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Insecurity - An Example from Nice Work `Vic wipes the tidemark of foam , leans forward on locked arms, and scans the square face, pale under a forelock of lank brown hair, flecked with grey…You know ho you are : it’s all on file at Division.
That’s who I am. Vic grimaces at his own reflection, as if to say : come off it, no identity crises, please. Somebody has to earn a living in this family.’ D. Lodge, Nice Work, p. 17
Insecurity - Social, Historical, Ontological
Slide 1 Insecurity – An Example Insecurity
Slide 2 Social - Material
Slide 3 Social - Symbolic
Slide 4 Historical
Slide 5 Ontological (1)
Slide 6 Ontological (2)
`For the person whose own being is secure in a primary experiential sense, relatedness with others is potentially gratifying; whereas the ontologically insecure person is preoccupied with preserving rather than gratifying himself : the ordinary circumstances of living threaten his low threshold of security’ R. D. Laing, The Divided Self, p. 42
Slide 7 Ontological (3)
 Limitless `security’ (`Being’ mode) | - acceptance of `world-openness’/death/the `Other’
Stress, Anxiety, Insecurity and the Workplace Layoffs, mergers, short-term contracts and high productivity demands havetaken their toll in the last 10 years, writes Andrew Osborn
The problem is costing employers billions of pounds in sick leave and lost orking time,
and often leaves employees grappling with a series of omplex mental disorders for years
afterwards. The study focused on the problems of stress and mental illness at work in the UK, the
US, Germany, Finland and Poland. Depression in the workplace is the second most disabling illness for workers after
heart disease, the report warns, and is likely to increase as new technologies multiply. Downsizing, layoffs, mergers, short-term contracts and higher productivity demands have
all exacted their toll in the last 10 years, leaving many workers on the verge of nervous
breakdown. "Workers worldwide confront, as never before, an array of new
"The self-reported occurrence of anxiety and depression [in the UK] ranges from 15
to 30 per cent of the working population," the report says. The reasons are twofold: people find it hard to adapt to new technology and cannot keep
up with constantly changing working practices. In the UK, higher stress levels are estimated to be responsible for the loss of 80
million working days a year. In financial terms, that leaves the country seriously out of
pocket - about £5.3 billion annually, according to the Confederation of British Industry. The British state-funded National Health Service (NHS) is also bearing the brunt of
workrelated anxiety. About 14 per cent of inpatient costs and almost a quarter of its
annual bill for drugs and medication are swallowed up by stressed-out, sometimes mentally
ill, office workers. "These trends represent a wake-up call for business," the ILO says. "For
employers, the costs are felt in terms of low productivity, reduced profits, high rates of
staff turnover and increased costs of recruiting and training replacement staff." In the US the picture is equally bleak. One in 10 workers suffers from clinical
depression and the problem is getting worse. Some 200 million working days are lost every
year because of stress, and the cost of treating anxiety-ridden workers exceeds $43
billion annually. About 40 per cent of workers complain that their job is very, or
extremely, stressful. Unrealistic deadlines, poor management and inadequate childcare arrangements are to
blame, the ILO says. As much as 4 per cent of the European Union's gross national product is ploughed into
treating the stressed and mentally ill. Guardian Service Information taken from `Mental health in the workplace: Introduction'. Prepared by Ms.
Phyllis Gabriel and Ms. Marjo-Riitta Liimatainen. International Labour Office, Geneva,
October 2000. ISBN 92-2-112223-9.
Post/modernity and Insecurity (1)
Extracts from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added
Modernity is usually conceived as the age following the classical epoch. The classical epoch was the age of the so-called traditional societies [that] were held together by a common perception of the world as a cosmic order grounded in the absolute authority of God(s). Within this divine cosmos, human beings were characterized by their acceptance of natural and social givens. Hence, nature was seen as an inscrutable, and often rather demanding, condition of everyday life, and the identity of individuals was largely equated with their social role.
Post/modernity and Insecurity (2)
Extract from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added
Modernity views itself as constituted through a break with the classical age. The break — which started with the Reformation, deepened throughout the period of the Enlightenment, and was more or less completed with the emergence of capitalism — is said to be radical in the literal sense of going to the roots. Modernity swept away the old matrix of society and changed western man’s way of thinking about our being in the world. Modern societies brought about an intrasocietal institutional division between civil society and the state, a much greater degree of social and technical division of labour, and the formation of nation-states…. Alongside and partially sustained by these new traits of society there occurred an increasing secularization of social relations. Modernity questioned the idea of the divine grounding of society together with the conception of the world as a cosmic order. Social relations were no longer seen as governed by divine intervention, and world history was stripped of its mythical clothing.
