A Negative Anthropology of Globalization Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht Albert Guérard Professor in Literature at Stanford University in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French and Italian (since 1989). He is also Professeur Associé à l’Université de Montréal, Professeur attaché au Collège de France, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Before coming to Stanford, he studied Romance philology and German literature, Philosophy and Sociology in Germany, Spain, and Italy (finishing a PhD in 1971, and the Habilitation in 1974, both at Universität Konstanz). His main areas of teaching and research are the histories of French, Spanish, and Italian literatures (especially in the Middle Ages, the eighteenth century, and the first half of the twentieth century); the history of Literary Criticism and of the Humanities; and the history of Western thought since its classical origins. He has received Honorary Doctorates from the University of Montevideo, l’Université de Montréal, the University of St. Petersburg, the University of Lisbon, and, in Germany, Universität Siegen, Universität Greifswald, and Universität Marburg. His most recent books are In Praise of Athletic Beauty (Harvard Press, 2006) and Geist und Materie – Was ist Leben? Zur Aktualität von Erwin Schrödinger (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2008). Currently in press are a collection of essays on Becoming American (Suhrkamp Verlag) and a book on Stimmung (mood/climate) (Hanser Verlag). [1] location for whoever wants to experience effects Globalization is of globalization. Each time that we sit down in about information Ouro Preto in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais, front of our computer to do e-mail, probably the far away from the Atlantic coast, is a well pre- most powerful condition and the certainly most (in the largest served baroque town with a bit less than a hun- powerful effect of globalization are at our finger- possible sense dred thousand inhabitants today—but it may well tips, quite literally. For, provided that we have of the word) and have been the wealthiest and most powerful city the required addresses, the computer makes our the consequences on the American continent around 1700 when, colleague next door and an e-mail user, say, in under the name of “Vila Rica,” it provided the Australia equidistant for all (or at least: for most) of information Portuguese Crown with gold and precious stones. communicative purposes. It does not take me transfer being Despite a steady flow of tourists with historical one fraction of a second more to be present on increasingly interests, Ouro Preto cannot be reached by air or a computer screen in New Zealand than on the detached from and by train, which adds to the impression that it is screen of a computer that stands in my own of- a place far away from the present. About fifteen fice. Obviously, computers do not give tangibility independent of kilometers away lies Mariana, a smaller and also to the persons whose words and reactions they specific physical very beautiful (though less spectacular) town that bring so close, but they can make them visible places. hosts the cathedral of the local diocese and sev- and audible for us in real time. Globalization is eral buildings belonging to the University of Ouro about information (in the largest possible sense Preto. These buildings were the reason why, on of the word) and the consequences of informa- five subsequent late August days, I went five tion transfer being increasingly detached from times from my fancy hotel in Ouro Preto to Mar- and independent of specific physical places. iana and back, with a car and a driver from the University. Now, there is nothing for the die-heart [2] sports fan that I am, especially in Brazil, like talking soccer with professional drivers or con- As soon as we mention or even describe effects ductors—but this driver was different. For when of globalization, the temptation seems to arise, I asked him about his favorite soccer team (ex- quite inevitably, of either praising or condemn- pecting that it would be one of the two major ing them. Forty million albums with music from league clubs from Belo Horizonte, the State cap- all countries, cultures, and historical periods ital), he almost bluntly replied that he did not have now become available to him, my fried Gary care about soccer, that the one person in the told me the other day, thanks to an electronic family who liked sports was his son, whereas his program that only costs a few dollars per month, own idol had always been the late Michael Jack- and how unimaginable that would have been son. And my driver went on to speak, with enthu- only a few years ago, when he made the transi- siasm, true compassion, and many details, about tion from collecting records to collecting CDs. Michael Jackson’s life and its tragedies, on the Conversely, we intellectuals do not ever miss an road from Ouro Preto to Mariana and back, and opportunity to frown, with august pedagogical he also talked about the innovations that his hero responsibility, at the contemporary overflow of had introduced to the world of show-business, opportunities to communicate and at what it has about his music and his dancing. By the time we done to shorten the attention span and to dry were arriving in Mariana the first time he even out the fantasy of the younger generations (nev- sang—almost without any accent although he er of course our own fantasy!), or we complain, was solidly monolingual—several Michael Jack- with a touch of Marxist sourness, about yet an- son hits from many years ago. I, by contrast, Mi- other step in the apparently never ending alien- chael Jackson’s fellow Californian, just knew his ation of producers from their products (not to name and that he had recently died, and I would speak of the ensuing excesses of economic ex- certainly not have been able to identify any of his ploitation). All of this critique and all of that songs all by myself. Thus our conversation was a euphoria just add, endlessly, to the two only and typical scene of hybridity, as we have come to symmetrically opposite attitudes and discourses call it in the age of globalization, a type of scene that have accompanied the different stages of that often makes conversation difficult because modern culture for centuries now, without pro- it has knowledge distributed in mutually unex- viding any true analytical power or insight. This pected ways. is why I will try to keep my text at a distance There is of course no need to travel to the from praising globalization or from nagging about Brazilian inland or to any other far-away looking it. Nor will I engage in any detailed descriptions

