Towards Asignifying Modernity: A Critique on the Interests that Shaped Social Sciences and Social Work

8/17/2019 Towards Asignifying Modernity: A Critique on the Interests that Shaped Social Sciences and Social Work

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Towards asignifying modernity: a

critique of the interests that shaped

social sciences and social work

P.Madhu *

Abstract

The paper is about interests. It attempts to point out that politics of historically sustained

and discursively reproduced interests constitute the assemblage of modernity. The politics is traced through exploring how social sciences and social work replaced political

philosophy and charity within discursive planes of modernity yielding to the interests

forming them. The first part of the paper discusses modernity as the subjectiveindividuation of its formative interests. Second part deliberates on semantic and

incorporeal significations that presented modernity as tightly networked truth. It is argued

that the modern social is a hierarchically ordered predatory force field sustained throughnetworks of significations. Towards the end, in lieu of the conclusion, the paper invites

for discussions counter-signifying modernity.

Keywords

asignify, interest, metaphysics, modernity, social, work

1.1 Positioning modernity

Modernity was both an event 1 and a counter event, 2 making up the social milieu

anew. It was an event because it broke with theocratic interests. It was subjecting the

planet and its beings to financial world order, hence, it is a counter event. Modernity broke into discursive singularity in the contexts of revolutions and uprisings of 18th

century crafted out of the intellectual anvil apparent since 17 th century Europe (Wittrock,

et.al, 1996:12; Barlow, 1997: 1). It prevails in its cultural diversities expressed in therealms of art, literature, science and philosophy (Nicolescu, 2014: 3-7). Modernity is

constituted by and expressed as intensive manifold.3

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* Associate Professor, Amity Institute of Social Sciences, Amity University, India.

Email: [email protected]


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Modernity is not a natural process of updating human rationality. It is not an ideal settowards autonomy or freedom; it had sprung from its enunciative modalities and

originary interests 4. (Foucault, 2002:55-61). It is originary as ‘effective history’ in

ethological and genealogical sense (Deleuze, 1988: 125; 2005:87; Foucault, 1984). It is

enunciative in construing the order of the discourse (Foucault, 1981). Interests are theunderlying text of milieux, methodical and calculative. Modernity was not a project of a-

social partners bereft of motives or interests in an unintelligible interaction in the contexts

of scientific rationality, enlightenment, or industrial revolution. It is the triumph offinancial-utilitarian interests investing and expanding on a global scale and beyond

(Nicolescu, 2014: 139-142; Greenfield, 2001:33-34; Dirlik, 2003; Adorno, 1974: 287-

309). Sustained by its enunciative interests, frameworks and theories, methods ofmodernity are biased towards the order of market expansion and capital accumulation. It

operates through sovereignty of nation states, which, in turn, is gradually collapsing into

corporate sovereignty (Collins, 1989: 4-32; Greenfield, 2013:6; Barkan, 2013:7-8).Objectification and appropriation of existence as exploitable ‘resources’ by a

hierarchically tapered order is the modo (now) of modernity. It is the hierarchized order‘[ir]rationally’ parasiting its base (Adorno, 1974:308). Modernity is made of interests of

modo enframing time: using past to colonize future (Dupre 1993:3-5, 87,145).Temporality, as it is rightly recognized, is the dimension of the subjectivation (Nancy,

2007:18). It is the dominant praxis of active time in the making (Dupre, 1966: 178).

Modernity is the modo of the dominant praxis modulated through and through thenetwork of significations, sustained as the logic of practice and social action (Bourdieu

1990; Weber, 1978:4).

Modernity is a plane of networked consistency modulated by dominant praxis and

interest sustaining it (Deleuze, 1987:69). Interests sustained the plane of network is

‘nonhuman’ for Foucault, and ‘das-man’ for Heidegger (Foucault, 1988: 39; Heidegger,2008: 164; Galloway and Thacker, 2007:154). Affective individuations, sociations and

their historical extensions formulated it. Interests that are invisible projected onto the

screens of subjectivations trigger their subjects. Discursively, they constitute theassemblage of consistency as powers that diminish impulsive life. It is the affect of

externality of relations, an active field, which is, “a whole organization which effectively

trains thought to operate according to the norms of an established order” (Deleuze,1987:18). They affect being human and reverberate modifying their ecology. Their

geological effect on planetary scale is termed by historians among ecologists as

anthroposcene (Arias-Maldonado, 2015; Morton, 2014). Anthroposcene is the

phenomenon of ecological colonization by hierarchized human order playing as pervasiveand profound active force rivaling the great forces of nature and pushing the Earth as a

whole into planetary terra incognita’ (Clark, 2015: 1).


