Age of Anxiety E-Book

Constantine Tsoucalas

• Herausgeber: ERIS
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 150

Beschreibung

We live in an age of ever-deepening anxiety. Free of convictions, released from certainties, we appear untethered—and alone. The values that underpinned our sense of, and need for, collectivity have been reduced to their lowest common denominator: liberty means nothing more than exploiting our individuality; equality has become an empty political slogan; as for solidarity, it's nowhere to be seen. Such ruptures are neither accidental nor benign. The not-so-brave new social mandates are outgrowths of globalisation's casualties: complete eclipsing of political sovereignty, gradual weakening of national identities, and breakdown of the welfare state. The situation is one of crisis. In this revelatory contribution to political science and sociology, Constantine Tsoucalas draws upon a wide range of philosophical discourses to understand and diagnose our anxious, opiate-seeking age, and to suggest that identity and difference have been incorporated into the deepest substratum of capital, culminating in our times' greatest woe: the extreme fetishization of the self. "Greece's pre-eminent sociologist." —Helena Smith, THE GUARDIAN

Leseprobe

ERIS

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Unit 6 53 Beacon Road

London SE13 6ED, UK

Copyright © Constantine Tsoucalas, 2010

Translation © Alex Stavrakas, 2018

Originally published in Greece by Kastaniotis in 2010

This first English edition published by Eris in 2018

Printed and bound in Great Britain

The right of Constantine Tsoucalas to be identified as

the author of this work has been asserted in accordance

with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

ISBN 978-1-912475-34-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

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CONTENTS

1 IDENTITY

2 FUTURE

3 ALCHEMY

4 GLOBALISATION

5 PERSONAL DESTINY

6 GUARANTEED EMPLOYMENT -LIFELONG LEARNING

7 HISTORY

NOTES

1

IDENTITY

Takes its Place on the Political Stage

Panta rhei. Everything flows—in nature, in society, in our minds. Our thoughts, like living organisms, are in a state of constant flux. They succumb to external pressures and obey unknown laws, they move relentlessly, accelerating and slowing down, advancing and retreating, attempting sudden leaps along a route that has neither direction nor end. The historical selection of ideas resembles the natural selection of species: the resilience of meanings in this march toward an unknown destination is unpredictable, and the dust of intellectual progress that is scattered by the relentless survival struggle will only retrospectively appear settled. What exists tends to be reproduced wholesale, while newcomers must overcome the inertia of social dynamics and the reflexes that existing semantic orders trigger. Worldviews aren’t deposed voluntarily. In a state of vigilant wakefulness, established ideas tend to defend themselves against insidious intruders, whereas new ones, like spermatozoa, look for eggs to fertilise.

But wakefulness itself isn’t something new: societies have always devised ways of handling the ‘new gods’. What has changed is the way novelty is perceived: intuitions are ever more frequently undermined, ideological convictions weakened, certainties readily abandoned, and entire value systems are deconstructed and reassembled anew overnight. Misreading Arthur Rimbaud (“we must at all costs remain absolutely modern”), zealots of unrestrained modernisation have fetishised newness: conceptual constructs seem finally rid of the compulsion to eternally repeat the same over and over; new ideas, regardless of their actual merit, are perceived ipso jure superior to old ones; even language can’t tame the forces of change; instead, it is subordinated to them. What’s more, the terms that grant access to the valid-as-true have been accorded their own unique political correctness.

Talk of identity and difference must, then, take into account three facts: one, the discourse’s merciless intrusion into an already disturbed setting; two, the eagerness with which it is being imposed; and, three, the effortlessness with which it seems to be displacing the established order. Difference, suddenly and in stark contrast with the patterns that heretofore designated the political field, is no longer just a natural state, but a crucial claim. The unprecedented clamour of demands for recognition, talk of the individual’s right to difference, and issues surrounding multiculturalism all  herald an ideological turn with unpredictable consequences. When difference and multiculturalism take the place of homogeneity and unitarity, the very coordinates of social organisation are at stake.