A Negative Anthropology of Globalization Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht 231 of globalization phenomena, however worthwhile part four I will show how globalization can be they may often be for the simple reason that seen as an extension of modernity, due to its some of the truly important globalization spe- convergence with the Cartesian motif of elimi- cialists of our times are among the authors of nating the body as a part of human self-refer- this volume, and I could never compete with ence. Modernity and globalization thus imply a their expertise. tendency of making us independent from the What I will try to do instead of praising, crit- dimension of space. In part five, I will identify icizing, or analyzing phenomena of globaliza- and describe further aspects of globalization tion—and what is meant to define the specific in their specific relation to the Cartesian tradi- perspective of my contribution to this book—can tion, whereas part six will deal with reactions best be described as bringing together two differ- to globalization and how they may enable us to ent but convergent movements of reflection. In delineate a “negative anthropology.” In conclud- the first place, I want to focus on globalization ing, in part seven I will point to possible lines of from an existentialist perspective, in other words: convergence between this argument and other I want to understand how globalization typically philosophical positions of our time. transforms structures and situations of individual life (rather than writing about its impact on “soci- [3] ety,” on the “economic system,” or on “politics”). I will do so under a premise that has belonged There is a ride in the oldest of all Disneylands in to existentialism since its very beginnings in the Anaheim, CA, called “Futureland” that I find to first half of the nineteenth century, and this is be of particular historical interest, so much so the assumption that absolute (or divine) norms indeed that I believe it should be renamed, togeth- of what makes an optimal human life and how er with the entire park perhaps, into “Futureland one can achieve it, are not (or perhaps no lon- of the Past”—for it beautifully stages the future ger) available to us. The second, complemen- that the world expected to emerge in the mid- tary movement of reflection, I will explain from 1950, when Disneyland first opened its doors. a historical angle. Early existentialism turned its This ride features small, two-seated cars that leave central challenge, i.e., the difficulty of believing no freedom of choice or any individual agency to in a God whose will was hard (if not humanly im- their drivers. Instead, each car is supposed to possible) to identify, into what we call “negative “find” the way through a relatively complex itiner- theology,” i.e., into the paradoxical conception of ary of curves, hills, and intersections “all by itself,” a divine order wrested from that silent God. In a thus producing an impression of “automatic driv- similar way, I will try to argue along the lines of ing” within a powerful traffic system that takes a “negative anthropology,” i.e., I want to speak care of all human needs of movement and loco- about some metahistorically and transculturally motion. Such dreams of “automatic” life have stable components of human life, at a time when always and inevitably implied the imagination an extreme degree of skepticism seems to make of a State that—benignly—overpowers, absorbs, such claims unacceptable. In doing so, I will rely and determines all individual life, much like an on my intuition that the process of globalization, optimistic version (it’s Disneyland after all) of Or- by leaving some universal needs and desires of well’s 1984. Other rides are inspired—until the human life unattended, has paradoxically helped present day and this somehow means: counterfac- to make these very needs and desires more vis- tually—by the past utopia of space traveling: they ible—because we notice, in our everyday lives, give you the illusion of very shaky and at some how they remain unsatisfied. So my discussion point even precarious flights to remote galaxies— of globalization is “anthropological” by trying or the scary impression of fast movements and to identify some universal conditions of human sharp turns within the absolute darkness of the existence; and it is “negative” due to the suspi- Universe. Finally and thirdly, the old Disneyland cion that some of these structures become more is filled with leftovers of our former belief in “ro- apparent the less they are in play. bots” as more or less humanly shaped machines In the third part of this essay, I will continue (their smaller versions tend to look like vacuum to build my argument by contrasting the histori- cleaners) who were supposed to do all the infe- cally specific future that not only intellectuals rior work that human laziness has always hoped expected to arrive in the mid-twentieth century to get rid of—and that the predominantly social- with the early twenty-first century present as it democratic spirit of the twentieth century has has by now established itself. On this basis, in indeed declared to be unworthy of human beings.