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II

2.1 Politics of modernity

Utilitarian atomism and triumphalist evolutionary discourses of the late eighteenth

century trajectorized the gaze of modernity into dangerously reductive circularity(Kankava2013; Marcuse, 1989:179). It was dangerously reductive because complexities

of subject- object, culture - practice, philosophy and metaphysics were all fused to its

circular logic. Got into loops of circular logic, methods of modernity replaced visionary

seeing, meditative listening and ideations into acquisitive eyeing, selective eavesdropping

and positivist constructs of reality (Heidegger, 1977). Tenaciously hegemonic cultural

articulation foreshadowed processes of capital accumulation in new guises of scientificrationality (Pred and Watts, 1992 xiii-xiv; Adormo & Horkheimer 1997; Derrida,

1982:322-326). It was a movement from nous to logos (Lee and Long, 2007; Wanker,

1991; Arendt, 1978: 110-111; Levin, 1993:2). Modernity was circular in logic becausethe end of the chain of its logic portended to reduction of a wide range of symbolicstructures and processes mutually reinforcing its apparently unchanging causal

connections. Narratives consequent on financial-utilitarian interests, racial claims of

evolutionary superiority, discourses on sovereignty, governance, polity, protestantism,nationalism, commercial growth and colonial expansion converged into forming

modernity (Goody 1993; Greenfield 2001; Dickinson 1989). Modernity was an

intellectual and political response to the time in making, projecticing its telos.

Revolutions of the 18th

century and their aftermath accelerated modernity as a

movement from vestiges of ‘tradition’, which were invented by modernity as a contrast to

itself. Revolutions were ‘intellectually’ interpreted as rebellion against ‘tradition’ andhence modern ‘enlightenment’ had become the alternative (Gilmartin, 2002:296; Berg,

1980:118). “Moneyed interest” along with “men of letters”, Edmund Burke noted,“engineered the revolution” and response to it too (Burke, 1989: 131-134). Interests in

the formative era of modernity abhorred radical political philosophy and ‘feared the poor’

because their combination was thought to radicalize the social, obstructing economic prosperity (Wagner, 2005:37-56; Desai, 2014: 303; Young and Ashton, 1967:9; Berg,

1980:117). Modernity is an active force field. It contrived both marginality and

emancipation. It invented madness and its treatment. It divided society into categories of

poor and rich and then suggested alleviation from poverty all within its schema ofeconomic productivity and work ethics. It projected individual to centre stage and

contrasted individual from society. It distinguished wasteful from productive and urgedfor the ‘cure’ from wastefulness (Bataille, 1991; Derrida, 2001:317-350). Modernityinvented tradition and pretended a rupture from it (Latour, 1993). Rise of modernity was

also rise of bio-politics where life is subordinated to the order of governance in

accordance with privileged interests (Thacker, 2012:28-29). It is a simulacra, contrivedautopoetic hyper-reality, drawing times that existed before and future yet to come, suited


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to its calling. It drew time unto itself and blinded historical processes into inauthenticity

of its calling (Marion, 1996:103).

2.2. Modernity, science and order

Apparently, modern science was an endeavour to let the nature speak: and so was theclaim of social sciences (Lelas, 2001:248). It was an attempt to discover the social

scientifically. It was an attempt to produce a ‘science’ of humanity. Together, it was

projected that modernity would produce an unified science that would explain things and processes objectively. Nevertheless, such a unified science of modernity is a suspicious

project as such an objective ‘science’ is hardly independent of the interests enframing it

(Habermas, 1972). The unified ‘science’ of ‘humanity’ was neither ‘objective’ sciencenor ‘human’ because it was tacitly entangled by governing interests and ‘non-human’

autopoesis of discursive ordering that deprives agential politics from below (Foucault,

1977: 138; Foucault, 1981: 67; Foucault, 1994: 3–7). It is non-human becausegovernance is “right disposition of things”: “men in their relationships, bonds and

complex involvement with things like wealth, resources, means of subsistence, the

territory with its borders, qualities, climate, dryness, fertility and so on” (Foucault, 2007:

96). Social interests and their sustenance is concerned about material environments and

technical networks beyond human actors.

