Andreas Reckwitz - Society of Singularities

It must be clearly stated: the social logic of singularity, whose proliferation has been observable since the 1970s or 1980s, fully contradicts that which had constituted the core of modern society for more than 200 years. The society of classical modernity, which crystallized in eighteenth-century Western Europe and reached its zenith as industrial modernity in the United States and Soviet Union during the middle of the twentieth century, was organized in a fundamentally different way. What prevailed then was a social logic of the general , and this prevalence was so radical and drastic as to have been unprecedented in world history. As Max Weber aptly observed, the classical modernity of industrial society was fundamentally a process of profound formal rationalization. 9And, as I would like to add, every manifestation of this formal rationalization – whether in science and technology, economic–industrial production, the state, or the law – promoted and supported the dominance of the general. The focus everywhere was on standardization and formalization, on making sure that the elements produced in the world were equal, homogeneous, and also equally justified: on the assembly lines in industrial factories and in the rows of buildings in the International Style, in the social and constitutional state, in the military, in the “schooling” of children, in ideologies, and in technology.

As long as one remains attached to this old image of modernity, which is shaped by industrial society, it is easy to dismiss the emergence of singularities and singularizations as a mere marginal or superficial phenomenon. The logic of singularities, however, is not in the periphery but is in fact operating at the center of late-modern society. What are the causes of this profound transformation? My first answer to this question, which I will elaborate over the course of this book, is as follows: during the 1970s and 1980s, the two most powerful social engines that had been propelling the standardization of industrial modernity were converted into engines of social singularization: the economy and technology. In late modernity, the economy and technology have become, for the first time in history, large-scale generators of singularization . They have become paradoxical agents of large-scale particularity, and we are the first to experience and understand the whole scope of this process and its social, psychological, and political consequences.

Between industrial modernity and late modernity there thus occurred a twofold structural breach . The first originated in the structural shift from the old industrial economy to cultural capitalism and the economy of singularities , with the creative economy as its main branch. The capitalism of the knowledge and culture economy is that of a post-industrial economy. Its goods are essentially cultural goods, and they are “singularity goods” – that is, things, services, events, or media formats whose success with consumers depends on them being recognized as unique. With this transformation of goods, the structure of markets and employment has fundamentally changed as well. Following the example of classic works such as Karl Marx’s Capital and Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money , social theory has to engage with the most advanced form of the economy if it wants to understand the most advanced form of modernity. The second structural breach is being brought about by the digital revolution, which marks a technological shift away from standardization toward singularization – from the data tracking of profiles and the personalization of digital networks to the use of 3D printers. Like nothing before it, the dominant technology of the digital revolution has the character of a “culture machine” in which primarily cultural elements – images, narratives, and games – are both produced and received.

If one considers just the economy and technology – that is, cultural capitalism and the culture machine – it becomes clear that the society of singularities has afforded a central position to something that the former industrial society had tended to marginalize: culture . For the way that late modernity is structured, culture plays an unusual role. Through its massive preference for rational processes and formal norms – and much to the chagrin of cultural critics – industrial modernity went out of its way to devalue cultural practices and objects. Today, on the contrary, unique objects, places, times, subjects, and collectives are no longer simply perceived as means to an end; in that they are assigned a value of their own – be it aesthetic or ethical – they are now strongly regarded as culture itself. Later, I will go into greater detail about what constitutes culture and how it circulates, but for now it is possible to state that culture always exists wherever value has been assigned to something – that is, wherever processes of valorization are taking place. It is important to understand that practices of valorization and practices of singularization go hand in hand. When people, things, places, or collectives appear to be unique, they are attributed value and seem to be socially valuable. Significantly, however, the inverse is also true: if they appear to lack any unique qualities, they are worthless . In short, the society of singularities is engaged in culturalizing the social , and profoundly so. It is busy playing a grand social game of valorization and singularization (on the one hand) and devaluation and de-singularization (on the other), and it invests objects and practices with a value beyond their functionality. In late modernity, moreover, the sphere of culture has adopted a specific form: no longer a clearly delineated subsystem, it has rather transformed into a global hyperculture in which potentially everything – from Zen meditation to industrial footstools, from Montessori schools to YouTube videos – can be regarded as culture and can become elements of the highly mobile markets of valorization, which entice the participation of subjects with the promise of self-actualization.

We have thus come to another central feature of the society of singularities: the extreme relevance of affects. With its logic of the general and its drive toward rationalization, industrial modernity systematically reduced the role of affect in society. When people, things, events, places, or collectives are singularized and culturalized, however, they then operate by attracting (or repulsing) others. Indeed, it is only by affecting others that they can be regarded as singular at all. Late-modern society is a society of affect in a way that classical modernity never could have been. To a great extent, its components operate in an affective manner, and its subjects long to be affected and to affect others in order to be considered attractive and authentic themselves. In short, whereas the logic of the general is associated with processes of social rationalization and reification, the logic of the singular is related to processes of social culturaliz­ation and the intensification of affect.

Thus far, I have focused on the fact that late modernity has undergone a historically unprecedented structural transformation that revolves around singularization and culturalization. Yet are these processes really entirely novel? And, inversely, has the old logic of the general been completely supplanted by the new logic of the singular? The answer to both of these questions has to be no, and this fact complicates the larger picture considerably. First, it is necessary to revise our image of modernity altogether. If we understand late modernity – our present time – as that version of modernity which has replaced industrial society, then we are obliged to discuss the notion of modernity in general. However, the sociological discourse about modernity has frequently been one-dimensional in that it often conflates modernization with the processes of formal rationalization and reification. In my view, however, modernity should not be understood as a one-dimensional process in this sense, for, from its very beginning, it has been composed of two divergently organized dimensions: the rationalistic dimension of standardization, and the cultural dimension that involves the attribution of value, the intensification of affect, and singularization. The encyclopedic thinkers of the nineteenth century – Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Simmel, for example, but also Max Weber – had a sense for this dual structure. 10