle deserves recording, but also what is ordinary and self-evident.

The two forms of confirmation and of condensation go back to the first of the two

laws, which Spencer Brown formulates in hisLaws of Form, namely to the law of

calling: the value of a call made again is the value of the call (1972: 1), respectively:

For our reflections, this means that, taking into account the expectations, which they set

and confirm, or disappoint, communications can be repeated in their value as well as

summarised with regard to it. We can repeatedly call up what maintains them. We can,

however, also try to find out what it is actually all about. Time and again, we meet

particular friends to attend a concert together. At some point, we discover that concert


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visits concerts are nothing else than celebrating and confirming the friendship on both

sides. The differentiation is not unimportant, as it makes it possible, among other things,

to choose between regretting that, on one particular evening, a friend is not going along

to the concert again, on one side, and suspecting that this other persons friendship has

diminished, on the other. And accordingly, we will react in various ways, and

accordingly, the friend will be well advised to look a various ways of formulating their

regrets.

He calls these two other possibilities cancellation,

and compensation,

Cancellation means that a difference already established can be abandoned through the

instruction to delete the indication and the mark in favour of the unmarked state. On the

contrary, compensation means that the unmarked state can be marked by a self-deleting

distinction. Both possibilities rest on the second of the two laws of form on which

Spencer Brown grounds his calculation, namely, the law of crossing: The value of a

crossing made again is not the value of the crossing (1972: 2, and see ibid.: 10),

respectively:

One of the calculations crucial ideas consists in the formulation of this second law. Itmakes explicit what has been gained with the concept of form. The concept of form

actually implies nothing less than introducing the distinctions initially uncertain exterior,

which an observer of the second order can define, and which hence means introducing an

empty space, and the calculation reckons with it as it does with the indicated and marked

interior of the distinction. The law of calling formulates how this unmarked space can be


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reached: by putting a cross against a distinction or better un-crossing it. If I have just

said to my friend, Id like to go to the cinema, and subsequently say, Id rather not go

to the cinema, I thereby gain the possibility of not wanting anything. Communicatively,

this possibility can be shaped just as interestingly as the possibility of wanting something.

I am not committed to anything, but have to, if I want something, set up a new difference,

and with this I have, in turn, the possibility of subsequently cancelling it. I do not want to

go to the cinema, not to the concert and do not want to stay at home too: with this, the

other person is called upon to occupy themselves with the one who could want

something, but does not want anything, and first of all to find out what is causing the

unwillingness to set up one of the differences we have been so consistently establishing

up to now.

But that is not all. We can not only put a cross against what has held good up to now,

but we can also imply observations of form, which allow observing how what we

establish so successfully as differentiations compensates for the emptiness they replace.

And this possibility is always on hand, is orientated according to every expectation we

might use to profile a communication, regardless of whether it is a matter of a friendship,

a task, enjoying art, admiring a woman or socialising. We will need reasons and reference

points, complementary expectations too, in order to initiate observing form this way. But

whoever seeks, they shall find. We might only think of Gustave Flauberts novels, above

all,Lducation Sentimentale (1869), in which a society is presented, where nothing

moves it other than compensating for its own emptiness.

Against the background of the law of calling, Spencer Brown links these two

possibilities of cancellation and compensation to the concept of order in as different from

that of number. When counting, it is a question of finding out what lasts and in what

regards it can be consolidated, with ordering, it is a question of scrutinising every

difference we establish against the background of possibly also cancelling it again. Both

concepts reckon with both sides of form, as counting also functions only if the indefinite

is incorporated every time as the exterior of the definite. We cannot count without

attending to intersections. But with ordering, the outside of the form becomes an

interesting argument in its own right, if we can put it like that. Ordering only functions,

when the two possibilities of defining and of the undefined are treated symmetrically. For

only in that way can we decide for and against an order. And that is the only reason why

an order is an order.

With that, we have unobtrusively introduced the premises or the axioms of Spencer

Browns calculation. Anything more than the two named laws does not exist. And


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anything more than the three possibilities they nominate for dealing with distinctions:

putting a cross against them, cancelling them and re-entering them into the space of

distinction again something we will come back to also does not exist.

3.3 Forms of the Social

Society is number, order and re-entry of communication. It repeats, confirms and

consolidates itself (number); it deletes itself and sets itself up as an alternative possibility

to itself (order); it explores what it creates as the space of its own possibilities (re-entry).

Society is a title for these three forms of dealing with communication. And each of

these three forms is embedded in observing the three degrees of freedom and how they

are stipulated. It is repeatedly a matter of opening a space of differentiation and the

descriptions possible within it. It is correspondingly demanding to construct a theory of

society. Society cannot be posited as the cosmos or chaos of its communicative

possibilities any more, but has to be developed from the form of differentiating

communication through describing communication as operation.

