Asymmetrization

With this question [⇒Women's Studies] we leave Spencer Brown, because we are now dealing with a substantive interpretation of the calculus, a semantic, if not sociological, clarification of the meaning of an asymmetry that is already built into the input operation in an irrevocable way.

Sociologists often admit and even emphasize that the description of types or the classification of people as men or women presupposes a social process of definition and depends on it. (Tyreil 1986) Accordingly, it is ultimately a matter of male and female images. Then, however, an empirically oriented sociologist will still have to wonder slightly that the classification is factually true to such a high degree, i.e., that it corresponds to biological characteristics – as if society does check before classifying someone as a man or as a woman. Also, the linguistic material from which such notions are often drawn must be regarded as highly unreliable.

In Schwyzerdütsch, for example, when women's names are used for intimate relations (and this goes far beyond intimate relations as far as social relations are concerned), they are referred to grammatically with the neuter gender: s'Gritli, s'Hildi. It has not become known, however, that the Swiss have had special difficulties in the procreation of offspring.

It is certain, and also immune to investigation by sociologists, that only real women can bear children, even if this presupposes some kind of intervention. This may be a reason to exclude women who are not yet or no longer able to bear children from the sex classification, to neutralize them, as it were. But one could hardly conclude from this that male and female persons before and after procreative capacity are consistently confused. It is just that outside this area the distinction is not so important.

Terminologically, therefore, a careful distinction should be made between classifications and distinctions, especially if one wants to work out what is, and why it is, subject to social variation. Only the distinction between man and woman is culturally variable, not also the property of being man or woman. Classifications only serve to attach distinctions to the object with the consequence that distinctions can then also be made on the object. For the sociologist's interest in distinctions, however, the starting point is not equality, which can only mean that the distinction does not matter, but an asymmetry, however slight and reversible. If one looks around, there are few offers in the social sciences that keep the required theoretical level. However, one finds a very substantial interpretation, which has the additional advantage of being illustrable by the example of Adam and Eve. I mean the "opposition hierarchique" analyzed by Louis Dumont (1983: 210ff. and passim).

One would miss the complicated relationship of asymmetrical distinctions to hierarchy if one thought only of the simple difference of above and below and regarded the man as the head of the household, as the master of the woman. This would be trivial – because it can be reversed without difficulty. One finds such descriptions in the old European household theory. At the same time, however, political theory since Aristotle boasts of having overcome this barbaric arrangement. One does not command women, one governs them "politically", (Pol. 1259a, 40-1259b 1) that is: according to their free will. Let us try to translate this into a more modern terminology.

The starting point is the problem of the asymmetrical distinction that Spencer Brown leaves us. This structure is referred to by Dumont under terms like "opposition hiérarchique" or "englobement du contraire" to an internal and external reference at the same time: internally to the respective opposite and externally to the whole, to which that which distinguishes the distinction belongs as a part. According to this double level of whole and parts, one can choose two different representations of their connection. The first one we call (not Dumont!) emanation. From a unity a difference arises, in which that, what was the unity, reappears as the opposite of its opposite. There are heaps of proofs for this. The old society, which is based on families and consists of families, develops a differentiation of family and corporation, in which the family is not corporation (Dürkheim 1930/1973 : 1ff.). The sacred cosmos is divided into a difference in which the sacred reappears as an opposition to worldly affairs (Assmann 1984 : 9ff., esp. 13). The I of Fichte's theory of knowledge projects a non-I, from which it then knows to distinguish itself (Fichte 1794/ 1962). Or: Adam and his rib piece, Adam and Eve emerge from Adam by a small surgical intervention. That moment, which preserves the continuity to the origin, has thereby obviously a kind of priority. It secures, without being henceforth the whole, the systematicity of the new structure. The "englobement du contraire" becomes the "opposition hiérarchique". The outstanding part secures, if one may say so, an asymmetry for the distinction that overcomes it. This is its value. But only modern ideology will, according to Dumont, separate "fait (la symétrie présumée) et valeur (Fadditif asymétrique)" (Dumont 1983: 215f.). A genuinely hierarchical way of thinking cannot make this separation. For it, this asymmetrization is not a question of preference or desirability, but a question of representation: the representation of the whole in the whole, the visualization of the invisible in the visible, the appearance of order.

Therefore the asymmetry is quite invertible. François Loryot, for example, emphatically emphasizes that there are women who surpass some men in spirit and ability; God shows himself not least in being able to make much out of little (Loryot 1614, Book I, Section IX). Nor does it contradict the asymmetry if there are situations in which women take precedence over men or in which worldly politics is more important than the sacred. In the borderline case, a "hiérarchie bidimensionelle" can develop (Dumont 1983: 244). Back-translated into the language of Spencer Brown: distinction, by making designation possible, also makes "crossing" possible, and thus only enrichment possible. Alone Adam would have been terribly bored in paradise. Through Eve he got work by sin. Felix culpa.

One aspect not specifically emphasized by Dumont is the ininvertibility of the hierarchy (apart from the inevitable Bakhtin and his Rabelais analyses). The ininvertibility of the hierarchy seems to be the precondition for the invertibility on the level of distinction. Related to this is the fact that representation is designed in the manner of a one-way street. It conveys positional strengths, but not positional weaknesses. For example, nobody concludes from "to err is human" to "to err is male", although it is easy to experience that women cannot err.

