The Realistic Possibility of Community: The Encounter between Postmodern Philosophy and the Information Society ^†

Abstract

The independent, self-disciplined, and liberal Enlightenment Subject is the foundation for the discussion of community in traditional political philosophy. However, in the present age, the Enlightenment Subject is still unfinished, and instead, the economically helpless, politically disempowered, and culturally irrational “Multitude” is a true reflection of reality. Postmodern philosophy has created a society of coexistence, borderless and liquid, based on this “multitude”, opening up new possibilities for the future of our species. However, postmodern philosophy’s theories are impracticable because of their deconstructive and speculative nature. The information society and this community, however, overlap in several ways. The true possibility of this community also exists in the information society.

1. The Absence of Enlightenment Subject

In Liquid Modernity, Zygmunt Bauman wrote: “when the old ways of doing things no longer work, the old learned or inherited modes of life are no longer suitable for the current conditio humana, but when the new ways of tackling the challenges and new modes of life better suited to the new conditions have not as yet been invented, put in place and set in operation” [1] (p. 3).

In light of this, it has become crucial to research the subject of where mankind should be going. The community is a warm and resonant subject that is rising to the surface in the meantime. However, the academic community has focused a lot of its attention on what a community should be rather than how it should be built. This method is similar to religion in that it helps people forget about the suffering in this world and focus on the beauty on the other shore. What matters most is not what community is, but rather how it acts as a practical force in the world. Herein lies the difficulty indeed. The Enlightenment Subject serves as the foundation for traditional political philosophy’s approach to community building. For instance, the self-disciplined, independent, and liberal subject of the Enlightenment serves as the foundation for Rousseau’s “contractual community”, Kant’s “ethical community”, and Hegel’s “ethical nation”. But it is doubtful whether such a subject of Enlightenment exists in reality. Therefore, the first step toward comprehending reality and building community is to reconsider what we identify as the Enlightenment Subject.

In this context, the independent, self-disciplined, and liberal subject of Enlightenment expected by many philosophers has not yet been formed, and a good community based on the subject of Enlightenment has not yet emerged. The independent, self-disciplined, and liberal subject of the Enlightenment, on the other hand, has been reduced to an economically helpless, politically disempowered, and culturally irrational “Multitude” in a modern society based on instrumental reason, and this multitude is the reality for which we must first plan our community.

One is the loss of subjectivity at the economic level. This loss of subjectivity manifests itself in two ways: people become instruments of exchange value, and human conflict is triggered by egoism. On the one hand, there is the cession of subjectivity. Marx explains that a capitalist society is one in which “exchange extends to all relations of production” in Capital and its manuscript volumes. This means that in a capitalist society, capital replaces the human and human subjectivity is given up to the value of exchange. On the other hand, there is the conflict between self-interest with subjective reasoning. Freedom and equality among humans are unattainable due to the dominance of objects over people and the conflict of individuals over their own interests.

Secondly, the legal subject at the political level is not yet fully formed. On the one hand, there is no freedom and equality of subjects within the state, within the legal order. As Hardt and Negri argue, the present republic is only a “republic of property” using the “rule of property”. Such a republic would inevitably slip into oligarchy and drift away from the modern ideas of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”. On the other hand, slavery outside the rule of law is ubiquitous. Life is at great risk and challenged in “The State of Exception” such as epidemics, and war. In “Disposable People”, Kevin Bales notes that slavery has been “revived” in modern society. By his conservative estimate, there were still at least 27 million slaves in the world in the year 2000 [2] (pp. xxxiv–xxxv). Slavery still exists insidiously in today’s capitalist society for economic exploitation or other purposes.

The third is the loss of subjective reason at the cultural level. The subject’s activities are not spontaneous, and a framework of social dominance is implied in them. Human minds have always been invaded by the discourse of power, and we have been tricked by a variety of ethnicity, gender, nationalism, and other ideologies. In the Swarm: Digital Prospects, Byung-Chul Han argues that “Homo Digitalis” become a new subject. Such subjects are no longer “responsible subjects” in the traditional sense, but rather the masses who are subjected to the “information cocoon”. They do not have independent rational thought. They are in a state of ‘wandering’ without clustering and they cannot form an immanent group like a class. “The digital inhabitants of the Net do not assemble. They lack the interiority of assembly that would bring forth a we. They form a gathering without assembly—a crowd without interiority, without a soul or spirit” [3] (p. 11).

