In Maurice Natanson’s account of sociality not as a sociological feature but as an object of phenomenological discourse, he discusses the structural elements at play within processes of alienation and social role taking. Natanson’s essay entitled “Alienation and Social Role”, provides a critical framework through which the thematics of alienation emerge as both a “structural deformation in sociality” and as a “grounding condition” of that social order itself (Natanson Pg. 256).
In order to fully grasp this relationship, Natanson marks the categorical differences between what he terms, role-taking, and role-action, as the essential correlates to an engagement with the social world through cohesive and continuous social action. For Natanson, it is crucial that role-taking constitutes a transcendent activity in which by exceeding the limitations of its own exemplifications or instances it reveals the basic (and primordial) structure of intentionality. Role-action refers to this underlying intentionality of role-taking which, is, structurally “the moment” where–because it is not a temporal movement–alienation emerges, thus conjoining the two in a co-constitutive relationship. Natanson describes this linking of intentionality and alienation as “noetic correlates which undergird and constitute roles and role-taking.” (Natanson Pg. 257). In this way, the two act upon each other as sense-bestowing figures, allowing for not the instantiation of social action but for its very possibility.
In claiming the aims of a reconstructive work that seeks to illuminate the structural conditions for the possibility of social action occurring, Natanson outlines five a prioris that present “the intentional contours of role-action”, revealing in their unity the “stages of the reconstruction of role-taking” (Natanson Pg. 260).
The first, which Natanson terms, “Assumption of Power”, describes the way in which the mundane or the routine flow of experience is divided into segments that belong to the general field of naive awareness. The “bounds or limits” of these portions of experience are presupposed by the act of demarcation in the field of social activity, generating intervals established by the intending role-taking which make available the to the actor the roles themselves. In other words, as Natanson writes, “role-taking is possible because social action is constituted as open to the initiation of limits.” Accordingly, “The Assumption of Recourse” determines the repeatability of role-taking at the core of the developmental construct of of social action, rendering the intending dimension of reproduction a structural condition of social action. However, Natanson’s concept of repeatability shares no relation to temporality but instead arises from the sense of “againness” intended in the “operative character” of role-taking. Earlier in his introduction Natanson notes his interest in tracing the path of how meaning (or the “Sedimentation of Meaning”) comes to manifest itself in social action. In being open to role taking and the assumption of power one is also necessarily bound to the assumption of recourse. Here, Natanson points to the notion of repeatition as a way of endowing meaning upon the assumption of power through the capacity to theorize the possibilities of re-performance, pattern, and recognition. This leads to the third level, “The Assumption of Uniformity”, in which the notion of recognizability through repetitiion arises not from a uniformity of action, a sameness, that holds a formal identity but through a familiarity in its “recognizable style”. The re-performance of this style or kind of action not only corresponds to a re-occurance of role-taking but on on a deeper level seeks to re-couperate the original signification of the action itself. Regaining the uniformity of social action then, produces a sameness in repetition that presents the “again” as fundamentally recognizable. “The Assumption of Recognition” develops the former stage, asserting the crucial sense of “mineness” that accompanies one’s own activity. Here, the process of coming to recognize the peculiar textures of one’s own style is a “constitutive feature of role-action”, located at the level of intentionality. Therefore, the moment of intention, role-action, already includes the expectation that the social action will persist in the familiar modes of the intimacy of “my own” style.
The last stage, entitled “The Assumption of Release” addresses the sequential constructions of the social role in which the naive spread of experience is broken up and demarcated into segments and intervals that make available possibilities of role-taking. However, these delimitations also provide a structure through which, as Natanson writes, “social action enunciates itself as a coherent enterprise.” (Natanson Pg. 260). In this model of meaningful social action, the actor must re-confront the “limits and bounds” of role playing and return again to the “socially neutral” flow of awareness. This release from the social role to those former modes of experience not only allow a return to the originary set of limitations but also to the “same mode of determination”.
While the model for these a prioris have been programmatic Natanson ensures that they are not fixed but are continually faced with the threat of what he calls “noetic destruction”. This term is essentially defined as the effect of alienation as the danger of a structural deformation in the social role, or more specifically the threat of a breakdown in role-action. Natanson goes on to conceptualize this breakdown as a loss of the capacity in consciousness to act upon the intentional forces that enable and motivate role-taking. In this way the possibility of entering into role-taking and roles is rendered a damaged notion as the representative field of demarcations now appears to be a seamless and “interval-less flux”; thus resisting any point of entry. The denial of the repetition of the social action severs any creative capacity to envision the continuation of role playing, restricting the action taken to it’s singular, floating occurrence without any referential structure. Again, the inability to re-perform negates any possibility of personal style or familiarity and furthermore by disassociating the “intentionality of recognition”, the self effectively “becomes a stranger to itself and its role world.” (Natanson Pg. 262). If the assumption of release demands that the role taker formulate conclusions and judgments linked to the completion of social action, it is in the denial of this that one is de-possessed of the capacity to identify and create cohesive connections between elements; an mode of paralysis.
In these later paragraphs Natanson provides several examples and reiterations of alienation that all extend from his most central thesis on the “noetic destruction”. As mentioned previously, one of the resultant losses of the abstractive capacity underlying role-taking is the familiarity of the social world and social roles. Yet, as Natanson notes, the refusal on the part of the “injured” actor to undertake social role playing does not always lead to the impossibility of role-taking but can, become itself an object of manipulation. In this sense role-taking in general is always measured against the threat of intentional role refusal or distancing, which allows “role-action to take on a voluntative force and character” (Natanson Pg. 264). Finally Natanson refers to exercises in “accommodation” which essentially disjoins the relation between role-taker and role-taking.
Natanson, Maurice, “Alienation and Social Role.” pp 255-269. James M. Edie, “Phenomenology in America.” Quadrangle. 1967
