The Elementary Forms as Political (A)theology

Abstract

Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life examines a fundamental intercalation of selfhood, sociality and cosmology, but as a response to a particular political context, it may also speak to contemporary issues of sovereignty and democracy. Reading the Elementary Forms in this context, and in light of Durkheim's references to monarchy, absolutism and revolution, is suggestive of an approach to such issues which resists sacrifice of the social to the sovereign, whether hierarchical or popular.Résumé. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse écrit par Emile Durkheim explore l' intercalation fondamentale de la subjectivité, de la sociabilité et du cosmos, mais dans la mesure où cela renvoyait à un contexte politique et historique précis, cela pourrait également insister sur les problèmes de la souveraineté moderne et de la démocratie de manière moins directe. Lire Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse dans ce contexte tout en étant conscient des références de Durkheim à la monarchie, à l'absolutisme et à la révolution suggère que son approche de ces questions résiste au sacrifice de « la vie » sur le « pouvoir », du social sur le mécanisme de la souveraineté qu'elle soit hiérarchique ou populaire. Mots clés:Durkheim, souveraineté, sociologie politique, révolution, sacré, représentation ambiguity and ContingenCy: the diverSe meSSageS of The elemenTary Forms T he publication of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (hereafter, EFRL) marked a controversial intervention into cultural politics (Tiryakian 2009: 172-186), but subsequently, that context and the unsettling potential of its argument were often obscured (Stedman Jones 2001) by interpretations emphasizing the functional aspects of religion: the ar-596 © Canadian Journal of SoCiology/CahierS CanadienS de SoCiologie 39(4) 2014 the elementary formS aS politiCal (a)theology

Paradoxes of sovereignty: Toward a Durkheimian analysis of monarchy

“…Thus, a Durkheimian sociology of monarchy faces two tasks: to construct a ‘what would it look like?’ model, and to interrogate Durkheim’s own reticence about it. I have elsewhere suggested (Ramp, in press) that Durkheim’s silence on monarchical sovereignty, and his critiques of absolutism and despotism, may have been part of a political stance marked by his republican affinities and by a sensitivity to the disastrous events that accompanied the end of the Second Empire and the conflicted and bloody advent of the Third Republic; it may also reflect more generally difficulties that French sociological thought has had in envisioning the political in relation to the social (Stoicea-Deram, 2006: 129–130).…”