Singularität und Regulierung

The German sociologist Andreas Reckwitz is among the leading figures to »capture our time in concepts« (Hegel). His book The Society of Singularities and, more recently, the follow-up The End of Illusions draw the critical picture of a three-class-society, and its genesis. Accordingly, late capitalism, the »authenticity revolution« of the early 70s, and new ways of communication have led to the rise of a new middle class leaving a primarily material life-style and self-definition behind for the value of self-expression and a singularised form of life. This paper recapitulates Reckwitz's account and critically comments on it. First, Reckwitz does not enter the obvious and post-Marxist debate in which sense we are living in an era of new »class struggles«; second, the explanatory weight that is put on the class model is too heavy to really explain recent developments and, thus, calls for further specifications; third, Reckwitz's plea for state-based and governmental regulation remains shallow, given his own sketch of how such a politics of intervention might look like; I refer to religion as an obvious example that is a potential tool for bringing different classes together or, at least, for suspending the severe divide between divergent classes. Reckwitz, however, seems to be presupposing the wrong-headed narrative of classical secularisation while religion represents a promising candidate of being itself an important phenomena of singularisation.

ANDREAS RECKWITZ, Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2017, 480 S. – DERS., Das Ende der Illusionen. Politik, Ökonomie und Kultur in der Spätmoderne. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2019, 305 S.