232 THE MULTIPLE FACES OF GLOBALIZATION Now, I think it is remarkable that none of bodies with those electronic machines. Nobody these three dominant dimensions from the now uses electronics without working for himself or historical future of the mid-1950 has become herself, and at the same time we inevitably also either real in our present nor by any means work for others. At first glance, the world of com- probable for the future that we imagine. The puters produces the impression that we have overpowering ideas of the “total” State, “total” gained enormous amounts of individual indepen- also in the sense of claiming to take care of dence and agency—but such a blatantly posi- the totality of human wishes and needs, the tive view ignores the addictive nature of these ideas whose hyperbolic version inspired Or- couplings, and it may also belittle the growth of well’s novel, have vanished with the demise of a collective exterior brain that is developing as the Communist governments in Eastern Europe the accumulated consequence of our computer after 1989, regardless of whether one hails usage, ending up with more blind power over us or regrets this development. The obvious new than any totalitarian State could ever have pro- and general tendency is a reduction and even grammatically aimed at. For with each e-mail an active withdrawal of State power, as it is that we send and with each visit to a website that reflected by the new concept of “governance” we make, we add to the complexity and to the that describes informal orientations for interac- intensity of the technical network within which tive behavior, which, rather than being imposed we are communicating and this means, increas- by State law, are emerging between national ingly, in which we are simply existing. States and (often multinational) corporations. We might then well say that we dispose of much [4] more freedom (we are much more “left alone” and much less “automatically” guided) than It is often said that, at least from the perspec- the drivers in Disney’s “Futureland”—and that tive of Western culture, globalization has been this sometimes confuses us. After all, the navi- coming for at least two centuries now. If we de- gation systems that we so like to use today re- fine globalization as growing independence of act very flexibly to our input and even to our information from physical space, then a quan- errors. titative leap that became quality, both in the Likewise and even more evidently, our high- sense of going places in order to acquire spe- flying imaginations of space traveling and of in- cific knowledge and in that of circulating knowl- habiting “foreign” planets or perhaps even other edge, happened with the development of railroad galaxies have all but disappeared (and, quite re- networks since the early 1800s. The surge and markably, they have done so to the same degree the new value of the concept “cosmopolitan” that we have stopped to worry about demographic was a symptom of this first stage in a long-term growth). Once again, more definitely perhaps than development. Its second stage was marked by ever during the past few centuries, the Earth de- a series of new communication technologies, fines the limits of our concerns and projects—and starting with the telephone, including the radio, this may well be the least frequently mentioned and culminating in television, a medium that, core condition of globalization (which somehow after an astonishingly slow start, conquered the still cultivates a self-image and a rhetoric of ag- entire world within a long decade beginning in gressive expansion). Collectively and ideologically, the late 1940s. Today, it is hard to imagine for we care more about the Earth than we used to do people who are not very old that Brazilian fans when we were still nurturing the dream of leaving could not watch on TV (assistir, as one interest- it behind ourselves; at the same time and from ingly says in Brazilian Portuguese) the game in an individual perspective, the power to cover the which their team won its first soccer World Cup planet, quite literally, with our acts of communi- against Sweden and in Stockholm in 1958. The cation has exponentially increased. most incisive development, however, although it Finally, instead of creating battalions of “ro- may well have been the least event-like stage, was bots” to do work for us, we have developed, above the process of the electronic transformation and all during the past three decades, a convergence socialization of a large (and still rapidly growing) of our mind with electronic devices that, rather section of humankind: it enlarged our individual than a master/slave relationship, looks like an and collective capacity for receiving and circulat- extension and increase of our mental (and some- ing information to a hitherto unimaginable degree. times even of our physical) efficiency, based on A new threshold lying ahead of us, from which we a coupling or on a prosthetic integration of our are only separated by legal, not by technological