As discussed above, Enlightenment subjects are unfinished in modern society. Therefore, when discussing the construction of community, we cannot take the Enlightenment subjects of traditional political philosophy as our starting point, but rather the economically helpless, politically disempowered, and culturally irrational multitudes described above.

2. The Community Program in Postmodern Philosophy

Postmodern philosophy argues that the reason Enlightenment subjects have not been completed is that the past state or community was a totalitarianism based on substantiality. In other words, one provides an essential definition to the community and implies this definition is immanent in the community. The logic of “substantialism” ultimately leads to a rejection of the “outside”. First, anyone outside the community who cannot assimilate into it because they do not fit in with its guiding principles is excluded. Second, because each member of the society is portrayed as having an entirely immanent and identical essence, they are also free from the need to interact with others or the outside world, exhibiting an “absolute immanence of man to man”. In the end, this reasoning results in the “totalitarianism” embodied by the Nazis. The community that people wished to create was exactly the opposite of this.

Contemporary French philosophy has published a series of postmodern philosophical works on community, such as Maurice Blanchot’s Unavowable Community, Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Inoperative Community, and Agamben’s The Coming Community. In their view, traditional political philosophy’s conception of the community is the result of substantive reasoning. This community is a closed, non-relational state. Thus, they sought to find a co-existence, borderless, and liquid community, aspiring to portray a notion of the community free from the forces of totalitarianism. In this community, the economically powerless, politically disempowered, and culturally irrational multitudes can attain economic and political equality and rational self-awareness.

Based on a critique of community in the traditional political philosophy, postmodern philosophy argues that community should have the following characteristics:

The first is a community of “co-existence”. Postmodern philosophy criticizes the traditional subjectivity thinking of “imposing my own views on others” and advocates a community of “co-existence” in which everyone has a stake. It also emphasizes the preservation of the ‘uniqueness’ of the individual within this community. In this way, we can respond to the disparity between the rich and the poor and the conflicting interests of contemporary society, with people in this community that is equal and different, harmonious and different.

The second is a “borderless” community. On the one hand, community must be free of racial and geographic barriers in order to be built. On the other hand, from the political and economic spheres, capitalism has dominated all facets of existence. As Foucault has demonstrated, the “power apparatus” of capitalism permeates people’s lives through “norms” and rules over them in a ghostly state. In order to build a community, society’s entire “power apparatus” must be completely destroyed.

Thirdly, it is a “liquid” community. The roots of community are examined through the deconstructive perspective of postmodern philosophy, which holds that community should be liquid. Postmodern philosophy attempts to design a non-central, pluralistic and differentiated world, advocating mutual understanding and interaction between cultures, as a means to achieve rational self-awareness and individual development of human beings.

In conclusion, postmodern philosophy challenges the traditional community’s substantiality and works to construct a coexisting, borderless, and liquid community. The foundation of this community is the encouragement of a space for dialogue and the acknowledgment of the other. Deconstruction implies construction at first, not just negation. Only this construction seeks to reorganize and restore what has been deconstructed, which requires affirmation, commitment, construction, responsibility, and endeavor rather than restoring the importance of the old metaphysical central structure, origin, or essence. This community planning is profoundly critical and topical, providing a fresh perspective on how mankind can develop in the future. But postmodern philosophy, which instead confines itself to a deconstructive theoretical critique, does not suggest a clear route to the reality of such a community. This also identifies the community’s strong utopian element. The challenge, however, is in how the “multitude”, who are politically helpless, economically weak, and irrational culturally, can force open the door to a new world.

3. The Possibility of Building a Community in an Information Society

Agamben views democratic and authoritarian politics as two sides of the same coin. He contends that the reason community is simpler to build is exactly because political authority in modern capitalist society has been exaggerated to such an extent. Because while the super-form power of capitalism exercises one-way control over people, it also suggests that people might be in charge of the system of power, which is analogous to the enslavement of the working class by capitalists and signals the beginning of the story of capitalists’ demise. Let us continue along this line of reasoning and return to reality. I think the information society we are in now contains the realistic possibility of the community envisaged by postmodern philosophy. I link, therefore I am has replaced Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” in today’s society. On the one hand, the big data network of the modern day is a fully objective system of computer algorithms, and this system monitors and molds individuals. On the other hand, this system is built by a network of social relationships and human behavior. This means that further than producing a “panoramic prison”, the big data network also provided the ability to undermine itself. In the information age; the “panoramic prison” alludes to the potential for a new social structure of “collaborative sharing”. Multiple existences are made possible through an efficient and thorough information network.

