ABSTRACT
It is now widely recognised that we are experiencing a moment of rapid historical transformation where we must reconsider many of the tendencies taken for granted over the last decades. The debate has often focused on enumerating multiple crises – environmental, economic, military, geopolitical – sometimes grouped under the umbrella notion of ‘polycrisis’. However, this recognition of systemic instability has not to date been accompanied by a sufficient constructive moment of reflection about the nature of the new world that is taking shape amid the fog of the old crumbling order. A symptomatic phenomenon to get to grips with the novel shape of our times is the return of state intervention, sometimes acquiring forms that are reminiscent of the vertical integration and social engineering attributed to modernity. I argue that the third modernity we are now experiencing lacks many of the characteristics attributed to postmodernity, ‘second modernity’ or ‘reflexive modernity’. Specifically, it is marked by a revival of large social units – states, classes, movements – which contradicts the assumption of ever-growing individualisation. Furthermore, it is accompanied by a return of typically modernist themes, such as vertical integration in production, centralisation of oversight in the state and rapid technological development, and heavy forms of surveillance that attempt to discipline individuals to ensure they contribute to national agendas. Rather than a reflexive modernity, this increasingly looks like a ‘re-modernity’, a recovery of some of the constructivist ideas of first modernity, but in ways that raise all sorts of societal dilemmas.