A Negative Anthropology of Globalization Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht 233 if globalization difficulties, is the “Google Project,” which prom- human body (and of space as the dimension has increased ises to make available every document existing of its articulation) from the understanding and on the planet for every computer screen. definition of what it is to be human. for most of us To imagine the realization of this project— This means that, if globalization has increased the likelihood of and it will definitely be completed sooner or for most of us the likelihood of taking a picture, taking a picture, later—helps us understand that existentially the with our digital cameras, of the Taj Mahal, of the with our digital most challenging consequence of the electronic Sidney Opera House, or of the baroque churches age has indeed been the elimination of the di- of Ouro Preto, it has also diminished the intensity cameras, of the mension of space from multiple levels of our with which the things of the world are present to Taj Mahal, of the experience and behavior. If we understand that us, in the sense of being tangible. While it would Sidney Opera House, the process of electronic socialization, while be difficult to argue that a relationship of “pres- or of the baroque of course not synonymous with globalization, ence” and “tangibility” is a truly “better” rela- is its most powerful source of energy, we can tionship to the material world that surrounds us churches of Ouro discover a fascinating paradox. Supported by than a relationship based on experience and in- Preto, it has also electronics, globalization has both expanded formation, it is interesting to see that many tour- diminished the and strengthened our control over the space of ists, today, do not really know how to react in the intensity with the planet (to which we have recently returned real presence of those monuments, which, in or- to limit ourselves) up to a perhaps insuperable der to see live, they have often invested serious which the things degree—while, at the same time, it has almost amounts of money. So they end up taking hun- of the world are completely excluded space from our existence. dreds of digital photographs that are most likely present to us, in And we are not only talking about the speed inferior in their quality to those photographs that the sense of being with which information can travel today or about they had already seen at home on the respective the unheard of quantities in which it is avail- websites—and this is only one of many reasons tangible. able and circulates—as if space did not matter why they will probably never have a retrospective anymore. Personally, I cannot forget that balmy look at all the photos they shot. Once again, I Friday evening in Rio de Janeiro, when I met will refrain from trying to argue that this—large- with some friends in a beautiful restaurant at ly “digital”—relationship to the material world Botafogo Beach and under the Sugar Loaf where is existentially inferior of a relationship based I saw, close to us, a table with four gorgeous on presence. By any means, however, it seems young people, obviously two couples, who at to omit—rather than to actively exclude—some some point all managed to talk to other people seldom mentioned dimensions of individual life, on their cellular phones. It does not really mat- which, in reaction to this omission, seem to make ter whether they were talking to other friends in themselves perceived. Rio or to people who were somewhere else (per- haps far away in New Zealand); the point was [5] that, despite the unbeatably beautiful environ- ment in which they found themselves, the young Before we try to see which largely overlooked people’s attention was separated, in each of the layers of our existence may become visible un- four cases, from the place where their bodies der the pressures of globalization, we should try were. Or, more dramatically: the position of their to identify some further phenomena that affect bodies had become completely irrelevant for the our individual lives—for while they may all be activities of their minds. From the perspective of somehow related to it, they are far from all being this scene that is so typical of our everyday lives, identical with the bracketing of space and pres- it becomes clear that the origins of globalization ence. One often observed aspect is the emer- go back much further than the early nineteenth gence and steady growth of a specific space—a century. If the capacity to separate our minds “network of channels” would be a good meta- from our bodies has been a condition (and more phor—that is immune to all local specifications recently also a consequence) of globalization, and flavors. It is, for example, the space of large then globalization becomes coextensive with the airports that displays the logos and the design process of modernization as it depends on and of the same few international airlines, and the begins with the Cartesian formula of human self- cafés and duty free shops with the brands that reference—“I think, therefore I am”—or, more we find everywhere else (both in their original precisely for our own time, “I produce, circu- version and, especially in former “Third World” late, and receive information, therefore I am.” countries, on the aggressively-expanding market Both formulas presuppose the exclusion of the of “designer knock-offs”): Starbucks and Möev-

