Henry Schermer

Fashion as a Form

When we expect that a style or pattern of social activity adopted by a group or class of persons is time-limited and may ‘vanish as quickly as it came’, we call it fashion. Anything, not only apparel, can become the ‘content’ of the ‘form’ of fashion, although some objects are less amenable than others. These features of fashion are part of Simmel’s account of fashion. Simmel also notes that fashion operates like ‘honour’ in its ‘revolving within a given circle’ and at the same time emphasising this circle as ‘separate from others’. The rapid circulation in the objects of fashion also differentiate time. Simmel’s dialectical general model — his usual vehicle for presenting and developing his sociological themes — is strongly evident in his treatment of fashion. Fashion is but one expression of a never-ending trend to social recurrence and renewal. It ‘is a complex structure in which the leading antithetical tendencies of the psyche can be represented’. Although in Simmel’s view it can enslave the individual socially, since it occurs at the ‘periphery of being’, it can also be used as a ‘mask’, leaving the ‘soul’ free. Thus fashion is also part of the endless dialectic of individual and society, the dialectic of ‘life’ and social forms. Absent in classless societies, in class societies fashion tends to flow from elites to the imitating middle class, but before class differences in fashions are eliminated, the elite move to a new, more fashionable mode.

Simmel’s Life and the Context of His Work

This chapter sets out to locate Simmel’s sociological thinking more fully in its wider historical, social, cultural and philosophical context. This coverage is not aimed at being exhaustive but is focused on providing a background to our consideration of his method.

The Philosophy of the ‘As If’ — The Role of ‘Fictions’ in Science and Social Life

The ‘As if’ in Simmel’s sociology and methodology is a term for assumptions known to be untrue or impossible and yet acted upon in daily life or used in theorising as useful, heuristic ‘fictions’, as if they were true or possible. We saw in Chapter 6 how Simmel’s use of the duality of absolute and relative makes recourse to the ‘as if’ device (not always labelled as such) and this plays a part in his ‘relationism’, in which fictionalism is nonetheless not at odds with strong conceptions of the ‘truth’. We also saw how Simmel utilised the ‘as if’ device when writing about ‘feminine culture’. The presence of fictions elsewhere in his sociology is seen in his use in the sociology of the stage actor of the dictum that ‘society can be viewed as if it were a work of art’. The wider presence of the ‘as if’ in social life itself is also a focus of the chapter. In Chapter 4 we saw that only by assuming a ‘juridico-social fiction does the practice of care for the poor seem to be placed beyond arbitrariness’.

The Secret and Secret Societies

The secret as a form is seen by Simmel as central in social interaction. Knowing about each other is essential for social living. Yet all human interaction is also accompanied by a withholding of information. Sharing fully with others one’s inner-flow of consciousness is impossible, and selection also provides scope for purposefulness. Sincere self-disclosure and its opposite only come about in the context of a wider, ever-present, ‘not knowing’ about one another.

Echoes of Darwin: Simmel’s Evolutionism

The evolutionary conceptual model outlined in this chapter will be advanced as an extension of our Simmel abstract general model in Chapter 1. In the main model, the time dimension, space, numbers, the polarity of order and change are all present, but the overall direction of the model is to merge into an infinity of potential forms of sociation. In the second model, the first will be assumed and the purpose then is to convey the dynamics of forms in the context of evolutionary change based on the principles of ‘selection’, involving a movement from lower to higher levels of social organisation, but allowing for regression as well as progression. The underlying philosophy in both models — and for Darwin and Simmel — is relational monism and materialism.

Interaction, Form and the Dialectical Approach — Simmel’s Analytical Conceptual Framework

Simmel repeatedly states that the language of sociology has links and commonalities with everyday language. But in contrast with common sense, sociology is oriented towards ‘cancelling’ the synthesis represented in particular a social phenomenon, such as ‘fashion’ or ‘the secret’, taking it apart, and seeking answers as to how and why it takes its general form. In sociological analysis the aim is to identify the recurring general forms that shape the varying content of social life. Once achieved, sociological insights may feed back into common sense.

Absolute and Relative — The Operation of a Single Polarity

In contrast, but still with the aim of exhibiting Simmel’s general method, though by a different means, this chapter collects together his use of a single general polarity absolute-relative spread across several of his texts and in relation to a number of different topics. The topics include truth and knowledge, money and gender. The terms absolute and relative occur together or singly, but if singly, still with the second half of the pair implied. Also, when both are present, often one part of the pair will be dominant. We will also notice how a second general polarity, the subject and object duality, is often present in conjunction with the absolute-relative one.

The Overall Terrain and Contemporary Relevance of Simmel’s Oeuvre

Although the ‘autonomy’ of the text and the possibility of multiple interpretations is much discussed, our final discussion of interpretations and applications of Simmel’s methodology sidesteps the more general literature and builds directly from Simmel’s own views on interpretation.