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CHAPTER - V

MODERNITY, POSTMODERNISM AND PRESENT

CRISIS

Renaissance in Europe proved to be an important

turning point in cultural and civilizational history of

humankind. Human endeavour of flight from facts towards

contra-factuals, or the apprehension of more just values, and

related voyage of realisation of apprehended values, both

received a very strong impetus from the renaissance.

Scientific and technological achievements of renaissance and

the period that followed were reflected in the enlightenment

sensibility also. It was believed that in modern era reason will

succeed in resolving almost all the problems being faced by

human society, culture and civilization. It was hoped that

advances in science and technology will help create a

situation where abundance of resources would replace their

scarcity and needs of all individuals would be fulfilled. The

aspiration was that in modern world all the conflicts and

differences of opinion would be resolved through reason,

resulting in a just and humane society. It was assumed that

this would lead to an exploitation and coercion free civil

society based upon egalitarian justice, respecting the dignity

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of every individual, irrespective of his or her gender, race,

caste, class, creed, etc. It was also hoped that in such a

society all humans would lead a satisfied and peaceful life

based upon equal rights and liberties associated with rational

duties towards community and society.

But the spread of crime, terrorism, violence,

pornography, drug addiction, alienation, dehumanization,

environmental and ecological problems, etc. have resulted in

a widespread dejection and disenchantment not only with the

claims associated with enlightenment vision but with the

possibility of achieving any future that is perfect in every

respect.

Postmodernism on Role of Reason in Present Crisis

The failures and shortcomings associated with

enlightenment vision have necessitated a reconsideration and

revisiting the project of modernity to say the least. In

contemporary academic and intellectual circles efforts have

been made from divergent perspectives to analyse and

evaluate the modernity project and enlightenment sensibility

associated with it. Postmodernism is a response that came in

vogue as an anti-modernist movement. Postmodernism

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-which thrives on the writings of Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard,

Baudrillard, etc.- puts a question mark on the enlightenment

sensibility and calls for abandoning of modernity project

itself. More often than not, it is rather insisted that in

postmodern condition the modernity project as well as

enlightenment sensibility both have already been abandoned.

Postmodernism not only questions the ability of reason

and rationality to resolve all the problems being faced by

humankind, rather it considers the present crisis to be a

result of oppressive role played by reason and rationality in

contemporary culture and civilization. Postmodernists point

out that in discourse of modernity all dissenting and contrary

view-points are silenced in the name of rationality and

reason. It is contended that the crisis has its genesis in

illegitimate attempt of reason to provide overarching and

totalizing blueprints for the forward march of humankind in

the form of grand-stories of human progress. The

grand-stories of gradual human progress are termed

grandnarratives that include all overarching philosophies of

history like enlightenment theory of gradual but steady

progress of reason and freedom; Hegel’s dialectic of spirit

coming to know itself; and Marx’s conception of forward

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march of human productive capacities culminating in state

less communist society.

Such grand-stories of progress of reason, emancipation

and freedom are considered to be an outcome of modern

approach to problem of legitimation that situates various

discursive practices within a broader totalizing

grandnarrative that provides legitimacy to them. The

grandnarrative narrates a story of human history and

purports to gurantee legitimacy of pragmatics of domains

ranging from the modern science to the modern political

processes. The story stresses some science and politics over

other competing ones as having legitimate pragmatics. Hence

only they are treated as legitimate politics and practices. In

this way -the postmodernists contend- in the name of

legitimation by reason, illegitimate ends are infact enforced.

In order to undo the negative effects, they call for abandoning

the project of modernity, and reason as it is alleged to have

resulted in present civilizational and cultural crisis.

The postmodernist view regarding the illegitimate role of

reason gains strength by invoking the views of Michael

Foucault, who explored the ways and mechanisms of

exclusion and power that influence and determine the

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manufacturing and circulation of reason, truth, knowledge

and discourse.