234 THE MULTIPLE FACES OF GLOBALIZATION enpick, Montblanc, Chanel, Armani, Dolce Gab- of a koiné to the English language is the fact bana, and Prada (has anyone ever mentioned that, due to a comparatively low complexity on that Italian brands—and Italian food at large— the levels of morphology, syntax, and pronuncia- have been much more dominant and successful tion, learners can quickly reach an elementary in this particular market than the United States, competence that enables them to participate in whose unfortunate McDonald Golden Arches— basic forms of communication. The well-known not to speak of the unspeakable Ronald McDon- flipside of this advantage lies in the fact that, ald himself—are much more frequently spoken individually, many speakers never reach a level about and much more frequently blamed?). Now, beyond “pidgin” practice—a fact that, for large what that excellent filmLost in Translation tried parts of their everyday communicative practice, to illustrate is the ongoing expansion and per- reduces the range of expression to an unaccept- fection of this emblematic channel of globaliza- able minimum. In addition and different from tion, up to the point of being inescapable. For those languages whose structures and conven- it now leads you from the airport to your hotel tions are held stable through institutions with an in downtown Tokyo or downtown Moscow, and authoritative status, such as the French language from there of course—preferably with an air- and the Académie Française (the Real Academia conditioned bus—to the main historical sites, Espanola fulfills a similar function but is less rig- monuments, and museums of those cities, be- id), English appears to be extremely tolerant with fore it takes them back to the airport. pidgin users up to the point of being receptive for Therefore, it has become difficult to find any certain deviations from the linguistic norm that situations that deserve to be called situations of they produce. It is therefore possible to imagine “lived experience” (which is the English trans- that the comparative softness of the English lan- lation of the German concept Erleben), in the guage as a cultural institution converges with a sense of being situations for which we do not historical environment—ours—that is eager (or have ready-made concepts, a well laid out ap- at least ready) to embrace the informal style of proach, and, in the worst case, even tickets and “governance” in its operations and interactions, a tourist guide. This development explains the no and that encourages us to live oscillating between longer so new—and inevitably paradoxical—ten- different time zones. In this sense, our world dency within the tourism industry today to pro- is different indeed from the world of the seven- vide their clients with “adventure vacations” (or, teenth and eighteenth centuries when French in the German speaking countries, with Erlebnis- was the koiné and the belief in the authoritative Urlauben). Meanwhile, those sectors of big cities power and dignity of “rational” solutions was un- and exotic countries that might provide adven- limited (implying that there always was one and tures and Erlebnisse have become too dangerous only one correct solution per problem). and too secluded to go there. Brazilian favelas, Today, by contrast, brand name producers are for example, have probably never been such ro- weary to legally pursue designer knock-offs, and mantic places full of samba and passionate love grammarians judge pidgin usages to be “pro- as Orfeo Negro, a beautiful French film from ductive.” Some critical minds will say that such the 1950s, depicted them—but today no curi- accumulated sloppiness reaches its dramatic ex- ous tourist could survive there for a single night, treme, an extreme with irreversible consequences for all of his or her potentially good intentions. for our planet, in the acceptance of air traveling English has become the koiné, the common (and other forms of locomotion based on com- language of our globalized world (with Castilian bustion) as a basic practice and precondition Spanish being a remote second)—despite all the of globalization and thus as a condition for our aggressive and politically correct efforts to avoid increasing independence from physical space— such a development. Without any doubt, this had despite their truly devastating ecological conse- much more to do with certain internal properties quences. A possible response to such criticism of the English language (properties that it largely could be that our growing awareness of such eco- shares with Castilian) than with the role of the logical “footprints” shows how we have at least United States as a former hegemonic power— begun to react to the excesses of globalization. and I am not emphasizing this point in order to “defend” the United States but because I want [6] to illustrate how globalization is a process that resembles evolution rather than any planned po- Let me insist: the increasing independence of in- litical action or operation. What gave the status formation from physical space and the impression

A Negative Anthropology of Globalization Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht 235 that human existence at large may reach a similar the fifth and the nineteenth century BC, its pre- state seem to have activated a new awareness of sence was astonishingly discontinuous. From some very basic needs of humankind. Here lies the decades following 1800, by contrast, it be- the potential of a negative anthropology opened came coupled for the first time, as a noble ac- by globalization. But I also want to mention that tivity that would ultimately strengthen the mind, the current desire to recuperate the dimensions to the educational systems in all Western soci- of body and space can well be explained through eties, while team sports with professional ath- a different argument, an argument that does not letes began to attract larger crowds than ever refer to globalization. From a philosophical stand- before from the last quarter of the same cen- point and from a standpoint of epistemological tury on. If a tension between (“noble”) amateur history, it makes sense to say that the Cartesian— sports and (“mercenary”) professional sports i.e., bodiless—idea of being human used to be had developed into a stable structure during associated with the