A Relatively Systematic Approach to the Phenomenon of Status

0.   Introduction

	In my opinion Alain de Botton in his interesting book Status Anxiety deals with this phenomenon of status in a rather superficial manner philosophically. Admittedly, his discourse has other objectives. However, he does makes some interesting philosophical observations on the nature of ideology, but, unfortunately, seems to go no deeper into trying to understand the phenomenal nature of status itself. In this paper I would like to address this oversight by subjecting this phenomenon of status to the following ‘relatively systematic’ overview. This attempt to be systematic (in orientation) will utilize the scheme of the hermeneutic circle as previously discussed by myself elsewhere. I regard this device as essentially mirroring what is effectively ‘central’ to all epistemological-intentional processes (as a circulation of value derived within and between gestalt fields as generally constituted within the overall psyche of the person). This schematic device,a regarded by myself as central to the intentional processes of consciousness, will be utilized as an integrated, interpretative lens through which our topic, therefore, will be ‘comprehensively’ treated [i.e., ‘systematically’ in this qualified sense of ‘comprehensiveness’; albeit without being able to go into too much detail or into too great a depth because of the introductory nature of this paper]. (1)

After this Introduction I will first look at this phenomenon of status from a meta-textual point of view and, therein, try to hermeneutically understand how this phenomenon is ‘read’. 
Second, from this hermeneutic reading I will then try to attempt a phenomenological reading of it as a text qua text (on the understanding that the phenomenological is essentially the textual in accordance with my own understanding of the hermeneutic circle in this regard). 
Third, I will try to understand this phenomenon from an existential perspective, i.e., as an experience of power on the understanding that the non-textual aspect of the hermeneutic circle deals with differentials of expressed power. 
Last, I will attempt an overall transcendental suspension of this phenomenon in order to appreciate how this phenomenon can be re-authenticated (through a purificational transformation and extensional radiation of its core authenticity) by invoking the textual aspect of the not-textual. 
These poly-textual dimensions of the meta-textual, textual, non-textual and the not-textual will be defined as we deal with them in the above order. (2)

	The hermeneutic circle is viewed by myself as a consisting of three dialectical moments dealing with, namely, ‘wholes’, ‘parts’, and the relationships between ‘parts-and-wholes’. When our interest is oriented towards ‘wholes’ we are dealing with contextual fields and our interests are synthetically oriented and hermeneutic in aspiration. On the other hand, when our interest is oriented towards the detail of parts we are dealing with a foreground-like focus on that text-to-hand. As a result our interests are analytically oriented and phenomenological in aspiration. Now, I would argue, that ‘parts’ cannot be appreciated apart from ‘wholes’, and v.v., hence the mutual correlativity of these two orientations of interest. That being the case, we cannot absolutely privilege either party since both orientations mutually co-define each other. In effect, we need a prior field of wholes-and-parts in order to relatively (and non-absolutely) isolate our apparent, relatively superficial attention on either ‘wholes’ or ‘parts’ (within this relatively prior field of wholes-and-parts). Hence the mutual co-relativity of all three moments with respect to each other. Lastly, I would like to note (in accordance with my understanding as developed elsewhere) that a dynamic balance between all three parties allows the hermeneutic circle to more efficiently function, and, that this sense of ‘balance’ is none other than the practice of an overall transcendental suspension. That an authenticity of research (be it practical, theoretical or critical in orientation) is realized when this dynamic sense of balance is properly, appropriately and validly conducted. (3)

Let me illustrate this scheme of the hermeneutic circle in the following diagram. (4)

A Diagrammatic Representation of the Hermeneutic Circle

*

Non-Textual Existential Moment
(wholes-and-parts)

Not-Textual
Overall Transcendental Suspension
(*)

Textual Phenomenological Orientation       –        Meta-Textual Hermeneutic Moment (parts)                                                                         (wholes)

