Liquid Modernity and Liquefaction in Today’s World

Liquid Modernity, written by Zygmunt Bauman in 1999, is a conceptualization of late modernity just before the second millennium. As its name also mentions, the late modernity is in the liquefaction process. But “Was not modernity a process of ‘liquefaction’ from the start?” asks Bauman. The modernity from the beginning was a process of “disembedding” and “re-embeding”. It is melting solid in order to replace it with “new and improved solids”. However, for Bauman in today’s modernity, there is the only disembedding, and there is no re-embedding. This new modernity promises “no ‘fulfilment’, no rest and no satisfaction of ‘arriving’… no prospect of re-embeddedment’ at the end of the road taken by (now chronically) disembedded individuals.” How can we relate this concept of liquid modernity and liquefaction with today’s world?

The liquid modernity shows itself dominantly in the time of globalization and the age of technology. This modernity has different aspects that classical ones in terms of movement, time, space. Just as Bauman claims, the time has become no more dependent on the space and it “has been reduced to instantaneity”. The governments now have to respond to events in the other part of the world instantly to earn the trust of their allies. The new terrorism no more operates locally but globally and it doesn’t need a central organization for carrying out the attacks, cell phones are enough for that. As a consequence of such development in movement, the nomadic has become advantageous over the settled. The “global” elites have become the ones who can travel more, communicate more, and integrate with the other nations. Meanwhile the disadvantageous are called the “losers of globalization”. Today many people might lose the value of their financial assets because of some speculators pushing for their distinct interests. These financial speculators might attack everywhere, thanks to the digitalization of the finance and increase of the movement. Don’t we see conspiracies such as invisible financial enemies trying to suck up all the national resources or conspiracies related to George Soros, David Rockefeller or invisible communities consisting of celebrities are governing the world without being visible? Thanks to the experience of this instantaneity of time, many can put that these conspirators might be “everywhere”. Are not we suspicious of the post-panoptical dimension Bauman mentions that we might be surveilled but our surveillants are not visible to us and they don’t have to be bounded by space? The liquid modernity brought just what Bauman called “the end of the era of mutual engagement” in which individuals do not see their counterparts who are operating the “levers of power”.

The individualization of that liquid modernity put by Bauman is not a new phenomenon, it is already a phenomenon in the classical modernity. Bauman’s analysis of freedom and its effect on individuals was already made by Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom (1941). He already distinguished two types of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. “Freedom from” is where the individual became free from authority and institutions, yet he/she becomes hopeless, lonely, insecure, anxious and there is no guide for him/her to find his way in contrast to the pre-capitalist era. And “freedom to” is positive freedom where the individual realizes the self, engages in creativity and spontaneity. Fromm says that “it is a relationship to man and nature, a relationship that connects the individual with the world without eliminating his individuality”. The former concept is already what Bauman defined individual in liquid modernity, and the second refers to what he analyzes as de facto individual. However, the novelty of what Bauman brought seems to be stressing the gap between the “legal” individual (de jure) and individual de facto and the weakening public and the invasion of the public by the private (which he also mentioned in his criticism towards critical theorists). Now, the gap between individuals’ desires and imagination, and the capacity to accomplish them is growing. This growth does not come from the individual itself but from the systemic contradictions, and these contradictions cannot be solved on the individual level but on the citizen level. The functional problems of society are interpreted through “private troubles” and the systemic contradictions creating neurotic individuals are interpreted as individual irresponsibility or functional disorders. Isn’t this relevant in the practice of clinical psychology? Today, for example, the mainstream clinical psychology’s aim seems to be fixing functional problems of individuals who fell into emptiness and meaninglessness of fluidity in the late capitalism and teaching them methods to adapt the society of “individuals” as a responsible person for their own problems which were actually rooted in systemic contradictions. Clinical psychologists struggle to help such issues while ignoring that they are rooted in “Politics”. Isn’t it clear when we look at the discussions in the US relating to social welfare? As soon as it comes to the agenda, it brings some people to complain that they do not want to pay for the “laziness” of other people. If these individuals worked harder, saved well, and spent well they would be able to get their insurance. It is a time where private scandals of politicians are more important than systemic contradictions of the country. Isn’t Donald Trump being held responsible for all the guilts of the US capitalist structure today? We are no more active political subjects; we are passively in seek for scapegoats other than the systemic tendencies. The caravan owners blame the figures and institutions organizing caravan site, even rival ones rather than the whole design itself, whether Trump, or Putin, or NHS, WHO or Macron, or even the Chinese.