specific dimension of pres- the first half of the twentieth century, the dis- ent in the historicist construction of time, that is covery of athletic activity as a device of proac- with present being “merely transitional,” as it had tive health care since the 1950s has now been taken for granted within Historicism. Adapt- produced a symbiosis between, on the one side, ing experience from the past to the conditions of top athletes in all events who can earn large present and future, the subject used to choose, in amounts of money based on media coverage the short present, among the many opportunities and advertising (mainly for athletic apparel and that the future seemed to offer. This, to choose clothes) and, on the other hand, a collective among multiple possibilities of the future, based participatory body that probably counts in the on experience from the past, is what we used to billions today, a body of people who both prac- call an “action.” tice sports and make watching sports a prima- Today, we increasingly feel that our present ry leisure activity. And with teams and athletes has broadened, as it is now surrounded by a fu- who emphasize their national, regional, and lo- ture that we can no longer see, access, or choose cal affiliations, sports do not only provide an and a past that we are not able to leave behind impression of recovering the physical side of ourselves. If, however, the Cartesian subject human existence, it also binds our imagination was dependent on the (historicist) present as a and experienced back to specific places—and present of mere transition, then the new, ever it often does so, paradoxically, through global broadening present can no longer be the pres- broadcasting. ent of the Cartesian subject. This view seems to Beside sports and beside certain auto-ag- explain our renewed concern with the physical gressive practices like piercing, tattooing, and aspects of human existence and with space as self-cutting that seem to be driven by a vague the dimension in which they emerge, against the desire of “grounding” oneself in the material grain of the Cartesian tradition—and it would not world, gender is a further dimension in which necessarily contradict a view of the same effects globalized culture has begun to reclaim layers of bodilessness as a consequence of globaliza- of physical existence, thus compensating for tion, i.e., the approach that we have been pur- previous losses. The process goes along with a suing so far. For one could claim, among others progressive (although not always ideally success- things, that the new, post-historicist construction ful) neutralization of gender in the profession- of time, too, is a reaction to phenomena and ef- al sphere, based on basic values and rights of fects of globalization. equality. For if women, during the past hundred Without any doubt, the most visible—and in- years, have been allowed for the first to excel deed ubiquitous—symptom of the desire and need as academics, politicians, engineers, or soccer to recuperate the bodily dimension of human players, and if the social pressure for men to be existence are the institutions of sport, as they high-achieving and dominant has diminished, have developed, in a both massive and complex these changes have been accompanied by a new way, since the beginning of the nineteenth cen- eagerness to experience the “essence” and the tury. Never before had they penetrated into all essential consequences of gender as a physical social groups end enclaves, never did they have difference. The assumption that women and the powerful economic articulation and, above men feel, experience, and perhaps even think all, the central existential importance that they in very different ways has become part of our have for us today. Sport in ancient Greece was everyday, as a frequent conversation topic, and the privilege of a small elite—whereas, between as a premise of many interactions. And we are

238 THE MULTIPLE FACES OF GLOBALIZATION now taking the next step by conceiving of gender ation of historical entropy, many of us find relief Together with as a non-binary distinction. in the production of historically coherent envi- the vanishing of The one reaction to globalization and globaliza- ronments. There is, for example, a regional air- tion effects that has long been understood as such line in Brazil whose cabins and whose uniforms our dreams about is the political tendency towards regionalization. try to copy, as closely as possible, the Pan Am the conquest of Nowhere is it easier to grasp and to study than style of the 1950s. The same is true for many space, the process in the European Union and, within the European baseball stadiums built in the United States dur- of globalization Union, in Spain. This development appears all ing the past twenty years, as they try to conjure the more impressive and all the more astonishing up the atmosphere of athletic events in the ear- has triggered a against the backdrop of the undeniable political ly twentieth century. powerful and very and economic success that the European Union But all these phenomena of compensation visible movement has had, and against the rise of modern Spain to seem to be quite marginal in relation to the fi- of reclaiming an international position of strength that nobody nal two tendencies that I want to describe. To- could have anticipated only forty years ago. Of gether with the vanishing of our dreams about the planet Earth course, each “region” within Spain that is empha- the conquest of space, the process of global- as the habitat sizing its cultural identity and claiming rights of ization