*                                                     *

1.   The Meta-Textual Dimension of The Hermeneutic Moment 

	The mere presence of a text (regardless of the nature of its intentional deposition… be it something written down, a photograph, footprints in the sand, a tune being whistled, etc., etc.) is never appreciated and recognized as just a mere text! The form of that text is perceived in a meta-textual light and that then tells us that that text is that type of text we perceive it to be, rightly or wrongly (but in this process of ascription we too can neither claim to be absolutely right nor absolutely wrong). Let me demonstrate this meta-textual dimension in our appropriation/re-appropriation of an apparent text. (5)

	Suppose, for the sake of argument, we were given or find a treasure map. How do we know that it is a treasure map? Well, in this instance, on the top of the page it just so happens to tells us that. The title is a meta-textual insertion that tells us how to read that text. This title is both ‘of the text’ and ‘about the text’. That aspect that is ‘about the text’ is, effectively, meta-textual in nature. Let us say the text tells us that “at the spot marked x the treasure is buried one foot deep”. Now, if were to envisage the possible veracity of this text we would not look for the treasure one foot below the x on this map exactly at that spot where I am holding this map. No, instead, we would ask ourselves where is this spot marked ‘x’? To perform this task I need to know ‘how to read this text’. I look more closely at the text and see what it might have to say in this regard. From my reading of the map I see it is on an island and that ‘x’ is in the very center of this island and that an ‘x’ is laid out upon the ground in the form of five rock shaped in the form of an x. That map tells me that this island is called ‘Treasure Island’ and from its shape I recognize it to be an island well-known to myself in our local harbour. Trusting this map I set off after crossing over the walking bridge to this island soon find this spot marked out with five rocks. Then, digging down one foot into the sand beneath this set of rocks I discover a small metal chest. Inside I find a note that says to the effect “that the finder of this chest is entitled to a year's supply of chocolate ‘gold coins’ manufactured by the local chocolate factory.” Happy and sad at the same time I realize that this map was a marketing ploy in the promotion of this chocolate confection. (6)

	What is the point of my anecdote? In what ways does it demonstrate this meta-textual dimension? When we are ‘reading’ a map we are not just reading that map. We understand it as a code that represents the world in a certain light. In this instance in and through the light of a ‘treasure map’. Even if the treasure was only simulated in the form of a note promising a so-called “year’s supply of chocolate gold coins;” ennumerated by footnote as one thousand gold-foil wrapped chocolate coins. Perceived as a ‘map’ we knew how to read it. Treated as a ‘treasure map’ we knew how to carry out its ‘instructions’. Our successful ‘reading’ of this map took us to this so-called treasure. Read like a ‘play’ our understanding of its meta-textual dimension allowed us to perform the apparent intentions of this text – as a set of directions that lead us to the so-called treasure. In effect, the text of this map told us to look for a certain unique text written in the form of five rocks marking out the shape of a cross. That one foot beneath this text on the ground, in the very center of this small island in our local harbour, one would find the treasure, albeit in the form of a note that announced that we had won a year’s supply of chocolate coins. (7)

2.   The Phenomenon of the Textual Dimension

Obviously the map per se is a text. But, that we can never read it as just a text. We also need to know what type of text it is in order for us to understand how to read. This dimension is hermeneutic – an appreciation of the genre conventions of this text, namely, as a treasure map, and, an understanding of its context, namely, as intending a certain spot in the center of a small island in our local harbour in the light of an advertising campaign for the promotion of chocolates. That the phenomenon of this map was as a ‘text’ printed in the context of an advertising campaign. (8)

	Now, it stands to reason that the textual and meta-textual dimensions must be read in conjunction with each other. This balanced necessity between text and meta-text opens us up to the existential dimension in which that text is effectively lived out, experienced as a living text; hence this existential dimension of the lived-text. (9)

3.   The Existential Dimension of the Non-Textual

	The third moment in this dialectical interaction between textual parts and meta-textual wholes and contexts is an existential moment. Here the text is performed and from this mutual balance between text and meta-text the existential dimension of the non-textual is revealed in and through an existential excess generated through such an ongoing balanced performance. Why do I refer to this aspect as ‘non-textual? (10)

