Introduction

The binary of “complexity/simplicity” is perhaps so familiar to us that it has evaded our explicit attention—and, as we propose here, it is overdue for a theoretical intervention.¹ A closer look quickly suggests that the notions of “complexity” and “simplicity” are used in very different ways in different contexts, and there is ample disagreement as to what counts as which. While context specific usages of the terms might suffice to make their meanings clear in individual cases, by striving for formulations that reach across theoretical contexts, we seek to think out the values of different conceptual commitments in ways that may not initially be clear. When we call a phenomenon simple or complex, we are often invoking normative connotations that we are not otherwise arguing for, whether it is by harkening to diversity or accessibility, richness or elegance, inventiveness or assertiveness, compassion or militancy, integration or separation. Moreover, the terms can refer not only to the character of an object of scholarly analysis, but also to the character of the analysis itself. Accordingly, it may be a point of pride to give the simplest possible account of a complex phenomenon, or alternatively, to attain analytical complexity sufficient to capture simplicity in its most basic abstraction.

Precisely because of this diversity in the terms’ reference and connotation, however, we believe this dossier demonstrates the productivity of concentrating on how we have been using them and specifying new uses. Of course, we are aware that there has been considerable effort to formalize complexity in a body of scholarship associated with the name of “complexity theory,” an approach discussed in several contributions to this dossier, but our interest in the notion’s uses exceeds that specific context. Importantly also, there is yet to emerge anything like “simplicity theory,” and it is in that conceptual asymmetry that some of our questions emerge: without a theoretical place, simplicity can easily figure as an arbitrary assertion. Complexity, meanwhile, can expand to signify any attempt at detailed analysis or deliberate formalization. By pursuing such generalized metaphorical uses along with more formalized ones, and articulating complexity explicitly in contrast to simplicity, we place new demands on each term and announce our interest in understanding how they express differing attitudes toward theoretical problems and differing attributes of proposed solutions, as well as how they foreground certain motifs and mobilize rhetorical topoi. In other words, this collection of essays embraces the fact that notions of “complexity” and “simplicity” are not restricted to a few schools or tendencies of thought, but cut across a broad spectrum of theories and disciplines, epistemological and political affiliations. (Of course, we cannot exhaustively cover their varied uses and necessarily present an incomplete exploration marked by our specific interests and preoccupations.)

While we cannot offer one foundational definition aiming to replace, or synthesize, each term’s various uses, the effort of moving beyond a casual usage of the terms does afford an analytical optic for rethinking how simplicity and complexity operate in selected contemporary and historical analyses of culture and society. The different analytical perspectives of the dossier’s individual contributions thus might be said to look transversely across the grids of existing categorizations, inviting us to stand back from a given approach and reenvision it with respect to the complexity or simplicity it brings into play. As we argue, this optic promises a fresh look at old epistemological, as well as ontological questions, and a new mapping of key theoretical controversies. Through the lens of “complexity/simplicity,” we sharpen both our analysis of texts and our ability to develop pertinent theoretical models. The individual contributors, of course, chart their own goals for such reimagining and mapping—some focus specifically on debates in current, twenty-first-century theoryscapes, while others reconsider historical scenes of knowledge production.

A crucial element informing the layout of our individual mappings is, of course, the normative or critical question of our individual sympathies for and investments in simplicity and complexity and our assessments of how they serve current scholarly aims. While our joint investigations have taken us well beyond a simple binary, some of...