This means that these notions at the core of the individual’s relation to the social collective will migrate to the centre of socio-political enquiry. Bearers of institutionalised and incontestable personal rights, individuals will have to embrace the additional task of determining their identity and carving out their own special otherness. Even if these developments do not immediately register as explicit regulatory adjustments, the shift in attitude is itself telling of a new era. Things are unfolding as if the now-distant existential uncertainty of the untroubled modern socio-political thought is forced to give way to an externally dictated and standardised conformity about primordial alterity. The already unconvincing answers to the question Who am I? are for the first time in recent history elevated to objects of systemic control. Identity is politicised.

This book looks at the historical conditions of this ideological remodelling. It focuses on the current political discourse that revolves around identity and difference, a discourse that seems entirely symptomatic of our times. Regardless of complex ethical parameters, underlying this ostensibly pathological obsession with individuality and freedom of choice, with collective identity, recognition1, and with difference2 is a widespread confusion caused by radical shifts in the historical function of social collectives and of the state. It doesn’t seem at all surprising that the sudden outburst of discussion about identities is gaining ground at a time when, one, the ideological cohesion and conceptual wholesomeness of liberal societies is in decline; and when, two, conventional understandings of the relation between individual and society, national and supranational, political and cultural, and, generally, between the individual and its social surrounding are all undergoing sweeping reforms. Seen in this light, the right to difference seems inextricably tied to a semantic redefinition of the conditions of differentiation within the social setting. If representations of the person’s place in the world and the terms used for understanding society as a solid and incontestable cultural unity are being reconsidered, the same will happen to the terms concerning human self-knowledge. And, if Gadamer was right when he wrote that “more than anything, understanding constitutes being and produces history”3, then we might indeed be at a turning point. Although it remains impossible to deduce any intention as such behind a historical happening that stubbornly refuses to end, we have every reason to believe—hope, even—that the period we are going through is transitional.

One thing is certain: as far as the terms that we use for understanding ourselves and society are concerned, the break with the recent past is by all means radical. Around the world, delineated and conceptually airtight socio-cultural schemes have been replaced by increasingly open, precarious, unruly even, social formations. The cohesion, stability, and self-sufficiency of grand narratives have been irrevocably compromised. Its political context aside, Thatcher’s emblematic catchphrase, “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women”, seems to capture the essence of an age when singular, imaginarily invested, and objectively definable collectives that sustained individuals have been replaced by a vitiating cluster of alternatives. Traditional forms of nostalgia and the societies that induced them will never be the same again. Solid and shared symbolic structures have found themselves knee-deep in boundless individualism, saturated with vague anti-statist sentiment, and corroded by the overabundance of irreconcilable signals, symbols, and choices, and can thus no longer function as the palpable reproductive hubs of meaning they once were.4 Those ideological bonding agents which guaranteed cultural homogeneity and regulatory independence in societies have been incapacitated, debilitated, and, worse, privatised. We are drifting within a constellation of universal haziness, increased vagueness, and semantic disorder. It has become harder to gauge the objective historical potency of reality whilst remaining capable of deciphering the meanings and limits of information.5 Even if we want to change the world, we have no idea how, or where to start, or what tools to use, or, even, what it is that we want to change.

To make matters worse, this lack of focus has distorted the psychological parameters of socialisation. It has weakened the reassuring sense of belonging to a finite, stable, and coherent social whole. Fewer people than ever seek to satisfy their practical or existential needs as members of some collective entity. Fewer, still, find comfort in the embrace of a multitude that allows them to express their impulses and manage—even possibly control—their inborn panics.6 Although people are still free not to overestimate the effectiveness of their personal desires and acts7 and whilst remaining cautious of the freedoms available to them8, even so, they are expected to toil in solitude to gain their own values and their own meanings, to understand the world and name its contents using their own terms, to choose their own course of action, and to solve their own problems, privately. The range of personal choice has expanded, offering abundant and often contradictory messages outside common networks of meanings and symbols.9 This type of freedom owes its appeal to the fact that, like the object of faith, it can be neither proven nor refuted10, which explains why it is being offered as both a universal cure and a placebo.11 But, like most conventional wisdoms, it too has proven to be spectacularly false: the expansion of liberties hasn’t delivered the dawn of a new age of reason we were promised. Our current convictions are neither more rational nor less irrational than the ones they deposed. On the contrary: disenchantment never seemed a more distant feat.12

