From Epistemology to the Avant-garde: Marcel Duchamp and the Sociology of Knowledge in Resonance

Abstract

This article argues that the sociology of knowledge as a critical subfield of sociology and the artist Marcel Duchamp are engaged in epistemologically analogous projects. Two sets of claims demonstrate the analogy: that Duchamp and the sociology of knowledge both have the same conception of and attitude toward their objects (respectively, art and knowledge/truth), and that they both mount similar critiques of the institutions they occupy (respectively, the art world and social science). A set of similar practices leads both to adopt an attitude of reflexivity which courts self-refutation by changing the ontological status of their objects and the epistemological status of their own practices. The analogy implies some new ways of thinking about the institutional role of the sociology of knowledge, the practice and epistemology of sociology, and perhaps the epistemic character of modernism. © 2003, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.