Ontological Insecurity Where is Class in Bauman? Politics of Exclusion

Ontological Insecurity as it appears...a loss of confidence and trust in the world as it appears to be Much of the process of addressing ontological insecurity takes place in the ‘private’ realm...

Ontological (In)security  Social Identity work  Ongoing process  Politics of Exclusion  Question of class  Post vs. Late Modernity  Saving a concept...

Bauman’s Liquid Concepts Liquid Modernity  Hyperpluralism  Class: vague terminology: Is he speaking of upward mobility freedom or symbolic class (renegotiating identity through consumption)?  Issue of empirical evidence...

The Issue of Class...aside? producers consumers, freedom “Because capitalism no longer engages society as producers in its reproduction...but as consumers, it is now the freedom to consume and to choose which symbols of self- identity are to be appropriated”, which constitute social order.

Theory / Praxis

The issue of ontological insecurity (anxiety) is not problematic once it is bracketed away from the postmodern assumption about the disappearance of class... Security is still up for sale...

“Freedom” and “Natural” environments ‘Freedom’: Adorno & Frankfurt School False consciousness  No Autonomy? How are virtual/real spaces more/less valuable? Consequences of Home Ownership  Identity is ‘real’  Anxiety is ‘real’

Freedom’s just another word for...  Vocabulary of Motives about...  Personalized failure*  Failed to learn  Failed to try hard enough  Failed to be confident  Failed to be persuasive  And on and on it goes... “Unprecedented” levels of anxiety... *Seriously, fuck that...

Home Ownership Dupuis & Thorns Home (property) is explained as...  A site free from surveillance control  Sense of control  Predictable  Predictable routines  Predictable  Predictable relationships

Home Ownership ontological insecurity Does ontological insecurity end with homeownership?

Home Ownership How are we convinced home ownership is a solution? Property relations - social identity Governing through crime?

Hyperpluralism social identity  Anxiety about social identity...  Micro- individual  Meso – social (institution + individual)  Macro – institutional  Looking for “the next” secure thing...

Hyperpluralism & Mass Media: The goal of a mass simulation culture is psychoanalysis in reverse - reverse enlightenment (Frankfurt School).  Despair as a structure  The parts that were just yours, are now general property  Confession culture?  Pleasure principal of mass media (spectacle)

Hyperpluralism Responses to Hyperpluralism  Change reinvent resist  Protests...  Recede into essentialist explanations of others.. Institutional violence against social groups (racist attacks, labour attacks) Politics of social inclusion & exclusion Beyond binaries...

Politics of Exclusion Can be economic, political or spatial  Cultural not individual  Context  Exclusion process includes opportunities for inclusion

Politics of Exclusion Various registers of exclusion  Call for policies that address economic exclusion on one hand, and political and social exclusion on the other hand...

Social Exclusion predatory crimes  “The profoundly precarious position of most of those ‘included’ in late modern society in turn spawns anger, vindictiveness, and a taste for exclusion. From this precarious social perch, it can all too easily seem that the underclass unfairly lone on OUR taxes and commit predatory crimes against us...” (p. 62)

Social Exclusion “Reconnaissance battles" fought out in specific territorial places, which are battles to define and redefine socio- political spaces. (Bauman 2002, & quoted on p53 of your text)

Multiple Registries of Rationality Consumption Culture Recall Hayward: “Why do consumers act against their better judgement and engage in spending they later regret?”  Vocabulary of Motives  Tandem relationship between rationality & excitement  Identity & Insecurity Aesthetic and affective dimensions....

Culture of Narcissism (Lasch)  Over-socialization  Alienation (tuning out)  ‘Disnification’ of experience Responses: self Shopping for self Leisure activities Leisure activities (purged from labour process of late modernity – ahistoricism)

Celebrate! Baudrillard: Treating people like products and products like people... Liquid modernity Baudrillard: Treating people like products and products like people... Liquid modernity

Cynicism... Similar to the term ‘motive’, do not misunderstand Lasch’s understanding of Narcissism