A virada afetiva em Durkheim: a ontologia das relações n’As Formas Elementares da Vida Religiosa

Abstract

The multiple turns that have occurred within the social sciences, including the most famous such as the ontological, pragmatic, post-human, and linguistic turns, share a common goal of producing new understandings of the foundations of reality; however, they primarily represent changes and tensions within the social sciences. The dilemmas of our 21st century raise new debates and new theoretical and methodological revisions to better grasp social phenomena. It was amid these movements within the field that Émile Durkheim's theory of religion, particularly *The Elementary Forms of Religious Life* (1912), began to be revisited. Previously read as a study in the sociology of knowledge or theory of religion, a new generation of interpreters has pointed to the existence of a praxiology in his late work and even a "sociology of affects." This sociology of affects falls within the affective turn, which assumes that society as a whole is driven by affects, diffuse energies within social structures capable of producing agency. Thus, diverging from traditional readings of Durkheim's work, this study aims to contribute to the new interpreters suggesting the presence of a theory of affects in Durkheimian sociology by elucidating his theory of religious practices, highlighting the main categories possible for thinking about a sociological translation of affects based on the notion of the circuit of affects.