We have fixed the possibility of counting communication through the structures of

complementary expectation, which can be fixed through every single communicative

event and allow differentiating these events, for their part, from each other. We will deal

with the re-entry of communication into the space of the society it creates in the next

chapter under the heading meaning. In this and the two following sections, it is a

question of the order of society, which we will describe as an ordering of differentiation

and of self-description. In this case, we are not concerned with working out a general

theory of society, but only with making comprehensible how far society can be

understood as an ordering of communication.

Society is only then the ordering of communication, when it fulfils itself as a self-

establishing and self-cancelling differentiation of communication, with which we can

engage alternately, which includes in each individual version the possibility of all others,

and these, therefore, relate with more or less severe exclusivity to each other. The

singular of this order is hence to be understood as a plural of its orders. Society always

appears as differing from itself, not least as differing from that community, which it

always has incorporated as the dream of being defined though its own definitions

(Plessner 1999). Communication is always engaged in the leap, delayed more or less, into

another possibility of being itself.


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Hence, society needs robust differentiations, which firstly denote various possibilities

for using communication, can secondly attract a sufficient number of communicative

events, in order both to hone its profile and also become structurally rich enough to

include the perspective onto alternative possibilities, and thirdly are sufficiently capable

of reflexion not to lose sight of the precarious terrain they operate on. The differentiations

have to be robust, because they accompany communication as, in the sense advanced by

Jrgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson, metacommunications which are, on one side,

communicatively included on the same level as the themes of communication and, on

another, set the conditions, which describe how communication can be continued

(Ruesch/Bateson 1987: 209ff.). These conditions extend beyond the respective thematic

and material attractivity of communication and denote the respective form of the social,

which can be called on by communication and is reproduced by communication. They

establish a differentiation foreshadowing which indications can be expected.

We have recourse to Niklas Luhmanns theory of society as developed in the book Die

Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft(1997), in order to nominate candidates for such forms of

the social. These candidates are here presented exemplarily and without any claim to

completeness, even if I would find it difficult at present to imagine any more of them.

These candidates are interaction, organisation, protest movements and society itself, the

latter being further ordered into tribes, levels and systems of functioning. The following

form denotes the context of the corresponding differentiations:

It is important that society itself appears once again in its order, because it would

otherwise have no possibility of differentiating and observing itself as what it is.

However, what is more interesting than merely nominating the candidates is describingthem from the point of view of ordering communication. How do interaction,

organisation, protest movements and society cope all together with the task of

establishing and repeatedly cancelling themselves? How do they succeed in profiling

themselves as possibilities of communication, without running the risk of establishing

themselves as the only possibility and not only excluding all others (that would indeed


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contain, even if in the form of negation, a nevertheless concurrent memory of them), but

of losing sight of them? How do they enable differentiations of events, objects and states,

without neglecting to embed these in the concurrent observation of other possibilities?

Interaction performs this task through differentiating presence, the organisation

through differentiating membership, the social movement by differentiating protest and

society as a whole by differentiating communication from the viewpoint of its

extendability. These distinctions are everything we have already named: they are delay

and supplement (diffrance); they are opposition and contrast (diffrend); they are a game

with a division (partition) and they are the space, in which correcting mistakes is

possible. Amid all that, they are the attractors or the inherent values of societys

communicative events, which can be counted using confirmed or disappointed

expectations. Distinguishing presence, membership, protest and communication itself

introduces the degrees of freedom exploited and stipulated in any particular order.

Interaction is that order of communication, which already occurs through individuals

(and in general: organisms) perceiving that they perceive themselves. Their condition is

the presence of the individuals communicating with each other, on condition that this

presence is established, that is, differentiated, that is, marked out against the possibility of

absence. We can engage with interactions when and because we can know how we can

also stop them again. Only in this way can presence in an interaction be shaped from the

viewpoint of conceivably being also absent from it, of the other person present

conceivably being absent too and of there existing absent people, whose presence is

excluded but can certainly be incorporated in this form of exclusion.

This last viewpoint has fascinated social theory from Georg Simmel to Michael Serres

under the heading of the so-called third party: how can we understand and describe

actions, when we take into account that each individual present has, as it were, a third

party at their back, who is, of course, not present but, as an absence, every time controls

what happens in the interaction (Serres 1982). This third party can be authority figures

like parents or teachers, imagined observers like spirits or gods, or also legitimisations

like ideologies, fashions and interests, whose criteria govern assessing and selecting what

happens in any given case, or whose power and plausibility respectively govern how we

test to see if things can also work differently. They are the proverbial fulfilment of our

condition of establishing and stipulating degrees of freedom, as referring to them renders

a situation autonomous vis--vis other demands, yet, with that, simultaneously subjects it

to this third party all the same (Miermont 1989).