	For a start, few people are aware that a text to be read needs to be seen through an appropriate set of genre conventions (with or without a specific context). People are even less aware of this existential dimension in which the text is lived-out in a dimension between the polarities of text and meta-text. In this metaphorical unlocking of the text, in its re-performance, an existential excess of meaningfulness is generated that absorbs a central portion of our overall awareness of the world. Into this state of absorption we cease to be overtly aware of the fact that we are currently reading, indeed, the moment this type of reflected or distracted awareness intrudes upon our act of reading it is essentially disrupted until such a time we allow ourselves to become re-absorbed (within this dimensional space between the text and its meta-textual instructions on how to read that same text or some other text now newly to hand). Hence my defining this existential dimension in the act of reading as ‘non-textual’ in character (since it is that aspect of reading wherein we ‘forget’ we are reading). (11)

4.   The Not-Textual Dimension and its Realization of Authenticity

	But wait, there is more! I am also going to argue that when there is a dynamic balance between these three moments (of the textual, the meta-textual and the non-textual) then we experience that text in and through an overall transcendental suspension and that a sense of authenticity is manifested that because ‘our overlooking of the text’ cannot be reduced to the mere text per se, etc., it must, in effect, be treated as  not-textual in character. Hence our consideration of this fourth moment; these four moments constituting the hermeneutic circle central to all epistemological-intentional processes. Let us now re-read the phenomenon of status through this theoretical lens of the hermeneutic circle as just outlined. (12)

5.   Reading ‘Status’ Through this Lens of the Hermeneutic Circle

	We are now in a position to ‘read’ this phenomenon of status as it presents itself in the world of lived-experience through this lens of the hermeneutic circle as here re-interpreted. Used as a method for re-interpretation we are now in a new position in which to re-appreciate this phenomenon of status through these dimensions of the textual, meta-textual, non-textual and the not-textual. Using this interpretative lens of the hermeneutic circle let us now explore some of the observations I would like to note on this phenomenon of status (in the process welcoming additional observational contribution from my audience or reader). (13)

5.1  A Hermeneutical Meta-Textual (Contextual) Point of View

	For a start, the phenomenon of status can never be read purely as a text per se. In a meta-textual context we come to discern its genre conventions, those conventions that allow us to read the apparent intentionality of that phenomenon as traced out in this world, and, the nature of the range of possible modes of interactions implicated in this type of experience that finds itself involved with this element of status. Indeed, we would automatically come to appreciate the nature of the power-relations embedded in a certain relationship we might have with a certain other person or institution merely by understanding the nature of that relationship in the context of our pre-understanding of this World-of-Life as that already-lived-with-others. We may not have met the current President of America but we already understand the nature of that relationship we might have to them by comparison to other relationships-of-overt-power and extrapolating accordingly. Understanding that status-differential allows us to act appropriately in the advent of our seeing or meeting the same, etc. Hence, in this regard, status essentially is already pre-understood, pre-configured in our considerations of the same. E.g., consider the following: wearing a large backpack, an overcoat and dark glasses would you rush up to the President of America in these troubled times and at the top of your voice repetitively accuse him of being a “terrorist”? (14)

	In this theoretical light, the phenomenon of status could be viewed as a collectively constituted co-authored phenomenon, i.e., society creates a certain variety of relationships, and participants in that cultural context act them out accordingly; the differential in power between these types of relational participants being more or less arbitrated through conventionally recognized means in order to achieve or not achieve certain ends commensurate with the type of differential status possessed between those parties? (15)

