Читать книгу The End of Illusions - Andreas Reckwitz - Страница 9

The point of departure for my perspective on today’s society is that, over the last 30 years, we have been experiencing a profound structural shift, over the course of which classical industrial modernity has transformed into a new form of modernity, which I call late modernity. Our understanding of the structures of late modernity, however, is still underdeveloped.

Industrial modernity first took shape at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it reached its zenith in the affluent postwar societies of the aforementioned trente glorieuses, which extended into the 1970s. This was a form of society based on rationalization, mechanization, and planning. Industrial mass production in large factories was just as characteristic of this society as large-scale housing projects, Keynesian economic planning, the expansion of the welfare state, and the firm belief in technical progress. For individuals, industrial modernity meant existing in an affluent society (in John Kenneth Galbraith’s terms) with a relatively egalitarian standard of living. Social control, cultural homogeneity, and cultural conformism were at a high; a clear division of gender roles and discrimination against sexual and ethnic minorities were not the exception but the rule. Following the French historian Pierre Rosanvallon, one could say that this was a “society of equals,” with all its bright and dark sides: a society governed by the rules of the general and the collective.⁸

This classical industrial society no longer exists, even though certain thinkers still regard it as a guiding light. Of course, many of its elements persist; there is, after all, some overlap between historical periods. However, it has been supplanted as the dominant form of society by another form that some sociologists have designated postmodern and others have called high-modern, hyper-modern, or the second modernity. I prefer the term “late modernity.” This structural shift was already well on its way in the 1970s and 1980s, and its emblematic events include the student revolts of 1968, the oil crisis and the collapse of the Bretton Woods financial system in 1973, and the development of the Apple I (the first affordable personal computer) in 1976. Late modernity has been maturing since the 1990s. It is characterized by, among other things, radical globalization, which has dissolved the formerly clear separation between the “first,” “second,” and “third” world, and which increasingly blurs the boundaries between the global North and the global South. In regions of the South, rapid modernization is now taking place, while regions of the North are losing their traditional status.

It remains challenging to formulate a coherent understanding of the structural features of late modernity. The liberal narrative of progress, which I discussed above, might focus here on globalization (understood positively), democratization, the expansion of markets, liberalization, and digital networking. In this way, the structural shift at hand could be understood from one side as a linear development. We have to learn, however, to understand late modernity as a contradictory and conflicted societal formation that is characterized simultaneously by social growth and decline, by cultural valuation and devaluation, and ultimately by processes of polarization. This, in essence, is what makes it explosive. In large part, these asymmetries and structural disparities have been neither planned nor consciously brought about; rather, they are what sociologists refer to as unintended consequences. For this very reason, they are irritating. Unlike industrial modernity’s society of equals, late modernity has increasingly been taking on the form of a society of singularities.⁹ In short, this means: whereas industrial modernity was based, in so many facets of life, on the reproduction of standards, normality, and uniformity – and one could say that “generality” reigned supreme – late-modern society is oriented toward the production of unique and singular entities and experiences and it values qualitative differences, individuality, particularity, and the unusual. If one would prefer to use more familiar terms from sociological and political debates, one could loosely describe late modernity as a society of radicalized individualism. In a sense, it takes this individualism, which has been a part of modernity from the beginning, to an extreme level. To me, however, the traditional concept of “individualism” – as well as that of “individualization” – seems both too broad and too narrow to describe the social and political processes that characterize late modernity.¹⁰

I therefore prefer the term “singularization.” It more accurately denotes the social processes in which particularity and uniqueness, non-exchangeability, incomparability, and superlatives are expected, fabricated, positively evaluated, and experienced.¹¹ In late modernity, a social logic of singularization has been established on a large scale, whereas during earlier phases of modernity such logic was only able to exist in small segments of society. It has an inevitably paradoxical structure: core areas of society have now developed general structures and practices whose interest is systematically oriented toward the particular. Thus, singularities neither exist outside of the social world nor are they directed against it – rather, they are at its center. They are not “released into the wild.” On the contrary, they are produced by and are part of the everyday praxis of society.

