Castoriadis - The Retreat From Autonomy - Post-Modernism As Generalized Conformism
Castoriadis - The Retreat From Autonomy - Post-Modernism As Generalized Conformism
Castoriadis - The Retreat From Autonomy - Post-Modernism As Generalized Conformism
AUTONOMY:
POST-MODERNISM AS
GENERALIZED CONFORMISM
Cornelius Castorladis
I.
The label &dquo;post-modernism&dquo; certainly does not and cannot define or char-
acterize the present period. But it very adequately expresses it. It manifests
the pathetic inability of the epoch to conceive of itself as something positive
-
something&dquo;, that is through a reference to that which was but is not anymore,
and its attempts at self-glorification by means of the bizarre contention that its
1
meaning is no-meaning and its style the lack of any styled
Nevertheless, a distinction between the terms &dquo;post-industrial&dquo; and &dquo;post-
modern&dquo; is worth making. Something in reality corresponds to the term &dquo;post-
industrial&dquo;. Briefly speaking, in the rich countries at least (but not only), pro-
duction (whatever that may mean) is moving away from old dirty factories
and blast furnaces toward increasingly automated complexes and various &dquo;ser-
vices&dquo;. The process, anticipated at least half a century ago, was considered for
quite a time as bearing extraordinary promises for the future of human work
and life. The length of work, one was told, would be dramatically cut, and its
nature fundamentally altered. Automation and data processing were supposed
to transform the repetitive, alienated industrial toil of old into an open field for
the free expansion of the inventiveness and creativity of the worker.
In actuality, nothing of all this materialized. The possibilities offered by the
new technologies are confined to a limited group of clever young specialists.
For the bulk of the remaining employees, in industry or in services, the nature
of work has not fundamentally changed. Rather, old style &dquo;industrialization&dquo;
has invaded the big firms in the non-industrial sectors, with rhythm of work
14
15
less than a quarter of the total labour input (and of the working population),
and could possibly absorb half of that, were it not for the incredible waste built
into the system (farmers subsidized in order not to produce, obsolete indus-
tries and factories kept into operation etc.). It might even absorb a vanishing
quantum of human time, in the absence of the continuous manufacturing of
new &dquo;needs&dquo; and the in-built obsolescence of most products. In brief, a leisure
society is, theoretically, within reach, whilst a society with creative, personal
work-roles for all seems as remote as during the 19th century.
H.
modernity? A period naming itself modern implies that history has reached its
end, and that henceforth humans will live in a perpetual present.
The term modern expresses a deeply self-centred attitude. The proclama-
tion : we are the moderns, preempts any genuine further development. More
than this, it contains an intriguing antinomy. The self-conscious imaginary
component of the term entails a self-characterization of modernity as indefi-
nite openness with regard to the future, yet the characterization makes sense
only in relation to the past. They were the ancients, we are the moderns. Yet,
what are we to call the ones coming after us? The term makes sense only on
the absurd assumption that the self-proclaimed modern period will last forever,
that the future will only be a prolonged present.
A short discussion of two contemporary attempts to give a precise content
to the term modernity may be a useful starting point. Characteristically, these
attempts concern themselves not with changes in the socio-historical reality,
but with real or supposed changes in the attitude of the thinkers (philosophers)
16
toward that reality. They are typical of the contemporary tendency of writers
toward self-confinement: writers write about writers for others writers. Thus
Foucault2 asserts that modernity starts with Kant, especially with the texts Streit
der fakultaten and Was ist Aujkldrung.;&dquo; because with Kant, the philosopher
for the first time shows interest in the actual historical present, starts &dquo;reading
the newspaper&dquo; etc. (cf. Hegel’s phrase about reading the newspaper as the
&dquo;realistic morning prayer&dquo;). Thus modernity would be the consciousness of the
historicity of the epoch one is living in. This is of course totally inadequate,
since the historicity of one’s own epoch was clear for Pericles (as is apparent
from the Funeral Oration in Thucydides) and Plato as well as for Tacitus, or
Gr6goire de Tours in the 6th century (&dquo; murcclus senescit&dquo;). The novelty, in
Foucault’s eyes, would be that, from Kant onwards, the relation to the present
is not conceived anymore in terms of value comparisons (&dquo;are we decadent?&dquo;,
&dquo;which model ought we to follow?&dquo;), not &dquo;longitudinally&dquo;, but in a &dquo;sagittal
relation to their own actuality&dquo;. But value comparisons are clearly there in
Kant, for whom history can only be reflected in terms of progress, and the
Aufklarung is a cardinal moment in this progress. And, if a &dquo;sagittal&dquo; relation
is counterposed to valuation, this can only mean that thought, abandoning
its critical function, tends to borrow its criteria from historical reality as it is.
