ABSTRACT
The second key argument underpinning my theory of liquid leisure is that liquid modernity ushered in a new phase for leisure, which saw it ingeniously empowered by the human imagination. To paraphrase what Agnes Heller (1999: 125) has said about culture more generally, with the onset of liquid modernity, the subsidiary, compensatory function of leisure was transformed to an interpretive function. In other words, leisure has become a hermeneutical exercise. That is, leisure ceased to be defined through the distinction between its good and bad aspects – work against leisure, serious leisure against casual leisure, leisure as freedom against leisure as constraint; instead, it acquired more and more meaning. In liquid modernity, then, it is hermeneutics that deepens the meaning of leisure, rather than good and bad taste or judgement. It is meaning, the appeal to the unknown known that places my leisure interest at the top of the modern hierarchy of culture. It is placed high by me because it has the potential to serve for infinite interpretability – as well as giving me pleasure and happiness – again and again. In liquid modernity, leisure performs a key function, then: the function of rendering meaning.