Being human-in-time is having resolute to counterpoise interests that reduce them

into non-humans, thrown to das-man of discursive interests. Following Heidegger, it can

be said, intelligibility as the counterpoise of being-in-the-world is being human(Heidegger, 2008:204). Being human-in-time is the only option to be ethical and taking

‘care of the self’ (Foucault, 1987). Taking care of the self is giving care to the self

rescuing it from the interests of subjectivation and governmentality. On the contrary,

practices within discourses are the discourse in practice (Foucault, 1988: xix). It is beinglost to the constitutive interests of the discourse. Reflexivity, if it is constituted within the

discursive momentum, it is more of an irreflexive reflexivity. The irreflexive reflexivity

lets its subjects to be an-ethical : having no scope or autonomy to be ethical or unethical.Since, uncritically being subjects of modernity is being in captivity, for a greater human

freedom, a rupture in the discursive fetters is inevitable. Nevertheless, being in captivity

is not our destiny; for, time is infinitely open to beings (Ricoeur, 1995:63).

2.3 Vacating metaphysics and charity

Historically, social sciences and social work have come into existence with a claim of

replacing ‘metaphysics’ and ‘charity’ with ‘social science’ and ‘scientific charity’respectively (Quigley, 1996; Lewis and Suarez, 1995: 1769). Thoughts and actions

grouped into modernity discredited political philosophy and religious charity and

replaced them with social sciences and social work (Wagner and Wittrock, 1991; Nowonty, 1991). Thinking and action were divided into academic social science and semi

academic social work. They emerged as ‘scientific’ apparatus capable of solving political

issues by means other than metaphysical or philosophical. They were to replace


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normative principles of political metaphysics into positive scientific laws (Boltanski andThevonot, 2006:29, 31; Mignolo, 2002; Mignolo, 2006: 456). However, they appeared to

echo the concerns of political metaphysics. Social sciences are products of modernity that

privileged social order over the chaos of politics. The new emphasis on ‘society’

‘science’ and ‘work’ drifted intellectual gaze away from polity, metaphysics and action(Wagner, 2006:26).

Thinking metaphysically is a method of approaching physical or experiential reality

beyond its appearance. It doubts real of the reality and seeks for its virtual roots.

Methodologically it is rhetorical, poetic and ideational. Essence of metaphysics forHeidegger is seeking what is active though buried beyond apparent reality. For instance,

politics is the metaphysics of society, or the doing of being is the metaphysics of work

ethics. Metaphysics explicates unnoticed obviousness. It reflects on the ontology of

relations resisting their reduction into ontology of substances (Bachelard, 1985; Badiou,2005:162). It looks for what cannot otherwise be noticed empirically. It declines to count

the becoming of multiplicity into a finished product (Badiou, 2005: 55). It problematises politics of incorporeal significations and historicises their milieu (Guattari, 1989;Bouldrillard, 1981; Tetsuro, 1961). Metaphysics is potentially political. It is thoughtful

thinking (Heidegger, 1993). It springs from ideation, novelty, reverberation and the direct

ontology of poetic imagination of the life force (Bachelard, 1994: xv). It is thoroughlysubjective imaginary endeavour, often contrasted with empirical, objective, and truth

claims of science. Canonical forms of religions are neither metaphysical nor scientific;

nevertheless, they switch to either of the side for survival of the canons. Votaries ofmodernity, since 17th century Europe, to accelerate progress, drew metaphysics into

battle with science towards stalling canonical faiths obstructing thinking-free or

imagining. Sciences of modernity, especially social sciences, for reasons different from

their counterparts in physical sciences, dismissed metaphysics as redundant and non-verifiable and hence claimed them to be meaningless. Historically, physical sciences

resisted ‘religion as metaphysics’ towards their struggle for free thinking. On the

contrary, in social affairs, religious interests joined with that of expediency for progresstowards eliminating metaphysics and there by politics from social and poetics from life.

2.4 Replacing political with social

The ‘social’ unlike political is merely an association of individuals, groups and

communities (Greenfield, 2001:2). Underlying premise of the transition was that issues

concerning the common could be solved by other means than political solutions. Politicalissues, unlike that of the social cannot be resolved other than by comprehensively

addressing the political contradictions. Unlike polity, the idea of society referred to

voluntary and purposive association of ontologically separate individuals (Wagner,2005:49). Social, when conceptualized as the aggregate of individuals, groups or

communities, fades away the politics, clearing hurdles politics may pose to individualist

libertarian order. Since social is merely connectivity, solving ‘social issues’ unlikehandling the political, is solving the connectivity issues of associations. ‘Social’ that


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appears self-explanatory is a modern conceptualization, processed by interests separatingit from the idea of political. Social work emerged in this historical milieu as a

professional engagement expediting hands-on solutions to connectivity issues through

adjustments and coping. Hence, social work literature takes the idea of ‘social’ simply as

‘humans as social beings’ (Kirst-Ashman, 2010:5). For them, definitional aspect of thesocial ‘does not matter greatly’ (Sheppard, 2006: 233).