Unlike the processes of individualization, those of singularization are not restricted to human individuals. Of course, late-modern society admires the particularity of individual people – an excellent performance at work, a top athlete, a prominent environmental activist, or an extraordinary blogger, for instance – but it also admires the singularity of things and objects, such as the authenticity and non-exchangeability of sought-after goods and brands, which are now in part esteemed like works of art. These processes also subject spatial entities to singularization – such as cities or landscapes as recognizably “valuable” places – and they do the same to temporal entities, which can interest us as singular events or memorable moments. Finally, late-modern society even singularizes its collectives: from projects and networks to voluntarily chosen “neo-communities” (of a religious or regional sort, for instance), each of which promises to be incomparable. Late modernity’s systems of evaluation typically frown upon that which is merely standardized and functional – “average” individuals who are mere role players, things that are industrial goods bought “off the rack,” spaces that are “faceless,” and temporal routines that are dull and forgettable – and instead direct society’s interest toward that which is felt to be singular and is valorized as such. Only the latter is attributed value in the true sense.

Broadly speaking, late modernity has thus turned out to be an extremely ambitious form of society in which it is no longer sufficient for anything to be average. Instead, it is expected of individuals, things, events, places, and collectives that they leave the average in the dust. It is only the singularization of the social that promises contentment, prestige, and the power of identification; it alone, from the perspective of late-modern culture, makes people and the world valuable. The transformation from the society of equals to the society of singularities has several causes: the most important among them are the structural shift of the economy from industrial to cognitive-cultural capitalism, the technological revolution of digitalization, and finally the socio-cultural process in which a new urban middle class of highly qualified and educated people, who are oriented toward self-development and individual prestige, has advanced to become society’s new leading milieu.

The “singularistic” structure of late-modern society, however, necessarily comes with its reverse side: that which is unable or unwilling to be singular (or forbidden from being so). Such entities are disdained; they remain invisible in the background, and they receive only minimal – if any – recognition. Inevitably, there are thus winners and losers; there is appreciation and devaluation. This insight is central: the singularization of the social is not a linear process in which everyone and everything receives recognition for his, her, or its uniqueness. Processes of singularization have not caused us to enter a postmodern “realm of freedom” on the heels of industrial modernity’s “realm of necessity.” Rather, society’s valorization of the singular entails the devaluation of that which is standardized and common (and therefore disappears into the background). Under today’s conditions, the ubiquitous singularization of the social inexorably and systematically generates structural asymmetries and disparities.

This dual structure of singularization and polarization applies to every dimension of the tectonic shift that late modern societies have been experiencing. Some of these dimensions will be discussed in the chapters of this book.

Regarding the economy, today’s ambitious and globally networked cognitive-cultural capitalism, which is oriented toward developing complex goods – things, services, events, media formats – that are highly innovative, creative, and appealing, has the reverse side that so-called simple services (routine and repetitive jobs held by low-qualified individuals, whose prestige and social security are minimal) have become more widespread. Conversely, cognitive-cultural capitalism is governed by market structures that follow a winner-take-all logic, so that extremely lucrative goods – from high-tech pharmaceuticals and top football players to globally renowned artwork and desirable real estate – lead to an excessive production of wealth.

In the late-modern educational system, the rapidly growing number of university graduates and the heated profile competition between schools, between universities, and between graduates for excellence and unique selling points is only one side of things. The reverse side of this is the indirect devaluation of lower or mid-rank educational degrees. Today, what was once a normal level of achievement is regarded as no more than average.

High ambition and devaluation also go hand in hand in the area of lifestyles. The lifestyle model of “successful self-actualization,” which strives for uniqueness and the accumulation of singularity capital, turns daily life, work, leisure, and family life into an ambitious challenge. The new middle class rises to this challenge. The reverse side of this process is the subtle cultural devaluation or massive social downgrading that the traditional middle class and the precarious class have been experiencing. In addition, however, there is also a great deal of frustration among members of the new middle class who have failed to live up to their own ambitious standards: the singularistic lifestyle is systematically prone to cause disappointment.

The digital world, too, is based on a fundamental asymmetry: between those individuals (and also goods, places, institutions) that attract attention and appreciation (occasionally in excess), and those that largely remain invisible, are poorly networked and isolated, and either lack recognition or become the focus of negative attention (they are hated or disdained, for instance).

On the level of spatial structures, the current popularity of metropolitan areas is characteristic of late modernity. Appealing cities attract new businesses, workers, and visitors, and a trans-regional competition is now taking place between cities vying to offer the best quality of life. The reverse side is that this has given rise to “left-behind” areas, which are now in a downward spiral of depopulation and waning attractiveness.

