[Xmca-l] Re: Liquid Modernity

[Lplarry]

Mike,
Yes, Zygmunt’s concept *liquid modernity* captures a profound shift or turn in ways social cohesion has transformed from solid to liquid *modes* of identity.

I was referencing the book *Practices of Selfhood*co-written by Zygmunt and Rien Raud. The format is a conversation between two passionate persons and it is  this quality of talking with each other (written in text) that is a way to engage the question of identity formation.

Rien is a scholar of Japanese philosophy and I anticipated a lively debate between the Buddhist approach (the oxcart frames) and Zygmunt’s approach as someone who has experienced profound dispossession that was volatile. His understanding of the times is very difficult reading but I was hopeful that Rien coming from an alternative tradition may provide *answers* addressing Zygmunt’s profound articulation of our liquid times.

This is my reason for juxtaposing *dissolution* of the essential *self* with *dispossession* of the modern *self*. 
The center of the modern self no longer holds but I hear the possibility of a *permeable* self that is open and ethical within situations of development.
The notion of the *germ cell* may be a cell with *permeable boundaries* where the inner and outer nourish each other.

Engaging Zygmunt in conversation is a permeable conversation and the opening chapter can be downloaded as an ebook


Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: mike cole