[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
every path can be connected with every other one & [it] has no centre,
no periphery, no exit, because it is potentially indefinite .34
94 Zygmunt Bauman
In liquid modernity, it is appearances that count and truth is
performative. Identities might be formed in lives that are real enough,
but they tend to be identities which are remarkably insubstantial and
provisional or, to use one of Max Weber s metaphors, made of light cloaks
rather than steel casings. Liquid modern identities are not solid because
they are not quite identities. This is because liquid modern identity-making
is concentrated on performing rather than building anything solid as such
and in this way it thrives on its own ambivalence; it is always about
performing an identity rather than expressing who you are.
For Bauman, as for Erving Goffman, the whole of society is on a
stage and all of its members have to perform their identities. However,
in a liquid modern sociality the idea that there is a division between a
real inner core and a somehow less authentic shell of an outer self a
propos Goffman35 no longer holds good. As Bauman puts it, drawing
on Lyotard:
We now live open space-time, in which there are no more identities,
only transformations & and the one thing lost is being itself: it
has no solid roots in time. Being, as it were is always escaping
determination and arriving both too soon and too late & This is a
time-space of the perpetual present and ubiquitous here .36
Liquid modern identity thus has to be performed in the dramatic mode:
a stiff scenario closely followed by the actors, but [this] stiffest of
scenarios remains a scenario, a contrived text scripted in this rather
than that way, and a text which could well have been scripted in
that way rather than this; and even the most disciplined actors
remain actors, playing their parts, this part rather than some other
which they could play instead with the same flourish and
dedication.37
Identities recast as transformations are remarkable performances which
are rooted first and foremost in their isolation an individualized sense
of isolation at once unconscious, the fruit of a habitual DIY self-
satisfaction dependent on the blessing of significant others, and finally
the inevitable result of a newly achieved sense of self that grasps others
without having to be grasped by them. The hope too is that their
incumbents will find for themselves in these individualized identities
somebody that is exactly itself and an image redolent of nobody else.
In this sense, liquid modern identities are best seen as productive and
creative cartographies. The rhizome life is deemed the most appropriate
way of living as it is entirely oriented towards experimentation in contact
with the real & it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant
Freedom and Security in the Liquid Modern Sociality 95
modifications .38 As Deleuze and Guattari might say, it is a life energized
by a play of active and reactive forces, fashioned by the contours of a
self-politics of desire, which makes self-transformation not merely a
possibility but a duty to one s individuality. The liquid modern mentality
is such that it perceives that life must be lived authentically and this is
what makes life bearable and exhilarating. As Bauman suggests, liquid
moderns follow Sartre s dictum: it is not enough to be a bourgeois &
one needs to live one s life as a bourgeois .39
PALIMPSEST IDENTITIES
As Bauman points out, liquid modernity demands above all else a
palimpsest identity which fits a world in which the art of forgetting is an
asset .40 He suggests that, like the characters in the film Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind, liquid moderns attempt to flush out all traces of
memory in creating these palimpsest identities which are erased to make
room for the next instalment. Indeed, according to Bauman, liquid
moderns spend the best part of their lives rewriting themselves because
perdurability is not the name of the game in liquid modernity.
Consequently, selves become more than the sum of their parts; the
individuals you see do not really determine who they are and what they
do together. Contrary to postmodernism s depthless asocial individuals
who have no identities to speak of either because they have disappeared
into discursive formations or have become merely representations
Bauman s individuals are always being themselves. For Bauman, what
remains uncertain is not our identity but our knowledge of it and the
problem is that, because they live in an era of constant change and
disposability, individuals not only seem to have too many selves to choose
from, but they have developed an extreme dislike for performing the
same identity too often.
One life strategy employed by liquid moderns for reconciling this
turbulent existence is to live parallel lives which have little to do with
one another. Identity in this sense is about disassociation, a mysterious
division between the real and the hyperreal. In liquid modernity it turns
out that there is not one but many aspects to the self, projected through a
lens which unites them to create the image of one identity. But this is an
identity without a centre, a meeting point. And the more you watch you
wonder how some of these different aspects of the self could be so
different, how sealed and impenetrable to each other they might appear.
Liquid moderns believe single-mindedly that any pain or alienation
they may have to face in the name of this constant reinvention of the self
is not only worth it, but that it ensures the solitude they imagine they
96 Zygmunt Bauman
need in order to live their lives to their full potential. Liquid modern
identity making is an art form and they are artists. Moreover, each one of
them is deadly serious about and deeply committed to their creative work.
They are people capable of devotion, but true to form that devotion is,
like Narcissus s reflection in the pool, aimed straight at themselves. Self-
obsessed with how they look, liquid moderns turn to self-help manuals
for wisdom and sound advice about how to live their lives. This is a
matter not just of self-protection but of aesthetics; liquid moderns believe
that their individual difference is paramount, and to perform their
individuality is a mark of their authenticity.
Liquid moderns are constantly on the look out for the immediacy of
the sting of pure transcendence, outside all previous experience. The trick
is to conceive an identity so swift and slight that it seems as weightless
as the fantasy that made it. In this sense they are like the characters of
Milan Kundera s fiction, who have to live with the burden of being
confronted with inexorable change and with fantastical powers of
weightlessness, winging their way through life, their quest is to attain a
temporary but bearable lightness of being. This results in a liquid version
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]