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It is only from this viewpoint of differentiating presence from absence that interaction

is able, for good or ill, to order its communicative possibilities, is able to cultivate what it

can achieve and is able to describe the conditions under which repeatedly coming back to

it remains attractive despite other possibilities. That other interlocutors are present opens

up an action space for freedom, which we can only use, if we make clear what conditions

we are maintaining and how we are willing to negotiate over these conditions. That is

what interaction in school classes, in court, in families, out shopping, on sports grounds,

or in offices and workshops lives by. From the viewpoint of presence, what we mutually

demand of each other can be intensified or also loosened; and from the viewpoint of

absence, we can give to understand that every interaction can also be ended, and it can

also become clear that reasons can also be found outside of interaction for re-engaging in

it.

Let us only imagine a moment: we had to engage in an interaction - buying a ticket for

a trip, going to the opera, taking part in a game of football - without also being able to

imagine our own absence in this interaction, and we will understand what is meant here.

But that goes for all participants; and every single interaction derives the extent of its

attraction from them actually dealing with the ensuing awareness of contingency and also

from their way of doing it. In this form, every interaction is interwoven and enmeshed

with what it is not and in this form orders the expectations directed at its

communications. The corresponding notation elucidates this point about differentiating

presence and absence and about reflecting absence into presence:

Sociology has occasionally described systems of interaction as simple or even

undifferentiated systems (Kieserling 1999). In actual fact, nothing about them is easy or

undifferentiated, because, in each case, they have include coping with what is also

alternatively possible to them in society, and because they have to be at least so

differentiated that they can succeed in profiling the grounds for communication in the

interaction within the range of choice for other possibilities of interaction itself and for

societys other possibilities (Luhmann 1997: 812ff.). This profiling, as we can presume,

following the sociology of interaction developed by Erving Goffman, at least requires

that participants in an interaction have not only the possibility to present something


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(performance) but also the possibility to watch (audience) (Goffman 1959). In every

interaction, every participant oscillates to and fro within these two options, is sometimes

presenter, sometimes spectator and, beyond that, has also to present their spectating and

watch themselves as a presenter in the light of how long the others will indeed still accept

what they are offering.

This oscillation between presenting and spectating, both of which are forms of

observation and forms of second order observation, lends interaction, via a second

differentiation after the first one between presence and absence, a structural richness

capable of being used to cultivate the conditions of presence and differentiate the

conditions of absence. We can accelerate the oscillation between presenting and

spectating and derive from that forms of highly cultivated social life, which are not

comprehensible to anyone, who has not learned to take part in them (Gracin 1991). We

can, however, build asymmetries into the oscillation and derive authority structures form

them, which act as if only one of the participants were the presenter (authority, teacher,

artist) and all others were spectators, who keep still as long as the performance,

recognisable by certain formal signs, is running, but have at least to perform keeping still

and may at least reckon with the main presenter being at the same time a spectator of the

performance of spectating and deciding accordingly, how long to go on and how to make

certain that what they are offering remains attractive enough.

We can see that, at the latest, determining the oscillation ensures that the exterior of

the interaction has, in fact, to be incorporated in the form of staging power, the

organisation of a school or social interest in art, because cultivating the interaction would

otherwise not have any bases for what it tries out. But then the opposite also applies, to

the effect that social order profits communicatively from whatever proves itself

interactively, and then arranges its own expectations quite differently with a view to

power, education and art, as if there were nowhere to try out how long citizens, pupils

and arts public are prepared to hold still.

All this makes interaction structurally so rich, that the view could long persist - in

Europe arguably up to the French Revolution - that society was on the whole to be

organised via that communication, which proves itself interactively. In the final analysis,

so people thought, it was a case of coming to terms within the family on the conditions

for acknowledging persons and in public, and in the political cabinets referring to the

public, of the conditions for organising society. People did not need anything more, in

order to shape society justly (Plato) and in harmony with its own possibilities (telos).

The French Revolution destroyed this fine hope irrevocably and, to use Hegels


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formulation, replaced it with the phenomenon of separation (Ritter 1965). That is because

this revolution did not allow itself to be conducted as a negotiation between enlightened

aristocrats and newly-rich citizens appearing as creditors, and with workers and peasants

interested in ascending into the bourgeoisie, but it got all the more out of control, the

more it tried doing just this, as an interaction under the guillotine.

People discovered that there are orders in society, which establish and cancel

themselves differently from those of interaction. People discovered society and initially

developed, in theories of progress (Auguste Comte), then in theories of revolution (Karl

Marx) and finally in theories of decadence (Matthew Arnold), various versions of this

entity, which were, to a greater or lesser extent, in danger of substantiating it and of

replacing the spirits and gods of the past with it. And people discovered organisation,

which counted in the 19th century as the only insurance vis--vis an increasingly liberated

and liberalised society (Russell 1934). For this reason, it was not only a question of more

or less technocratically organising society itself as a State, but also the protest against

this society in a more a less revolutionary form as a movement.

Meanwhile, having in turn become quite unhappily wiser through the experiences of

the 20th century, the ideological hopes of interaction, organisation, movements and

society have cooled off correspondingly. Sociology, as providing enlightenment in the

medium of differentiating systems, certainly has its share in this. In the meantime,

interaction is no longer the model for measuring the other possibilities of ordering

communication, but only one possibility among others, albeit one at least as prominent as

them.

