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Interactive
metal fatigue. The interpassive transformation of democratic life
This research project runs at the Department of Philosophy of Erasmus University Rotterdam from december 2007 till december 2012. It is supported by a grant from NWO, the Dutch Council for Scientific Research, within its research domain Omstreden Democratie (Contested Democracy).
Project leader is Dr
Gijs van Oenen, Department of Philosophy, Erasmus University
Rotterdam.
A
short summary of the project
Increasingly
people seem unable to act in accordance with norms that are
generally accepted, even - and here’s the rub - when they themselves
subscribe
to the very same norms. This phenomenon of, sometimes even
self-declared, moral incapacitation
has, ironically, been brought about exactly by a social and moral
success-story,
that of achieved emancipation and democracy. No one can be forced
nowadays to
live according to norms he or she does not rationally assent to. This,
however,
creates an unanticipated burden: exactly because we feel obliged to
live up to
all our self-imposed norms, we sometimes fail to do so. Thus we feel
dissatisfied, without being able to explain this to ourselves: aren’t
we now
free, self-directing individuals who really do want to be ruled by
self-imposed
norms?
The hypothesis of this
research project is that modern democracy suffers from ‘interactive
metal
fatigue’, or ‘interpassivity’. That is, the incessant democratic
interaction
and rational consent that modern society exacts from us, and that we
indeed
voluntarily affirm, is becoming ‘too much of a good thing’ for us. We
do not
manage to live up to our own promise of emancipated life. Symptoms of
this
condition are now starting to show up, in the form of e.g. aversion,
capsularization, detachment, disinterest and outsourcing.
The research project aims
to track down and analyse the symptoms of interpassivity in three main
areas of
modern social life: politics and governance; labor and economics;
citizenship and
public space. This leads to a new cultural-philosophical diagnosis of
problems
and tensions in several spheres of society that have not yet, or not
yet
adequately, been analysed. In this way, the research program is
pioneering on
two levels. First, an innovative conceptual framework is constructed
around the
notion of ‘interpassivity’ that covers and integrates several themes in
social,
cultural and political philosophy. Second, this framework is used to
identify
and diagnose a number of urgent problems in actual social reality, such
as:
dissatisfaction with politics and democracy; the decline of the public
space
and of social commitment (‘private wealth, public poverty’); and the
‘outsourcing’
of responsibilities.
Project information
For more information please contact:
Gijs
van Oenen
address
Deparment of Philosophy EUR, Woudestein campus, H-building, room H5-27
postal address
Deparment of Philosophy EUR, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam
phone
010.4088999/8963. fax 010.2120448
email vanoenen@fwb.eur.nl
last change: June 6,
2010