Terrores metafísicos y otros problemas con la realidad
Entre los libros imprescindibles para conocer la estructura de la realidad, que no son tantos, suelo recomendar Frame Analysis de Goffman, o su Interaction Ritual o su Strategic Interaction, pero también The Social Construction of Reality, de Berger y Luckmann. Para mantener la realidad en estado puro es mejor no conocerla demasiado, sin embargo—son dos empresas divergentes, la de conocerla y la de mantenerla. Y las dos son todo un trabajo, pues ni se mantiene por sí sola—hay que apuntalarla constantemente con rituales y rutinas—ni desde luego se conoce por sí sola, que tiende a camuflarse detrás de esos rituales y rutinas y objetos cotidianos. Detrás de sí misma, por así decirlo. Berger y Luckmann señalan a la conversación como el instrumento más importante de mantenimiento de la realidad, pero en seguida vemos que no es tanto lo que se dice en la conversación como lo no dicho, las presuposiciones, lo que más contribuye a mantener la realidad. Es decir, que el conjunto de la realidad conspira para mantener la realidad, en sus lugares asignados. Sobre las presuposiciones y la realidad proyectada de antemano algo dije, a cuenta de Goffman, en este artículo sobre la realidad como expectativa autocumplida y el teatro de la interioridad. La vida cotidiana es de por sí tanto la realidad más accesible como el instrumento o técnica de mantenimiento de sí mimsa más eficaz. De Berger y Luckmann me llaman la atención hoy sus incursiones en las otras realidades marginales que rodean (y a la vez constituyen) a la vida cotidiana, extraña manera de constituirla, por el procedimiento de diferenciarse de ella. Quizá haya muchas personas sensibles a la inestabilidad o precariedad de la realidad, pero pocos autores lo son, o por lo menos no de esta manera tan reflexiva—las amenazas a la realidad, y los procedimientos para mantenerlas a raya, no suelen exponerse con tanta claridad como en este pasaje de La construcción social de la realidad:
As we have seen, the reality of everyday life maintains itself by being embodied in routines, which is the essence of institutionalization. Beyond this, however, the reality of everyday life is ongoingly reaffirmed in the individual's interaction with others. Just as reality is originally internalized by a social process, so it is maintained in consciousness by social processes. These latter processes are not drastically different from those of the earlier internalization. They also reflect the basic fact that subjective reality must stand in a relationship with an objective reality that is socially defined.
In the social process of reality-maintenance it is possible to distinguish between significant others and less important others. In an important way all, or at least most, of the others encountered by the individual in everyday life serve to reaffirm his subjective reality. This occurs even in a situation as 'non-significant' as riding on a commuter train. The individual may not know anyone on the train and may speak to no one. All the same, the crowd of fellow-commuters reaffirms the basic structure of everyday life. By their overall conduct the fellow-commuters extract the individual from the tenuous reality of early-morning grogginess and proclaim to him in no uncertain terms that the world consists of earnest men going to work, of responsibility and schedules, of the New Haven Railroad and the New York Times. The last, of course, reaffirms the widest coordinates of the individual's reality. From the weather report to the help-wanted ads it assures him that he is, indeed, in the most real world possible. Concomitantly, it affirms the less-than-real status of the sinister ecstasies experienced before breakfast—the alien shape of allegedly familiar objects upon waking from a disturbing dream, the shock of non-recognition of one's own face in the bathroom mirror, the unspeakable suspicion a little later that one's wife and children are mysterious strangers. Most individuals susceptible to such metaphysical terrors manage to exorcize them to a degree in the course of their rigidly performed morning rituals, so that the reality of everyday life is at least gingerly established by the time they step out of their front door. But the reality begins to be fairly reliable only in the anonymous community of the commuter train. It attains massivity as the train pulls into Grand Central Station. Ergo sum, the individual can now murmur to himself, and proceed to the office wide-awake and self-assured.
E la nave va..
