Telic Reflections: Interactional Processes, as Such

Abstract

Interactional processes, conducted through symbols of various kinds, are the primal events in human life and, therefore, the primary site also for all social scientific inquiries. The implications of such a claim for a variety of sociological issues are then examined: the “individual” should be conceptualized as an interactive agent; the symbolic processes that she or he undertakes are both pragmatic and artistic exercises; selves emerge out of such exercises and face various “contingencies” as the individuals who bear them advance through various trajectories of their lives, each such moment having its own telos, just as the trajectory will have its particular telic process.only in silence the wordonly in dark the light,only in dying lifebright the hawk's flighton the empty sky—Ursula Le Guin