Exclusion in Reason, Discourse and Knowledge

The unconscious of discursive practices has been

sought to be maped by Michael Foucault by unveiling the

rituals of exclusion and selection. He endeavours to delineate

the role that exclusion and power play in discursive practices

as well as in determining what counts as reason or

knowledge and what does not. These processes play a

dominant role not only in defining a given social domain, but

also in shaping its thought as well as dominant ideas.

Instead of thinking of power as something located

within the state and its instruments, he seeks to conduct an

ascending analysis, starting from the infinitesimal

mechanisms of power, each of which has its own history,

techniques and tactics. Then he goes on to see how these

mechanisms of power have been colonized and utilized by

more general mechanisms and forms of domination. He

insists that there is a close relationship between systems of

knowledge and discourses that codify techniques and

practices of social control, and the nature of domination

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within a localised context. The prison, the asylum, the

hospital, the university, the school, the psychiatrist's clinic,

etc. are all considered to be the sites where a dispersed

organization of power is built up that plays a significant role

in furthering the role of exclusion and domination. He

delineates how systems of discourse are connected to

non-discursive practices of social power structures and

insists that bodies of knowledge are not autonomous

intellectual structures, rather they are essentially tied to the

systems of social control. Thus in a way social structures of

power influence exclusion of certain aspects from the

discourse which in turn influence the power structures also.

Let us discuss the distinction between madness and

reason. In Madness and Civilization,1 Foucault focuses on

how the notion of madness performed an essential role in

construction of reason. He rejects the view that equates

madness with mental illness and insists that it has also been

seen as a fundamental choice in favour of what may be

considered unreason. Unreason is seen as opposite of reason

-where reason refers to the norms of rationality constituting

dominant social life in a localised context. Since madness is

defined on the basis of rejection of reason, the reaction of

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dominant society results in exclusion of madness from social

and public domains. This exclusion of unreason as madness

is maintained in order to allow the constructed notion of

reason of circulate. Thus reason thrives by excluding its

other as madness.

Just as exclusion is important in the context of reason,

it is also central to production, distribution and circulation of

various discourses such as different sciences, various forms

of arts, academic and non-academic disciplines, groups of

statements about various types of every-day activities, etc.

Discourse may be defined as “regulated practices that

account for a number of statements”.2 Foucault argues that

each discourse is regulated by a set of rules and practices

which lead to distribution and circulation of certain

statements and exclusion of others. Some statements have

wide circulation whereas others are circulated in a restricted

manner. Certain others are silenced by denying any

circulation to them. Thus process of exclusion is important in

circulation of discourses. A discourse exists because of a

complex set of practices which try to keep it in circulation

and other practices which try to fence it off by keeping other

statements out of circulation. Discourse, according to him, is

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regulated as “in every society the production is at once

controlled, selected, organised and, redistributed by a certain

number of procedures whose role is to word off its powers

and dangers”.3 He describes such procedures as external and

internal exclusions.

The external exclusions pointed out by him are (a)

taboos, (b) demarcating sane and mad, and (c) demarcating

true and false. Taboos are in the form of prohibitions. They

discourage to speak about certain things such as sexuality

and constrained the way in which such issues can be talked

about. The second exclusion, i.e. distinction between mad

and sane has been discussed earlier. The voice of people

considered insane is not attended to and only the statements

of people considered sane are given importance. The third

external exclusion is distinction between true and false.

People in positions of authority are considered to be the

experts and hence the truth is considered to be their

monopoly only. Truth is supported by a range of practices

and institutions including universities, government

departments, publishing houses, intellectual bodies etc.

These institutions work to exclude statements which they

characterize as false and keep in circulation only those

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statements which they characterise as true. The true

statements are circulated throughout the society, are

reproduced and described again and again, appear in

educational curricula and are commented upon by others.

The statements termed false are not reproduced at all.

Foucault insists that each society has a regime of truth.

Truths and facts are produced and kept in circulation

through a complex web of social power relations and there is

a political history of the production of truth.