In the end, it is only logical that the singularism of late-modern society has also led to polarization in the sphere of politics. Since the 1980s, the dominant form of politics has been a new type of liberalism that is radically based on competition and difference, dynamism, and the removal of social, economic, and cultural boundaries on a global scale. What has recently emerged as a reaction to this liberalism is an aggressive form of populism that propagates the social isolation of nation states. It is supported above all by those segments of the population that were either ignored or threatened by the liberal program of modernization. Populism is thus an articulation of the disgruntled reverse side of the society of singularities.

* * *

In the first chapter – “Cultural Conflicts as a Struggle over Culture: Hyperculture and Cultural Essentialism” – I discuss the ways in which late-modern societies are defined by conflicts over culture and identity. Contrary to Samuel Huntington’s prominent thesis that we are dealing with a struggle between cultural spheres, I show that, across the globe, there are now two fundamentally oppositional ways of dealing with culture. One approach – that of hyperculture – allows for individual self-development and provides space for diversity on global markets, while the other approach – that of cultural essentialism – understands culture as a fixed entity or as the medium of a given community’s collective identity. Here I examine the relationship between these two forms of “culturalization” and ask whether there might be an alternative to both of them.

The second chapter – “From the Leveled Middle-Class Society to the Three-Class Society: The New Middle Class, the Old Middle Class, and the Precarious Class” – investigates the new differentiation that presently characterizes the social structure in Western nations. Over the course of post-industrialization and the expansion of education, the formerly all-encompassing middle class of industrial modernity gave way to a new, tripartite class structure. On one end, a highly educated and urban new middle class has risen to the fore – the new leading milieu of late modernity – while on the other end, there is a new precarious class comprised primarily of working-class employees in the service industry. Between these two, there remains the traditional middle class, which is oriented toward order and sedentariness. It will be shown that the relationship among these classes cannot be reduced to material inequalities but is, rather, fundamentally defined by the cultural factor of symbolic valuation and devaluation.

“Beyond Industrial Society: Polarized Post-Industrialism and Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism,” the third chapter, is devoted to the structural transformation of Western capitalism. In the West, the industrial economy has lost its structural and formational significance. But what does it mean to say that we live in a post-industrial society? This chapter explains the transformation from the industrial to the post-industrial economy as a response to a dual crisis of saturation and productivity. Here I identify the features of cognitive capitalism, which is based on intangible assets, knowledge, and scalability, and I also examine the mechanisms of cultural capitalism, whose markets depend on the variable reputation that its symbolic goods happen to acquire in the eyes of consumers. Cognitive-cultural capitalism turns out to be a capitalism of extremes that has also paved the way for the widespread economization of the social.

In the fourth chapter – “The Weariness of Self-Actualization: The Late-Modern Individual and the Paradoxes of Emotional Culture” – I examine the culturally dominant lifestyle of the late-modern self, and particularly its everyday practices and psychological dynamics. What does it mean to lead a life that aims to combine the “Romantic” aspiration of self-development with the “bourgeois” goal of social success? This chapter identifies the dilemmas of a late-modern way of life in which subjective experience and psychological contentment have become fragile measures of a success. It is characterized by a paradoxical emotional culture that, on the one hand (and to an extreme extent), is based on positive feelings as a goal in life, and yet, on the other hand, it offers no way of dealing with the negative feelings – such as disappointment and frustration – that it systematically generates.

The final chapter – “The Crisis of Liberalism and the Search for the New Political Paradigm: From Apertistic to Regulatory Liberalism” – is concerned with the current political crisis, in which liberalism and populism stand in opposition to one another. Here, I present an alternative interpretation of political developments since 1945. Rather than being defined by mere shifts between the left and the right, these developments have been shaped above all by a transformation of the overarching political paradigms of social regulation and dynamization. The current crisis of liberalism – which has been dominant since the 1980s as a synthesis of neoliberalism and progressive liberalism – can thus be interpreted as a “crisis of excessive dynamization.” Finally, I ask what would be needed to establish a form of “regulatory liberalism,” which could replace the present paradigm and also offer an alternative to the rising wave of populism.

Four of the five chapters were written specifically for this book, the exception being the first chapter, which has already appeared in two earlier versions.¹² I have composed them in such a way that they can be read and understood independently. Thus, they do not have to be read in any particular order. Readers should simply go where their curiosity takes them!