July 12, 2001

11:49 AM

Question concerning the notion of the social construction of reality. If enough people cease to believe in the Holocaust, or if enough of them have just never heard of it, as detailed in another MeFi thread, does that mean it didn't happen?

If it only means "well, as far as those people are concerned it never happened" then that's a truism and hardly worth any hoo-hah. But does social constructivism, if I can call it that, go on to make the much stronger claim that if the millions cease to believe in it, or forget about it, then it reallyo-trulyo never happened?
posted by jfuller (9 comments total)

socially constructed reality is in itself socially constructed.
posted by Postroad at 12:09 PM on July 12, 2001

My memory's a bit fuzzy on Berger & Luckmann, but the central point I seem to recall is that events that "reallyo-trulyo" happen in our world only take on meaning in a social environment. So, millions of people were definitely restrained, tortured, and killed in WWII, but the "reality" of that event only becomes a "Holocaust" when we, as social creatures, agree to name it as such.

Or something like that.
posted by ChrisTN at 12:36 PM on July 12, 2001

This book offers the best and most well-informed critique of various "social constructionisms" that I've read.
posted by holgate at 12:46 PM on July 12, 2001

Ian Hacking's book, cited by holgate, is indeed the best discussion of the various meanings and ambiguities surrounding the term "socially constructed."
But let's not be silly. Even in its most radical formulations, "social constructionism" doesn't mean that if people forget about the holocaust, then it never really happened.
Rather, it means that:
1.The Holocaust was not some sort of inscrutable act of nature, but something perpetrated by human beings upon other human beings, in particular social, cultural, etc circumstances.
2.How we interpret what happened in the Holocaust has to do with who we are who are doing the interpreting (our culture, values, etc). Interpretation is always more than just facts. As Nietzsche pointed out more than a century ago, the fact that we insist on knowing the objective truth, rather than relying on myths or fantasies, is itself a value that we have posited for ourselves.
posted by Rebis at 1:24 PM on July 12, 2001

And since Ian Hacking, silly question, etc.: The CBC show Ideas offers downloadable and streaming real audio files of many greatest hits. Scroll down to the series on Modes of Thought and download part 4 (read carefully; part 2 is not available). The second half of this show is Ian Hacking on the concept of "Normal" which is good listen. (The first half is Scott Atran talking about the his book Cognitive Foundations of Natural History which was good enough to make me order the book before the show was over.) Note that the whole series is also available in book form as a series of essays.

The only thing I'd add to the above answers: jfuller's confusion hangs on understanding "reality" to mean "the stuff that physicists go on about" whereas Berger & Luckmann were talking about the less rarified realm in which human beings actually dwell — the world of divorces and promotions and and pornography and art and stock option plans (if you can't get around sentences which contain "the world of ..." then you needn't read much in this area). If the physical events which comprised the holocaust were not understood to have any kind of meaning (either in the sense of significance or content) — and, boy, just try imaging such a(n) (im)possible world— then they might as well not have happened and inquiring as to their "actual occurance" would be an activity reserved for, and only of interest to, specialists in some academic field.
posted by sylloge at 2:01 PM on July 12, 2001

My booklist just got longer....thanks holgate and sylloge for the pointers.
posted by briank at 3:11 PM on July 12, 2001

"Interpretation is always more than just facts." I cant help but think of immigrant women from cambodia who have just gone blind, quickly, and for apparently reason' If an event as wide scale in the human condition as genocide is 'forgotten' or 'false', what of these physiological manifestations. i say this because 'cease to believe' seems living while denying that an event took place that one knew where to be true empirically. It seems the act of denial or forgetting starts with the individual.( I just dont get the mass forgetting part.)
posted by clavdivs at 9:12 PM on July 12, 2001

Quite.
posted by Mocata at 3:48 AM on July 13, 2001

fine mocata you explain it because i think the whole argument is skewed, hence false, more along the lines of posts thinking, so say something or shut the fuck up.
posted by clavdivs at 6:47 AM on July 13, 2001