Apart from these external exclusions, he discusses four

internal procedures of exclusion also. The first of these

exclusions discussed by him is the commentary. Commentary

is writing about author’s statements. Commentary’s role is to

say what the text fails to say. He insists that the commentary

must say for the first time what had, nonetheless, already

been said, and must tirelessly repeat what had, however,

never been said. The second internal procedure of exclusion

is the author. Foucault insists that notion of the author is

used as an organizing principle of the texts that imposes a

sort of cohesion on diverse texts written by the same author.

This cohesion is based on exclusion and is infact more

imposed than being actual. The third internal exclusion is

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imposed by the boundary of the discipline. Disciplines (e.g.

Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, etc.) work as a limit on

discourse as they prescribe what can be considered

knowledge and exclude what is considered not so within that

discipline. The fourth internal exclusion is termed the

rarefaction of the speaking subject. It imposes limitations on

who can speak authoritatively. Even universities and systems

of education place restrictions on who can speak with

authority. Thus he insists that any system of education is a

political way of maintaining or modifying the appropriation of

discourses, along with the knowledge and powers that they

carry. Thus there are processes associated with discourse

that select certain statements and exclude others.

Just as there are processes of exclusion which lead to

production and circulation of certain discourses rather than

others, similarly Foucault insists that there are processes of

exclusion in relation to knowledge also. He contends that in

order to establish something as knowledge some other

statements that are equally valid are discredited and

excluded. He therefore focuses on institutional processes at

work that establish something as knowledge. He explores the

mechanisms through which knowledge comes into being. He

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describes knowledge to be consisting of a conjunction of

power relations with information seeking and terms it

power/knowledge. It unveils the fact that in production of

knowledge a claim of power is also made. What counts as

knowledge changes with historical conditions. Various factors

comprising of practices, pedagogies, libraries, institutions,

technologies etc. influence the production of knowledge and

information. Post-colonial thinkers, following Foucault, have

taken the example of knowledge about India and Africa at the

time of British colonial period. Marie Louise Pratt has argued

that production of information was not an objective process,

rather the aim of western people was to ‘‘produce what they

themselves referred to as information’’.4 The information was

being fitted into western classificatory systems, which in the

process erased by exclusion the system of classification

developed by the local people that might have been more

fruitful in certain contexts. For example western botanists

classified the flora on the basis of morphological features of

plants, which excluded the indigenous classification based on

use of plants in medicines or rituals.

It can be seen that the processes of information and

knowledge production are influenced by the current power

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relations, and in turn they also play a role in maintaining

and furthering those power relations. Thus reason,

discourse, knowledge, truth, power, etc. are intricately

connected and are produced as well as kept in place by

exclusionary practices.

It would be pertinent to note here that though

Foucault’s explorations have been a fecund source for

postmodernist arguments against modernity, but they ought

not be uncritically equated with postmodernism –a term that

Foucault himself never embraced. His arguments regarding

the role of exclusion and power in the processes of

manufacturing, construction and circulation of knowledge,

truth and reason hold not only for modern state-of-affairs,

rather they apply to the postmodern conditions as well. Their

echo can be heard in Lyotard’s views regarding the status

and role of knowledge in postmodern condition, which we

propose to discuss alongwith views of Baudrillard and

Jameson in the next section.

Contemporary reality as Postmodern

Present cultural, civilizational and historical context

has been analysed, characterised and described divergently

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by various contemporary thinkers. Many of them have

described it as postmodern, whereas some others have

characterized it as liquid modern, and still others have

contended that it can be analysed as modern only since the

project of modernity is still incomplete. The view that

contemporary reality is liquid modern will be discussed in the

next section and that it pertains to incomplete project of

modernity will be delineated in the subsequent section. This

section proposes to discuss the views of Lyotard, Baudrillard

and Jameson, who have described contemporary reality as

postmodern.

Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition : A Report on

Knowledge is considered one of the most accepted and

comprehensive accounts of postmodernity. In this work an

effort has been made to understand the role, position and

status of knowledge in contemporary culture and civilization.