What does organisation mean, then, if we do not understand by it the counterpart to

freedom (be it in the shape of chaos, be it in the shape of the, as it were, unorganised,

ordered cosmos), but an order of communication, which has combine freedom with

unfreedom, perhaps in the form of definiteness and indefiniteness, just like all other

orders? What sort of differentiation opens up the possibility of organisation?

Organisation, as we assume it in the tradition of organisation theory (Simon 1997;

March/Simon 1993; Luhmann 1995; Weick 1979), means quite plainly and in turn

robustly differentiating the members of an organisation from its non-members and

addressing behavioural expectations to the members of an organisation and being able, as

a premise to this end, to treat possible differentiations, which would have no chance

outside of the organisation:


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With that we take a significant step beyond interaction and one which also touches on

what we can imagine as the form of communication. That is because differentiating

members from non-members means being able to imagine a communication, which goes

on between participants, who are not present in any particular situation, yet can

nevertheless reach and also, in this sense, perceive each other. The space of this

differentiation exceeds the condition of being there. Nothing is more unlikely than this,

but, to the extent that organisation succeeds, it succeeds. A space of action for freedom

opens up, unanticipated by society and fascinating and fearful for it, yet it gains its form

only to the extent that conditions are discovered, which make it attractive to members to

feel themselves committed to the organisation also outside of control by those present. It

takes centuries, before this form of order becomes at all visible and differentiable. Until

that point, organisation had to rely on commitments to the evidence of organised

interaction and the social ideologies accompanying this evidence. It is only today that

everyone can see that organisations decisive degree of freedom is not its order, but

deciding the membership of this order, that is, a communication and not a practical

necessity.

This step should also be signalled here for the reason that it has been above allsociologists who have so far been able to imagine this possibility of communication

among those absent. Many other have problems with it, which can, however, be reduced,

if we imagine absence to be, in the first instance, something capable of being indeed

present as a horizon for imaginings and, in the second, only playing a role anyway in

those respects where grounds exist for imagining those absent who are to be reached.

Hence, in organisations keeping written and electronic records plays such a central role.

These records, whatever shape at all they adopt, lay down a trace we can follow, in order

to reach those absent. Our own nameplate, our own desk, our own signing rights together

with working discussions as needed and under the conditions of being present, these quite

suffice to equip the individuals involved to be sufficiently conscious of the likelihood that

their communicating is possible.

In organisations too, structural richness is not gained by subjecting the members of an

organisation to the purpose and the goals of the organisation, disciplining and motivating

them accordingly and dismissing them again, if they do not conform (although that is


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exactly what happens), but by profiling and cultivating the possibilities of membership as

against the possibilities of non-membership (Weber 1958; Trk 1995, 2000). In an

organisation, every communication carries the condition of having to find and commit

members, who, on one side, can leave the organisation again and who, on the other, know

they are being observed by non-members of the organisation as to what they tolerate in

their organisation and what they do not. For this reason, organised communication

oscillates, albeit, in fact, in the range of micromoments too, between belonging and not

belonging to the organisation. And for that reason alone, communication in the

organisation takes on the form of a differentiation, that is, of doubly validating a sender

and an addressee of communication. It does so because only in this way can it be

focussed on the condition of membership in such a manner, as to allow the organisation

to be, in each of it moments, profiled and examined as an order, that is as it own

possibility and impossibility.

Decisions have the decisive advantage that they are meant to commit the other person

and hence have to test in advance the conditions, under which this commitment is

accepted. Under the cloak of the one-way street (my decision commits you), the

organisation cultivates a form, which is capable of being intensified almost at will and

recursively reinsures communication through its own possibility (Luhmann 2000b, 1997:

826ff.). This is the only reason why it could seem as if organisation were order

epitomised: in the process of the recursive communication of decisions, it has found ways

and means of committing and binding itself to those few conditions, which have proved

themselves under these conditions. Put another way, it has found convincing grounds for

excluding a world of possibilities, has developed a succession of suitable mechanisms

(hierarchy, division of labour, routine, goal-setting) for, in actual fact, inhibiting these

possibilities too, and legitimised all this under the viewpoint that the few realised

possibilities (purposes, goals, products, processes) are, should they be retained, attractive

enough for the members of the organisation and for the relevant non-members

(commissioning clientle, customers, financiers, partners) and can be presented to the

rest of the world as rational.

