Abstract
Acceleration and globalization are generally considered as the fundamental aspects of modernity’s experience of, respectively, time and space. The precedence given to these forces over their opposites of deceleration and localization seems, however, to be an ideological imposition (imposture). Modernity’s spatio-temporal experience results in being characterized by the contemporary operativity of both the spatial and temporal opposite forces. Modernity will thus result in being the epoch that is signed, from its very beginning, by perennial crisis. Considering the analogousness of living in perennial crisis and in living in Limbo, living in the modern world is, as such, equal to living in Limbo.
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Notes
- 1.
It is thus not very surprising to discover, with Hartmut Rosa, that if there is a concept (exorbitantly enormous as it is) that is under-researched in a not self-evident, not all too specific, or reassuming way (there are as much theories of ‘time’ as there are scholars who have written on this topic), then it is the concept of ‘time’ (cf. Rosa 2015, 2); Saint Augustine’s enigmatic statement about time: ‘What is time? When no one asks me, I know. But if I seek to explain it to someone who asks me about it, then I do not’ (Augustine 2006, II, XIV, 17; 254) is still the most quoted one in scholarly work.
- 2.
Mentioning theories of ‘acceleration’ (even acceleration of time) should not frighten or worry the reader. We are not entering the sphere of astrophysics. What is at stake in these theories (as we will be able to discover shortly) is the attempt to understand how ‘everything’ (something which will be disproven) seems to be ‘going faster’. This ‘going faster’ (or process of acceleration) is evident in a variety of fields we encounter daily: forms of transportation that go much faster than before (if they already existed), the changes of trends and ‘fads’, the presence of expiry dates of products that is no longer in a distant future but in the near future (generally the day after the insurance expires), and so on.
- 3.
The concept ‘dromocratic’ derives from the Greek word ‘dromos’ which means race.
- 4.
Acceleration is defined by Rosa as ‘an increase in quantity per unit of time’ and a variety of ‘things may serve as the quantity measured: distance traveled, total number of communicated messages, amount of goods produced or the number of jobs per working lifetime or change in intimate partners per year or action episodes per unit per time’ (Rosa 2015, 65).
- 5.
That one can consider the mere existence of forces of resistance to acceleration, or simply forces of inertia, indicates that the superficial statement that ‘everything is acceleration’ is misleading if not simply wrong (cf. Rosa 2015, 151).
- 6.
According to Rosa, it is Francis Fukuyama’s famous declaration of the ‘end of history’ that is at stake here. We do have our serious reservations with this affirmation. Fukuyama’s theorization of the ‘end of history’ can hardly be seen as pronouncing or belonging to the category of boredom or existential ennui caused by a sense of being overwhelmed by the pace of life, let alone can it be compared or likened to categories of ‘“exhaustion of utopian energies”…and the “utopia of the zero-option”’ (Rosa 2015, 89) as Rosa does. The end of history was, as he wrote in the opening paragraph of his famous article entitled ‘The End of History?’: ‘the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’ (Fukuyama 1989). Although Fukuyama admits that this end of history will be somewhat boring and not the most creative of times, there is no exhaustion here, but, on the contrary, the (delusive) claim that ‘all the big questions had been settled’ (Fukuyama 1992, xii). Maybe real life was not up to date yet, but that would soon come. In the meantime, Fukuyama has also somewhat come back on his thesis, claiming (rather belatedly) that history may not have ended as there is no end to science (Fukuyama 2002, xii; 15).
- 7.
This idea is not an uncommon one—something which Rosa also admits. Not only is it present in Bauman’s Liquid Modernity —‘What prompts so many commentators to speak of the “end of history”, of postmodernity, “second modernity” and “supermodernity”, …, is the fact that the long effort to accelerate the speed of movement has presently reached its “natural limit”’ (Bauman 2000, 10)—it was also already rather prophetically present in Jean Baudrillard’s statement about a ‘system [that] rides roughshod over its own basic assumptions, supersedes its own end, so that no remedy can be found’ (Baudrillard 1993, 32). What one contemplates then is simple catastrophe.
- 8.
Although on more than one occasion, Rosa also identifies the relationship between the powers of acceleration and the powers of rigidification/deceleration as dialect (e.g., Rosa 2015, 283; 287). The dialectics at stake are very different than the one intended by Noys.
