Bauman’s liquid metaphor captures how modern institutions dissolve into time-governed flows

Evidence

Liquids, unlike solids, cannot easily hold their shape. Fluids, so to speak, neither fix space nor bind time. While solids have clear spatial dimensions but neutralize the impact, and thus downgrade the significance of time (effectively resist its flow or render it irrelevant), fluids do not keep to any shape for long and are constantly ready (and prone) to change it; and so for them it is the flow of time that counts, more than the space they happen to occupy: that space, after all, they fill but “for a moment.” In a sense, solids cancel time; for liquids, on the contrary, it is mostly time that matters. When describing solids, one may ignore time altogether; in describing fluids, to leave time out of account would be a grievous mistake. Descriptions of fluids are snapshots, and they need a date at the bottom of the picture. Fluids travel easily… . From the meeting with solids they emerge unscathed, while the solids they have met, if they stay solid, are changed—get moist or drenched… . These are reasons to consider “fluidity” or “liquidity” as fitting metaphors when we wish to grasp the nature of the present, in many ways novel, phase in the history of modernity. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 571

Categorization

• DEFINE: Bauman’s distinction of solids-as-time-neutralizing versus fluids-as-time-dependent provides the ontology underwriting ‘liquid modernity’.
• XREF: The solid/fluid opposition for institutions recalls the earlier claim (ch15) that modernity’s institutional framework has itself been set in motion. — connects to: Global power deliberately dismantles rooted community bonds to stay fluid and invincible — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 595; Bauman’s liquid modernity parallels the financialization thesis — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 669; Colonial modernity replaced organic social unity with machine-regulated individual flow

Broader Connections

• Colonial modernity replaced organic social unity with machine-regulated individual flow #exemplifies (0.85)
• Bauman’s liquid modernity parallels the financialization thesis #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 669