But caution: all this is, as ever, only possible within the form of communication, that

is, only within structures not only stipulating but also introducing degrees of freedom, not

only describing efficiently and effectively pursuable goals, but also opening up a space of

differentiation, which makes other goals imaginable. Hence it pays not to let ourselves be

dazzled by organisations faades of order and to look in every single case, were it

concerning a public authority, a university, a business, an association, an opera house, or


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a political party office, at how the participants get on with each other in their respective

orders, deemed, as they are, organisations. Karl E. Weick has presented as concept,

double interact, which permits describing how the perspectives of an organisations

members, as they participate in it, have to be related to each other even under the most

unlikely conditions of specific working practices, artificial hierarchies and as yet untested

goal-settings, in order to be able to make sense, if only communally and only by

acknowledging difference between them (Weick 1979: 110ff.). From that Niklas

Luhmann has concluded that communication in the order of the organisation would, in

principle, have to be at all times in a position to consider itself impossible, even outright

insane and yet that is exactly what it has to be able to fortify itself against (Luhmann

2000b: 141ff.). In other words, we really cannot deal with organisations ethnographically

enough, accepting what is foreign, in order to do justice to the improbability they are

capable of realising.

In the order of society, the order of organisation makes a difference nowhere else

apparent. Here, two points are remarkable. Firstly, organisation has to be in a position to

justify its difference with a view to its members, the individuals participating in it. And

secondly, the order of society, within which this order of organisation realises itself, has

equally good grounds for espousing and allowing it, like interaction, which naturally also

occurs massively in organisation.

Interestingly, these two points are fulfilled in the form of one single condition.

Organisation, and only organisation, allows orientating communication according to

goals, that is, determining a future and, with a view to this future, treating things past

always as present, like the space of possibilities for various options (Luhmann 2000,

chap. 5). All other orders of society have to instead treat the future as open. Interactions

can as little determine, were it not through organisation, who carries on, as someone

present, having enough motives to participate in them, as societies can devise and shape

what indeed becomes of them. And protest movements too cannot determine that their

protest will be heard and abuses remedied. Only organisations determine their future by

orientating themselves according to goals. Naturally, they can only do this for the reason

that the future is unknown to them too and because they can, thanks to the channelling of

their communication towards decisions, cancel these determinations and correct them in

favour of other goals at almost any time and independently of deliberately invented

strategic considerations.

Fixing the organisation on a future, which is, in whatever form at all, always its

future, makes the organisation attractive both for its members and for society watching it.


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We seek employment in and through organisations, because we can in that way reduce

the uncertainty of the future or, respectively, replace it through the uncertainty of the

organisations future, which is possibly better, because manageable in the self-integrating

collective of the watchers. And in their social environment, all non-members of the

organisation accept it, because only in this way can it be assured that tomorrow too there

will still be possibilities for spiritual counselling from churches, provision of goods and

services from businesses, treatment of the sick from hospitals, education from schools

and warfare from the military. In this form, society accepts the importunities of organised

behaviour and in this form the organisation orders, not least, society itself as well. It is

hence not surprising, that society also takes organisations offer of order seriously in

forms which overtax organisation, for instance, for securing what is taxable, for securing

jobs or for securing chances of increasing income and wealth, even, in fact, for the dream

of a being able to plan society.

However, society and individual interactions intervening in the organisations offer of

order does not mean that we would lose sight of the difference the organisation makes in

society and vis--vis interaction. Admiring its order and capacity for collective action can

at any time tip into criticism of the hierarchy. Being ready to rely on its capacity for

reaching collectively binding differentiations always parallels dissatisfactions with its

bureaucratic and undemocratic structures as if we could also have differentiations, if we

secured them recursively through assuring uncommitted participation from everyone.

Each society not least ensures that there are social buffers between the demands of the

working world over typifying communication and the rest of societys ideas about

acceptable forms of communication, which are often not compatible with such typifying

(Udy 1959, 1970, 1990). In tribal societies, men returning from the bloody business of

hunting are, first of all, cooled off in a quarantine station outside of the camp, before they

come into contact with women, children and old people again. In the working societies of

modern times, there is the institution of going to the pub, meanwhile rendered civilised as

the blue hour, during which men, and increasingly women, can tell the heroic stories

about what they would like to have experienced at work, which no-one believes at home.

And if anyone finds the heroic stories too taxing, they can combine their evening errands

with a stroll around the shops, which is equally well suited to rediscover themselves as

sovereign over their own decisions, something they lost sight of in dealing with their

superior. Extending and deregulating businesses opening hours falls in with this need

and with the transformation of the chill out into an act of consuming.


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Organisation is order in the sense specified, namely in the sense of observing it

establish itself and, for that very reason, in the possibility of its being cancelled.

However, organisations order does show, perhaps in contrast to interactions order, that

the operations of form amounting to cancellation or compensation cannot be achieved at

one blow, in the framework of a stroke of the pen. Underlying each of these orders is a

more or less comprehensible number of communications, which justify structures of

expectation and are confirmed by structures of expectation reaching far beyond the

respective order, namely into the order of society. That is why observing contingency, the

possibility-of-being-otherwise of a form is one thing, cancelling it another. And that is

why observing the possibility of a form, for instance, the founding idea of an

organisation, is one thing and establishing it another. The history of revolutions, just as

that of the capital markets, is also a history of more or less successful attempts to get rid

of organisations of the state or of private enterprise respectively, that is, more elegantly

expressed, to factor in exit options for them, as soon as they have installed themselves

(Selznick 1952; Jensen 1993). We shall come back to organisations order in section 4.7.

