Interregnum: Beyond Liquid Modernity

By Carlo Bordoni

Challenging the thought of Zygmunt Bauman on the subject of liquid modernity, where everything has become unstable, precarious and uncertain, Carlo Bordoni (author with Bauman of »State of Crisis«) proposes to look at contemporary society as an »interregnum«, a temporary break with the past. In a condition characterised by anomie, the questioning of democratic achievements and the primacy of an unbridled economy, he offers a new perspective on our social condition. Understanding the interregnum and being aware of its instability and the social degradation that it entails can help us to make the right choices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: transcript Verlag
• Release date: Mar 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9783732835157

Carlo Bordoni

Carlo Bordoni is a sociologist and a journalist, writing for »Il Corriere della Sera« and »Social Europe Journal«. Former teacher at the Universities of Florence, Pisa and Naples, he was professor of Media Studies at the Academy of fine arts in Carrara (1980-2006). He is the author of »State of Crisis« (Polity Press, 2014) with Zygmunt Bauman. His research fields are cultural, political and social change as well as Sociology of literature.

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Preface

The king is dead, long live the king!

This book stems from a controversy, a special kind of controversy that arose with Zygmunt Bauman on the subject of modernity. Bauman claims that we live in a liquid modernity, where everything has become unstable, precarious, temporary and uncertain. For this reason, we are not dealing with postmodernism; in actual fact, we have yet to reach the peak of modernism. Even Lyotard, to whom we owe the definition of postmodern, in his later writings overturned the concept, saying that we cannot be modern without first being postmodern.¹

We have not even come close to modernity – argues Bauman – I prefer to speak of liquid modernity. I am opposed to the use of the term postmodern because it is a negative concept. It says that we are something that in fact we no longer are. I have tried to get rid of this formula. I see a world that is leaning towards modernity, a liquid modernity, because I firmly believe that the solid version was no longer adequate.

That is to say, a sense of positive continuity with the past, where even the liquidity is presented as a progressive value, in that it is an adaptation to the changing living conditions. Undoubtedly, between solid and liquid societies (albeit characterised by insecurity and impermanence), there is no doubt that the preference goes to the latter: solid societies are outdated, inadequate to the times and unable to understand and accept the changes. Hence, his idea of modernity is determined by a world that is constantly changing, where the novum is always the best, and man must strive to understand it. Everything lies in the ability to cumprehendere, that is, to take as one’s own, accept and understand what is happening around us.

However, faced with this positive and optimistic vision, we cannot deny the obvious epochal changes that have interrupted, modified and distorted the human journey. The task of the sociologist, if not to find solutions, is, however, to warn, to explain the reasons that have led to that change and identify the critical issues and the risks because it is not necessarily true that every change is both welcome and acceptable to those who are at the mercy of it, and is not in any way opposable or amendable. It is a delicate and dangerous task, since sociology has renounced the freedom from value judgements postulated by Max Weber, but not less essential, unless we want this science to be nothing but a gregarious, mercenary tool at the service of the powers that be and also of politics. First, by confronting itself with history, its main ally, that provides sociology with the fundamental knowledge needed to benefit from past experience.

History continues on its course for periods, for centuries, in synthetic schemas that are useful to have a clearer picture of the objectives of human actions and their consequences. It is, therefore, beneficial to define temporal cuts that are united by the same cultural, social and political characteristics: an operation that is purely methodological and has no intention of breaking the continuity of history or of human action, but to provide flexible instruments of interpretation, bearing in mind that each label given is pure nominalism. A name is given to a thing to make it more easily distinguishable from the others.

The first doubts fall on liquidity. Why should we continue to call society modern after something has upset the reference parameters, the features that defined its face? It is not a question of names: what is important is to understand where we are and where we are going. This is what is needed in order to correct the route and avoid mistakes. If it is true that our present seems unchangeable, having been prepared by the actions of those who have gone before us, our choices will determine tomorrow’s society, because that is how history works: we write it, but it will be our children who will suffer the consequences.

In consideration of the decline of modernity, it might be better to speak of Interregnum, a period of time and a waiting condition between the end of the power of a sovereign and the assumption of power by another. During this interruption of continuity an atmosphere of suspension is felt, as if the laws were devoid of any validity, as if pending others that the new ruler will waste no time in issuing. Meanwhile, the absence of the principle of authority that the sovereign personified causes imbalances, uncertainty and confusion. Normally, the interruption is brief, just long enough to attend to administrative affairs, and to prevent the country from falling into chaos. The sense of continuity is well represented by the proclamation announced loudly by the royal criers, The king is dead, long live the king!, which communicates the immediate handing over of the throne to his successor.

Zygmunt Bauman uses the concept of interregnum, according to Gramsci’s meaning of an unexpected break of continuity with the past, to better represent the present, surpassing that of liquid modernity, around which he built up his critical way of thinking. But the interregnum is established when a power system ends, the symbols of the authority are challenged by the new order on the horizon that has not yet imposed its laws: in our case the deceased sovereign is modernity, with its ethics, its expectations and its trust in progress.

