Abstract
- Nomadic Theory – Michel de Certeau’s Theory of Everyday Life and Early Modern Mysticism.
The experience of migration is in the view of Michel de Certeau (1925-1986) the basis of his theory of everyday life. This theory can be understood as the foundation of a critique on modern ‘techical’ rational, which is so dominant since Early Modernity. This experience is meant to be the foundation of a critique on all forms of social sciences at the end of the 20th Century – until today. In his historical studies on mysticism in Early Modernity Michel de Certeau describes the figure of the mystique as a modern nomad, travelling throughout Europe. This nomadic travelling however is at the same time a metaphorical figure for the mystique’s way of escaping and criticizing the dominant discourses of technocratic power. The travelling of the mystique offers so to say a paradigm for a social theory from the perspective of society’s margins, opening space for the ‘other’ (in various meanings).
As such Certeau’s extensive studies on mysticism in the 16th and 17th Century can be understood as the horizon for his theory of everyday life in his book L’invention du quotidian (translated in English as Everyday Life Practices). This book was quite influential in the United States mainly for the newer cultural studies. In this contribution I argue for the thesis that the travelling of the early modern mystique is presupposed in the theory of everyday life as a kind of paradigm. The ‘common man’ is, in this book, the starting point for a new theoretical model for cultural studies. It is a perspective showing that every theory in cultural studies has to deal with the undetermined place of theory. Theory itself became, in the view of Certeaua, nomadic. From this point of view the experience of migration in our days can be interpreted in innovative ways.
Everyday Life, Social Criticism, Centre and Margin, Nomadic Mysticism, Theory
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