Ugo/liquidmodernity

LIQUID MODERNITY – Zygmunt BAUMAN, Polity Press, 2012 (First ed. 2000)

The metaphor of liquidity apply to the current form of life. Exploring the challenges of human togetherness. Human societies in an “interregnum” era, where old and inherited ways are not suitable for the current conditio humana, but when the new ways of tackling challenges and new modes of life better suited to the new condition have not as yet been invented, set in operation. We don't have a clear image of destination, wich needs to be a model of global society / economy / politics / jurisdiction.

Feels like power (the ability to do things) has been separated from politics (the ability to decide wich things need to be done and given priority). Confusion about who is going to do it.

Modernization is a compulsive continuous process. Forms of modern life differs but are united in their fragility, temporariness, vulnerability and inclination to constant change.

“ To “be modern” means to modernize compulsively, obsessively; not so much “to be”, let alone to keep its identity intact, but forever “becoming”, avoiding completion, staying underdefined.”

Replacing Post- by Liquid- modernity. Change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty. 100Yds ago, to be modern meant to chase the final state of perfection , now it means an infinity of improvement, with no final state in sighted and none desired.

Solid to liquid. Flexibility replace solidity as the ideal condition to be pursued of things and affairs. Fully biodegradable structures, starting to disintegrate the moment they have been assembled. Biodegradable s a standard in flexibility.

The appearance of the fear of things fixed too firmly, is the start of the paradigm. The shift in modern paradigm, from: Change view as a transition period, a movement towards the vision of an order, a socio-economical ideal, a synthesis. A self-equilibrating system. REF Marx – Capital as a transition period?

Primitive accumulation of capital (China, Taiwan. Chile, South Korea..) “The course things are taking is bound to shock its victims and collateral casualties, and produce potentially explosive social tensions wich have to be suppressed by up-and-coming entrepreneurs and merchants, with the help of a powerful and merciless, coercive state dictatorship”

Liquidity is caused primary by derugulation (separation power/politics) The condition of resolidificaion to go out of this state rules by uncertainty.

Europe and migration – Massimo D'Alema statement (Le monde 2011). Europe needs 30millions newcomers in next 40 years to support the economy. (birth rate is going down) https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2011/05/10/l-europe-a-besoin-d-immigres-pour-garantir-son-niveau-de-developpement_1519682_3232.html

A: The life saving role played by immigrants in a fast ageing Europe? B: The power-abetted and power-assisted rise in xenophobic sentiments eagerly recycled into electoral capital?

Foreword: On Being Light and Liquid

Liquid state achieved by melting the solids, to link with Max Weber Rationalisation. Melting the solids (traditional values, norms...) left the network of social relations unstuck, unprotected, unarmed and exposed, impotent to resis the business-inspired rules of action, business-shaped criteria of rationality.

“That fateful deparure laid the field open to the invasion and domination of (Max Weber) instrumental rationality (4 types, Formal, Substantial,Theoretical, Pratical), or (like Karl Marx) the determining role of economy: now the basis of all social life AKA superstructure. Melting of solids led to a new order defined primarily in economic terms.

... p8 Main attribute of modernity is the changing relationship between space and time. Modernity starts when time and space are separated from living practice, from each other, ready to be theorized as distinct and mutually independent categories of strategies and action. In modernity Time got History because of his perpetually expanding carrying capacity of time. Time acquires history once the speed of movement through space becomes a matter of human ingenuity, imagination and resourcefulness. Space was the solid, time made it flexible by speed? Conquest of space? Time was the active and dynamic side in the battle, on the offensive, the invading, conquering and colonizing force. Velocity of movement and access to faster means of mobility rose to the position of the principal tool of power and domination. REF- Panopticon Foucault/Bentham, surveillants facility of movement was the warrant of their domination. Inmates fixedness. Pyramid of power and domination, built out of velocity, access to means of transportation and the resulting freedom of movement. The routinization of the time-rhythm of the subordonates.

Power can now move with the speed of the electronic signal. Instantaneity. Power has become exterritorial. Post-panopticon power, people responsible can escape anymoment beyond reach, in panopticon, they needed to be there. The end of the era of mutual engagement: between the supervisor and supervised, capital and labour, leaders and followers, armies at war. The prime technique of the power is now escape, slippage, elision and avoidance. War dont wants to take over the territory, wants to crush the walls witch stopped the flow of new fluid global powers, open the space to non-militarry arm of power. War today looks like a promotion of global free trade by other means (Clausewitz's).

1 EMANCIPATION

2 INDIVIDUALITY

3 TIME / SPACE

4 WORK

5 COMMUNITY