2

TheFUTUREAppears

This book is divided in five parts. It begins with the claim that any understanding of identities and differences can only be socio-historical. The meaning and function of words is intrinsically bound to the particular conceptual schemes within which these words emerge. In this sense, the unfolding of social representations of identity must be placed inside a wider range of ideas that originated in eighteenth-century European thought. Whether legitimate children or bastards of the Enlightenment, we are all still clinging to its apron strings. Openly or not, we agree that all statements—including those that vainly try to elucidate the issue of who we are—must be articulated and substantiated rationally, and that they must comply with the fundamental, universal, and inalienable value of liberty.1 Before we can even pose a question, we must think and speak as rational and free agents.

This in itself was a historic break with the past. Ideas about the organisation and politics of society, about the meaning of selfhood and otherness, about being human, and about individual and collective identities were henceforth uncoupled (gradually and, when necessary, forcibly) from traditional irrational and illiberal (or pre-liberal) religious and ethnic origins. This made central again the primordial question of signalling the first-person plural, We. Future societies made up of free individuals would not be able to rely—at least not exclusively—on divine orders, straightforward and obvious cohabitation rules, or the whimsical expectations of the perennially oppressive ruling classes any more so than on the Aristotelian desire to live together. What we refer to as public, and its relation to the parts that inhabit and constitute it, would have to be justified and rationalised based on coherent and consistent principles.

As a result, those distinctly modern procedures that are responsible for generating and solidifying a nonintuitive ontological meaning for societies (and, for that matter, all collective entities) were born.2 Free and rational individuals were expected to join together and socialise as if convinced of both the necessity and the rationality of the whole, even if they didn’t believe in it. The ratio essendi of societies and groups, unnatural and forced as it is3, became the object of a wider theoretical enquiry, and the issue of establishing and rationalising organised authority as a lawful and rational community of free people was suddenly inescapable.

In this sense, the predominance of Rousseau’s rational and cohesive contractual societies, Herder’s historically rigid and necessary Volksgeist, and Hegel’s understanding of the state as the embodiment of the transcendental spirit, are all parts of the same historical and logical framework. Societies, being by definition contractual, national, and rational, must be perceived as both concrete and uniform closed political and cultural orders4 that can be legitimised as necessary and holistically constituted conceptual constructs.5 Under these conditions, notions surrounding the relationship of the individual with society would be placed at the centre of a new discourse that would fulfil the emerging functions, address the priorities of, and satisfy the notional prerequisites for the establishment of contemporary powers. As a result, contractual formations, enduring national cultures, and exclusive collective identities would be established within a common historical process. It looked as if the circle could close; maybe, even, be squared.

But, unsurprisingly, history had other plans. The prevalence of state nationalism established new threats to the dominant ideological, political, and conceptual harmony. From a very early stage, national and religious minorities challenged the authority of insulated national symbolic integrations. The creation of nation-state entities led to a spontaneous proliferation and hardening of unprecedented geopolitical and ideological reactions and tensions. The centripetal national identities destined to bring about the ultimate state came face-to-face with centrifugal minorities that threatened them anew with doctrinal imbalance and disorder.

Once again, it becomes clear that the backdrop against which conflicting powers are organised could not self-propagate as if rid of the historical rust that corrodes it. With history lurking ghostly in the wings, the imaginary of the political aspect of social uniformity, stubbornly impervious to rationalising constructs, is practically impossible to settle once and for all. In this sense, the proliferation of national minorities constitutes by itself a resistance to the idea of a nation. And for this very reason, minorities seem to always rise from their ashes like a mythical Phoenix, feeding off the scraps of new orders, and exposing them to new threats and challenges.

