Zygmunt Bauman - Liquid Modernity

Liquid Modernity

Zygmunt Bauman

polity

Copyright Zygmunt Bauman 2000, 2012

The right of Zygmunt Bauman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2000 by Polity Press

Reprinted 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004 (twice), 2005, 2006 (twice), 2007, 2008, 2009 (twice), 2010 (twice), 2011

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ISBN 978-0-7456-2409-9
ISBN 978-0-7456-2410-5 (pbk)
ISBN 978-0-7456-5701-1 (ebook)

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Foreword to the 2012 Edition

Liquid Modernity Revisited

When more than ten years ago I tried to unpack the meaning of the metaphor of liquidity in its application to the form of life currently practised, one of the mysteries obtrusively haunting me and staunchly resisting resolution was the status of the liquid-modern human condition: was it an intimation, an early version, an augury or a portent of things to come? Or was it, rather, a temporary and transient as well as an unfi nished, incomplete and inconsistent interim settlement; an interval between two distinct, yet viable and durable, complete and consistent answers to the challenges of human togetherness?

I have not thus far come anywhere near to a resolution of that quandary, but I am increasingly inclined to surmise that we presently fi nd ourselves in a time of interregnum when the old ways of doing things no longer work, the old learned or inherited modes of life are no longer suitable for the current conditio humana, but when the new ways of tackling the challenges and new modes of life better suited to the new conditions have not as yet been invented, put in place and set in operation... We dont yet know which of the extant forms and settings will need to be liquidized and replaced, though none seems to be immune to criticism and all or almost all of them have at one time or another been earmarked for replacement.

Most importantly, unlike our ancestors, we dont have a clear image of a destination towards which we seem to be moving which needs to be a model of global society, a global economy, global politics, a global jurisdiction... Instead, we react to the latest trouble, experimenting, groping in the dark. We try to diminish carbon dioxide pollution by dismantling coal-fed power plants and replacing them with nuclear power plants, only to conjure up the spectres of Chernobyl and Fukushima to hover above us... We feel rather than know (and many of us refuse to acknowledge) that power (that is, the ability to do things) has been separated from politics (that is, the ability to decide which things need to be done and given priority), and so in addition to our confusion about what to do we are now in the dark about who is going to do it. The sole agencies of collective purposive action bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents, confi ned as they are to the boundaries of nation-states, are clearly inadequate, considering the global reach of our problems, and of their sources and consequences...

We remain of course as modern as we were before; but these we who are modern have considerably grown in numbers in recent years. We may well say that by now all or almost all of us, in every or almost every part of the planet, have become modern. And that means that today, unlike a decade or two ago, every land on the planet, with only a few exceptions, is subject to the obsessive, compulsive, unstoppable change that is nowadays called modernization, and to everything that goes with it, including the continuous production of human redundancy, and the social tensions it is bound to cause.

Forms of modern life may differ in quite a few respects but what unites them all is precisely their fragility, temporariness, vulnerability and inclination to constant change. To be modern means to modernize compulsively, obsessively; not so much just to be, let alone to keep its identity intact, but forever becoming, avoiding completion, staying underdefi ned. Each new structure which replaces the previous one as soon as it is declared old-fashioned and past its use-by date is only another momentary settlement acknowledged as temporary and until further notice. Being always, at any stage and at all times, post-something is also an undetachable feature of modernity. As time fl ows on, modernity changes its forms in the manner of the legendary Proteus... What was some time ago dubbed (erroneously) post-modernity, and what Ive chosen to call, more to the point, liquid modernity, is the growing conviction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty. A hundred years ago to be modern meant to chase the fi nal state of perfection now it means an infi nity of improvement, with no fi nal state in sight and none desired.

I did not think earlier and do not think now of the solidity versus liquidity conundrum as a dichotomy; I view those two conditions as a couple locked, inseparably, by a dialectical bond (the kind of bond Franois Lyotard probably had in mind when he observed that one cant be modern without being postmodern fi rst...). After all, it was the quest for the solidity of things and states that most often triggered, kept in motion and guided their liquefaction; liquidity was not an adversary, but an effect of that quest for solidity, having no other parenthood, even when (or if) the parent might deny the legitimacy of the offspring. In turn, it was the formlessness of the oozing, leaking and fl owing liquid that prompted the efforts at cooling, damping and moulding. If there is anything that permits a distinction between the solid and liquid phases of modernity (that is, arranging them in an order of succession), it is the change in both the manifest and the latent purposes behind the effort.

The original cause of the solids melting was not resentment against solidity as such, but dissatisfaction with the degree of solidity of the extant and inherited solids: purely and simply, the bequeathed solids were found not to be solid enough (insufficiently resistant or immunized to change) by the standards of the order-obsessed and compulsively order-building modern powers. Subsequently, however (in our part of the world, to this day), solids came to be viewed and accepted as transient, until further notice condensations of liquid magma; temporary settlements, rather than ultimate solutions. Flexibility has replaced solidity as the ideal condition to be pursued of things and affairs. All solids (including those that are momentarily desirable) are tolerated only in as far as they promise to remain easily and obediently fusible on demand. An adequate technology of melting down again must be in hand even before the effort starts of putting together a durable structure, fi rming it up and solidifying it. A reliable assurance of the right and ability to dismantle the constructed structure must be given before the job of construction starts in earnest. Fully biodegradable structures, starting to disintegrate the moment they have been assembled, are nowadays the ideal, and most, if not all structures, must struggle to measure up to this standard.