Uncontrollability of the World
- Book: The Uncontrollability of the world. By Harmut Rosa. Polity Press, 2023
URL =
Review
Paul J. D’Ambrosio:
"There is not a single reference to “virus,” “pandemic,” “race,” or any other “2020-was-the-worst-year-ever” topic in his new book. When it comes to analyzing the concrete effects of capitalism, modernity, and social acceleration, Rosa’s work in general is extremely insightful, so it would be inaccurate to say that his latest book is “timelier than ever.” We might, however, say that our experiences over the two years or so put us in a better position to appreciate what Rosa has to offer. Perhaps we now have a more palatable feeling of acceleration, uncontrollability, and the need for resonance.
Rosa’s topic is Unverfügbarkeit, normally translated as “unpredictability.” After abandoning that term and trying a few others, including “non-availability” and “non-engineerability,” Rosa and his excellent translator James Wagner settled on “uncontrollability.” The book is then about “modernity’s incessant desire to make the world engineerable, predictable, available, accessible, disposable (i.e. verfügbar) in all its aspects.” Uncontrollability, coupled with “dynamic stabilization” — that is, the notion that social systems today can only remain stable through constant growth — characterizes what Rosa means by “modernity.”
Growth means continual expansion of humanity’s reach. We want more of everything, and we want to control it all. Rosa delineates four dimensions of control: rendering things visible, reachable, manageable, and useful. From nature and time to our own sleep habits and step counts, we must know, master, conquer, or make useful whatever we can. "