〈透明人間〉と〈分身〉の肖像

孤独の文学社会学・試論

抄録

　Erving Goffman remarks in passing that "[there exists] what may be worse than a sociological demise, namely, a sociological double. " This paper seeks to explore some of the sociological implications of this passage from the viewpoint of the literary sociology of loneliness.
　The experience of a sociological demise is portrayed as one of the "invisible man. " Hitherto studies about loneliness used to conceptualize the "loneliness" from this imagery, namely, as the feeling caused by "the absence of any social relationships."
　But, "what may be worse" than this, the experience of the "double" exists. I shall propose that this experience would describe the tragedy of loneliness more properly. For loneliness means, as Georg Simmel once suggested, rather the excess of social relationships than the absence of them. This may seem a bit of a paradoxical social phenomenon, but it also is the paradox of society itself.
　In conclusion, I will show, through the analysis of "the scandal of the double, " the reason people use the representation of the "invisible man" rather than that of the "double" when they try to depict the experience of loneliness.