The central objective of this article is to examine some of the claims put forward by post-modern theorists concerning the rise of new spatializations & the era of the ‘post-social’, by a return to the inaugural texts of Emile Durkheim. The author examines Durkheim’s initial conception of the social in “The Division of Labor,” “Suicide,” & “The Rules of Sociological Method.” He then traces the concept’s displacement during the 1920s & 1930s, & its current reconstitution as a result of new scholarship & rereading of Durkheim’s texts. (59 refs)