It is argued that as societies enter post-industrial age and

cultures enter postmodern age, the status of knowledge

undergoes a significant change in them. In contemporary

world the economies are driven by knowledge. In such

economies technological innovations and ability to access as

well as manipulate ideas rapidly is an important means not

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only of making and enhancing profits, but of surviving itself.

Knowledge is seen from a vantage point that is primarily

commercial in nature. As a result we become consumers of

knowledge that has been transformed into a commodity.

Lyotard stresses that, “knowledge is and will be produced in

order to be sold, it is and will be produced in order to be

valorised in a new production -in both cases the goal is

exchange”.5 This comercialised view of knowledge is for

Lyotard a significant shift from the ways in which knowledge

was conceived earlier, including modernity.

In order to bring out differences between modern forms

of knowing and ways in which ideas are generated as well as

communicated in postmodernity, Lyotard analyses knowledge

into narratives i.e. the ways in which we try to make sense of

the world through stories that we tell about it in order to tie

together events and ideas to get coherence. This includes

everything from science to gossip. Each form of narrative is

grounded in a particular set of explicit or implicit rules –that

differentiate good from bad, right from wrong, and/or truth

from falsity– within a specific discourse. He classifies such

set of rules as metanarratives and holds that they provide

criteria that help to judge which set of ideas and statements

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are legitimate, true and ethical within a particular narrative.

Along with metanarratives that legitimize individual

statements and ideas, Lyotard puts forward concept of

grandnarratives also. Grandnarratives are considered to be

the governing principles of modernity. It is through their

analysis that he defines modernity and points out how it has

given way to the postmodern condition. It is insisted that

modernity’s grandnarratives bring together various narratives

and metanarratives that constitute a culture and present the

idea of development of knowledge as a progress towards

universal enlightenment and freedom. While producing

systematic accounts of workings of the world, they seek to

construct accounts of human progress. He identifies two

main forms of grandnarratives : speculative and

emancipatory. The speculative grandnarrative chalks the

progress and development of knowledge towards a systematic

truth and constructs a system which will help to make sense

of our place in the universe. The grandnarrative of

emancipation on the other hand sees the development of

knowledge as enabling and empowering humans since it

liberates them from mysticism and dogmas.

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It is through the analysis of change and shift in role

and status of metanarratives and grandnarratives that

Lyotard seeks to clarify difference between modernity and

postmodernity. He insists that in postmodernity status and

nature of knowledge changes in a manner that shatters the

conception of grandnarratives as claims of gradual march of

humanity towards the discovery of systematic truth that

would eventually be used for human emancipation. He

argues that the project of modernity is not forgotten or

forsaken, rather it is liquidated. The destruction of

grandnarratives and the associated idea of gradual progress

also gets reflected in the loss of status of metanarratives,

prompting Lyotard to define postmodernity as ‘‘incredulity

towards metanarratives”.6 This change means that the

perspective which gave direction to progress of ideas -the

criteria that systematised knowledge by differentiating right,

legitimate and valid from wrong, illegitimate and invalid in

various domains and discourses- do not have same respect

now that they commanded as an integral part of modern

grandnarratives. The sort of grandnarratives that used to

organise knowledge, categorise its usefulness for humanity

and direct it towards a goal have lost their power in

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postmodern world. In changed circumstances if anything

remains as organizing principle, it is the criterion of efficiency

and profit that is being propagated, forwarded and supported

forcefully by the global market. Whereas grandnarratives

sought to draw all knowledge into a single system, global

market driven cultures are rather happy with fragmentation

of knowledge in the form of different and specific domains of

information as it gets translated into more profit. Thus all

developments of knowledge are determined by the pragmatic

logic of the market rather than overarching conceptions of

human good. The criteria of universalism and emancipation

have been replaced by the criterion of profit. Contemporary

capitalism, he argues, ‘‘does not constitute a universal

history, it is trying to constitute a world market”.7

Lyotard contends that in postmodernity knowledge itself

has become a commodity and is the basis of power :

knowledge in the form of an informational commodity

indispensable to productive power is already, and will

continue to be, a major -perhaps the major- stake in the

world wide competition of power. Research and development

are funded by business and governments to give them edge

and power in global market. The global competition of power

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has become a battle for knowledge and the goal is efficiency

for more and more profit. The sole criterion of judging a

narrative is its effectiveness in making more profit and make

postmodern society and global market work more efficiently.