The idea of ‘society’ conceals the relations of contradictions of human political

existence. One among the pioneering thinkers who warned against apolitical character of‘society’ was Karl Marx. He, unlike many thinkers who succeeded him, held ‘society’ as

‘product of human reciprocal action’. He also warned in his Paris Manuscripts against

conceiving ‘society’ as an abstraction vis a vis ‘individual’ because for him ‘individual is

a social being’. He emphatically summarized the idea of social by stating, “My ownexistence is social activity” (Marx, 1994.:72). Simmel, differing from most of his

contemporary sociologists, explained society as forms of sociation beyond dualisms ofindividual/ social (Simmel, 1895:52). Nevertheless, with the emergence of socialsciences, especially sociology, the idea of society had been reductively hypostatized into

‘society and its units’ (Spenser, 1904: 436). Logically otherwise, ‘social’ appears to

include political; hence, its schema of apolitization remains disguised for social sciences.

Presupposing purposive voluntary association of individuals, the idea of socialorder foreclosed problematizing its undermining political chaos (Heilbron, 1995: 87). The

category of ‘society’ was brought into existence categorizing the process of social

existence and further dichotomizing that into individual and society. Individual, in this

discursive schema, is a pre-formed ‘natural’ identity category and society is the moldformed of individuals. Theorizing ‘society’ within the discourse of modernity indeed had

sprouted from the historical a priory of the already constituted upper echelons of thesocial order. By defining society as aggregation of individuals, interests that shapedmodernity naturalized the hierarchical society of order- from individuals to nation up to

global- and thereby denaturalized contradictions of chaos or disorder (Greenfield,

2001:32). The idea of ‘society’ by preferring order for chaos tacitly anomalized socialmobility. It disguised the fact that pioneering interests and dispositions had always

triggered the catallaxy of social order. Order emerged in the social world through the

impetuous interests historically portending to be potential. Taken for granted, the

presupposed placidity gave leeway to governmentality through pretexts of governance

towards containing plausible turbulences (Boltanski and thevenot, 2006:40).

2.5 Work ethics and the perversion of work

Words like ‘society’ or ‘work’ appear self-evident until contested because they

modulate operating interests of the plane of organization. Apoliticized social existence

and individualized work roles are the two major aspects of the force-field of modernity.Battle for defining work as labour and bringing the contested idea within ‘ethical’

framework was a major theoretical endeavour of modernity. Within the discursive


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premises of modernity, the idea of labour was processed by the history of colonialexpansion: need for labour in colonies, slave trade, slave schools, division of labour,

industrialization, invention of machines and the use of religion to justify labour

extraction. Work was “any exertion of body or mind” towards doing “some good other

than the pleasure derived directly from the work” (Everman, 1985:27). Gradually, processed by the spirit of modernity, it was turned into morally obligatory ‘work ethics’.

Before modernity, work meant sacrifice. It was sacrificial and voluntary toil, exertion,

effort, slog and drudgery offered voluntarily for common goodness in terms of spiritual,communal or ethereal bonds. (Marshall, 1907: 65). Ontologically work is the aspect that

connects beings together. For Heidegger, ‘ability-to be’ is being in work ( Arbeit Sein)

(Blok, 2015: 110). Work is a being’s active response to its situation and time. That which“constantly aeteiolates difference between what is now and what is after-now is work”

(Holquist, 1993: x). Work is the act of creation. Work transforms the plane of consistency

of being towards well-being. Ontology of work is the act of transforming ethereal,communal, filial or spiritual bonds towards a greater integration by sacrificial efforts.

Work is response to the void of being, response that drives ‘ongoing event of being’(Bakthin, 1993: 31-32). The act of work is a deed of personal resolute within the

singularity of one’s existence and not a mere happening.