has triggered a powerful and very vis- of humankind. political independence, and each European na- ible movement of reclaiming the planet Earth tion State which, like the United Kingdom, Den- as the habitat of humankind. For we have re- mark, or France in recent years, that has tried to alized, in the first place, that there may be no slow down the process of European integration, other habitable space for us in the Universe and, had valid historical, social, and legal reasons. But in the second place, that our culture and our the fact that regional customs, regional styles, technologies may jeopardize those properties regional gastronomy—indeed, anything region- of the home planet on which our survival de- al—has become so very important, even in those pends. This movement may be the one dimen- countries inside and outside of Europe whose sion where a desire to compensate for effects populations seem to be content with their current of globalization may convergence with global- national constitution and identity, like Germany ization itself: ecological awareness as the will or France, the new desire for the regional gives to minimize certain globalization effects can evidence to an existential need. It is the need of profit from the efficiency of global communi- belonging to a space that is not too large to be cation and its technologies in order to promote filled with personal experience or, at least, with attitudes of world-wide solidarity. personal imagination. Part of such a new desire The final tendency that I want to talk about for the specific is a new fascination with national is equally powerful but, at least until now, much languages and their dialects as devices of world- less visible. I am referring to the central intu- appropriation that have been shaped through their ition of a book (Du musst dein Leben äendern) places and histories. By comparison, the circuits that the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk of global traffic where we so easily get “lost in published in 2009. Without speculating much translation,” and even the concepts and emblems about possible historical or social reasons that that stand for the European Union or other politi- may have produced this phenomenon, Sloter- cal federations, are too abstract to produce such dijk observes that, for the past hundred years feelings of belonging. and increasingly, individuals in Western cultures The interference of different time zones as an have been obsessed with “exercise” (the Ger- experience and, above all, the juxtaposition of man word is ueben), that is with the individual different historical times in our broadening pres- acquisition of skills and with efforts of individ- ent have produced a similar need for what I ual self-transformation, on an each time higher would like to call “temporal scale.” If it has be- level and without any ultimate limits. At first come increasingly difficult for us to “leave be- glance already, we can discover an interesting hind” any past, partly because of our new parallel—or convergence—with one of the three powerful technologies of recording and memory elementary conditions of human life today that preservation, partly because of the above men- we identified at the beginning of this essay. In- tioned transformation in our social construction stead of delegating human labor to “robots,” i.e., of time, we have greater difficulties today than to machines with the status of servants or even in the past to say what would be the architecture, slaves, as centuries of utopian imagination had the literary style, or the music “of our time.” propagated, we have entered a dynamic of trans- While there may be no easy remedy for this situ- forming ourselves, individually and collectively,

A Negative Anthropology of Globalization Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht 239 in our prosthetic fusion with computers. “Self- predecessors were those privileged “cosmopoli- reflexivity and self-transformation” seems to be tans” and those hard working “playboys” who the combined formula of our present, rather than accompanied the emergence of the railroad net- dominance and delegation. This is where Slot- work and of the network of airlines in the nine- erdijk’s diagnosis meets our own reflections. In teenth and in the twentieth centuries. The second addition, I would like to complete Sloterdijk’s phenomenon emblematic for the detachment of description with the historical thesis that self- information from space is incomparably more reflexive and self-transforming “exercise” may incisive and more dangerous. I am referring to respond to and may compensate for a situa- the so-called “derivative” monetary instruments tion, i.e., the world of globalization, in which that have been identified as the central reason institutional contours are blurred and obligatory for the dramatic financial crisis that hit the world patterns of interaction are hard to identify. In in 2008. “Derivatives” are instruments supposed confrontation with ourselves we establish an ex- to produce revenue independently of any object istential framework that our cultural environment or of any business “of reference” that they would refuses to provide. If, for example, the organiza- stand for or be in touch with. It is the type of tional structure of most Silicon Valley companies detachment that creates the risk of economic are horizontal, in the sense of non-hierarchical, implosion in situations where a collective need and if the different employees of a firm hard- arises to cash in derivatives. ly ever work together in a shared space, then Here, too, I will not engage