Reflections on Reflexivity: Sociological Issues and Perspectives

This paper attempts to comprehensively concentrate and critically reflect upon the theoretical and methodological conception of sociological reflexivity. It thus concisely presents some relevant debates on reflexivity’s most influential sociological and epistemological definitions, as well as on its varied and complex relationship with the contentious notions of the self and spokespersonship. The conceptual elaboration on both notions emphatically highlights the crucial importance of the relational dimension over against the ubiquitous risks and dangers of subjectivism/objectivism, reification (blackboxing) and essentialism. In addition, it is described and demonstrated the particular significance of the apophatic dimension of reflexivity over against its eurocentric (or western-centric) and over-activistic (or cataphatic) dimension, which inevitably leads to an excessive analytic emphasis upon a highly ordering, instrumental, and chronically monitoring approach to the inherently dynamic and fluid processes of self-awareness, self-experience, self-definition and self-identity.