Postmodern fragmentation results from acceleration forcing nonintegrated parallel processing past a critical threshold

Evidence

Both the fragmentation, multiplication, and diffusion of social identities (“the end of the subject”) and the apparent abandonment of a political shaping and normative steering of society (“the end of politics”) are equally central themes of postmodern social theory. In light of the reconstructed processes of liquefaction and contemporization, the diagnosis of postmodernity can then be reformulated as the attainment of a social state in which the acceleration of social relations rooted in modernity surpasses a critical point or takes on a new quality such that the linearity and sequentiality of the perception and processing of problems and changes, at both individual and social levels, is broken up and the aspiration to integration is abandoned. The rapid pace compels a nonintegrated form of parallel processing that leads to fragmentation and a loss of steering, intelligibility, and malleability (Gestaltbarkeit) on the individual as well as the sociopolitical level. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 593

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Postmodern affirmation of fragmentation depends on abandoning autonomy ideals — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 785; Modern fragmented experience makes life race at both ends. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 405; Time acceleration redistributes and conceals power across classes — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 97

Broader Connections

• Time acceleration redistributes and conceals power across classes #complicates (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 97