in an apocalyptic their success can only depend on an outstand- critique of globalization as the “reason” for that ing degree of self-motivation and self-guided very recent finance disaster of global dimen- transformation. Self-reference replaces institu- sions, and if it were only in order to avoid any tional structures. To phrase the same thought in ungrounded optimism regarding the possibility a dystopian tonality: the brave new world of our of controlling such processes. Globalization and globalized present condemns us to be our own its consequences may well be part of a specific Big Brothers. Or, in alternative, milder words: in stage in the evolution of humankind where cul- the neoliberal world of globalization, we are free ture and technology have replaced biology as to constantly reinvent ourselves. the source of energy that drives all change. But while we may not be able to change them, we [7] have seen how the effects of globalization pro- voke certain reactions, reactions of inertia some- Before trying to make a judgment—or a more times, and with them the impression that the synthetic statement—about the anthropological dynamics of globalization are no longer in syn- view opened by those multiple reactions to the chrony with very basic human needs and human process of globalization, I would like to mention limits. We want to recuperate the human body briefly two phenomena that I find emblematic—in as a core dimension of individual existence; we complementary ways—for two basic structural as- want to claim specific places, specific regions, pects in which information is becoming detached and the planet Earth as spheres of “home” to from specific physical places. The first of them is which we belong; we enjoy being wrapped into a new type of world-wide celebrity and stardom (artificially produced but) coherent historical that has no particular ground or reason—Paris environments; we are longing for languages that Hilton is the name that unavoidably comes to open up and that are shaped by the specific mind (but also the names of David and Victo- spaces that we call ours; and we want to give ria Beckham whose respective achievements in our existence orientation and goals through self- soccer and in popular music have at no moment reflexive activities of “exercising.” matched the massive presence of their faces in This list of converging conditions and needs multiple media and omnipresent commercials). that, in the most literal sense of the word, give While it is of course not the function of these us a place and bind us to the Earth is remindful media protagonists to embody or to represent of the “fourfold” (das Geviert) as a central motif anything at all (rather, their lives are character- in the final stage of Martin Heidegger’s philoso- ized by the blatant absence of a function or of any phy. The four conditions that frame our individ- other assignment), they may be part of a restless ual existence according to Heidegger (the Earth, intransitive movement typical of the condition in the sky, the godhead, the mortals—“mortals” which we become detached from space. In this both in the sense of our fellow humans and in view, Paris Hilton’s and the Beckhams’ historical that of our own mortality) look more symmetrical

240 THE MULTIPLE FACES OF GLOBALIZATION and also more mythological than the “anthropol- sue because she believed the cosmological iden- ogy” that we have extracted from our own reflec- tity of human existence to depend on the fact tions on globalization and its effects. But both that the very condition of “culture” and its lay- lists are very similar, not to say synonymous, in- ers of “labor,” “work,” and “action” were all asmuch as they describe, in Heidegger’s words, grounded in life—and “life” meant for her that “dwelling” as “the manner in which mortals are they were all sustained by our biological con- on the earth” and as they include the intuition nection to the Earth. This participation of hu- that “the basics character of dwelling is to spare, man existence in two different but inseparable to preserve.” Even closer to the conclusions we dimensions that Arendt called “artificial” (cul- have arrived at is the work of the Italianist and ture) and “natural” (life) explains why human philosopher Robert Harrison who, in three differ- birth and death, “natality” and “mortality” (in ent books that make up one complex argument, her own terminology), must be different from the has concentrated on forests, on burial places, and birth and death of all other living beings. Should on gardens in order to elaborate what I would like we ever get definitively severed from the Earth, to call a new “ecological existentialism.” we will lose that identity and with it the ability The preface to Hannah Arendt’s magnificent to labor, to work, and to act. book on The Human Condition, from 1958 reso- Recent developments have confirmed the nates with the powerful reactions that the launch- core of Arendt’s anticipation and concern. With ing of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, had the one difference of course that it was not caused just one year before. Arendt took issue space traveling that jeopardized the existential with the then often expressed view that Sput- condition of dwelling—but electronic communi- nik had been “the first step toward escape from cation, the most important basis and the most men’s imprisonment to the earth.” She took is- important consequence of globalization.

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HANS EIJKELBOOM Ω PARIS-NEW YORK-SHANGHAI, 2007

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