The overburdening of interaction by societys order and the more or less radical

difference organisations order can set, may already be enough to account for society

having sufficient cause to protest against itself. We can hence foresee also in societys

order, alongside interaction, organisation and society as a whole (we will be coming back

to that directly), an order of protest and then we always talk about a social movement or

about a protest movement too, when communications appear, to which a protest against

society lends a profile, which, interestingly, at least presupposes the same society being

simultaneously accepted as condition for the possibility of protest.

Protest movements, in this sense, range from revolts and peasants uprisings to the

classical examples from modern society, namely workers movements, womens

movements, peace movements and ecological movements, yet are meant to include less

welcome manifestations like racist movements, fundamentalist movements or movements

hostile to foreigners. Recently there have even been protest movements that protest

against themselves: we can describe the globalisation movement as a movement

appearing in the two mutually inimical forms of criticism of globalisation and of the

reform movement, yet wanting in both forms the same thing, the democratically secured

order of world society, about which we do not exactly know, if it is not identical with

todays world society constituted of nations (Tilly 2004).

Just as organisation, protest movements too do not depend on those present.

Differently from organisation they do not, however, arrange to reach those absent through


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the formal condition of membership, but rather do so through the attractivity of the

protest itself, that is, through turning the reasons why into scandals, through the vision of

a better society and through the feelings of community resulting from ritualising and

already staging, right now in anticipation, the possibility of a better society (including

invoking feelings, which, as shown above, result from the intensification of expectations

into demands). They have their degree of freedom in the protest, their conditions in its

justification. Just like organisations, protest movements depend on reaching those absent

stigmergetically, that is, via an environment which animates sufficiently many

individuals, typically a mostly indeterminate number, to subscribe to the protests

motives and its form of expression (Grass 1959; Bonabeau/Dorigo/Theraulaz 1999).

That purpose is served by texts we read when we turn against the same thing, just as do

chains of light, which we can join, and supporting payments, which not only help but also

put our own motives to the test.

On the other hand, it is true that protest movements order communication through

society as something we can climb into and out of again. As a rule, we take care of our

children or our parents parallel to the protest; we go to work, feed ourselves, travel and

read other books from those of the movement. The other possibilities remain attractive,

although they take place in the society we are protesting against. We can indeed then

decide, whether our own parents, some colleagues, particular destinations or forms of

nourishment actually participate in exactly that misery we are protesting against, but, as a

rule, we will not protest against everything, and we do not for the reason that we would

have to protest against our own protest. That is why we suggest setting down the form of

protest as follows:

That means the society we are protesting against is simultaneously affirmed, welcomedand confirmed as the one to which we owe our own motives, our encounters with like-

minded others and the prospect of improvement (Adorno 1981). Describing the protest

takes place in a space opened up by the acknowledgement of our own circumstances, for

example, by describing these circumstances for what they are when seen from our own

perspective. We communicate our protest with a sidelong glance at the affirmation, which


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allows not only finding our own protest good, but also finding the society good, that

furnishes forms for protesting against it.

It may be attractive for a while to look for forms of protest, which are so radical that

the exterior of affirmation can be blacked out (for example, engaging in a terrorist

organisation), or also for forms of protest capable of being linked to affirmation so easily,

that we can live with them without the constant suspicion, we are not serious (for

example, riding a bicycle). In each case, the form of the protest movement makes sure,

that the protest against society takes place in society and is hence an option for ordering

society itself. The protest makes sure, that society is complete, as Luhmann probably

would formulate it: it now controls the possibility of its own negation as well (Benjamin

1986; Luhmann 1981b). For its part, negation has, however, to be communicated; it is an

operation by observers of the first order, who reckon, in their communicating, with

observers of the second order, the like-minded, opponents and journalists, and hence

commit themselves to society just like everyone else. But that is exactly what protest

does indeed aim at: it protests against society, in order to change it, not quit it.

Finally, the order of society itself. It epitomises the form of the social and in society

once again appears in this form among the other forms of the social itself, because the

condition of society being continued, of the social, can itself only be formulated in this

way. In each specific form, in an interaction, an organisation or a protest movement,

reflecting on the possibility of continuing communication always comes along too, as the

thesis has it, under unspecific conditions, that is, ones still to be specified. We observe

communication being limited by constellations of presence and absence, by the condition

of membership or by the blinkers of protest and wish we could go on communicating

under other conditions. And the other way round, we discover that we cannot do what we

want with those present, that not even membership allows intervening fully and that

protest gets stuck half way and contributes to a society, which meanwhile goes on

communicating and, as a concomitant horizon of other possibilities, does not let itself be

simply negated.

