Society of Singularities. Andreas Reckwitz
Late Modernity: Competitive Singularities, Hyperculture, and Polarization
In various constellations, processes of culturalization and singularization have thus existed throughout all of social history. In late modernity, however, they have acquired a new quantity and quality. To visualize this proliferation of the particular, look no further than NASA’s satellite images of Earth’s city lights, which show the continents at night and thus underscore the bright illumination of the world’s large cities. In a similar way, it is possible to imagine all of today’s acknowledged singularities – all of the unique objects, subjects, places, events, and collectives, which are spread across the globe in a sea of social practices and which stand out, on account of their affective heat, like brightly shining points and paths. If one were to look at similar pictures taken from the years 0, 1200, 1800, 1900, 1950, 1980, and 2000, there would certainly be a few bright points and paths to see – the old rites and magi, the churches and courtly societies, the Romantic communities and bourgeois theaters, the cinemas and the stars – but as of 1980 one would notice an explosion of brightness. Of course, not everything has been illuminated, because the logic of the general still exists in the background. But what was once the exception is now the rule: ours is a society of singularities.
In late modernity, the social logic of singularization, which is also the logic of culturalization and the intensification of affect, has become structurally formational for all of society. Since the 1970s or 1980s, the culture of the particular, which has been present since the beginning of modernity but was subordinate to the logic of the general, has itself become structurally formational on a large scale. Both the status and form of formal rationalization and its logic of the general have accordingly changed. As I have already said on several occasions, they have increasingly become a background structure – a general infrastructure for singularities. Especially in the propagation of global markets and technologies, the phenomenon of “doing generality” in globalized late modernity is obvious, but upon closer inspection it functions in many respects as a condition of possibility for the processes and arenas of singularization.
What are the causes that have led to the primacy of the logic of singularities? The transformation from organized modernity to late modernity has been due to a historical coincidence of three factors, each of which has been gaining strength since the 1970s. The three factors are the following: the socio-cultural revolution of authenticity, sustained by the lifestyle of the new middle class; the transformation of the economy into a post-industrial economy of singularities; and the technical revolution of digitalization. Their context warrants a more detailed examination.
Since the 1970s, a fundamental structural transformation has taken place in formerly industrial societies, and this has been a transformation of culture and values as well. At its heart stands the new middle class, which owes its existence to the expansion of educational opportunities and is characterized by its high cultural capital.19 In this sense, the new middle class is an educated middle class that has been active primarily in the knowledge and culture economy of post-industrial society and has been the latter’s most important standard bearer. This socio-structural transformation was accompanied by a transformation of values, over the course of which the values of materialism, duty, and acceptance, which were characteristic of industrial modernity, were replaced by a post-materialistic orientation toward self-development and actualization.20 The leading measures by which people orient their lifestyles have thus changed from those of the general and functional to those of culture and the particular. The old, rationalistic measure of one’s standard of living has been superseded by the measure of one’s quality of life. The authenticity of the self has thus gained an enormous amount of significance. One’s self should now develop into its uniqueness, and the pursuit of correspondingly authentic experiences (at work, at leisure, and in one’s private life) has become a leitmotif. All of this has added up to an authenticity revolution. This transformation of values is linked to modernity’s tradition of cultural and aesthetic counter-movements, which began with Romanticism and has ranged from the life-reform movement to the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. The counterculture, which is rather superficially understood with the label “1968,” represents a historical link between the cultural counter-movement of Romanticism and the new middle class. Romanticism’s comprehensive program of culturalization and singularization, which was historically no more than a subcultural phenomenon, became for the first time the central force behind the lifestyle of society’s most influential population.
Parallel to and interwoven with the rise of this new, authenticity-oriented middle class, a structural transformation of the capitalist economy has also been taking place since the 1970s. Essentially, the latter has transformed from an industrial economy into a knowledge and culture economy – an economy of singularities with the creative economy at its center. At the same time, the related technological revolution of digitalization has also taken place. This has given rise to a historically unprecedented infrastructure for the systematic and expansive fabrication of singularities and culture. Together, the economy and technology have formed a global cultural-creative complex. Whereas the economy and technology of classical modernity were elementary engines of rationalization and standardization, the tides have now turned: the practices of production, observation, and evaluation have become engines for manufacturing cultural singularities. Cultural capitalism and computer networks are the driving force behind the expansive culturalization of the economy and technology. They have created an institutional structure that actively fulfills the formerly Romantic but now middle-class desire for the singularization and culturalization of the world. It goes without saying that this new structure has not left subjects and lifestyles unchanged.
Although the three factors that brought about the transition from industrial modernity to late modernity are each characterized by their own dynamics and relative autonomy, they have also influenced and enhanced one another. The genesis of the new middle class and its shift in values can be traced back to the unique educational dynamics of the twentieth century, as well as to the intrinsic logic of the cultural movements and lifestyles that have been going on since bourgeois modernity and Romanticism. At first, the rise of the post-industrial and post-Fordistic economy also followed an internal economic logic and can be understood as a reaction to the market saturation of standardized goods at the beginning of the 1970s, as well as a reaction to the automation of industrial production and the fundamental crisis of the Fordistic logic of acquisition and accumulation.21 The digital revolution ultimately began along the inherently technical (and military-sponsored) path toward developing the computer and digital networks.22
All three factors, however, are interlocked with one another. The new middle class has found professional employment in the knowledge and culture economy and, to satisfy its desire for authenticity, has acquired the broadest variety of cultural singularity goods. Cultural capitalism has not only responded to this demand but has further intensified it, thereby expanding the pool of singular goods and discourses of valorization (which now concern such things as education, cities, and religion). Finally, digitalization has been used and further developed in a specific way to satisfy the desires for communication, presentation, and consumption that characterize the late-modern subject and cultural capitalism. These new technological means simultaneously promote the singularization and culturalization of subjects and goods alike.
By mutually supporting each other in this way, the three factors in question have also changed their shape. The economy of singularities, the digital culture machine, and the new middle class (with its lifestyle of successful self-actualization) have each acquired their characteristic form from this constellation. Their coincidence is thus not without historical irony. After all, the Romantic image of culture and its singularities had implied that the latter could only exist outside of and in opposition to the economy and technology, which were regarded as large-scale equalizers and agents of utility. In late modernity, the Romantic orientation toward singularization may have become socially dominant for the first time, but this was only able to happen on account of the development of expansive economic and media-technological structures. Over the course of this process, however, post-materialism was also transformed.
Together, cultural capitalism and digital computer networks have institutionalized