Thus the significant feature of posmodernity

highlighted by Lyotard is that in its search for efficiency and

profit global market has severed all contacts with

emancipatory goals of modern grandnarratives. Another

significant feature of postmodern society highlighted by

another postmodern thinker -Jean Baudrillard- is that the

recent developments in economic sphere and information

technology have generated a loss of contact with reality.

Baudrillard argues that postmodern societies have

moved away from being based on production of things

towards being based on production of images of things. He

calls these images or copies of things to be simulacra. He

insists that in postmodern societies difference between real

life and simulacrum has been reduced so much that it has

become rather difficult to differentiate one from the other.

Newspapers and news channels report goings on in T.V.

serials as if they are real happenings in the real life as people

care more for soap opera characters than their own

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neighbours. Baudrillard terms this state-of-affairs as

hyperreality where simulation is considered more real than

the real.

He argues that in postmodern society not only sign and

object have become indistinguishable, rather the reality has

been replaced by the simulation and the hyperreal. So much

so that when one desires and purchases a commodity, one is

not buying simply the object rather one is purchasing the

signs, the images and the identities that are associated with

it. We do not buy what we need or what satisfies our need,

rather we buy brands, images and lifestyle identities. Need

can be satisfied by an object but desire is not satisfied by any

particular purchase as one always desires more. This

according to Baudrillard is the moving forces of postmodern

society.

In order to see how excess of desire is produced and

manipulated, one has to remind oneself of the advertisements

being replayed in Indian media that say No one can eat just

one, or Don’t be Santusht thoda aur wish karo… .This way of

producing and manipulating excess of desire exhibits how

ubiquity of advertisements annihilates the reality and

transforms reality as well as its appearance and image. In

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postmodernity, images and simulations become more

immediate, more real, as also more seductive and desirable

as instead of reflecting the contemporary reality, they

produce it. Rather than being only a producer of simulations,

contemporary society is their product also. And in this

manner we move from reality to hyperreality.

It would be pertinent to note that hyperreality does not

mean unreality. Rather it identifies a culture in which

fantastical creations of media and information technologies

have become more real than the realities of nature or

spiritual realm. While discussing the example of Disneyland,

Baudrillard argues that its function is to conceal the fact that

in America real is no longer real. “Disneyland is there to

conceal the fact that it is the … ‘real’ America which is

Disneyland … Disneyland is present as imaginary in order to

make us believe that the rest is real, when infact all of Los

Angles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but

of the order of the hyperreal and simulation’’.8 Baudrillard

argues that within American society there is no longer any

access to reality but only a play of simulations forming the

seductive code of hyperreality. Disneyland is a means to

mask the fantastical nature of every-day life. It is the same

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function that prisons perform. The function of prisons is to

delude us that those who are out of them are free. In

contemporary world almost everything pertakes to fantasy,

where as reality, truth, freedom etc. have infact vanished

from the postmodern everyday life. As a result only images of

truth, freedom, reality etc. are being produced by media

groups controlled by multinationals.

In introduction of Baudrillard’s The Gulf War Did Not

Take Place a significant moment that throws light on relation

between reporting and hyperreality is narrated. The news

channel CNN switched live to a group of reporters present in

the Gulf to know what was happening. It was discovered that

they themselves were watching CNN to find it out. This shows

how news is generated by news, i.e. the source of news is the

news itself. Thus news is producing the reality of the war. It

generates more advertisements for the channel. Baudrillard

points out that “the media promotes the war, the war

promotes the media, and advertising competes with the war

… it allows us to turn the world and the violence of the world

into a consumable substance”.9 Various media channels

complete with one another to get most quickly (sabse tez) the

most spectacular pictures and stories. Baudrillard argues

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that ubiquity of advertisement in all the coverage turn the

war into commodity. This coverage gives rise to rather too

many commentaries, discussions, arguments and images

which overshadow the truth and reality of the war. For the

people who are rather hypnotised by the simulations that are

being fed to them, a real understanding of what is happening

becomes almost impossible and they discuss and live the

hyperreal only. This according to Baudrillard is the most

disturbing point -the hyperreal does not exist in the realm of

good and evil as it is measured in terms of performativity. i.e.

how well it works.