	Naturally, in a society there is a certain broad desirability or non-desirability associated with a certain type of relationship and hence a general status is already recognized within that cultural context. The specifically perceived ‘desirability’ of that type of relationship being accorded a specific status in that complex hierarchical system of cultural evaluation as bought to bear upon that specific situation. The current resolution of competing economies of status-attribution according a particular status upon a general consensus on the current desirability of that type of relationship from the point of view of the cultural or sub-cultural context adopted [(and therein adapted with that particular type of evaluation in mind). Hence the concept of a status quo in that generalized context of a pre-constructed relational typology)]. Put more simply, society has a general understanding of status in both denotative and connotative senses, a particular type of understanding with respect to particular types of relational situations, and, that the same is more clearly cashed out in a specific reading of a unique situation. The relative stability of our common cultural understanding in these perspectives effectively creating the sense of a status quo when arrived at in a relatively non-controversial manner. In periods involving a paradigm shift there will be peripheral shifts in this consensus (but never in any absolute radical sense since the revolution in question is itself in a need of certain centrally integrated consensus in order to proceed). (16)

5.2  A Phenomenological Textual Point of View

	The textual depositions issuing from a certain participant or set of participants in a certain type of relationship usually bear the character and sometimes the direct status, of their depositor. So, e.g., the President of the United States of America signs various citations, statutes, treaties, etc., etc. Hence our appreciation of the types of textual traces involved in this phenomenon of the presidency that are directly deposited by the president, indirectly deposited for the president or involve our collective participation with the same in some form or other. Such items or processes deposited from the ‘high end’ in a high status relationship often themselves take on an aura of status. So, e.g., the letter actually signed by the President has a higher status than one with merely a reproduced signature, whilst, a letter completely handwritten and signed by the same would have an even higher status, and, then, a letter with unusual ‘historical’ content would be even more prized than one with some mundane request, expressions of gratitude, or observation. (17)

	Status items deposited in one culture can be later re-evaluated by that culture or by other cultures and treated and adopted therein as status items in that first or second culture. But, re-evaluation can work both ways! Such depositions could be completely ignored. Cultural relics from earlier eras, like statues, e.g., were often ignored for centuries until the recent era when collectors for such things re-imported an increased degree of desirability for such items (in that relevant economy). Then, again, conversely, images of the person and/or the divine could be disvalued by later epochs and, as a result, disfigured, damaged or destroyed. In the light of this observation we can see that various objects are cycled and re-cycled in economies of status attribution and re-attribution. Furthermore, a definitive sense of status, correctly, is realized through a resolution of competing economies of evaluation (and hence the implication of a complex interaction of political, ethical, aesthetical, pragmatical dimensions, etc.). That, obviously, status attribution is always realized in accordance with its current adoption and adaptation of a variety of socially prescribed norms of evaluation. E.g., the drinking of alcohol has been both proscribed and promoted at various times in our own culture. (18)

	I would also like to add that the aesthetics or ethos of a culture is also stamped upon the deposition of its cultural artifacts (with varying degrees of psychic integrity, as essential ‘reflections’ of that culture). Often, high-status items in a particular culture serve an iconic position in that same society, helping to define and re-define the overall ‘spirit’ of that culture through that ‘aura’ just as much as society defines the form of such (prestige) items in the first place. Formed in an economy of value all such items, whether relatively high in status or low in status, can be re-cycled in that same culture or in some other. Hence this observation that status is always realized in and through an economy of value. (19)

5.3  An Existential Non-Textual Point of View

	What could be said here is this: that in our pre-understanding of the social conventions attached to various kinds of relationships we already have an implicit hierarchicalization of status. Furthermore, our understanding the meta-textual aspects of that relationship (between ‘them’ and ‘us’) the possible modes of appropriate performance within that type of relationship are already relatively pre-configured. In this the power of that relationship is already in that sense pre-determined both in fact and as a template of expected possibilities permitted within that type of interaction. If the President of America needs to get from A to B their range of options in transport are considerably greater than most American citizens and this is already reflected in our understanding of their status. Equally, certain limitations and obligations also restrict the performance of that same role. Today the President does not travel by ordinary local bus or train (except under certain circumstances). In this regard, the projection of the power of such a person has its modes of possible employment already pre-established. ‘Power’, in effect, is that existential excess that cannot be reduced to the mere sum of its participating elements. That President is just as much a person as the next person, however, a certain complex differential exists vis-à-vis all other persons by virtue of the status that ‘automatically’ surrounds that person (in regards to this difference in power and its expressions). Indeed, this conventional pre-understanding allows us to function in the world without too much difficulty as long as we remain within the same culture and knowledgeable of its conventions, or, can understand what is to be expected of us in some other culture through an adequately extrapolated translation from our own cultural point(s) of view). In some measure, a certain sense of ‘freedom’ is defined by this pre-understood sense of status. Paradoxically, the President of America can, within reason or for a certain reason, fly almost anywhere but is not able to just casually take a bus or train in their local city, e.g. Of course, with transport laid on the necessity for the making of a choice in the mode of transport required is usually not a decision they either need to make or pay for. (20)

