Rolf-Dieter HEPP
Co-ordinator of the SUPI European Network on precariousness and social insecurity
Professor of Sociology, Freie Universitaet
Berlin (Germany)
Introduction
Two years ago, the Corona crisis dominated the political-media, scientific and everyday discourse. Before Coronavirus, the climate crisis was the media-dominating phenomenon. In the past two decades, we have been confronted with the so-called refugee and migration crisis, the banking, financial and economic crisis, the sovereign debt and euro crisis, the crisis of democracy, (popular) parties and representation, the crisis of the welfare state, the media crisis, the education crisis and the demographic crisis. In addition, there are humanitarian crises as well as intra-societal or inter-state conflicts and wars, which are perceived as crises. Not to forget, finally, relationship, marriage or family crises and individual crises such as depression, burnout or midlife crisis. Individual economic sectors or companies are constantly in crisis. In medicine, a critical turning point in the course of a disease is defined as a crisis.
1-The word "crisis" and the evolution of its multiple meanings and implications
The term crisis has a long tradition dating back to Greek antiquity. The etymological origin of the word lies in the Greek noun krísis, which means dispute, judgment, distinction, decision, or turning point, and in the complementary verb krínein, which translates as to examine, separate, part, choose, decide, dispute, or fight. In addition to its use in political, legal-forensic, theological contexts, krisis was used especially in a medical context, denoting the final phase of the disease process with a turn toward recovery or death. Overall, krisis originally "aimed at a final, irrevocable decision. The term implied sharpened alternatives that no longer permitted revision: success or failure, right or wrong, life or death, finally salvation or damnation" (Koselleck 2006: 204).
Rousseau's observations mark a turning point because he did not only mean the alternative between catastrophe and recovery in the sense of a return to the old order, but also associated revolution with it as the possibility of something new and a better and higher social order. In the course of the American and French Revolutions, this view spread, and the concept of crisis now referred to momentous sociopolitical decision-making situations.
Although the semantic expansion of the concept of crisis took place through political language usage, since the 19th century the economic concept of crisis in particular represented a new everyday experience and further expanded the associative space of crisis. Of course, economic crises were not a new phenomenon at that time, but the logic and structure as well as the frequency and manifestation of economic crises changed with the establishment of modern capitalism - and with it their social perception and scientific analysis. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in particular related crisis to economic development and developed the first "sociological term, life or death, ultimately salvation or damnation" (Koselleck 2006: 204).
In addition to the periodically recurring economic crises, the profound transformation of societies in the 19th century contributed to the growing importance of the concept of crisis for the description of social conditions and forced the further scientific examination of the concept of crisis. It seemed particularly suitable for characterizing the uncertain, dynamic and open social development that resulted from the capitalist penetration of the economy and society and manifested itself, among other things, in the economic-social consequences of industrialization, urbanization, the founding of political associations, parties and trade unions, or in the progressive democratization of state and society and the first beginnings of welfare state services. It is therefore not surprising that it was precisely at that time that sociology emerged as an independent scientific discipline. Sociology emerged "from the spirit of crisis" (Repplinger 1999).
Through such forms of subjectivization of the crisis, the actors are identified as carriers of the .respective crisis. With their behaviour the Actors are an active part of the crisis.
In anchoring such views in social discourses, a tried and tested "neoliberal" tradition of dismantling social security systems is taken up and at the same time reinforced by fears and feelings of guilt in order to achieve an orientation of the population toward the restrictions on the potential for action during the pandemic, since measures such as lockdowns and/or restrictions on freedom must be accepted as necessary by the actors.
Fears and feelings of guilt are mobilized for this purpose. Targeted or untargeted confusion is promoted by a systematic production of uncertainty, which on the one hand plays with the fears, anxieties and hopes of the actors, but on the other hand tries to channel and orient them towards an attitude of acceptance of the "necessary" subjugation strategies to fight the virus.