This almost coincides with what Lyotard has pointed

out in the context of knowledge in postmodern condition. In

postmodernity everything is measured in terms of

performativity only. In search of efficiency and profit every

thing ranging from personal life to war has been

commodified. Frederic Jameson has described this as new

depthlessness 10 in which everything becomes a commodity,

or just another interchangeable image to be purchased by the

consumers. As an example and image of this new

depthlessness, Jameson compares two paintings, one by

modernist artist Vincent Van Gogh and other by the pop

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artist Andy Warhol. The first one titled A pair of boots depicts

boots covered with dust and placed in the context of

agricultural life of the peasant who presumably owns them.

The latter, titled Diamond dust shoes, presents a collection of

women’s shoes floating freely in space, free from any social

context. Jameson insists that Warhol’s painting “No longer

speaks to us with any of the immediacy of the Van Gogh’s

footgear; … [it marks] a new kind of flatness or

depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal

sense, perhaps the supreme formal feature of all the

postmodernisms”.11

Jameson argues that the experience of depthlessness of

postmodernity is akin to schizophrenia in which the world

cut off from all foundational contexts “comes before the

subject with heightened intensity, bearing a mysterious

charge of affect, here described in the negative terms of

anxiety and loss of reality, but which one could just as well

imagine in the positive terms of euphoria, a high, an

intoxicatory or hallucinogenic intensity”.12 Thus the

transformation of social experience into a flow of images in

which everything is for sale produces a sense of loss of reality

which is simultaneously euphoric and terrifying. The feelings

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associated with it keep on changing direction, occilating

between intoxication and anxiety. This makes this

depthlessness schizophrenic in nature. The postmodern

consumers are trapped in schizophrenic depthlessness in

which the traditional grounds of cultural contexts, customs,

class and even family organization have been swept away.

Contemporary reality as Liquid Modernity

Like Jameson and Baudrillard, Zygmunt Bauman is

another thinker who argues that contemporary culture

revolves around consumerism. But he prefers the term liquid

modernity for contemporary reality, which has been described

as postmodernity by other thinkers. For the phase described

as modernity by postmodern thinkers he prefers the term

solid modernity.

Bauman suggests that traditional society was more

coherent. Activities and knowledge was integrated fully in

everyday life. People did not merely populated their world,

rather they were a part of it, and it also was a part of them.

The relation was so close that like facts of nature it was also

considered natural. Whereas traditional society was governed

by predictability and certitude, modernity is inherently

disorderly as there is no state of modernity, but only process

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of modernization. But it endeavours to predict future and

seek order in future perfect. This, according to Bauman, is

the ambivalence of solid modernity. He insists that solid

modernity was ambivalent since its inception as it sought a

new kind of permanence in a world marked by the

contingencies.

The idea of liquid modernity emerges from where the

solid modernity begins to understand this ambivalence.

Bauman insists that liquid modernity is solid modernity

“coming to terms with its own impossibility; a self-monitoring

modernity, one that consciously discards what it once was

unconsciously doing”.13 Solid modernity -the stage of order

seeking in the face of increasing disorder- has over the years

been gradually transformed into a liquid modernity, which

means living without some ultimate and perfect model of

society. Where individual's life reflects the experience of being

in an increasingly deregulated and flexible world. A world

which is full of uncoordinated and often contradictory

changes and voices, where there are no clear cut standards

by which superiority of any of them can be established. We

have shifted towards a society in which consumption and

consumer culture have been taking on central role in

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economy that had once been the place of production and

