A hermeneutic of social texture : The dialectics of text in sociology
This article advances the notion of social texture. It begins with an analysis of Dilthey’s hermeneutics in order to illustrate the ambiguity he identifies between text and the role it plays in our understanding and interpretation of social life. The relationship between text and social texture is further developed by referencing the work of Pierre Legendre and his theory of the “forbidden,” of an excluded/included third party. The relationship between text and community is also analyzed as a sociological interpretation of the modalities of narration and conceptualization, which are defined first and foremost as human interactions and social relationships. To situate how a hermeneutic of social life is dialectically articulated in texts, the sociological approaches of Margaret Archer and Jeffrey C. Alexander are also examined. In the Canadian “postcolonial” context, the reweaving of relations between the country’s Indigenous peoples and its settler populations is used to explain how the relationship to text operates within a hermeneutic of social texture.