Work is not merely a service sold to its purchaser. The question of work isontological. Heidegger makes it clear by saying “any work with which one concerns

oneself is ready-to-hand not only in the domestic world of the workshop but also in the

public world” (1962: 100). ‘Work,’ Lukacs explained, “is human activity which can beshown to maintain, establish or change commonly valued social institutions, whether

these activities have this as a goal or not” (Lukacs, 1977: 407). Work is creative

engagement with webs of meanings and culturally produced values. Work is also, where

workers care to direct their attention to during its practice. Essence of work for Heideggeris the essence of being, in the sense of becoming (Heidegger, 1986:196). Work is not

merely working towards producing ‘surplus value’ or limited to the productivity of

individual worker (Heller, 1981). However, within protestant theology processed bycommercial interests, work was semantically transformed into ‘work ethics,’ a legally

enforceable personal obligation. Rationale of work penetrated into public conscience and

activity as semantically embedded ‘social action.’ For Weber, the rationale is ‘the spiritof capitalism’ (Weber, 2012). For Weber, it is action of social and not vice versa. In the

context of modernity, for the interests of expansion, colonization and progress, the idea

was a passport for forced or waged labour towards transforming human and physical

nature for greater material accumulation. Under the premises of modernity, ‘work ethics’had become mandatory obligation of existence, avoiding which was either to be cured or

punishable. Positioning work as ‘work ethics’ from a narrow theological foundation is the

‘work’ of modernity: its telos realization (Eyerman, 1985: 16).

2.6 Political Science and the perversion of political philosophy

The plane of interconnectedness called ‘society,’ had replaced politics as

communis, a common-field of contests and consensus. Gradually, ‘polity’ had become


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‘society’ and later it assumed the label ‘economy’: a movement from historicizing thecommon to futurizing individuated social or economic order (Wagner 2006). Social

sciences bereft of the commonality, that political philosophy had, have become

rationalist-individualist behaviorist and positivist. Interestingly, political science too had

become a discipline dealing with issues of ‘unit citizens’ with a stake of their own in thedetermination of the common at micro level and at macro level an epistemic field

concerned of nation states, international relations and diplomacy, tacitly severing itself

from metaphysics of polity. Before sixteenth century Europe, the word ‘nation’ referredexclusively to political and cultural elite and ‘people’ or ‘commons’ to the lower orders

of the political hierarchy. With modernity, the words went under semantic transition to

refer a composite entity of people with elite, under sovereign nation states (Greenfield,1993:6). Political science, in disconnect with political philosophy, in the oeuvre of

modernity, had become a ‘science’ of individualist liberalism, nation states, globality and

a science advocating frugal governance of free-marketeering (Walters, 2012:30,31). As aresult, it had been severed from the wisdom of political philosophy that saw individuals

and nations “tied into pre-existing network of social relations held together by commonvalues and beliefs” (Wagner, 2005: 53, Wagner, 2006:29-30). In sum, separation of

social from political and science from philosophy marks the birth of social sciences.Discursive context of modernity has reinvented every idea suiting it to the impending

economic world order.

2.7 Social Science and its governmentality function

Society as an object and social science as a discipline has been a ‘post-

revolutionary discovery’ (Wagner, 2006:28). Moreover, social sciences emerged as

pragmatic replacement for philosophy and metaphysics within the intellectual climate of post-revolutionary aporias because they were compatible with the elite class impetus.

Modernity discursively upheld economic prosperity, ‘work ethics’ and the ‘art ofgovernance’ which were convincingly projected as undoubtable principles of socialuniversality. Social Universality as a principle of totalizing the social from utilitarian

point of view was a consequence of systematic dehistorization and ontologization of the

forms of socialities from a hierarchically tapered evolutionary bias of EurocentricProtestantism (Wolin, 1992:61; Adorno & Hokheimer, 2003:22-24). Social sciences had

come into existence because of the dehistorisized and false ontology. But for the premises

of the false ontology, social sciences could not have approached human existence in

restricted terms of ‘economics’ ‘politics’, ‘anthropology’ or ‘history’. They were‘universally’ applied to all humans existing in past and those yet to come. The gaze of

history, sociology, anthropology and even studies of natural resources had never been

neutral as they were otherwise implied as ‘objective’ by their scientific status. Otherfields like religion, governance, polity, production, and labour had to adjust and claim

their place within new assemblage of modernist semantic convolutions. The perceived

necessity of governmentality tacitly worked as the enunciative principle for theemergence of social sciences and social work (Foucault, 1994: 29; Eastwood, 1991: 162;

Wagner, 2001:2; Kemple, 2006:4). A closer look into the transition would reveal that it