2-The debt economy and the integration between present and future
“Debt” does not only mean economy but at the same time involves a whole arsenal of security techniques, calculations, measurements and an establishment of equivalences through which the entire existence of the debtor is shaped. Thus, the debt situation does not only refer to the present, but involves coordinations, conditionings and orientations to the future life contexts of the creditor, as well as the debtor.
“In the light of the neoliberal debt economy, the Second Essay of the Genealogy takes on a new topicality: debt is not only an economic mechanism, it is also a security-state technique of government aimed at reducing the uncertainty of the behavior of the governed. By training the governed to "promise" (to honor their debt), capitalism exercises "control over the future," since debt obligations allow one to foresee, calculate, measure,and establish equivalences between current and future behavior. The effects ofthe power of debt on subjectivity (guilt and responsibility) allow capitalism to bridge the gap between present and future.“ (Lazzaratto Maurizio, The Making of the Indebted Man. An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition, 2012, p.45).
Since debts create a bond, a relationship between the present and the future, between creditor and debtor at the same time, the disposal of the future flows into the network of relationships as a "social fact" in Durkheim's sense, or determines and arranges the roles at the two poles of the oppositional relationship creditor/debtor. Thus, the future is immediately structured, objectified and subjectified by sorting it into the corresponding chains of action.
“The debt economy is an economy of time and subjectivation in a specific sense. Indeed, neo- liberalism is an economy turned toward the future, since finance is a promise of future wealth and, consequently, incommensurable with actual wealm. No use making a fuss because the economy's "present" and "future" fail to match up! What matters is finance's goal of reducing what will be to what is, that is, reducing the future and it possibilities to current power relations. From this perspective, all financial innovations have one sole purpose: possessing the future in advance by objectivizing it. This objectivation is of a completely different order from mat of labor time; objectivizing time, possessing it in advance, means subordinating all possibility of choice and decision which the future holds to the reproduction of capitalist power relations. In this way, debt appropriates not only the present labor time of wage-earners and of me population in general, it also preempts non-chronological time, each person's future as well as the future of society as a whole. The principal explanation for the strange sensation of living in a society without time, without possibility, without foreseeable rupture, is debt.“ (Lazzarato M.., Ibidem, 55f.)
The dismantling of security systems produces an insecure world that carries indeterminacy within itself and is tailored to precarious life contexts. Corona control and combat ties in with these tendencies in order to be able to develop mobilization potentials.
Indeterminacy is a permanent crossroads;- in which decisions are based on poverty.
During the pandemic, seemingly all political and social actions and activities focus on fighting the pandemic. Pandemic control is the focus of political and public interest. To this end, the population must be mobilized to support díe measures and restrictions. Ernst Jünger considers mobilization to be a formative factor of modernity that structures, orders and aligns individuals. This
refers not only to mobilization for World War I, but also determines the fate of the worker and the clerk, who are encouraged to move constantly. (Compare Ernst Jünger, The Worker). According to Agamben, the state of exception that is sought with the mobilization of the masses is described as authoritarian rule, following and echoing Foucault.
"Sovereign is who decides on the state of exception." (Schmitt, Carl: 1996). Whoever can determine the state of emergency is the sovereign. As early as 1899, Thorstein Veblen pointed out in the "Theory of the Leisure Class" that the existing society, although peaceful, was built on a war- oriented system based on subjugation.
“During the predatory stage proper the distinction between the leisure and the labouring class is in some degree a ceremonial distinction only. The able bodied men jealously stand aloof from whatever is in their apprehension, menial drudgery; but their activity in fact contributes appreciably to the sustenance of the group. The subsequent stage of quasi-peaceable industry is usually characterised by an established chattel slavery, herds of cattle, and a servile class of herdsmen and shepherds; industry has advanced so far that the community is no longer dependent for its livelihood on the chase or on any other form of activity that can fairly be classed as exploit. From this point on, the characteristic feature of leisure class life is a conspicuous exemption from all useful employment.