Next, we look specifically at the political, economic, cultural, and emotional dimensions of the information society that presents a fit with the postmodern philosophical community.

The first is the realization of the economic community in an information society. On the one hand, the information society has led to an enormous development of material wealth. The networked and decentralized, instantaneous, innovative, and global production methods of the information society have led to closer links between people and an increasing amount of material wealth. On the other hand, this rapid and comprehensive development of information-based production foreshadows the growing impact of capitalist economic crises, and the potential risk for economic crises foreshadows the possibility of future revolutions. By then, the material wealth provided by capital is ready for the new world and the economically powerless subjects will have been transformed into active revolutionaries.

The second is the realization of the political community in an information society. While the capitalist power mechanism exerts control over the masses in a unidirectional way in politics, it also implies that the masses have the possibility of manipulating politics in turn. People are no longer passive recipients and consumers of information, but active senders and producers. Traditionally, the exchange of information about political power has been one-way, but in the society of the future, two-way information interaction will inevitably extend to all areas of politics. Everyone will be involved in all political actions without intermediaries, and political actions will become more and more open and transparent. The centralization of politics will be overcome by the information society, and direct democracy for all will be technically possible. As Prof. K. Wu says: The new way of information in the network era is a reversal of the large-scale, one-way, top-down unified control of information in the industrial era. Network democracy, which is constituted by the basic features of networking, has fundamentally changed the information technology prerequisites that supported the centralized state system established in the industrial age, so that network democracy is a challenger and dissolver of the centralized state system [4]. Going further, this openness, transparency, and universalization of the political system will not only dissolve the traditional centralized political system but even the traditional nation-state, because political information would be open not only to the citizens of the country, but to anyone in the world, and this openness makes the nation-state itself unsustainable. This means that politics will die out, politicians will be replaced by experts, political parties will become redundant and impossible, politics will become a science, and a non-institutionalized community will become possible.

The third is the realization of the cultural community in an information society. On the one hand, a decentralized cultural industry will become the trend of future development. In the information society, the main body of cultural output is each individual, the amount of cultural output will be greatly increased, and culture will continue to develop in the direction of individualization, diversification, and enrichment. On the other hand, compared to cultural exchanges in traditional societies, the integration and intersection of different cultures in information-based societies are much larger and deeper. In this context, the inculcation of ideologies will become increasingly difficult. Because cultural diversity naturally makes recipients resistant to the monopoly of a particular culture, the consciousness of the multitude is possible in cultural exchange. At the same time, while the ideology of capitalist society shapes a culturally irrational multitude, this irrational multitude also deepens the risk of capitalist domination. Because irrationality is inherently uncertain, it contains within itself the possible power to overthrow capitalism. Thus, capitalism does not unilaterally discipline the masses; it necessarily educates them in an enlightened form of reason as well. Capitalist society both disciplines the “good people” and educates people about rational independence. In this sense, the non-enlightenment subject will gradually achieve rational self-consciousness.

The fourth is the realization of emotional community in an information society. We are not experiencing emotions; we are creating them. “The emotions again suggests that the emotions are not simply there in the head or body to be discovered. Rather, what we call emotion is created in co-action” [5] (p. 99). Emotions are constructed by co-action between people, or events that require joint participation. Thanks to the Internet, there will be more and more events to participate in together and more shared memories. If you go back 100 years, there were few shared human emotions. But, in today’s information society, it is increasingly likely that people will share a certain piece of information or an event. After a shared experience based on an information event, shared emotions are generated from it. People can temporarily detach themselves from real life and immerse themselves in the event in a unified way, sharing stories and resonating emotions. We can now discuss the NBA game together; we can discuss how good or bad a particular song or movie is. More and more common stories are being created and there is more and more emotional resonance between people.

In conclusion, in the information society, there is a real possibility of the community as planned by post-modern philosophy: economically powerless subjects may become revolutionary subjects, realizing the commonwealth of property; politically, the system will realize direct democracy for all with the support of information technology; culturally irrational subjects will gradually realize rational self-consciousness, and people will enjoy emotional empathy in a co-existent, borderless and liquid information society. Of course, this article is only about ‘possibilities’, and many of the opposite ‘impossibilities’ are not discussed. But we also need to keep faith in the future of humanity and be sure that the moment is the closest we can get to the idea of community.