5.4	The Not-Textual Appreciation of Authenticity and its Re-Authentification

Status is an ubiquitous social phenomenon. However, a more connotative reading, rather than a denotative reading, is more inclined to realize a less authentic reading of status. Because status is realized through a hermeneutic circle already to some extent transcendentally balanced between parts, wholes and parts-and-wholes it follows that authenticity is a core phenomenon. That relative degrees and forms of inauthenticity arise when one or two of these dialectical moments, forms of textuality, aspects, etc., become excessively privileged or relatively de-privileged. Similarly, other forms of privilege or de-privilege brought to bear upon the phenomenon in question can overlay the inherent central authenticity of all phenomena. In this light re-authentification must merely call for a (transcendental) re-balancing of these forms of textuality. That authenticity is augmented through a re-authentification of the relatively non-authentic (and not a re-authentification of the relatively authentic). The ongoing dynamic of the overall transcendental suspension ‘resident’ in the very center of the hermeneutic circle must also call for some form of a balance between ‘means’ and ‘ends’ since to privilege one orientation over the other is also to commit this process of relative de-authentification. (21)

	This process of re-authentification need not be just an individual act of re-normalization through this intuitive act of a transcendental re-balancing of relative privilege/non-privilege. Our experience of  ‘status’, as already argued, is a collective-ly co-authored affair. Through a restoration of an existential sense of community the economy of value can also be transcendentally re-normalized. In this re-centering of (our perception of) society, and its all-pervasive sense of culture, the overall psychic economy of that culture can be transformationally re-invested with a more healthy, existential sense of value. Obviously, in this healthier climate, both the individual and their society are more able to achieve the goals that better express the spirit of that society… a sense of ongoing achievement that cannot mean the obliteration and equalization of power-differentials between either individuals or individuals-in-their-society. However, implied in this healthier, humanistic sense of re-normalization is a rectification of this overall economy of status wherein the connotations of status are more brought into line with their denotations (be they centered in the ethical, the pragmatical, the aesthetical, the political, etc.) and re-valued accordingly…. (22)

6.   Conclusion

	To conclude I would like merely to summarize some of my findings.b Although a relatively systematic method has been adopted in our research into this phenomenon of status this tentative, provisional list is neither systematic nor comprehensive, and, people are welcome to rectify any relevant oversights they feel should be brought to our attention in this regard:

1.	Our perception of status is primarily as a social phenomenon and hence its meta-textual orientation implies that status must be read more as a collectively co-authored phenomenon.
2.	An overall sense of status is derived from an overall economy of competing economies of (e)valuation, and, therefore, status is a phenomenon that is socially constructed.
3.	The perception of status, therefore, can be re-constructed by invoking changes in those relevant economies or changing the nature of that mix of competing economies.
4.	Status can be ‘systematically’ read using our device of the hermeneutic circle of comprehension and hence our readings of it as a complex poly-textual phenomenon.
5.	Textually, status is perceived as depositing textual artifacts; meta-textually we perceive economies of interpretation; non-textually we experience an existential excess through the interaction of these two former types of textuality; not-textually we experience the authenticity of that event or situation as a status phenomenon in a phenomenological dimension of status, etc.
6.	Although status, in its denotative sense, is an inescapable, ubiquitous facet of our social existence, through the re-imposition of a sense of a transcendental balance we can re-experience that facet of our existence in a relatively more authentic mode of being.
7.	Privileging and/or de-privileging various aspects of our social existence realizes a sense of status in a more connotative sense.
8.	However, acts of privileging and/or de-privileging are not in and of themselves inauthentic acts of being since to act in an intentional manner necessitates their existence, but, that an ongoing, excessive loss of transcendental balance can only result in an inauthentic mode of being.
9.	Authenticity being established through the ongoing re-imposition of an ongoing, thoroughly re-balanced transcendental attitude towards the manner we disport ourselves in our passage through this World-of-Life.
10.	Hence the need for a transcendental balance between the correlatives of means and ends, self and other, content and processes, rights and obligations,c etc., etc., wherein a healthy sense of status can be reinvested, re-defined, refined and re-disseminated… 
11.	Being in an existential conformity with the nature of our relationships allows us to both correctly perceive their nature and experience that nature through an authenticity of being as an existential re-normalization of that relationship.
12.	Status is a recognition that between and within all relationships there is a differential power spectrum that effectively expresses the status between those parties, and, between that relationship and other relationships (and their textual depositions)! (23)
   Noël Tointon, Sydney, 24.9.05.
Some Reflection on this Paper in the Form of Endnotes:

a.	This is a hermeneutic device. But to what extent does such a metaphorical modeling of the world actually reflect the world itself per se? A philosopher should not reduce the world of philosophy or the philosophy of world merely to a set of metaphors! Of course such a person should be aware of their use of such linguistic devices. At the same time they cannot reduce their understanding of the world to a mere set of such linguistic entities! By themselves they would possess no real meaning. Just as important, if not more so, are those items that allow us to focus on metaphors through a process of differentiation. My device of the hermeneutic circle allows us to do this task of dialectical differentiation by recognizing that metaphors are textually oriented, but, as rhetorically manipulated meta-textually and allowed to simulate the ‘living’ World-of-Life non-textually, and, that by such means collectively allows us to be-in-the-world-with-others (not-textually). In this light metaphors are put in their place so to speak as but one moment in the process of being-in-the-world. The overall transcendental suspension both positing and canceling out the same. Hence their simultaneous ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ – the dynamics of this interaction simulating an overall sense of self, an overall sense of world and an overall sense of other, and, our-being-together ( as but, equally, various simulations before each other, etc., and thence, to that extent, equally, as phenomenally real in the phenomenological manner as found ‘in our standing’ before these various sense of otherness).
b.	In this section I briefly concluded with a number of insightful points that could be derived from various arguments in the text to date (although to do justice to some of these points further discussion and additional arguments would need to be brought to bear on their rather rudimentary articulation). Let me now take the opportunity to offer a summary in a more ‘systematic’ phenomenological fashion: Status is a distinctive-like state of affairs in the world that is best appreciated through a poly-textual approach wherein the existential power differentials already embedded in genres of activity are created and re-created in an economy/economies of evaluation; whilst, on one hand, their denotation is determined in and through an overall transcendental suspension of the same, on the other hand, connotatively, they are re-determined through a loss of this psychic sense of balance in and through acts of privileging/de-privileging. That, essentially, status is determined through the invocation of this economy of evaluation (that mirrors the intentional processes needed to create/re-create that economy of evaluation) !
c.	Obligations and rights are intimately bound together by virtue of the fact that they co-determine each other in and though this hermeneutic circle of comprehension. E.g., we have a right “to be free from hunger” but that does not entail that we should eat our neighbour’s food if we already have eaten sufficiently, or, chose to eat my neighbour instead of eating more mundane food already to hand, etc., etc. The point being made here is that this right “to be free from hunger” is already scoped, limited, etc., and is not a blank cheque to eat just anything or everything (that is potentially judged as edible)! Hence rights and obligations inherently co-determine the limits of each other (in the same manner means and ends cannot be exercised without reference to each other, etc!)! 							         N., 15.11.05.

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