Chapter 4 looks at changes occurring in today’s world. In our so-called globalised world, the increasing transnational mobility of people, the opening up of borders, and the widespread dominance of capitalist forms of social organisation have engendered decisive displacements in the terms used for understanding collective identity.6 Against these erratic, fluctuating, hybrid social embodiments, the dominant discourse will need to venture into unfamiliar interpretive territory if it wants to imagine anew its structural prescriptions. The rigorous distinction between private and public spheres will be relativised; the relationship between political and financial powers will be redesigned; and the strict separation of state and society will be weakened. Since traditionally solid and recognisable national cultures can no longer pose as unquestionable, overarching, and inalienable collective values, power structures will have to invent increasingly imaginative ways to handle unpredictability and uncertainty, contain randomness, and deal with precariousness and impermanence. Naturally, the conditions for wedding reality’s functional and organisational aspects to its symbolic substance must shift. The struggle against entropic forces will take place elsewhere; the need for social reproduction will move in new directions; and the demand for cohesion will be invested with a new ideological and political terminology. The forms of signalling and reproducing shared values and the organised social being will never be the same.

The following chapter (Chapter 5) addresses some of the ideological consequences of these new forms of socio-political instability. Indeed, the debasement of the concept of nation-state and the rise of individual cultural self-determination seem to go hand in hand with the triumph and glorification of rampant self-centredness, with the end of public accountability, and with the privatisation of responsibility for one’s life. It’s not a coincidence that although many traditional forms of socialisation (especially education) have remained in the hands of nation-states, their objective is drifting farther away from the original mission of instilling and cultivating common values and ideals (universal or local) into members of society. In the coming years, the main duty of ideological mechanisms will be breeding autonomously competitive, professionally potent, voluntarily acquiescent, and ungrudgingly domesticated individuals. The demand for a collectively advancing symbolic harmony and cohesion will be replaced by the demand for the best possible instrumental acclimation of each person separately to a wider, ungovernable, open environment. The disenthralment of societies from specificity means people will become static notional matrices.

Chapter 6 deals with the specific consequences of these new models of socialisation on the structure and function of mechanisms responsible for the reproduction of social relations, particularly in the case of education. The deregulation of welfare states and the enfeeblement of labour welfare contributed massively to the intensification of a global and at the same time endemic survival uncertainty which not only overdetermines workplace conditions, but also influences socialisation. For instance, instead of the now-neglected demand for guaranteed employment within a consistently stratified world, we get the fanciful idea of lifelong learning which ensures that competitive individuals can constantly restock their skills and cognitive reserve to find a place within a workforce that appears to be naturally volatile. Socialisation, then, becomes the process of ingraining individualistic industrial vigour that an unpredictably developing job market might only retrospectively recognise, and possibly reward. And in this sense, people are appointed not only in charge of, but also accountable for, their own professional future. Their constantly and freely available personality is their only inalienable property. Self-differentiation has ceased being an ordinary and dispassionate cultural fact; as the object of a universal prescription, it has been elevated to a tactical priority.

Finally, Chapter 7 reveals the unforeseen political aspects of those transformations. Idiosyncratic cultural emancipation cannot be seen separately from changes in the methods and objectives of power—it goes hand in hand with the establishment of an entire network of social relationships where the whole renounces not only its pastoral duties but also its symbolic jurisdiction. Everything seems to be taking place as if the right to difference and the demand for individual cultural self-determination are solutions to a problem: a social, ideological, and political problem that happens to coincide with the decline of all the mechanisms responsible for protecting and caring after people who have no options except those which they deserve. In our contemporary risk societies7, the main objective of socialisation seems to be privatising liability and implementing a choice-based versatility vis-à-vis the challenges posed by ever-changing circumstances and lurking dangers.