Ontological Insecurity

Where is Class in Bauman?

Politics of Exclusion

Ontological Insecurity

...a loss of confidence and trust in the world as it appearsas 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 Bauman’s Liquid ConceptsConcepts

Liquid ModernityLiquid Modernity

HyperpluralismHyperpluralism

Class: vague terminology: Is Class: vague terminology: Is he speaking of upward he speaking of upward mobility freedom or symbolic mobility freedom or symbolic class (renegotiating identity class (renegotiating identity through consumption)? through consumption)?

Issue of empirical evidence...Issue of empirical evidence...

The Issue of Class...aside?

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

Theory / Praxis

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 consciousnessFalse 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

Sense of controlcontrol PredictablePredictable routines PredictablePredictable

relationships

Home OwnershipDoes ontological ontological

insecurity insecurity end with homeownership?

Home Ownership

How are we How are we convinced home convinced home ownership is a ownership is a solution?solution?

Property relations - social identity

Governing through crime?

Hyperpluralism Anxiety about social social

identityidentity... 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)

HyperpluralismResponses 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 “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 predatory crimescrimes 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 CultureConsumption 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:• Shopping for selfself• Leisure activities Leisure activities (purged

from labour process of late modernity – ahistoricism)

Celebrate!

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