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was not a ‘neutral science’ replacing ‘moral philosophy’, but a certain form of politicalinterest that had the individualist libertarianism presuming scientific guise. The regime of

social science academics, despite its radical appearance, performed the governmentality

function in the intellectual sphere. Homologically, social work shares discursive

footprints of modernity with social sciences. Social work philosophy in its formative erawas grounded on the utilitarianism of nineteenth century, as they were sphere headed by

Bentham, Malthus, James Mill and Ricardo (Young and Ashton, 1967:16). It presumed

the role of a moral premier in the secular world in which reasoning was replacing faithand professions were replacing positions of theocratic domain (Payne, 2005:182). Social

Work, like psychiatry, was authorized to be a profession towards scientifically managing

the ‘hampering …antisocial impediments’ that may constrain “the system of economicfreedom” and “the immense potential of free pioneering individual initiatives” (Robbins,

1952:19).

2.8 Social Work as the practice of governmentality

Social sciences, in their pursuit for generality, had to consider beliefs, values and

representation as generic objects or collectivities and not as situationally emergent

contingent phenomenon (Boltanski and Thevonot, 2006: 16). In addition, it was desiredthere should be mechanisms for the governance of exceptions, pitfalls, consequences of progress at the margins. Since the profession of social work came into existence in the

context of modernity, the objective of social work, corresponding to the then existingdiscursive environment, was towards containing the effects of marginality on the elite

social order. Immediate milieu leading to the birth of social work was the intellectual

context of ‘work ethics’ and the policy frameworks that led to the enactment of English

Poor Law. Within the logic of ‘work ethics’, poverty was understood as the consequenceof idleness and moral turpitude (Lewis and Suarez, 1995: 1769). Free doles are said to be

breeding laziness, and charity which had been a virtue till then, under modernity, became‘scientific charity’. The idea of charity was transforming from nomothetic philanthropy toideographic social diagnosis and ‘treatment’ towards curing the social from its idleness

(Popple, 1995:2283). The idle, it was believed, ‘hurt their own souls’ and that of others’

to the high displeasure of the Almighty God’ (Slack, 1990: 59-60). Gertrude Himmelfarb,

in her study on poverty echoed the mindset of the era in the following fashion,

[the poor], like rats, could indeed be eliminated by this method, or at least

driven out of sight. All that was required was the determination to treat

them like rats, on the assumption that the ‘poor and luckless are here only

as a nuisance to be abraded and abated’ (Himmelfarb,1984: 193).

Getting rid of the poor, being politically incorrect, resulted in social work emerging as thesecond option towards monitoring and controlling them. In his critical commentary on

the attitude of elite interests, Brian Inglis comments,

. . . the case gained ground that the destitute were expendable, whether or

not they were to blame for their condition. Had there been any way simply


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to get rid of them, without risk to society, Ricardo and Malthus wouldcertainly have recommended it, and governments would equally certainly

have given it their favourable attention, provided that it did not entail any

increase in taxation (Inglis, 1971:75)

The earliest of charity missions of modern social work are relief-work towards

repressing mendacity among the ‘growing pauper semi-criminal class’ that was thoughtto be ‘rising tide of pauperism and crime’ which ‘threatens grave social consequences’

(Anonymous, 1870; Mooney, 1998: 68; Pratt, 1997:42). Poor was believed to have the

professional assistance in the wide open world as ‘prostitutes’, vagrants, mad people,criminals, blasphemers had state sponsored professional assistance in confinement.

Within the regulatory context, social work profession was the legal apparatus with

statutory authority under the poor law towards containing the “dangerous classes”

(Young and Ashton, 1967:43; Stedman Jones, 1971). Beneath the passion to help therewas always undercurrent of profound biases that let the social workers to be merciful

towards the -so called- insane, feeble-minded, blind, crippled, epileptic, immoral, prostitutes, addicts, alcoholics and others of ‘defective eugenics’ (Hansen, 2013). David

Ricardo’s seminal work on taxation exposes the spirit of the governing class,

“The clear and direct tendency of the poor laws, is in direct opposition tothese obvious principles: it is not, as the legislature benevolently intended”

(Ricardo, 1817).

Ricardo, further wrote, “every friend to the poor must ardently wish for their abolition”

and continued,

“[u]nfortunately, however, they have been so long established, and the

habits of the poor have been so formed upon their operation, that toeradicate them with safety from our political system, requires the most

cautious and skilful management”.

