Bauman, Elias and Latour on Modernity and Its Alternatives. Sandro Segre
“world devoid of visible structure and any—however sinister—logic.” “Overwhelming and self-perpetuating uncertainty” prevails nowadays as a consequence (Bauman 1997: 25). This change, Bauman argues, has been so significant that the term of modernity should be replaced by that of postmodernity. Uncertainty, which is its defining feature, can be gauged and assessed according to the following aspects:
(1) First of all, a new world disorder; for this new world is connoted by the contrast between a few “wealthy, but worried and unself-assured” countries and the rest of the world, which depends on them for its survival but no longer abides by “their definition of progress and happiness”; (2) second, the “universal deregulation,” as pointed by “the unbounded freedom granted to capital and finance” at the expense of the Welfare State and labor legislation; (3) moreover, the falling apart or considerable weakening of the neighborhood and family relations. In their stead, a “ruling spirit of consumerism” now prevails that casts the other merely as “the potential source of pleasurable experience,” rather than as a steady and reliable interaction partner; (4) finally, and as a consequence, a world in which there are no more stable bonds and identities (Bauman 1997: 22–25; see also 1987a: 3–4); in which, therefore, what is defined as public intrudes into the private realm, and privacy, secrecy, intimacy and human bonds are “collateral casualties” of liquid modernity (Bauman 2011b: 83–93).
Postmodernity differs from modernity also in their worldview, as formulated and carried into practice by intellectuals. Bauman, accordingly, distinguishes between two historical periods. Modernity is connoted by “the power/knowledge syndrome.” Intellectuals—a previously nonexisting category of people—draw on the Enlightenment legacy in their attempt to obtain mastery over nature and society. Both are considered predictable and amenable to domination. The resources and skills of the State are enlisted to this end. Postmodernity has a quite different worldview, one that is connoted by the intellectuals’ abandonment of their ambitions to control society and nature. The intellectuals’ new self-ascribed role is no longer to legislate on the world, but rather to interpret it by virtue of their superior knowledge (Bauman 1987b: 2–6). Interpreting, in this case, means “translating statements, made within one communally based tradition, so that they can be understood within the system of knowledge based on another tradition” (Bauman 1987b: 5).
This role, which intellectuals have conferred to themselves, has been especially noteworthy in their “intellectual romance with the ‘proletariat’ of the modern factories” (Bauman 1987b: 175). Bauman refers here to its passage from “class in itself” to “class for itself.” The passage occurs as the proletariat acquires a revolutionary class consciousness building on “a theory of society and history.” In a work of the early eighties (Bauman 1982), Bauman has argued that the revolutionary class consciousness was not so much caused by vindications of the right to the whole product of labor, but rather by the attempt to resist to “the new power’s bid for the total control over body and soul of the producer” (Bauman 1982; 17–18). It was, in other words, a power struggle concerning production, rather than distribution, relations in capitalist societies. This struggle, Bauman has maintained, cannot therefore be interpreted in economic terms as a rational attempt to control and manage the surplus by bargaining, but as one to assert the workers’ autonomy in the factory.
In the present stage of late industrial society, however, there is no longer a class that represents and promotes social interests in general; rather, an “intricate network of systemic interdependencies” (Bauman 1982: 29) now prevails, while the State provides the necessary link between the particular interests represented by specific groups and movements. Accordingly, the tensions that beset the social and political systems do not originate from antagonistic class interests. Instead, they originate from the inability of the State to satisfy incongruent interests; to deal with the malfunctions of neo-corporatist arrangements; and to overcome the inequalities and deprivations that are inherent to present-day capitalism, and that stem, at least in part, from massive unemployment (Bauman 1987a: 8–9). Remedies to the current crisis of late industrial society must be sought in the social and political emancipation of the groups that are affected by these inequalities and deprivations. Their causes, however, must be correctly interpreted and accounted for.
Only “professional intellectual” can formulate a theory of society and history, as Bauman has argued in a subsequent work (Bauman 1987b: 175). Hence, the intellectuals’ privileged role as interpreters of the proletariat’s historic interest. This role, as intellectuals conceived of it, belongs to the bygone age of modernity, however, as interpretations can no longer in this age impact on social or political reality. As a Bauman’s commentator has stated, however, “what we cannot do, for Bauman, is to translate this interpretation directly into legislation” (Beilharz 2000: 81). Modernity being a failed project (Bauman 1987b: 191), global projects have been abandoned in this postmodern age. Therefore, “no social group or category of the postindustrial world seems to be fit for the role set aside by the history-as-rationalization theory for the ‘agent of Reason’” (Bauman 1987b: 194). Bauman, however, has not relinquished Marxism as a tool for sociological analysis; for a Marxist analysis involves looking for “a class whose sufferings are radical,” whose members are most affected by the “rapidly spreading areas of deprivation” (Bauman 1987a: 9).
As a global society no longer offers stability and security, freedom in today’s world is granted to and enjoyed only by those who possess “skills and resources” (Bauman 1997: 27). These people commit themselves to a lifestyle that is connoted by “looseness of attachment and revocability of engagement” (Bauman 2005:4). They can afford to be the pleasure-seeking and the well-to-do customers of fashionable restaurants and other city amenities. They are the modern-city residents, secure in their fortified and well-policed homes and neighborhoods. Their residential areas are sharply separated from those where the inhabitants of other city areas live, and especially from the poor. Today’s poor are a collateral casualty of our “liquid” times. Bauman finds the “rapidly growing inequality on a global scale replicated “inside virtually every single ‘national society’” (Bauman 1997: 58). “Emerging post-modern circumstances”—signally, “the newly legalized post-modern self-centeredness and indifference”—may be conducive to “new outbursts of savage misanthropy” (Bauman 1991: 260).
This condition of social deprivation is permanent in polarized postmodern and global societies. Bauman describes them as societies of consumers, and he devotes a work to deal specifically with this subject. A society in keeping with this description “promotes, encourages or enforces the choice of a consumerist lifestyle and life strategy,” while other life options are discouraged and negatively sanctioned (Bauman 2007: 53). Consumers’ desires are continuously stimulated, while consumption becomes a moral duty (Bauman and Mazzeo 2012: 116–17); their satisfaction, however, is always postponed. Consumer or “liquid” society, therefore, “manages to render non-satisfaction permanent,” as those hopes of fulfillment are bound to be forever frustrated (Bauman 2005: 81–82). The past times of “solid modernity” was based on production. In contrast, “the way present-day society shapes its members is dictated first and foremost by the duty to play the role of the consumer” (Bauman 1998a: 80). Heavy social penalties are inflicted on the individuals who cannot play this role because they are poor.
The polarization process of postmodern society has enlarged the gulf between the rich and the poor; that is, in keeping with Bauman’s well-known metaphor, between the tourists and the vagabonds (Bauman