Pictures of Nothing? Visual Construals in Social Theory

This paper builds upon ethnomethodological and social constructivist studies of representation in the natural sciences to examine sociological theory, afield that is much closer to home. An analysis of diagrams and related illustrations in theory texts shows that labels, geometric boundaries, vectors, and symmetries often are used to convey a sense of orderlyflows of causal influences in a homogeneousfield. These graphic elements make up what I call a that conveys an impression of rationality. Although theory pictures rarely show much beyond what a text already says in its writing, they simulate a hermeneutic passage from written ideas to an independent representational or mathematical space. The paper discusses two modes of textual disruption of the rhetorical mathematics of theory pictures: parody and deconstruction. Parody makes ironic use of graphic devices in order to expose the rationalistic associations that come with the territory. Deconstruction displaces (and, if taken far enough, dissolves entirely) the Flatland of pictorial rationality. These negative maneuvers raise the possibility of using figural space for alternative modes of sociological inquiry.