Social sciences performed the function of governmentality at intellectual spheres andSocial Work was part of “the art of governance” at grassroots level. Social Work was

born in the twilight era in which pastoral sovereignty was phasing into the ‘art of

governance’ (Foucault, 1991). Poor had to be ‘professionally’ disciplined preventing

them from rebelling against the rich (Swift, 2001:69-70).The ‘profession’ was seen as ananathema for revolution. The uneasy conscience of the middle class combined with the

demand for “art of governance” was the leitmotif of the state sponsored social work in its

inceptive era. Society, social science, social work, poverty, work ethics, governance, progress, property & expansion are homologies of modernity. They are multiple, however

they have a plane of organization animating them to co-evolve homologically. Together,

they form into a galaxy of semantics mutually reinforcing one another towards producinga phantasmagoria of experienced realities. The interests that triggered the prevailing

plane of stratification are force fields of human interests of the foregone past and of the

forthcoming futures (Benjamin, 1989:60). Modernity is triggered and constituted by


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heterogeneous interests of multiple pasts, singularized and percolated as sense-makingcapillaries producing subjects, their discursive environment and its momentum. Authentic

social science or work is impossible when subjected to the discursive processes, milieux

and politics of relationships or production of subjects.

III

3.1 Politics of modernity as politics of governmentality

Politics of modernity is politics of governmentality (Foucault 1991). It is politics

of the governing interests. It was a project of hegemony of ruling interests in disguise.Resistance to the governing interests as revolutions was sporadic outbursts of chaos

against order. Protestant religious uprisings and French revolution necessitated and

justified governmentality over pastorality. Response to chaos is order. Interests of order

are hierarchical. They trigger protocols of governance. In other words, hierarchically privileged within the network of social relations are triggered to safeguard and maintain

order, and more so when it is challenged. Financial interests, throughout the history,

since the invention of money, were privileged to be at the top of hierarchy abovereligious, cultural or regal interests (Madhu et.al., 2014). They were always tending to begeographically global and temporally futuristic. The interest was finding its actors

throughout history. Modernity is the expression of ruling interests expressed as our

collective subjective time. ‘Social’ is privileged over ‘polity’ because the spirit ofmodernity is to privilege order over chaos in accordance with the governing interests of

hierarchical order. Politics of the order is to privilege and expand order. Politics since has

been gradually drawn away from agonistics. Privileging positivistic social sciences over political philosophy and metaphysics were the impendent strategy of the historical force

field of modernity (Lewin, 1943). It is the tactic of unconscious program superseding

conscious rational calculations as practical mastery of logic in the immanent necessity of

the force fields of portending interests (Lamaison and Bourdieu, 1986).

3.2 Social as communis

Social is political. ‘Social’ is both of sensus communis and polis communis. SensusCommunis is a whole set of shared but unstated mores, prejudices, and values that exist in

a social milieu often taken for granted. Polis Communis is the discomfort and

contradiction shared but often unstated. They tacitly work through the culture of makingsense. For Gadamer, sensus communis is “never solipsistic but always communal”. It is

the ability to make one’s own that which comes to one out of communal relations. Sensus

Communis is counter acting polis Communis that emerge out from and return to praxis.Their work is a double state of bisociation where the individuation is in communion with

the social where by both are modified in the interaction (Koestler, 1989:35). Sensus/Polis

Communis is the site of creation. Sensus is the seat of creativity; Polis is the site of


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contradiction. Communis is the affect of the force field of contradictory or shared,unstated social force field (Lyotard, 1991:227). Communis is the transitory subjective

mobility that revokes totalizing endeavours. It is the work of the affective ‘ sensus’ and

‘ polis’ on the ‘communis’ . ‘Sensus’ and polis are the ‘inter’ of the ‘interaction’ that

makes the social. ‘Inter’ is the quodlibet that opens (Agamben, 1993: 66). It is work ofthe unthought passing through and opening up towards the potential. Work of the ‘inter’,

is the “inner energy of an intelligence which at each moment wins itself back to itself,

eliminating ideas already formed to give place to those in the process of being formed”(Gadamer, 2006: 23). The communis is agonistic and political. Loss of the agonistic

polity, Arendt observes, expels ‘man’ from “humanity” (1961: 297). Modernity is the

mode of subjectivation that expelled ‘man’ from humanity.

Ontologically, social is neither physical nor mere aggregation of individuals.

There are no individuals, there is only individuation; individuations as the affect ofcommunis (Agamben, 2009; Agamben, 1993:17-23; Deleuze, 2004:86). There is no

society; there are only sociations (Simmel, 1908: 23, 62, 178-179; Wolf, 1950: 409-424).Social is metaphysical. It is a networked assemblage of subjective judgments in themaking. Social is a derivative affect of subjective prejudices (Gadamer, 2006: 273) 5.