If hierarchy is a condition of order par excellence (because parts can only be parts of a whole), there can be no "free" recognition of the other as other within the framework of an "opposition hiérarchique". There are only the two possibilities: the recognition of the other in his position assigned by belonging (for example: as creature of God) or the recognition in conflict. On the basis of equality, recognition would simply be superfluous - unless one thinks of the individual quite modernly as endowed with an ontological defect, as inwardly in need of recognition, even addicted to recognition, as alienated and overreached, as dependent on compensation.

We hold this commonality of features of "opposition hiérarchique" as indicative of a gain in structure, that is, a restriction of possibilities. Hierarchy semantics goes beyond the mere basic operation of distinguishing designation and gives it a contextual meaning. But this also raises the question of the social-structural conditions under which this restriction could be an evolutionary success. And especially one would like to know: what is the basis of the assumption that within a whole there must be parts which are more capable of representing the whole than others and more capable than their counterparts?

Once this question has been posed, it becomes apparent that traditional societies, due to their type of differentiation, could indeed dispose of positions with competition-free possibilities of representation. This was already true when a differentiation between center and periphery developed, it was true for so-called "rank societies" and it was even more true for fully stratified social systems in which social strata with clear boundaries formed the primary subsystems (a case, by the way, that is not very frequent at all, but the one that precedes the modern era). We spare ourselves references and individual analyses. It only matters that in the pre-modern societies, which had exceeded the type of a primarily segmentary differentiation, a representation visible in the system could be presupposed – be it as center (for example: temple, palace, city), be it as top of the hierarchy. For these positions, even if they were obviously special positions in the system and just because of that, there was no competition. It was inconceivable that the actual qualities of social life could be represented by the peasants in the countryside or the staff in the kitchen, and of course the entire recruitment of positions, up to and including the recruitment of saints, was geared to this.

These results do not allow direct conclusions on relations between man and woman, but they make understandable that one could, indeed had to assume representation asymmetries in general. The social structure determined by its type of differentiation that order could only be perceived in this way; and this also explains that a differentiation between facts of being and values was not necessary at all. One could see that it was so, and who would have claimed the opposite would have been in error.

Above all, however, in this semantics, for us hardly comprehensible, enjoyment of preferential positions (fruitio) was a moment of their justification.

Accordingly, the woman was assigned the special function of being responsible for the bearing of offspring, i.e. for the reproduction of mankind. That this is so, is actually also undisputed, not however all consequences, which were drawn from it, are. The Marchese Malvezzi, for example, concludes from this that men naturally regard women with regard to this function; and he therefore advises the prince not to receive women in audience, because this could give rise to misunderstandings and temptations (Malvezzi 1635 : 157ff.). But anyway: What would women have to look for in the audience, if they have nothing else to represent than their ability to bring offspring into the world.

Only with the printing press and the reconstruction of society in the direction of a primarily functional differentiation is this structure gradually deprived of its plausibility. John Donne (an author who can also be recommended in many other respects of women's studies) already complains about the egocentricity of men – about the breaking out of the conditions which they have to represent as a species. Since the 17th century, then, there have been such things as feminist movements, which have noticed discrepancies between factual situations and valuations. Since the second half of the 18th century one can notice the loss of representation (Foucault). From then on, the efforts to maintain the superiority of the man seem cramped and untrustworthy – for example, in the insistence on virginity in marriage and "double standard" as an attempt to consolidate the superiority of the man by cutting off the woman's possibilities of comparison. Thus it is not surprising that representation by the man can finally only be perceived as the man's self-representation, i.e. as pure presumption.

However, this does not yet determine which logic of distinguishing and designating one could now follow. There is, at least today, no competitive position for representation in society. None of the functional systems can claim it; or in other words: each, as far as its own function is concerned. One must therefore be able to find a semantics and a social-structural arrangement that can do without representation of the system in the system. Therefore, one has to renounce the "opposition hiérarchique" and the asymmetries of representation; but does this then mean to make the giant leap to unconditional equality, which can then be celebrated "free of domination", but which leaves all the more in the dark what actually makes the difference. Perhaps the stamina and the stronger nerves in the conflict?

It corresponds to modern thinking to discover circles even in the hierarchy, and this seems to correspond better to today's relationship between man and woman. A "tangled hierarchy" in the sense of Douglas Hofstadter (1985; cf. Dupuy 1984): Sometimes one is on top, sometimes the other. No sooner do you think you have won than you discover that you have lost. Those who want to exercise dominance must learn to obey. Such systems are, as we know, sensitive to the environment in a very specific sense. Every disturbance is welcome to them and is converted into a moment of internal regulation. Do they, then, one might suppose, stimulate the mental systems involved to contribute the necessary amount of disturbance? Is the self-reliant, equality-emphasizing relationship of woman and man perhaps therefore a particularly attractive relationship?

Before we judge too quickly, we should recall the question and look for functionally equivalent possibilities of solving the problem. As remembered, it was about the asymmetry built into the basic operation of distinguishing and designating. A renunciation of it leads to the absolute domination of the chaos of situations. Nobody is prepared for that. But how and for what purpose could one keep the asymmetry, if the social system does not evaluate asymmetrically any more? Surely it will not be enough to say that logic cannot get going any other way? Before going any further, therefore, we should look at another solution, also secured by tradition. It follows a rhetorically formed morality of praise and blame, which was brought to special bloom towards the end of the Middle Ages on the basis of antique models as Renaissance.

⇒ Virtues and Vices

LUHMANN, Niklas, 1988. Frauen, Männer und George Spencer Brown. Zeitschrift für Soziologie. 1 February 1988. Vol. 17, no. 1, p. 47–71. [Accessed 24 October 2022]. DOI 10.1515/zfsoz-1988-0104, p. 50–54.