JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

324 Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingsto seriality as the material resistance of gatherings and masses to the action of groups(and even to the action of practicoinert factors).If we are to encompass the world of seriality, if only in one glance, or to note theimportance of its structures and practices—in so far as they ultimately constitute thefoundation of all seriality, even that which aims to bring man back to the Other throughthe organisation of praxis—we must abandon the example we have been using andconsider what occurs in a domain where this basic reality discloses to our investigationits true nature and efficacity. I call the two-way relation between a material, inorganic,worked object and a multiplicity which finds its unity of exteriority in it collective. Itdefines a social object; it is a two-way relation (false reciprocity) because it is possiblenot only to conceive the inorganic object as materiality eroded by serial flight, but alsoto conceive the totalised plurality as materialised outside itself as common exigency inthe object. Conversely, one can start either from material unity as exteriority, movingtowards serial flight as a determinant of the behaviour which marks the social andmaterial milieu with the original seal of seriality, or from serial unity, defining itsreactions (as the practico-inert unity of a multiplicity) to the common object (that isto say, the transformations they bring about in the object). Indeed, from this point ofview the false reciprocity between the common object and the totalised multiplicitycan be seen as an interchangeability of two material statutes in the practico-inert field;but at the same time it must be regarded as a developing transformation of every oneof the practico-inert materialities by the Other. In any case, we can now elucidate themeaning of serial structure and the possibility of applying this knowledge to the studyof the dialectical intelligibility of the social.[. . .]The fused groupThe group—the equivalence of freedom as necessity and of necessity asfreedom—the scope and limits of any realist dialectic.The genesis of groupsAs we have seen, the necessity of the group is not present a priori in a gathering. Butwe have also seen that through its serial unity (in so far as the negative unity of theseries can, as abstract negation, oppose seriality) the gathering furnishes the elementaryconditions of the possibility that its members should constitute a group. But this