We can mark the beginning of Modernity in a multitude of ways: the arrival of the industrial revolution and the triumph of “scientific method”; the emergence of the modern political state; Kant’s “Copernican revolution” and, in the “age of reason” the enthronement of the autonomous subject; the change in status of religious belief from a public to a private matter, and even the proclamation of the “death of God” – for just a few examples. Modernity ushered in unparalleled prosperity and hitherto unknown levels of development, often achieved through technological means. Modernity also brought with it modes of governance and political organisation, transforming and intensifying the relationship of the individual to the state: Lenin’s slogan of the 1920s – that “Communism = Soviet Power + Electrification” was possible only because of something wider that was already in place, namely: “Modernity = State Organisation of the Individualised Subject + Technology”. This connection became especially visible in times of war: if Clausewitz’s loosely remembered “war is the continuation of politics by other means” rings true, it is because (as thinkers like Ernst Jünger recognised) the way we manage war, pestilence and crisis are only intensifications of the ways in which everyday life is already organised. Increasingly this mode of organisation goes by the name of “technocracy”, and this research stream aims to examine the ways in which “technocracy” and “modernity” are understood: historically; in law and constitutional thought; in international relations; in political and economic thought; and as we turn out toward the future.
CURRENT PROJECTS
The Metaphysics of Managerialism
Modernity, and its establishment through technology has brought with it the the processes of its enactment, namely the drive to bring all things under control, and so to manage them. Every political form competing for dominance in the twentieth century undertook this process of competition through the application of a technique that was above all managerial. The nascent Soviet Union borrowed wholesale the methods of American management to achieve its own industrial construction. Not only social and industrial organisation, but all the forms of politics in modernity have also been managerial. This is even more the case now, as governments increasingly resort to managerial means to achieve their goals. The response to every crisis has been to resort to still higher and more developed managerial methods. This research stream asks: why? What is the ground for “managerialism” itself? What forms does it take, and what is its effects? To what extent is “the political” already “the managerial”, and was this relationship always so? What understanding of human being is posed in the managerial? Is the only possible response to every difficulty, every “crisis” to manage better?
Project Leads: Bogdan Costea (Lancaster University) & Laurence Hemming
International Research Network on Critical Theory and Conservative Thought
This research network brings the insights of critical theory and conservative thought into constructive dialogue in order to find fresh and interesting things to say about our current predicament. The network includes participants across ten countries (in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe; North America; Latin America; South Africa; and New Zealand) and includes distinguished and established researchers as well as PhD students representing a broad range of views and backgrounds. The rationale for the project is that critical theorists, conservative thinkers and liberals can engage productively with one another through a deepening theoretical, philosophical and historical engagement – and can liberate and expand the meaning of “critique” in the process.
Project Lead: David McGrogan