the second part of three posts exploring sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s ideas of resonance. The first part was concerned with ‘dynamic stabalisation’ within modernity. You should probably read part one first!

Rosa’s definition of the problem, or perhaps the in-built dysfunctionality of modernity is highly persuasive, perhaps in part because we all have a sense of the gathering speed within our society and our culture. Stress is expected, even embraced. We are all running to stand still and we can not pretend that this is working out well either for us or for the planet. Having described the problem, does Rosa have a solution?

One obvious response to the accelleratoin critique is to… slow down. For a while, Rosa was known in Germany as the slow-down guru, but he was always uncomfortable with this description, at least in part because he doubted that ‘slowing down’ was actually possible. Even if we do indeed need to slow down, her thought that this was unlikely to be the full answer. Any attempt to change the course of modernity would be like swimming against the direction of a whirlpool. The rules of modernity are simply too engrained. Rosa was searching for other ways to engage and connect with the world. What he came up with was something called resonance.

In this video, Rosa takes us on the full journey. Strap in for the ride.

If you have stayed the course with this video, well done! If not, here are a few things I would point towards.

Alientation

Rosa identified alientation from the world as a defining quality – perhaps even a progressive quality – of human modernity. He describes alienation as “a specific form of relationship to the world in which subject and world confront each other with indifference or hostility (repulsion) and thus without any inner connection” (Rosa, 2019, p. 252)

I came accross this paper, exploring Rosa’a ideas in relation to nursing. Here is a quote;

In most cases, the interaction between caretaker and patient is no longer an encounter between two unique individuals who “speak with their own voice” each. Instead, the focus is on an ever-growing number of measurable, documentable, and above all optimizable parameters. How is the patient’s blood pressure? Their pulse? Their dosage of medication? What services are needed and how long will it take to perform them? What sort of insurance benefits are they entitled to? What kind of services can or should be billed? What qualifications do trained assistants need to perform what services? What parameters need to be recorded on what forms? Doctors and caretakers have to deal with documents, measurements, and display screens under constant time pressures; they are always trying to optimize their performance economically, technologically, medically, and temporally. Meanwhile patients expect the “optimal care” promised them; who their caretaker is doesn’t matter, so long as the services rendered are parametrically optimized in every respect. There is no longer any space, even at a conceptual level, for caretakers with an individual voice that cannot be made controllable (…) Nurses and caretakers, who need to account for their actions minute by minute, cannot allow themselves any open-ended interactions with their patients. (Rosa, 2020, pp. 81–88)

The eyes of every patient and child express a demand for resonance, and what is more, without resonant relationships, caregivers and educators cannot adequately carry out their work. Not only children, but also the ill (as well as the elderly and the homeless) want to be seen, heard, touched. They expect not just to be attended to, but responded to. (Rosa, 2019, p. 329)

As I may mention in my third post, this description sounds very much like something that Ivan Illich may have written 40 years ago.

Resonance

It turns out that for Rosa at least, the opposite of the accelerating alienation is something he called resonance, defined like this;

…a kind of relationship to the world, formed through affect and emotion, intrinsic interest, and perceived self-efficacy, in which subject and world are mutually affected and transformed.

Resonance is not an echo, but a responsive relationship, requiring that both sides speak with their own voice. This is only possible where strong evaluations are affected. Resonance implies an aspect of constitutive inaccessibility.

Resonant relationships require that both subject and world be sufficiently “closed” or self-consistent so as to each speak in their own voice, while also remaining open enough to be affected or reached by each other.

Resonance is not an emotional state, but a mode of relation that is neutral with respect to emotional content. This is why we can love sad stories.^[3]

From here.

I love that last little line about sad stories. Resonance is not happiness, neither is it positivity, or self actualisation. It is connection.

The components of resonance

Rosa believes that resonance can be identified and defined through four criteria: firstly, the ‘affection’ (or responsiveness) we experience in relation to an object, be it a piece of music or literature, a painting, a landscape or any ‘event’ triggering a personal reaction; secondly, the ‘efficient emotion’ which might be understood as our reaction to the ‘call’ of the specific external event in our own unique way; thirdly, the ‘transformation’ experienced by the subject in contact with this new external event and lastly, the fundamental ‘elusiveness’ of resonance in its long or short-term effects on the subject. 

Is this enough?

Can this central idea of resonance really describe the difference between an alienated modern human and a person living a good life? On the face of it, of course not. Rosa seems to have rejected the utopianism of Marxist theories, but their critique of structural inequality and more recently, the descriptions of colonial legacy of north/south inequality – Rosa’s resonance seems inadequate to engage with the scale of these things.

But perhaps this is the point. Trying to address big problems as small people is impossible. But small engaged, resonant people, en masse? Might he be on to something?