Societys form inside the order of society is hence the how communication itself is

marked, differentiated form its indeterminate exterior, which plays a role in all specific

forms of the social only, but all the same, as exterior of the respective binary form:


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Or perhaps it is:

In this form, the indeterminate itself becomes, as concomitant exterior of communication,

an argument, that is, itself becomes an observation delineating the range of choice among

possible communications. According to the situation in which we find ourselves, and

according to the interlocutor we are dealing with, this argument can fascinate or horrify.

Society means operating in the space of a differentiation, which is indeterminate as long

as no communication is happening. Moments arise in communication, which make it

clear, that we are communicating but could also desist, and that we are for exactly this

reason moving in a space of possibilities, which do not exhaust the space of possibilities,

but let it go along too as an indeterminate world. It is only in this moment, that is, only

when looking at a society, which for this very reason appears as invisible as it is

overwhelming, does communication itself become visible as a degree of freedom, about

which no one knows who introduced it (as in the case of the world and of life, it is, with

communication too, a matter of a unique invention), but about which all argue as to howit is to be stipulated.

This is the point of connection for all kinds of religions, which already know, but then

have to designate, who opened up or, respectively, revealed the indeterminate space,

without that enabling them to establish anything other than options of human

communication, which have repeatedly to prove themselves all over again in the face of

this indeterminate situation. This is why the theologians know better than anyone how to

designate something that at the same time has to remain indeterminate. The individuality

of an individual, the intentionality of action, the in-between of inter-subjectivity or the

risk of acknowledgement can, however, also be applied as needed. Here we presume a

sort of source of communication, without thinking it possible that indeterminacy itself is

quite enough to provide communication with motives for describing how it can possibly

prolong itself (Waldenfels 1994). This is because it is only then that communication

observes itself and will find what it needs.


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In tribal societies, what is indeterminate attracts attempts to control it by magic, in

advanced civilisations it triggers utopian schemes and in present day society it adopts the

form of insight into the futures uncertainty. And according to situation and interlocutor,

this argument can be related, from as far away as possible, to society as a whole and,

from as close as possible, to the situation and the interlocutor themselves. People suspect

that arguing like this is the intellectuals stock-in-trade, whether they appear as shaman

and magician, as humanist and scholar or as revolutionary and trend researcher. Each

case concerns reflecting communications indeterminacy into communication and

confronting communication with the outright need for continuity by unbalancing it

(Fuller 2005). If we ask, how then can this need be handled every time, certain specific

possibilities can and must be named, which in turn call other intellectuals, not satisfied

with all that, onto the scene. What is indeterminate can be determined in many ways, but

throughout it never quite loses the character of indeterminacy.

Now, it is interesting, that this overall determining of society as a form of the social, is

exploited, as an indeterminate possibility for continuing communication, semantically by

intellectuals of all colours and, however, at the same time structurally by society itself.

The intellectuals unsettling argument has its pendant in societys various forms of

difference, in which what is indeterminate is accepted as such, localised and mirrored so

often, that it can be reached from every structurally determined form of society. In the

last few decades, various directions of research in sociology have described four such

forms of difference: tribal society, empires, advanced civilisations, and modern society

(Schimank 2000; Luhmann 1997: chap. 4). In individual cases, these forms cut across

each other, but, with regard to addressing and localising what is not determined to use it

for communication, they can be differentiated exactly enough. That also goes historically.

These four forms make a particular historical progression is unmistakable; conversely,

however, our historical consciousness has got used to considering simultaneous what is

not as conceivable and factual, so that we know how far the communicative possibilities

of tribal society, of empires and of advanced civilisations persist among us.

In tribal society, our own tribe is determinate and all other tribes are not. We know

they exist and we consider the other tribes particular forms of living barbaric and every

form of warlike confrontation, economic cheating and abducting of women justified.

Nevertheless, our most exact knowledge about the danger of boundaries, the possibility

of infection, the need for conjuration and how sensitive marking out transitional

situations and stations is, all of which together amount to a dramatics of practical, social

and temporal differentiations, where the communication of things differentiated from


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each other is less hindered than much rather orchestrated (Leach 1976). That our own

tribe is determined not only secures this, but endangers it also, because what our tribe

differs from is too indeterminate.

In an empire, a Reich, the centre of power is determined religiously, economically,

politically and not least bureaucratically, and the chance of building in gradations,

including the possibility of shifting the borders due to further conquests, renders the

periphery all the more indeterminate the further we progress outwards. We act in the full

awareness of our own power and we know how this power is acknowledged throughout

the empire, yet we assume, both rulers and subjects, that power ends at the border of the

empire, hence becomes impotent. In this form it can be reflected back into the empire

again, in order to find out how we can evade power, how we can subvert it or how we can

mount a resistance likely to succeed, and naturally also, how we can build power up

again. With the last of these, for example, creating addresses on the periphery can be

decisive, ones reachable for our own communications in the dimensions we consider

important and ones that, for their part, order the periphery with regard to the centre that

speaks to it (Dobbins 2003).