Undoubtedly such a tendency becomes acute in the 19th and 20th centuries;
Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, even if the last two oppose the reality of today
in the name of a more real reality, the reality of tomorrow. But this tendency
is a problem within modernity: it could never be taken as summing up the
thinking of the Aufklarung and post-Aufklarung period, and even less the real
socio-historical trend of the past two centuries.
Equally problematic is Habermas’s identification of modernity with the
spirit of Hegel’s philosophy (Der ph ilosophische Diskurs der Modern, p. 57).
According to Habermas, it is only in Hegel’s theory that &dquo;a conceptual constel-
lation uniting modernity, consciousness of the time and rationality becomes
apparent for the first time&dquo;. But this unification is precisely ~-~egel’s illusion.
Nor can one forget that not only Hegel’s ipsissirrea verba, but the whole struc-
ture, logic and dynamic of his philosophy lead to the anti-modern theme par
excellence that the &dquo;end of history&dquo; is already with us and that, after Absolute
Knowledge has been embodied in Hegel’s system only some &dquo;empirical work&dquo;
remains to be done.
Hegel represents, in fact, the full opposition to modernity within moder-
nity or the full opposition, more generally, to the Greek-Western spirit within
-
that spirit -
already
17
in words-
these
oppositions, whereby it is led necessarily to a conservatism of the sort Hegel
reached in the Philosophy of Right, or by remaining true to its critical function,
in which case the idea that it merely conceptualizes the epoch is preposterous.
Critique entails a distance relative to the object, if philosophy is to go beyond
journalism, this critique presupposes the creation of new ideas, new standards,
new forms of thought establishing this distance.
III.
I am not able to propose new names for the period which called itself
modern, nor for the one succeeding it. But I will attempt to propose a new
periodization, or rather a new characterization of the more or less accepted
divisions of (Western) European history (which obviously includes American
history). It is hardly necessary to remind ourselves of the schematic character
of all periodizations, of the risk of neglecting continuities and connections, or
of the &dquo;subjective&dquo; element involved. The latter is to be found specifically in
the basis chosen for the division in which the philosophical and theoretical
preconceptions underlying the attempt at periodization are condensed. Of
course this is unavoidable, and has to be recognized as such. The best way
to deal with it is to make as explicit as possible these preconceptions. My
own preconceptions are that the individuality of a period is to be found in the
rediscovery and reception of Roman Law, Aristotle and then the whole of the
extant Greek legacy. Tradition and authority cease gradually to be sacred, in-
novation stops being a disparaging word (as it was typically during the &dquo;true&dquo;
Middle Ages). Even if in embryonic form, and in perpetual accommodation
with the powers that be (Church and Monarchy), the project of political and
intellectual autonomy reemerges after a fifteen century eclipse. An uneasy
compromise between this socio-historical movement and the, more or less
reformed, traditional order is reached in the &dquo;classical&dquo; 17th century.
the Enlightenment and lasts till the two World Wars of the 20th century. The
project of autonomy is radicalized, both in the socio-political and in the intellec-
tual fields. Instituted political forms are put into question; new ones, entailing
radical breaks with the past, are created. As the movement develops, contes-
tation embraces other domains beyond the narrowly political one: property
relations, the organization of the economy, family, the position of women and
the relations between the sexes, education and the status of the young. For
the first time in the Christian period, philosophy breaks definitively with the-
ology (up to Leibniz, at least, mainstream philosophers felt obliged to supply
&dquo;proofs&dquo; of the existence of God, etc.). A sweeping acceleration in the work
and expansion of the fields of rational science takes place. In literature and
the arts the creation of new forms not only proliferates, but is self-consciously
pursued for its own sake.
