Talking about a Method Which You are not Using: The History of Sociology in the Service of Non-Reading [transl. by Monika Boruta-Żywiczyńska and Candice Kerestan]

Abstract

The text begins with the reconstruction of the current debate. Then, the author emphasizes the lack of emancipatory potential for methodological debates. In her opinion, the history of sociology is a discipline based primarily on reading, and it engages in textual practices, which also applies to sociology itself. In this somewhat ironic perspective, the historian of sociology supports with his/her own reading the cognitive effort of other sociologists. According to the author, there are strong premises (i.e. the tradition and history of sociology) to consider the activities of historians of sociology as contingent and having no other justification than dealing with (i.e. reading) books that no one else is interested in.