ABSTRACT
The classical bourgeois world view can be understood as a process of individuation, as the pursuit of pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure is the pursuit of the self; and the self, like the cosmos, is a system of relations tending towards a unique equilibrium. This has long since ceased to be a plausible view of either psyche or cosmos. The pre-eminence of the classical bourgeois world view (mechanism and egoism) can claim an historical validity indeed for little more than 150 years.1 The cultural history of capitalism since the mid-nineteenth century has been one of disintegration. It is a process which, still continuing, does not allow us to adopt a position ‘beyond’ its own apparently aimless course. There is no vantage point from which to observe its bewildering succession of styles, no way to avoid being caught up in (or caught out by) its next convulsion.