At the same time, a new socio-economic reality -
economy is just about producing more (outputs) with less (inputs), nothing
-
ought to stand
in the way of the maximization process. Everything is called before the Tri-
bunal of (productive) Reason and must prove its right to exist on the basis
of the criterion of the unlimited expansion of &dquo;rational mastery’’. Capitalism
thus becomes a perpetual process of supposedly rational but essentially blind
self-reinstitution of society, through the unrestricted use of (pseudo-) rational
means in view of a single (pseudo-) rational end.
intel-
lectually and spiritually restless -
as &dquo;hermeneu-
tics&dquo; and &dquo;deconstruction&dquo;. A further step has been the recent glorification of
&dquo;weak thought&dquo; (pensiero debole). Any criticism here would be out of place;
one would be forced to admire this candid confession of radical impotence,
if it were not accompanied by woolly &dquo;theorizing&dquo;. The expansion of science
continues, of course -
quanta, relativity -
<
From the various attempts to define and defend &dquo;post-modernism&dquo;, and
from some familiarity with the Zeitgeist, one can derive a summary descrip-
tion of the theoretical or philosophical tenets of the present trend. In Johann
Arnason’s excellent formulation5 these tenets are:
For, despite the antinomy outlined above between the two core imagi-
nary significations of autonomy and &dquo;rational mastery&dquo;, the critique of existing
instituted realities never stopped during the &dquo;modern&dquo; period. This is exactly
what is rapidly disappearing at present, with the &dquo;philosophical&dquo; blessing of the
post-modernists. The waning of the social and political conflict in the &dquo;real&dquo;
sphere finds its appropriate counterpart in the intellectual and artistic fields
with the evanescence of the genuine critical spirit. This spirit, as said above,
can only exist in and through the establishment of a distance with what there
is, entailing the conquest of a point of view beyond the given, therefore a
work of creation. The present period is thus best defined as the general retreat
into conformism. This conformism is typically realized as well when theo-
rists go around repeating that one cannot &dquo;break the closure of Greek-Western
metaphysics&dquo;, as when hundreds of millions of TV watchers all over the world
absorb daily the same inanities.
23
V. m
actual historical fact is one of the roots of present political apathy and privati-
zation hardly needs stressing. For the resurgence of the project of autonomy,
new political objectives and new human attitudes are required, of which, for
the time being, there are but few signs. Meanwhile, it would be absurd to try
to decide if we are living through a long parenthesis, or if we are witnessing
the beginning of the end of Western history as a history essentially linked with
the project of autonomy and codetermined by it.
Notes
1. "At last, post-modernism has delivered us from the tyranny of style", proclaimed a
well-known architect at a conference in New York in April 1986.
2. Michel Foucault, "Un cours inédit", Magazine Littéraire (May 1988), p. 36.
3. On the question of the "true Middle Ages", A. Gurevitch, The Categories ofmedieval
Thought (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981) and Cyril Mango, Byzantium:
The Empire of New Rome (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980), supply mate-
rial and analyses very close to the point of view adopted here.
4. "The Révolutionary Movement Under Modern Capitalism" in Cornelius Castoriadis,
Political and Social Writings (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1988),
vol. II.
5. Johann Arnason, "The Imaginary Constitution of Modernity", Revée Europêenne des
Sciences Sociales (Genève, Droz, Autumn 1989).