work. From a more structured society, in which identity was

largely ascribed by social class, gender and ethnicity, world

has shifted towards a society in which individuality

dominates more and more. In liquid modernity identity

remains always a work in progress. More than anything else

it is achieved through consumption. In such circumstances,

change of identity becomes a necessity rather than being a

possibility. Differentiating the state-of-affairs in liquid

modernity -where freedom associated with flexibility is

maximum but security in comparison to solid modernity is

less- Bauman wrote in 2003 that,

“Twenty years ago eighty percent of the working

and earning people of Great Britain had secure

jobs, insured against sudden and unwarranted

dismissals and offering their holders a safe future

in the form of welfare and pension entailments;

only thirty percent can boast such jobs now, and

the percentage goes on falling… .In virtually every

country the part of work force still enjoying the old

securities of employment is crumbling fast, while

almost all new jobs are of the part-time,

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temporary, fixed-term, no-benefits-attached, and

altogether flexible character. Add to this the new

fragility of neighborhoods, the breath taking pace

of change of recommended and coveted

life-fashions and to the market value of skills and

acquired habits -and it is easy to understand why

the feeling of insecurity (better still : of

Unsicherheit -that complex combination of

uncertainty, insecurity, and lack of safety, best

covered by the German term) is so widespread and

overwhelming.”14

Liquid moderns live their lives against a backdrop of

relentless upheaval and change. In contrast to solid moderns,

who lived working for the future perfect, liquid moderns live a

life composed of present tense only. Liquid modern living can

be compared to rhizome as it is constructed not as any kind

of rooted or structured way of life. Its features include

incessant modifications to the identities and multiple social

networks. Liquid modernity seeks palimpsest identities that

go along with a reality in which art of forgetting is considered

to be an asset. Infact liquid moderns live most of their lives

re-writing themselves. They have several identities available

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to choose from and they do not like to play same identity

again and again. An important strategy employed to cope

with turbulent existence is to live parallel lives which do not

have much to do with one another.

Like identities, relationships of liquid moderns are also

contingent and temporary. They are made only to be broken.

In Bauman’s words, “Bonds are easily entered but even

easier to abandon. Much is done … to prevent them from

developing any holding powers; long term commitments with

no option of termination on demand are decidedly out of

fashion”.15 Bauman suggests that all this infact is related to

the consumer culture pervasive in liquid modernity. When

one becomes habituated to consumer culture where the norm

is immediate gratification, then the capacity for long term

commitments is also reduced. Liquid moderns are afraid that

committing themselves to another will deprive them of newer

experiences. In the life of liquid moderns freedom is all

pervasive, but it is associated with various types of

insecurities.

In order to overcome insecurities and anxieties

associated with their lives, the liquid moderns seek remedy in

community. But there is no such thing as community in

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liquid modernity as there is no solid ground on which

conditions for community could be realised. Liquid moderns

are masters of ambivalence who give passionate lip service to

togetherness while infact secretly avoiding it at all costs. In

case of any need, instead of turning to community, liquid

moderns prefer self-help manuals for wisdom. The liquid

modern yearning for togetherness gets manifested in forms

which are quite different from the orthodox communities. In

liquid modernity, community has gone bust and its “void is

hastily filled by ‘peg communities”, “ad-hoc communities”,

“explosive communities”, and other disposable substitutes

meant for an instant and on-off consumption…”.16 What all

liquid forms of community have in common is impermanence

and depthlessness. It is fleeting landscape of temporary

togetherness whose pattern is always changing, shifting from

one event to the other. It can be death of a celebrity, a cup

final, a charity concert, etc. What actually gives a sense of

community is some event that is consumable in the society

-for liquid moderns are never more together than when they

are consuming.