- 9.
This is similar to Heidegger’s Seinsvergessenheit (to which it [in-]directly returns as a sort of homage). These founding oppositional concepts of philosophy (and its history) are, according to Derrida, the true forgotten angular stones of Western philosophy.
- 10.
Deconstruction is, in fact—and contrary to what many of its critics have ignorantly proclaimed—, not to be considered as some sort of destructive or nihilistic fury that wants to liberate itself of the Western philosophical tradition.
- 11.
Michael Naas has written an excellent chapter (‘A Given Take: The Platonic Reception of Plato in the Pharmacy’) in his Taking on the Tradition. Jacques Derrida and the Legacies of Deconstruction (Naas 2003, 3–21) that treats the same topic I am about to confront.
- 12.
Rosa speaks of a German rather poetic translation of Virilio’s ‘polar inertia’ into ‘frenetic standstill’ (Rosa 2015, 15; e.a.). This is, indeed, quite an interesting translation. As Jonathan Trejo-Mathys (the translator of Rosa’s Social Acceleration) correctly remarks, ‘frenetic standstill’ becomes a ‘central theorem of his theory of acceleration’ (Rosa 2015, 335, n. 56) rather than accurately referring to Virilio’s binomial. In the series of interviews with Virilio collected by John Armitage entitled Virilio Live (2001), one of the interviewers has another ‘metaphor’ up his sleeve, namely ‘frenzied hyperactivity’. It is interesting to note how Virilio quite cynically ignores this observation (he responds, ‘when I use the term “polar inertia”’ without adding what could have been a good interpretation—but is more than probably not considered as such by Virilio) and repeats the fact that what is referred to is absolute speed and a sort of paralysis, of paralyzing inertia (Armitage 2001, 154–155).
- 13.
Rosa agrees on the paradigmatic relevance of the treadmills in the fitness studios (see Rosa 2015, 363, n. 44). He, however, sees this as an example of acceleration induced paradoxical situation of ‘speeding standstill’ missing out on the true autonomous meaning of this paradox.
- 14.
Politics, furthermore, seems to be very capable of keeping up with the pace (if not still setting the pace of) the processes of acceleration—if there is a missing out, it does, more than probably, not result from systemic or endemic incapacity, but of personal and mental incapability of the majority of the contemporary political class (Max Weber’s statement on the ‘revolutionary state’ that ‘complete amateurs have been handed power over the administration … and they wish for nothing better than to use the trained officials as executive heads and hands’ (Weber 2004, 49) is still more than appropriate, probably it is more so now than it ever was in the beginning of the twentieth century). If one looks at the traditional political institutions (and its physical buildings as well), then one cannot but think that politics is completely out of pace. However, politics is, already since a while, no longer happening there. Politics is now being done on the screens of the more traditional means of the media, but above all on Twitter and Facebook—perfectly in line (also as far its content—its ephemeral presence/absence game—is concerned) with its times.
- 15.
For a series of examples (especially from the field of religion) on this hypertrophy of law, see Benson and Bussey (2017).
- 16.
The capacity of inclusion and exclusion allows, for example, for crackpots to be immediately (or, at least, quickly) fall through the maze, but, on the other hand, it can also avoid for true and fundamental innovations to be accepted, as was, for example, the case with Mendel and his ‘fellow’ biologists in the nineteenth century and a series of other scientists before and after him.
- 17.
Rosanvallon is correct to stress the need of some rehabilitation of the political distrust. It is, in fact, an increasingly important, albeit an inherently ambivalent, aspect of our contemporary democratic institutions as it can reinforce or contradict democracy as such (cf. Rosanvallon 2012, 24).
- 18.
This is what Streeck calls, a ‘theory of the “common pool”’ (Streeck 2014, 47–48) and is the standard economy theory of politics that explains ‘the crisis of public finances in terms of failure of democracy’. Streeck also underwrites a similar theory. However, for him the failure is not on the part of the electorate but of capital (and its management).
- 19.
The problem of ‘money’ is reversed on ‘time’ which is being ‘bought’, giving somewhat of a cynical twist to Jefferson’s statement that ‘time is money’.
- 20.