This nerve-wracking wait, which extends beyond the limits of human endurance, assumes the characteristics of the time in the life of a generation, whose rules are the absence of rules, the predominance of the strongest, the questioning of democratic achievements, the primacy of an unbridled economy that overwhelms everything with the expectation of an abstract gain, the purpose of which is dispersed in virtual spaces.

Understanding the interregnum, being aware of its instability and the social degradation that it entails, can help us to make the right choices. Understanding if the light that we can glimpse at the end of this interregnum really coincides with the end of liquid modernity or the restoration of the same: modernity is dead, long live modernity?

C.B.

1 | Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity Revisited, in Liquid Modernity, Polity, 2013, p. IX.

I    Why we cannot define ourselves as modern

1.    FROM MODERNITY TO THE INTERREGNUM

Stating that modernity is over does not mean ignoring its merits, nor the extraordinary importance that it has had in human history. Its end does not depend on an accumulation of errors, or on an internal breakdown, but only on the natural evolution of society, within which the characteristics of the modern no longer find space; they have been surpassed and are therefore inadequate to deal with the needs of the present.

Knowing modernity through its main innovations, highlighting the critical issues that now arise in the face of rapid changes, can help us to understand our situation and help us make the right choices to get out of the state of crisis that proves to be – on closer inspection – not so much an accidental interlude, while waiting to return to the status quo ante, as a turning point towards a new humanity.

Understanding modernity means highlighting its points of reference, the fundamental principles on which its certainties are built, but also its fragility, its promises that, after more than three centuries, appear only partially kept. It is on the lines of broken promises that we make our analysis, taking into account the fact that all that modernity formulated at the time of its establishment appeared to be as open as possible towards the liberation of man and the realisation of his life plans. The prospect was so wide and evolved and there was a level of optimism for the future that had never been attempted thus far.

The long journey through modernity began on an icy morning in October 1648, when the news of the peace treaty of Westphalia was officially released in the cities of Münster and Osnabrück, though it had already been signed some months prior to that, at the end of the Thirty Years War, and reconfirmed the principles established almost a century earlier by Charles V with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. On that fateful date, which was shortly before the publication of Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), we can definitely recognise the universal validity of the principle of the so-called Cuius regio, eius et religio (whose realm, his religion), that is, the power of the sovereign to lay down the law and religion in his country. Hence, the birth of the modern state and the recognition of national unity that, according to Jürgen Habermas, is probably a direct result of the political community. However, for Habermas, as for Bauman, modernity remains an unfinished project, while, for Fredric Jameson, modernity is not so much a period or an era, but rather a narrative or a trope, but one utterly different in structure from the traditional figures as those have been catalogued since antiquity.¹

From the solid political affirmation given by the Peace of Westphalia flows the promises of modernity, which from now on will find a sound foundation on which to consolidate. All of significant social value, such as to substantially modify the structure of populations and their fate: since then, we can speak of post-Westphalian States.

First, the promise of equality among men, then of the domination of nature, of social security and, finally, the work ethic and the belief in progress.In this short list lurks everything that appears to be right, good and beautiful; a life that is worth living and, ultimately, that can be summed up in a promise of happiness. It is an optimistic teleology that, in the secular and pragmatic spirit, based on economic principles of human relations, as endorsed by the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, which is dedicated to shape the world according to their own aspirations, promises to realise the happiness that religion always remanded to an afterlife after death. Innovation is revolutionary and successful: happiness can be achieved here on earth, and it is only deferred in time. Closer and closer, and more and more within reach, but only obtainable through work, the spirit of sacrifice, commitment, the good bourgeois virtues of the self-made man, the new man that makes his own way and his own name, independent and determined to reach his objectives, who pursues knowledge not just for pleasure, but in order to achieve his goals. These include the domination of nature, and therefore the concrete possibility to change the world around him.

Thanks to the advances in science and technology, dominating nature is an exciting project; it means the acquisition of an enormous and unimaginable power, but it is also a defiant hybris that brings man closer to the divine prerogatives – appropriating nature and, at the same time, desecrating it by subjecting it to his will.

Man believed in these promises; he elaborated them, assimilated and renegotiated them, in part they were fulfilled, but he never lost his trust in them, even when the conditions of life proved to be unbearable and the achievable goal, happiness, was further and further away. Even when the most coveted of the promises, the achievement of real equality between men that Marxism tried to make possible through the revolutionary act of demanding rights even for the most humble, all took place within the system of modernity, without calling the underlying principles into question.

Today those promises are appearing more and more in their true light, which time and experience have made clear: good intentions that served to overcome the difficulties at that time, but that are now threadbare and inappropriate to solve the current problems. On the contrary, they themselves are the cause and reason