Politically, the social is agonistic at its source. Interests of governance make it an

aggrandized totality constituted of statistically calculable empirical generalities. Problemof modernity is not absence of metaphysics, but excessive presence of unexamined

metaphysics. Ironically, totalized constructs of individuals and society are metaphysics

unscrutinized . Farther, modernity is preclusively blind to its metaphysical imperative(Puhek, 1982). It is extravagant expediency to reduce them into self-contained empirical

entities of independent identities or categories. It is erroneously metaphysical first and

empirical second and hence, its formative interests passed on to create a world order,

unexamined. Virtue of science lies in examining. A science that is not capable ofexamining is inauthentic. Persisting positivist empirical assumptions combined with deep

unawareness of its metaphysical imperative made ‘social sciences’ inauthentic and

counter-evental. It is counter evental because it is historical unconcious in scientistic

action tapering the world order hierarchically.

Modernity is there since governmentality of state replaced pastoral

responsibilities of erstwhile sovereign. State is increasingly emerging multiple in the

sense of many and in terms of its composition as manifold. There are converged states

and unified governmentalities. Social sciences and social work mostly work for themultiplicities of the states and governmentalities, uncritically. They work towards telos

realization of modernity. Within the logic of governmentality, politics is an anathema,

science is an instrument, and work is purchase and employment of alienated labour. Themodern social is a hierarchically ordered predatory force field sustained discursively

through networks of significations.


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reverie of imagination (Bachlard 2014). Sonorous outweighs the forms (Nancy, 2007:9).It means countervailing research methods should be eager to listen than speak. Speaking

confirms; listening ruptures. To listen is “to be straining towards a possible meaning and

consequently one that is not immediately accessible” (Nancy, 2007: 11). Listening is

understanding; watching is governance: visual surveillance. Listening is being reflexive,in which subject is referred back to itself as object. Visual is tendentiously mimetic, it is

imaginary capture. It expands outwards. It colonizes. On the contrary, listening is

sonorous. Listening expands through resonance and reverberance. It is stretching one’sear to the other. Sonorous is methexic. It is participating, sharing, and understanding. It

penetrates, ruptures, prepares for further cracks, and awaits event (Nasio, 1998:98).

Listening is invitation to alterity: to alter the internalities. To listen is “to enter thatspatiality, by which at the same time, I am penetrated, for it opens up” (Nancy, 2007: 16).

Speaking, is imposing, colonizing and thus produces its externalities. Speech dictates.

Expansion of modernity is the expansion of speech: the dictatorship of the formative

interests of modo. Listening is the countervailing power.

Asignifying significations is metaphysical and political work on the social: social

work. Such a work is a process towards unachievable, pure immanence and the

unthought. It is the work of ‘unbecoming’ into pure immanence. It is the social work ofde-subjectification and undoing consistencies (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 42). It is the

work towards ethico- aesthetic chaosmosis. The work of chaosmosis is probing into

modalities of alterities, understanding bifurcations beyond pre-established schemas. This paper is an invitation to explore the processes that preceded the heterogenesis of the

modo of modernity. It is towards the work of de-ontologizing totalities: the pure work of

altering the telos (Guattari, 1995:108). The agonistic polity of altering the telos, I

propose, should be the social work of social sciences. Bereft of the capacity to asignifythe interests governing the social, the social sciences can hardly be scientific.

Notes:

1.

Event is that breaks with the prevailing discursive interests.

2. Counter event is a transitional break towards affirming the prevailing discursive interests. For

Foucault they are ‘discontinuous systematicities’ (Foucault, 1981:69)

3. Manifold is ‘heterogeneous yet interactive’ (Deleuze, 1994:203)

4. Etymologically, interest is inter + esse, which means force-field (inter) that transforms beings

(esse). Interesse is also, indemnification for damage due to the delay in the interval. Politically, it

implies claim over others and future (Knight 1932: 131)

5.

Gaddamer: The history of ideas shows that not until the Enlightenment does the concept of prejudice acquire the negative connotation familiar today. Actually "prejudice" means a judgment

that is rendered before all the elements that determine a situation have been finally examined. In

German legal terminology a prejudice" is a provisional legal verdict before the final verdict is

reached (Gadamer, 2006: 273)


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Towards Asignifying Modernity: A Critique on the Interests that Shaped Social Sciences and Social Work