Three: Post-modern self
“this is me in my room home in Helsingborg before a trip to Croatia last summer. this pic is representative of me because it is about here and now… which is a motto i try follow.
it is also representative because it captures travel – a big part of my life so far – in a good way: how someone’s room, their own most private and intimate space, can look like before a journey.
another reason why this pic is representative of me is because of the many details in it, which create my life. several of the things in the pic were gifts from friends and family and through the material items i will forever keep them with me, no matter where i may go. i guess they make memories come alive.”
Andrea
(…)
For Bauman the main difference between modern and post-modern times and phenomena that accompany them lies mainly in the evolution of what he tends to call high capitalism. Revolution of modernity came with production-cantered capitalistic economy; its results and causes including rationalisation of work, leisure and culture. In modern times “all that is solid” might have melted “into air” but it was melting of the old traditions not to get rid of what is solids all together, but to make space for new, better ones. That was the plan of the grand project of modernism, however, Bauman states “a task to construct a new a better order (…) is not presently on the agenda” (Bauman Z, 2001: 5). The move to post-modernity happened when capitalistic economy moved from being cantered on production to really on consumption thus creating a new individual that was to consume, consume and then consume some more. The melting of solids helped this case by freeing the members of society from old constrains of responsibilities, loyalties and fears of inevitable punishment that was supposed to fall upon those who didn’t fulfil their “customary obligations”. All of these, says Bauman, “hindered moves and trampled the enterprise” (Bauman Z, 2001: 3). But what also melted was the connection between individual choices and the collective. That gives the individual an endless choice – of lifestyle, of believes, practices, morals, people, places etc. What we experience is shortage stable orientations, or rather there are way too many of them, which causes them to crash, create conflict and eliminate one another. “It is the patterns of dependency and interaction whose turn to be liquified has now come. They are now malleable to an extent inexperienced, and unimaginable for past generations; but like all fluids they do not keep their shape for long. Shaping them is easier than keeping them in shape” (Bauman Z, 2001: 8). (…) Bauman is right – we, as individuals, disposed of all that was crumpling our moves and ended up with nothing to hold on to. But what I would also argue is that we are developing new form of personal narratives to deal with this new shape of individuality.
(…)
Let us now put these general reflections of Bauman’s in the context of development of consumer (sic!) technologies. After all wasn’t the beginning of, to use Giddens’ term, “the high post-modernity” (Giddens A., 1991) connected with the technological revolution, which was the introduction of personal computers? Or more to the point with the fact that information became present everywhere? An informed person has to leave the factory; they are even pushed out of it. If one observes the of evolution information systems, for example Internet, it is possible to see patterns of change of orientation emerging. After the fashionable appearance of the concept of web 2.0, which was to be the new, improved version of the original web, there is now talk of web 3.0. This one is to be built around the user, and not products (which in Internet terms are applications and services). This could potentially be capitalism that has to revolve around a person (a consumer), obviously not so in order that person’s life is easier; but so that the capitalism benefits. This revolving around is a form of charming the consumer, giving them easier access to whatever they might want but also giving the capitalistic system easier access to its consumer. “I suggest that the spectacular rise of ‘identity discourse’ can tell us more about the present-day state of human society than its conceptual and analytical results have told us thus far” (Bauman Z, 2001: 140). This statement is not to be treated lightly – the individual becoming a centre of economic and cultural system is not so much about freedom any more, it is about the necessity of choice. And there is no right or wrong choice any more, or rather no set authorities that would have the executive power to preside over people in terms of dictating what is wrong and what is right . No authority means the act of choice and its consequences is a solitary thing. Life does indeed become a project of whoever is leaving it and the course this project takes is for the individual to decide. Life, as the popular saying has it, is what you make of it. Additionally Anthony Giddens observes that “sequestration of experience means that, for many people, direct contact with events and situations which link the individual lifespan to broad issues of morality and finitude are rare and fleeting”. The implications of this phenomenon are not as simple, however, as concluding that actions of modern individuals are inevitably attempts to compensate for this fragmentation of experience. In the same way that contemporary “search for intimacy” is not only “a negative reaction to a wider, more impersonal universe” (Giddens A, 2005: 7), but is a reaction to a complex combination of different influences, I would argue the need to represent one self visually is more than just an attempt at giving more solid form to a “liquid identity”. Modern self, argues Giddens, is not really fragmented – it is constantly revised (Giddens A, 2005: 6). Individual, who represents themselves via the medium of photography attempts, among other things, constructing a narrative of these revisions.
(…)
The practice of photography is representative of these trends. As Bauman writes “identity appears stable and solid only when it is looked at from afar and for a brief moment” (Bauman Z, 2001: 128). This brief gaze at who we appear to be can be happen through a photograph. In this sense photos are documentation of what you consume, of what you own (clothes, life style, alcohol everything is bought) as well as an attempt at giving some lasting form to what’s liquid. They are also projections of who we want to be, which might be very important since Bauman identifies dreams as a frail binder of reality. Everything more realized than a dream is a form of limiting of freedom and freedom of consumption seems to be the freedom of identity. As Bauman rights the dream life is on TV – “things really experienced become unreal”. Which, I would again argue, might be the source of our need to document, to represent in something lasting (or at least lasting longer than an illusion of a dream). It is not enough to be somewhere, live the experience – we need to look back at it (made lasting in a form of a photograph) from outside (of experience) to feel that it truly happened. The performative nature of our being, one could argue, demands documentation, safe in the knowledge that even this documentation – films, pictures – can easily be disposed of should we find ourselves disposing of the identity we were performing.
Browse Timeline
Comments ( 2 )
I didn’t know you were this deep. I have to disagree with your last paragraph however. Documenting my experiences alter the memory of the experience, which is why I never do it. I let something happen and then store that reaction internally. The more I ponder on it, the more that reaction, that memory, becomes altered.
I forget where I heard/saw/read this, but it goes something along the lines of: “if you examine something, then it changes.”
Stefan Constantinescu added these pithy words on
Dec 18 08 at
4:22 am
Well that’s not really disagreeing, since this is about people who do feel the need to document it – I’m trying to get at why they need it. You’re very right about the alternation of the experience, especially with photography, if only because it removes you from the action for the time of composing/taking the photo. It’s like you’re becoming a tourist (Sontag writes about it in these terms). But that whole matter was to off topic for this essay, I only had 8 000 words.
Had you had read my blog before instead of demanding some prose you would have known how deep I am (which is not very by the way) :)
ana added these pithy words on
Dec 18 08 at
12:19 pm