Today’s modernity does not dominantly include classes, families, or “given” groups of collective action, participation which canalize individual choices. The society has become individualized and the bonds that interlock the individuals are now in the place of old feudal elements that melted and replaced. Bauman claims that this time there is no re-embedding of a new collective “reference groups” like the transformation of old rigid castes, estates into socially more inclusive stratification, classes. Rather, there is only fragmentation and individualization rather than emerging a new solid collective identity group. Classes and “pre-allocated” reference groups are in the process of liquefaction, becoming less solid, being disembedded. Just like the panopticon has become post-panoptical, that there is no central tower where everything is being surveilled, (pre-alocated) “effective agencies of collective action” are decentralizing or becoming more fluid. Social movements appear depending on grievances and demands. There are more populist demands than class demands today and that any demand rooted in grievances and with other demands (as what Laclau claims through the chain of equivalences in his On the Populist Reason) can lead performatively construction of these agencies, or rather the popular, political subject. They are negatively constructed or constructed on the lack. Whether they will be solid or fluid is a matter of satisfaction of these demands and their ability to put this negatively constructed movement into a positive base. This negative construction of community is already what Bauman mentions “communities of shared worries, shared anxieties or shared hatreds… This was the case for instance when the United Kingdom Independence Party and Brexit Party became successful for its raison d’etre by capturing anti-immigrant sentiments of the British and canalizing it towards the EU. This was not a class movement but a populist one, and as soon as it was fulfilled (partially) the salience of it plummeted. Classes do not disappear when their demands are fulfilled but Brexiteers and anti-Brexiteers did as Brexit has become a reality. Protests of anti-austerity policies during the eurozone crisis or yellow vest protests might be other examples. There is no constant, solid political subject that will push for demands of the groups, rather there are performatively constructed movements, that melts in the air as soon as their demands are fulfilled, like Freudian slips, where unconscious only instantaneously interrupts the speech and vanish into its darkness again. They don’t have any shape rather they are constantly in the shaping process, without having any subject of demands. This is the fluidity or liquidity in this era of modernity, that political subject can take any shape rather than pre-given ones, and this liquidity cannot even be controlled by the system anymore since it has no permanent shape, the governments can only keep them temporarily.

How might the current pandemic affect this liquefaction process? The pandemic forced us to look at the contradiction between the economic and non-economic aspects of the lockdown decisions, the prohibition of exporting important medical equipment and restraining international and internal transportation. Suddenly reducing time in movement, individualization, and technology, in other words, the liquefaction process has become a resistant force rather than a force that is pushing for flowing. The states tried to minimize movements, block roads rather than motivating and giving incentives for them. States started to tell that individuals are not responsible for themselves but for other individuals, that they should regard other individuals as their fellows whom they should also protect by acting together, collective action for inertia. Social media has suddenly become the operation center of conspiracy theories such as 5G networks were spreading the virus and there were technology firms trying to reduce the rising population of the earth. Even it went much further that some people attacked phone mast in the UK. Suddenly we saw that the other face of the liquefaction and states trying to prevent it. What we see from this liquefaction is that suddenly the absentee lords or ones that are in the levers of power have been thrown into a situation that they are forced to “freeze” such liquidation, yet they couldn’t since they had not enough power to do so. This is what claimed that “the liquidizing powers have moved from the ‘system’ to ‘society’, from politics’ to ‘life-policies’” and realization of such transformation in the pandemic time alarmed the ones who are in the “levers of power”. Isn’t it clear why Trump is panicking and pressuring the governors for easing lockdowns after seeing the possible economic consequences of the lockdown strategy? I think that the Covid-19 pandemic has a negative effect on this liquefaction process and it will continue to be negative because the states and even these individuals saw the other side of this liquefaction. This will be the crisis that the system and the “individuals” will have to be forced to find a new solid, to slow down the liquefaction. How it will slow down might be a speculation, but that it will be slowed down seems like a probable prospect.

To sum up, liquid modernity is a distinct kind of modernity than the classical one, and it has some aspects that are relevant today. Relation of time and space has changed, it brought down the solids of spatial obstacles. Invisibility, movement, nomadism has become an advantage over the settling. Individualization, which was already a process from the beginning of modernity, came to a level of widening gap between individual de jure and de facto, which denotes that the individuals cannot meet their desires and goals, they are struggling to deal with systemic contradictions as individuals. Meanwhile, classes are in decline, the movements predominantly appear on ad-hoc and grievance basis. There is no political subject that is solid, it takes the shapes of vessels of grievances and demands, and vanish as soon as these vessels disappear. However, this does not mean that ones behind these demands will be no more, they are now rather constructed also on a performative basis. Their shape is lost just for a matter of time to have another, and the pandemic process shows such aspects. The ones on the levers of power realized that they had overestimated their own power, the liquefaction did not only happen to them but to society. They suddenly faced the shadow side of the liquefaction process, that they realized they could not give solid shape to the society of “individuals”.