This brings us back to the central feature of liquid

modernity pointed out by Bauman, i.e. “if our ancestors were

164

shaped and trained by their societies as producers first and

foremost, we are increasingly shaped and trained as

consumers first, and all the rest after”.17

Contemporary reality as incomplete Modernity

It has been seen in previous sections that there is a

simultaneous disruption of traditional forms of culture,

identity and values that has led to fragmentation and crisis

in contemporary society. The fragmentation, and the

contemporary reality both have been interpreted and

described differently by various thinkers. Jurgan Habermas

considers the fragmentation to be a result of going astray of

the project of modernity. He contends that the project of

modernity is still incomplete and insists on furthering its

aims in order to overcome disintegration in contemporary

society and culture. He provides an account of modernity

that seeks to defend its project as being crucial and

important even today. Agreeing to a large extent with

postmodernists in their critique and description of present

states-of-affairs, Habermas contends against them that

present crisis, instead of having its genesis in excess of

reason, is rather rooted in “deficit of reason”.18 He stresses

the self-rectifying capacity of reason and argues that present

165

crisis can be overcome within the framework of modernity by

completing its project and bringing it to the logical

conclusion.

Following Max Weber, and before him Kant, Habermas

stipulates the cultural modernity as separation of

substantive reason expressed in religion and metaphysics

into three autonomous spheres of science, morality and art.

Since eighteenth century, problems inherited from the older

world views have been sought to be rearranged under specific

aspects of validity : truth, normative rightness, and beauty.

They have then been handled as questions of knowledge, or

of justice and morality, or of taste. Scientific discourse;

theories of morality and jurisprudence; and the production

and criticism of art have been institutionalised. Each domain

of culture has been made to correspond to cultural

professions in which problems have been dealt by special

experts. There appeared the structure of

cognitive-instrumental rationality, moral-practical rationality,

and aesthetic-expressive rationality. Each of them has been

under the control of specialists and as a result distance grew

between the culture of experts and that of the people at large.

With this type of cultural rationalism, the threat to the

166

life-world -whose traditional substance has already been

devalued- increased and it tended to become more and more

impoverished.

Habermas insists that the project of modernity

formulated by enlightenment thinkers consisted in their

efforts to develop above mentioned three spheres in

accordance with their inner logic by the experts, but at the

same time, the project intended to release the cognitive

potentials of each of these domains to set them free from

their esoteric forms. It was intended to use the accumulation

of specialized culture for the enrichment of life-world and for

rational organisation of every day social life. It was hoped

that the arts and sciences would promote not only the control

of natural forces but also increase understanding of the world

as well as self that would promote moral progress leading to

well being of humans.19

Habermas admits that present scenario has shattered

this optimism. “The differentiation of science, morality and

art has come to mean the autonomy of the segments treated

by the specialists, at the same time letting them split off from

the hermeneutics of everyday communication.”20

167

Habermas argues that it is the colonization of life-world

by the instrumental rationality, divorced from ethical and

aesthetical concerns, which is responsible for present crisis.

He argues that under the influence of contemporary

capitalism, human reason has become more or less

instrumental, as the developments of knowledge are valued

for their economic and political efficiency, rather than for

their potential to improve human life. Scientific and

technological innovation has become an end-in-itself as it is

sought for increasing the efficiency, without considering its

effect on social and individual lives. As a result the life-world

has split off from various expert cultures and the common

person cannot take part in proceedings that infact effect his

or her whole existence.

Herbermas calls for a struggle against this

fragmentation and fracturing of social life which can only be

done by retaining the notion of emancipation as a means of

reconciling various language games that constitute a culture.

It is in this sense that he considers the project of modernity

to be an incomplete one. For him solution does not lie in

abandoning the project of modernity, rather it consists in

seeking its completion in the sense that all three spheres of

168

reason -i.e. instrumental, ethical and aesthetical- should

enrich the life of every individual as well as the hermeneutics

of everyday communication. This can only be achieved if all

the spheres infact enrich the life-world rather than splitting

it.

169

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3. ____________ (1981) ‘The Order of Discourse’, in R.

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6. ibid., p. XXIV.

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170

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11. ibid., pp. 8-9.

12. ibid., pp. 27-28.

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16. ______________ (2002) in Tony Blackshaw, ‘Interview

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18. Habermas, J. (1987) The Philosophical Discourse of

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Seyla Benhabib (ed.) Habermas and the

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