The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

The rise of modernism as a cultural force 26116Time-space compression and therise of modernism as acultural forceThe depression that swept out of Britain in 1846-7 and whichquickly engulfed the whole of what was then the capitalist world,can justly be regarded as the first unambiguous crisis of capitalistoveraccumulation. It shook the confidence of the bourgeoisie andchallenged its sense of history and geography in profound ways.There had been many economic and political crises before, but mostcould reasonably be attributed to natural calamities (such as harvestfailures) or wars and other geopolitical struggles. But this one wasdifferent. Though there were bad harvests here and there, this crisiscould not easily be attributed to God or nature. Capitalism hadmatured by 1847-8 to a sufficient degree, so that even the blindestbourgeois apologist could see that financial conditions, reckless speculation,and over-production had something to do with events. Theoutcome, in any case, was a sudden paralysis of the economy, inwhich surpluses of capital and labour lay side by side with apparentlyno way to reunite them in profitable and socially useful union.There were, of course, as many explanations of the crisis as therewere class positions (and a good few more besides). The craft workersfrom Paris to Vienna tended to view it as the inevitable outcome of arampant capitalist development process that was changing employmentconditions, raising the rate of exploitation, and destroyingtraditional skills, while progressive elements in the bourgeoisie couldview it as a product of the recalcitrant aristocratic and feudal orderswho refused the course of progress. The latter, for their part, couldattribute the whole affair to the undermining of traditional valuesand social hierarchies by the materialist values and practices of bothworkers and an aggressive class of capitalists and financiers.The thesis I want to explore here, however, is that the crisis of1847-8 created a crisis of representation, and that this latter crisisitself derived from a radical readjustment in the sense of time andspace in economic, political, and cultural life. Before 1848, progressiveelements within the bourgeoisie could reasonably hold to theEnlightenment sense of time ('time pressing forward' as Gurvitchwould put it), recognizing that they were fighting a battle against the'enduring' and ecological time of traditional societies and the 'retardedtime' of recalcitrant forms of social organization. But after 1848, thatprogressive sense of time was called into question in many importantrespects. Too many people in Europe had fought on the barricades,or been caught up in the maelstrom of hopes and fears, not toappreciate the stimulus that comes with participant action in 'explosivetime.' Baudelaire, for one, could never forget the experience, andcame back to it again and again in his explorations of a modernistlanguage. In retrospect, it became easier to invoke some cyclicalsense of time (hence the growing interest in the idea of businesscycles as necessary components to the capitalist growth process thatwould connect back to the economic troubles of 1837, 1826, and1817). Or, if people were mindful enough of class tensions, theymight invoke, as Marx did in The eighteenth brumaire of LouisBonaparte, a sense of 'alternating time' in which the outcome ofbitter struggles must always be seen as a precarious balance betweenclass forces. But I think it true to say that the question 'What timeare we in?' came in upon the philosophical agenda after 1848 in waysthat challenged the simple mathematical presuppositions of Enlightenmentthinking. The sense of physical and social time, sorecently brought together in Enlightenment thought, began oncemore to diverge. It then became possible for the artist and thethinker to explore the nature and meaning of time in new ways.The events of 1847-8 also challenged certainties as to the natureof space and the meaning of money. Events proved that Europe hadachieved a level of spatial integration in its economic and financiallife that was to make the whole continent vulnerable to simultaneouscrisis formation. The political revolutions that erupted at onceacross the continent emphasized the synchronic as well as the diachronicdimensions to capitalist development. The certainty of absolutespace and place gave way to the insecurities of a shiftingrelative space, in which events in one place could have immediateand ramifying effects in several other places. If, as Jameson (1988,349) suggests, 'the truth of experience no longer coincides with theplace in which it takes place,' but is spreadeagled across the world'sspaces, then a situation arises 'in which we can say that if individualexperience is authentic, then it cannot be true; and that if a scientificor cognitive mode of the same content is true, then it escapes individualexperience.' Since individual experience always forms the