Fresh Conservatism and Beyond : [Voorbij het fris conservatisme. Tweede moderniteit]

• The superpresent as commitment. As the sociologists Lash and Urry explain in Economies of Sign and Space, the identity of space and place is undergoing radical change due to the pressure of a new sort of modernity. Social structures are in decline and are being replaced by a structure of flows, i.e., a set of information and communication structures. Social inequality and social class are no longer determined by one’s position not in the mode of production but in the mode of information.We can no longer explain this new modernity in terms of the contradictions produced by industrial society between feudalism and the nineteenth century. A new modernity is now penetrating our everyday lives with the utmost discretion, by way of normality. This time however, there are no political explosions or revolutions. This supermodern world – or rather, this second modernity – of everyday material and immaterial objects is experienced and consumed by all of us, while at the same time it virtually always escapes our vigilance, no matter how determined. We need to learn to look closely in order both to escape the fresh hypnosis of this supermodernity and to be able to assess at their true value the different qualities of this second modernity that lie concealed under the skin of society. New concepts, instruments and forms need to be devised if we are to operate within this second modernity in a fashion that is active and not consumerist. In short, we long for new fantasies and experiments.This search for, and creation of, a new space for experiment is a fascinating quest, but there is also a danger lurking in it. I call this danger Fresh Conservatism. This is because the second modernity, while it enables us to find new possibilities – an immanent radical space and aesthetics2) – is also accompanied by an excess of political blindness. This illiteracy is generated by a middle class without perspectives. A striking feature is that this middle class, more than any before it, is colonizing the world. For a long time now it has been at home in our worldwide second modernity, while ordinary citizens remain confined to their national borders. But alongside the silent majorities, there are large numbers of men and women who are taking on an increasingly critical and reflexive distance with reference to the institutions of the new information society. This growing reflexivity is part and parcel of a radical enhancement in our second modernity of individualization. Today’s world is a ‘risk society’, as Ulrich Beck calls it, where humans themselves both have created global problems and are increasingly reflexive about monitoring the outcomes and developing at least partial solutions to those problems.Contemporary life is premised upon the social organization of reflexivity, but of course it is doubtful whether that reflexivity can be organized so as to regulate and minimize the scale of those risks and depency of power.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Arkitektur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Architecture (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Architecture

fresh Conservatism

Architecture in the Netherlands

aesthetics

estetik

design

design

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)