Introduction to Focus: The Ordinary

Recently, I had the opportunity to tour the sewers of Vienna, a city I dearly love. Afterwards, numerous people asked me why I would do that, spend time in the grotty underground, given the remarkable beauty of Viennese traditional and modernist architecture? Why wouldn’t I just spend more time taking in, for instance, the grandeur of the Hofburg? To begin with, there is a metaphoric significance to the fact that in the very city where Freud developed his ideas about the unconscious, one can actually be given a tour of the underground. Indeed, the health of the city is dependent on that sewer, and has been for centuries. My guide, a retired historian, pointed out that few people ever think about where the water they use to drink, wash, and cook comes from. They never ask about that ordinary but crucial aspect of their lives. To know the sewer, to acknowledge its complex and important history and function is to know better how the city itself works and how its infrastructure shapes daily living. Yet people seem to consciously, willfully avoid thinking about what exists beneath their feet. The trope speaks for itself.

Each day, our phones, computers, and tablets shout at us a variety of reminders, warnings, and declarations that indicate whatever else it might be, our moment in history is anything but ordinary. From looming climate catastrophe to a dizzying range of technological innovations one almost never dreamed would be possible, it certainly seems an inescapable, incontrovertible claim that the Ordinary is lost to us. In his essay included in this issue’s special focus, political theorist Thomas Dumm makes the stakes clear: “The question we face is whether the very idea of the ordinary as a place of meaning and a resource for life can survive in the face of the catastrophic.” Yet, by the same token, has there ever been a time that, while living in it, one would have comfortably described the era as ordinary? Although it seems true that we are on the edge of very real crises, it might be that ordinary is a descriptor that cannot be applied to eras and times, and has much more to do with one’s own life. It has a different measure, and, perhaps, its opposite may not be, or may not always be extraordinary, just as a term such as normal seems to mean something different from ordinary. Normal is perhaps a value assigned by others, and authorized by the collective, whereas ordinary is determined from within. It may be that some of the crises of our time arise from an ongoing repression of the Ordinary as a focus of our attention.

From Heraclitus to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud to Stanley Cavell, there has long been within certain strains of thought an argument that finds the Ordinary, that which is most familiar to any one of us, is actually that which is most unknown to us, most unfamiliar, and, therefore, remains deeply mysterious. The Ordinary often eludes thinking because by its very nature we come to consider—if, that is, we ever do consider it—as not warranting any sustained, serious thought. Familiarity, so it seems, breeds indifference, Yet, the problem becomes evident: we overlook, consciously and unconsciously, the very things and experiences that are most determining of what we call—if we call it anything—our daily life.

Defining the Ordinary is a crucial part of the problem of discussing it. What counts as the Ordinary? Is a flower ordinary? Is a comb? Is washing the dishes ordinary? Yes, perhaps, one is inclined to say, but something about attaching the word to a thing or even a routine action might be misleading. To a certain extent, thinking about the Ordinary is a broadly philosophical and even phenomenological endeavor, and in such regards the term indicates one’s relationship to an action or thing or circumstance. Calling something ordinary signifies a relationship familiar enough that our sense of the relationship helps us to define to and for ourselves who we take ourselves to be. This seems to be why David LaRocca in his discussion of...