This second revolution, which is mainly due to the invention of ‘print’ (with all its implications—identical reproduction, mechanization, etc.)—‘a delirium…. A transformation and metamorphosing drug that has the power of imposing its assumptions upon every lever of consciousness’ (McLuhan 1962, 259–260)—is the main thematic of his The Gutenberg Galaxy.
- 21.
The third revolution is the ‘electrical revolution’—we are living in a ‘new electric structuring and configuring of life’ (McLuhan 1994, 26)—and is the topic of Understanding Media.
- 22.
In the end, it seems that Gutenberg’s contribution to his own invention (huge as this was) was rather modest. All the components needed to create the printing press were already known, he (simply) brought them together in the fifteenth century. McLuhan goes even so far and ponders upon the question what Gutenberg actually invented: ‘Usher has made it plain that the cluster of events and technologies that got together in the mind and age of Gutenberg is quite opaque. Nobody is today prepared to say even what it was the Gutenberg invented’ (McLuhan 1962, 154).
- 23.
‘The feudal system was based on oral culture and self-contained system of centres-without-margins, …’ (McLuhan 1962, 162).
- 24.
‘Printed books, themselves the first uniform, repeatable, and mass-produced items in the world, provided endless paradigms of uniform commodity culture for sixteenth and succeeding centuries’ (McLuhan 1962, 163).
- 25.
For some, it is a cultural ‘movement’, for others, a sociopolitical one, and for others still—like, for example, the former ‘guru’ turned into fierce enemy of globalization, Joseph E. Stiglitz—globalization is first and foremost an economic concept. For Stiglitz, globalization consists solely in ‘the removal of barriers of free trade and the closer integration of national economies’ (Stiglitz 2002, ix).
- 26.
One could, in fact, wonder about acceleration’s capacity to destroy, much earlier than it would be able to destroy space, time itself. This idea is, for example, proposed by Bernard Stiegler when he thinks about industrial’s calendarity that is capable of destroying time (cf. Stiegler 2009, 52). Bauman gives this time-space plot another twist when he writes that ‘[P]erhaps, having killed space as value, time has committed suicide?’ (Bauman 2000, 118–119).
- 27.
We have already seen how acceleration, as understood by McLuhan, actually stood in service of the spatial dimension. It was, in fact, the process of acceleration that made the simultaneous experiences of the tribalized fragmentation in the new global village possible.
- 28.
Besides these general affirmations of the simultaneousness of the mechanical age and the electrical age, a manifold of examples can be brought forth (offered by McLuhan himself) that speak against the accuracy of the story of the replacement of the effects of the mechanical age by those of the electrical one.
- 29.
For the first version to even hint at accuracy, it would need another theory, namely the theory of the ‘Break boundary’ as it was theorized by Kenneth Boulding (Boulding 1963, 73) and re-proposed by McLuhan (cf. McLuhan 1994, 38), a copy of which we have also found in Rosa’s theory of ‘surpassing the threshold’ (see Sect. 3.1). McLuhan, however, never elaborated this theory.
- 30.
It should be noted here, that the title of Nancy’s volume translated as The Creation of the World or Globalization was not La Création du monde ou la globalisation but La Création du monde ou la mondialisation .
- 31.
The expression ‘the sense of the world’ is, according to Nancy, clearly a tautological one (cf. Nancy 1997, 8).
- 32.
Derrida refers to similar conditions when talking about birth. In ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ he writes: ‘I employ these words, I admit, with a glance toward the operations of childbearing—but also with a glance toward those who, in a society from which I do not exclude myself, turn their eyes away when faced by the as yet unnamable which is proclaiming itself and which can do so, as is necessary whenever birth is in the offing, only under the species of the nonspecies, in the formless, mute, infant, and terrifying form of monstrosity’ (Derrida 2001, 370).
- 33.
It should thus not surprise that the inaugurating battle of modernity, the French Revolution, was fought principally in the city of Paris. Waterloo was the last spasm of the old regime and this style of warfare disappeared with Napoleon’s defeat.
- 34.
The idea of New York being the ‘capital of the globe’ is shared by one of the most important scholars of the city, Joseph Rykwert (2002, 188). Edward W. Soja, another scholar of the modern city, is of the opinion that it is Los Angeles that holds the scepter of being the center of the world: ‘Los Angeles, in another paradoxical twist, has, more than any other place, become the paradigmatic window through which to see the last half of the twentieth century’ (Soja 1989, 221).
