Introduction: Proust's Modernist Sociology

The introduction to this special issue sketches out some urgent forms of intelligibility that Proust's Recherche might hold for readers in 2022 given the many crises of the present moment. Whereas Proust's novel is often read as an investigation and valorization of various forms of subjective experience, contributions to this special issue consider how aspects of the Recherche's composition might provoke us to step back and objectify subjective experience in the service of some other kind of knowledge. The introduction juxtaposes Proust's novelistic practice with Pierre Bourdieu's sociological construction of points of view. We see the social world in limited ways because we see it from a single point of view, but we can work critically to rise above those limits and envision a social field of different points of view. The introduction demonstrates how Proust's novel, like Bourdieu's sociological practice, models this form of understanding for us.