Post/modernity and Insecurity (3)
Extract from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added
The break with metaphysical foundationalism was seen as the condition of possibility for the emergence of the modern individual. The modern perspective on the world, with its emphasis on the efficacy of its immanent forces and powers, created a distance between human beings and the world they lived in. The worldly surroundings of human beings constituted an unknown, and thus distant, background for what was known by human beings, who were themselves constructed as both subjects and objects of knowledge. The attempt to minimize the perceived distance between human beings and their worldly surroundings spurred the development of increasing human control over the natural and social environment. Post/modernity and Insecurity (4)
Extract from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added This [transformation] was, for example, reflected in growing confidence in the engineering capacity of the social sciences and in the constant improvement of technical skills for mastering physical nature. The break with the political, social and geographical bonds of traditional societies and enhancement of the capacity for exercising control fostered a general feeling of freedom. This feeling in turn made individual self-development within a world of social contingencies and natural laws the main goal of human life. In the perspective of modernity, the individual was no longer a small, insignificant cog in the cyclical movement of society and nature. By contrast, the individual was portrayed as the controller of social life, propelling the linear development of society towards higher states of humanity, in addition to enhancing progressively our protection against the devastating and unpredictable effects of natural forces. Post/modernity and Insecurity (5)
Extract from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added In its own terms modernity was a great achievement for humankind. Not only did it bring us closer to our true conditions of being; it also inaugurated an epoch of social and political liberation and carried with it the promise of a future transcendence of the world of necessity into the world of freedom. However, at the same time, modernity gave rise to a general feeling of despair as individuals recognized that their newly won freedom of self-development was conditioned, not only by their separation from social objectivity but also by the increasing fragmentation apparent within this very objectivity. In the modern age individuals are left alone with the recognition of their finitude, and therefore carry an onerous responsibility for their own development within a largely unknown world in which ‘everything solid melts into air' Post/modernity and Insecurity (6)
Extract from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added
This feeling of despair was, however, soon eased as the empty space left by the demolishing of belief in the world’s divine grounding was reoccupied by belief in the unlimited reign of Reason. This reoccupation not only substituted Reason for God(s) but also effected an interiorization of the ground. Reason is internal to the world as it forms the motive force in the progressive development of social institutions and the individuals imbedded in these….. The distance between subject and object is bridged at the moment the subject identifies with a higher reason and starts transforming society and nature in its image.
Post/modernity and Insecurity (7)
Extract from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added
Recent developments indicating a crisis, or at least a certain questioning, of the main features of modernity….it seems to be perfectly legitimate to speak about postmodernity, especially if postmodernity is conceived in terms of a movement which at once splits, radicalizes and weakens modernity. For modernity is increasingly being fissured as the main features of modern societies become still more ambiguous…The social division of labour is further deepened as Fordist methods of mass production spread from the productive to the service sector, while the introduction of new post-Fordist methods of flexible and specialized production seems to encourage the reintegration of industrial work processes. …
Post/modernity and Insecurity (8)
Extract from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added
Modernity is radicalized as the modern assertion of the contingency of values, beliefs and ways of life is stretched to include recognition of the contingency of modern metanarratives. Modernity has always presented itself as the final truth about the conditions of our being in the world. However, today, in light of numerous studies of the historical preconditions for the formulation of the project of modernity and with the surge of anti-modern movements in the near Orient, modernity is revealed as simply one among other possible ways of accounting for our conditions of being.
Post/modernity and Insecurity (9)
Extract from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added
Finally, modernity is weakened in at least two important senses. First, subjectivity is no longer conceived as a unified and self-conscious starting point for the construction of social life, but revealed as a divided and overdetermined subjectivity constructed by unmasterable discursive strategies. Second, rationality fails to provide an ultimate guide for ethico-political judgement and historical development… it is recognized that scientific knowledge rests on communal rules and values and thus has to renounce all pretence to universality (e.g. Kuhn’s notion of scientific paradigms, which emphasizes the formal and informal rules and values governing the research activities of a scientific community). Post/modernity and Insecurity (10)
Extract from J. Torfing, New Theories of Discourse, Blackwell, 1999, pp 57-61, emphases added
In sum, we might say that postmodernity describes the emergence of an intellectual climate characterized by an increasing awareness of the limits of modernity as a blueprint for the necessary development of society, as a privileged insight into our true conditions of being, and as a subjectivistic and rationalistic reoccupation of the space left by the demolishing of the belief in a divine grounding of the world. Hence, what postmodern philosophy questions is not the legitimacy of modernity and its emancipatory project, but its status as a fundamental ontology. In fact, what is questioned is the very possibility of a fundamental ontology.…
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