Experiences of Modernity and the Modernity of Experience

It has often been argued that a certain loss of experience, even of the ability to have experiences is apparent under the modern condition (Adorno, Benjamin). Yet, at the same time it seems to be true that modernity is quite obsessed with experience (see: Jay 2005). Certainly, there are different understandings of what experience actually means, and it is probably true what Michael Oakshott has to say about this topic: "Experience, of all the words in the philosophic vocabulary, is the most difficult to manage, and it must be the ambition of any writer reckless enough to use the word to escape the ambiguities it contains" (quoted in: Jay 2005: 9). Although this paper sees itself in the tradition of this 'recklessness', it does not aim to escape the ambiguities of 'experiences'. On the contrary, ambiguous is not only the word, but also what it stands for. But it is precisely this ambiguity of experience, and the acknowledgemente of it, that contributes to an often claimed characteristic of modernity: its contingency (Rorty) or its ambivalence (Bauman). In this paper I will argue that the ambiguity of modern experiences has to do with a new kind of world-consciousness that emerges in modernity. I will draw on authors like the recently deceased Marshall Berman, the already mentioned Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, but also more recent authors like Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Peter Wagner. And I will include in my discussion voices from Latin America like Octavio Paz and the philosopher Bolívar Echeverría. They all shall help to outline a theory of modernity for which the experiences that real human beings are making when confronted with the challenges of modernity.

Martin Jay (2005), Songs of Experience: Modern American and European. Variations on a Universal Theme, University of California Press.