- 35.
Obviously, the first dominant cities did not stand at the center of a global world. With every new societal form the embraced space underwent massive expansion. And although the cities themselves grew, its centers became ever more concentrated.
- 36.
This view of mirroring reciprocity between the ‘global’ and the local is shared by Rykwert’s colleague Edward Soja. In his extremely interesting study on Los Angeles, he claims that ‘Los Angeles provides an exaggerated case of more general national trends’ (Soja 1989, 210) to which we could add, global trends.
- 37.
Purgatory has, in fact, only one direction and conclusion, namely Heaven.
- 38.
For as much as Purgatory could be considered as the correct mirroring image of the city, what is at stake is a similar operation as the one we already discovered as described by Milton in his Paradise Lost. Just like those Milton takes pride in (justly) ridiculing as being headed for Heaven (in their hopes and wishes at least) but who were coast (and cast) away by means of a violent cross-wind into the Paradise of Fools, so also the citizens (the members of the basically economical un-world) mainly consist of those who pray and hope for Purgatory but get carried away by a stern cross-wind (caused mainly by climate-change induced radical weather) straight into the still existing Paradise of Fools. A Paradise of Fools that was, as we can recall, named Limbo.
- 39.
To phrase it different with Zygmunt Bauman, cities are ‘swiftly turning from shelters against danger into danger’s principal source’ (Bauman 2007, 72).
- 40.
Lefebvre, interestingly, describes this paradoxical state of the city—as being a locus of Hell and of culture—as part of the city’s double legacy, respectively, the city’s Jewish legacy and the city’s Greek legacy (cf. Lefebvre 1996, 205–206). According to Lefebvre, this double and paradoxical legacy still has reverberations on the modern city as we still ‘haven’t resolved the contradiction between these two traditions’ (Lefebvre 1996, 206). One could judge this double paradoxical Jewish–Greek legacy of the city as a ‘mythological’ translation (and further confirmation) of the contemporary operativity of the spatial opposite’s we have been attempting to establish throughout this chapter.
- 41.
The conviction of the city being the (only) place to start the overcoming of our current socio-politico-economic impasse has been recently re-proposed by David Harvey (2012).
- 42.
It is quite interesting how this idea of ‘suspended judgment’ reminds us of Simon Critchley’s ‘production of a crisis’ we briefly discussed in Sect. 4.2. Both ideas intend to stress the necessity of the critical attitude, but, most interestingly of all, they do this in a very contradictory way, the one from the other. If Russell wants to temporarily suspend judgment/crisis, Critchley intends to accelerate and even inaugurate crisis: to judge.
- 43.
Although this translation might be considered somewhat provocative, it is perfectly defendable. As we already indicated, the concept of crisis derived from the Greek word krinō which means, among a series of other possibilities, to judge. That ‘suspension’ has been substituted by the qualifier ‘perennial’ relates to the particular operation that is put in action by this qualifier as we discussed in Sect. 4.4 and will briefly summarize in a short while. This operation we defined as ‘logoration’ or exhaustion, as the excavation of the soil of the present, its postponement or procrastination, terms, these last, which in the end, can be considered (following the thesaurus) as synonymous with suspension.
- 44.
It is necessary to remind ourselves of the desire of Janet Roitman, as we noted in Sect. 4.2, to suspend judgment about all the claims to crisis. Something which, as we can reaffirm, is a means to uphold the state of perennial crisis.
- 45.
Herbert Marcuse seems to have shared this prophetic idea of Baudrillard when he claimed that, at least in merely political terms, the greatest peril did not come from a bad and lethargic society, but ‘from the affluent society,…, not from a poor society, not from a disintegrating society,…, but from a society which develops to a great extent the material and even cultural needs of man—a society which,…, delivers the goods to an ever larger part of the population’ (Marcuse 2015, 176). It is from this society that, Marcuse claims, we need to liberate ourselves from. In fact, it is only in this type of so-called ‘good’ and ‘happy’ society—which is modernity’s society—that one is subject to the operativity of ‘perennial crisis’.
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Vanhoutte, K.K.P. (2018). Modernity: A Limboic Fool’s Paradise. In: Limbo Reapplied. Radical Theologies and Philosophies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_5
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