The normal and characteristic occupations of the class in this mature phase of ist life history are in form very much the same as in its earlier days. These occupations are government, war, sports, and devout observances. Persons unduly given to difficult theoretical niceties may hold that these occupations are still incidentally and indirectly “productive”; but it is to be noted as decisive of the question in hand that the ordinary and ostensible motive of the leisure class in engaging in these occupations is assuredly not an increase of wealth by productive effort. At this as at any other cultural stage, government and war are, at least in part, carried on for the pecuniary gain of those who engage in them; but it is gain obtained by the honourable method of seizure and conversion. These occupations are of the nature of predatory, not of productive, employment. Something similar may be said of the chase, but with a difference. As the community passes out of the hunting stage proper, hunting gradually becomes differentiated into two distinct employments. On the one hand it is a trade, carried on chiefly for gain; and from this the element of exploit is virtually absent, or it is at any rate not present in a sufficient degree to clear the pursuit of the imputation of gainful industry. On the other hand, the chase is also a sport— an exercise of the predatory impulse simply. As such it does not afford any appreciable pecuniary incentive, but it contains a more or less obvious element of exploit. It is this latter development of the chase — purged of all imputation of handicraft — thatalone is meritorious and fairly belongs in the scheme of life of the developed leisure class“.Veblen, 1899, p. 20
3-The control society: from numbers to codes
According to Foucault, the plague forms an ideal model as a "dream of the order politicians", All actors are fixed in one place, controlled and monitored. The panoptic principle of organization provides a model of control and surveillance of individuals, so that disciplining produces subjects. Today, according to Deleuze, through mechanisms of the society of control, individual subjects are no longer monitored in a specific place; instead, the methods of surveillance are carried forward by gaining an overview of the movement of actors through fluctuations, which experience an inherent weight and amplification in the pandemic as a real existing threat scenario.
Power, and thus profit, is no longer necessarily gained from disciplining the individual body, but by directing and controlling movements and flows.
According to Deleuze, the society of control unfolds primarily through the control of movements, the legibility of bodies and data streams, and the modulation of individuals. Thus, individuals are not fixed and enclosed in single closed institutions but, on the contrary, individuals are kept in constant movement and flexibility. The body is no longer adapted to the large machinery, but is constantly "modulated".
“The disciplinary societies have two poles: the signature that designates the individual, and the number or administrative numeration that indicates his or her position within a mass. This is
because the disciplines never saw any incompatibility between these two, and because at the same time power individualizes and masses together, that is, constitutes those over whom it exercises power into a body and molds the individuality of each member of that body. (Foucault saw the origin of this double charge in the pastoral power of the priest—the flock and each of its animals--but civil power moves in turn and by other means to make itself lay "priest.")
In the societies of control, on the other hand, what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code: the code is a password, while on the other hand disciplinary societies are regulated by watchwords (as much from the point of view of integration as from that of resistance).
The numerical language of control is made of codes that mark access to information, or reject it. We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become "dividuals," and masses, samples, data, markets, or "banks." Perhaps it is money that expresses the distinction between the two societies best, since discipline always referred back to minted money that locks gold as numerical standard, while control relates to floating rates of exchange, modulated according to a rate established by a set of standard currencies. The old monetary mole is the animal of the space of enclosure, but the serpent is that of the societies of control. We have passed from one animal to the other, from the mole to the serpent, in the system under which we live, but also in our manner of living and in our relations with others. The disciplinary man was a discontinuous producer of energy, but the man of control is undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network. Everywhere surfing has already replaced the older sports.“ (Deleuze, p.3)
Closing remark
The societies of control are characterized primarily by the control of movements, the legibility of bodies and data streams, and the modulation of individuals. Thus, I repeat, individuals are not fixed and enclosed in single closed institutions but are kept in constant movement and flexibility. The techniques of domination during the situation’s crisis are based on these criteria.
Contact:
Email: kerghepp@gmx.de
