Re-discovering friction

all that is solid does not melt in air

Helga Nowotny

pp. 31-57

in: Nordal Åkerman (ed), The necessity of friction, Heidelberg, Physica, 1993

Abstract

Modernism ceased to be fashionable some time ago. To live a life of paradox and contradiction, to be moved at once by a will to change and to be horrified by the prospect of disorientation and of life falling apart, has ceased to be a meaningful way of how contemporary men and women experience the by no means less dramatic changes around themselves and in themselves today. Yet, a curious split of consciousness seems to occur: in one part of Europe, a kind of pre-modernism seems to emerge, characterized by the re-appearance of primordial ties of real or imagined ethnicity and mutually exclusive belongingness, ready to deny to others what each group claims for itself. In another part of Europe, the supposedly post-modern turn is undergoing equally troubling, though far less painful, convolutions to reach a more encompassing stage of integration, this time primarily in the name of a greater economic unity to which other forms of unification might follow. Large parts on the map of a suddenly re-arranged and enlarged Europe are actively engaged in deconstructing space and time after having been occupied so long by the central powers that no longer exists, while the other half is deconstructing space and time as part of a welcomed process of internationalization and further technological modernization.