In advanced civilisations, our own respective social level, the level of the nobility, the

clergy and the peasants, certainly later of the bourgeoisie too, is indeterminate from the

perspective of all individuals and from that of each individual level. We know how to

behave as nobility, as priest or as peasant. However, we deem the others behaviour as

much remarkable as incomprehensible. The bourgeoisie is the level untypical in this

regard and it explodes the schema and hence the societys form of differentiation, and

does comes upon the idea first that we can also then imitate the behaviour of another

level, when, beyond just laughing at the others as usual, we seriously mean it. To become

typified individually, we have to stop resembling the others in our own level any more,

yet all we have to do is copy selectively what we can use. The bourgeoisie begins by

imitating the nobility and then, however, introduces, with increasing uncertainty over the

question of what its identity is, the possibility of imitating the peasants and the workers as

well, reaching a high point in theBiedermeier idyll, which amalgamates the behavioural

forms of the nobility (social life), the peasants (bound to the soil), trade (local loyalties)

and the workers (industriousness) into a scarcely very durable form.

In the advanced civilisation of a stratified society, social inequality hence only means,

that we know the behavioural pattern by which to orientate ourselves - or not to.

Communication between the levels is limited to a few forms (the lord and his coachman,

the lady and her gardener, the duke out hunting and the girl gathering mushrooms in the


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woods), which are soon not enough any more, as society becomes more complex, and we

have to know how we can deal with teachers, judges and pharmacists, and, the other way

round, with schoolchildren, accused people and customers, without treating them

according to the behavioural patterns of incompatible levels.

But in an advanced civilisation, we naturally also communicate about two things,

about what is determinate for our level and what is not for the other, and we bring along

cosmological notions describing how one fits in with the other, they being, however,

unknown to each other and allowed to remain so. Karl Marxs theory of the capitalist

class society is a remarkable outgrowth from this social form of advanced civilisation, as

it differentiates two classes, both of which, in a Hegelian manner, derive their

determining factors from their respective counterpart (the proletarian as non-capitalist,

the capitalist as non-proletarian), and lose sight of all other classes, above all of the

consuming, voting, managing and self-generating bourgeoisie.

What should additionally be noted is how from the beginning (Babylon) the social

form of the city cuts somewhat across societys large scale and dominating forms of

differentiation, yet fulfils the schema of the binary form of determinacy and

indeterminacy precisely. Plat already discovers in his dialogue Politeia, that empirical

variety (equalling indeterminacy?) abides the necessity of ascertaining its just order (To

each his own!) only with difficulty (Politeia 427ff.). But it is only Max Weber, who first

brings up the point that challenge of but also the achievement of urban life consists in

strangers being able and having to live here with each other, in complete contrast to

relations in the tribe, the clan and the feudal hierarchies (Weber 1958). And only the

concept of the ecology of the city, which Chicago city sociology develops in the 1920s

(Burgess/McKenzie/Park 1967), formulated first of all how the social order of city

defines itself via local and functional neighbourhoods, markets and news networks

(rumours, stories, mass media), which combine perfectly with the fact that the citys

order as a whole is indeterminable.

Hence the city also is a social order, which establishes and cancels itself. We engage

with it communicatively, that is, in our behaviour, in our observations and in our feelings,

because we tolerate living together with strangers and the way we do it, but only as long

as certain forms and rituals, described as civilised, are to hand and permit getting to know

the strangers. However, by contrast too, it then counts as particularly cultivated to treat

acquaintances as strangers again in specific respects, for example, with reference to their

political preferences, their income, their taste in art, the intensity of their faith and their

erotic inclinations. Monotheistic religions are invented, so that city-dwellers, certain


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pariahs excluded, can come together for acts of worship, which do not recall the gods of

tribal society and the ancestors of clans (Weber 1958). And queuing at the bread shop, at

bus stops and at box offices is invented so that we can tolerate situations shared together

without having to find out if the other is friend or foe. It is quite enough to be able to treat

them as strangers, whose origins are cosmopolitan and hence indeterminate and the

conditions for whose staying here are municipally determined (with liberal spaces for

action and excluding marginal groups) (Stichweh 1992).

In its social form, the city is something like the form of society re-entering into

society. That is because the city renders indeterminate what tribes, clans, centres and

social levels have just been getting into order, whilst other things are newly determined

(trade and transport, education and culture, career and individuality), which hence start

looking for their indeterminate exteriors in modern society, as it is called, perhaps for that

reason (Tilly 1992: 54ff.). With the city, the binary form of being determined and

undetermined becomes so much of a fractal, a self-identical and multiply scalable

structure of society, that city and society can finally establish themselves as

undetermined, although every individual expectation of expectation capable of

structuring a possible communicative event, that is, connecting it with others, is always

and fundamentally determined. In other words, city and society are treated as mod

baecker - 2008 - form and forms of communication(2)

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