We live in an age where crises seem to be everywhere. But what do we mean by a “crisis”? Miguel de Beistegui examines how we make sense of crises and explains why we should be cautious about the idea that crisis has become the general, permanent state of the world.
Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the triumph of liberal democracy and free market economies seemed inevitable. Crises were to become something of the past.
Today, democracies are in retreat. The world economy nearly collapsed in 2008. The planet is on fire. Pandemics are increasingly frequent. War rages in Ukraine and the Middle East.
We are faced with an unprecedented and singular historical situation, defined by the interaction and mutual reinforcement between climate, political and economic crises. The age of poly- or perma-crisis, defined as the point when crises in global systems become mutually entangled and reinforce one another, is upon us.
But do we even know what we mean when we speak of crisis? Is the word used in the same sense in every situation, or is it irreducibly polysemic, thereby betraying its apparent unity? Furthermore, beyond questions of signification, should we not distinguish between types or regimes of crisis, to which we are subjected, and which govern our lives in ways we are not always aware of?
Subjective experience
We all have a pre-theoretical, intuitive understanding of crisis, rooted in experience. Crisis is first and foremost a subjective experience. That experience involves at least three dimensions of our subjectivity, or three of our faculties, which need to be recognised for crisis to become a genuine philosophical concept.
First, it is indissociable from a certain affectivity or emotional state, some of which are paralysing (anxiety, depression, boredom), while others are more conducive to action (fear, indignation, anger). So long as a situation is not experienced in that way, it cannot be experienced as a crisis.
Second, the experience requires that we make sense of the situation, and therefore make use of our faculty of understanding and critical analysis. Crisis has a diagnostic or theoretical dimension, which is also irreducible: it is always the crisis of something (a system, a relationship, an institution).
Third, it is also a call to act, to modify the conditions of one’s existence, or transform those of the system in question. In that respect, it also practical: when faced with a crisis, we feel that something can and should be done, even though we don’t necessarily know what ought to be done.
The phenomenon of crisis
While subjective experience is a necessary component of crisis, it is not sufficient to account for the phenomenon of crisis. In an age defined by the plasticity of norms, rather than the rigid power of the law, crises signal a kind of shock imposed on the norms which define a given system, be it socio-economic, political, physical, scientific, or aesthetic. But the shock (or violence) at stake varies in kind, and not just degree.
Thus, mere crises of deviation, such as those regularly affecting financial markets, or hospitals facing an epidemic, can be “managed”, whilst crises of exception, say following a terrorist attack or a pandemic, can require a more radical response, which is one of suspension of the legal nomos. Whereas the first designate anomalies, and require technical-administrative solutions, the second designate a situation of anomie (Carl Schmitt), and the intervention of sovereign power.
What the two interpretations or regimes of crisis have in common, though, is their conservative nature: they seek eventually to restore, not transform, the norm. As such, we need to distinguish them from crises of collapse, such as the ecological crisis; and from crises of contradiction, which define the capitalist mode of production (at least according to Marx) and the history of science (at least according to Kuhn).
Inasmuch as they affect not just the norms of the system in question, but its viability, or normativity, that is, its ability to generate solutions from within its own set of norms, they call for the creation of a new paradigm and the invention of new norms. They are intrinsically revolutionary.
Naturally, we need to distinguish between the norms of the biosphere, which are under attack as the result of human activity (or, to be more precise, the activity of countries of the Global North), and the economic and social norms of global capitalism.
The norms of the biosphere, by which I mean its ability to self-regulate its climate and maximise the chances of emergence and creative evolution of life, cannot be replaced by manmade norms. But human beings can question the way in which they inhabit – conquer, dominate and exploit – the earth, transform their relation to it and, as a result, cease to erode the normativity of the biosphere.
Danger
“Crisis” always signals a danger. But it also harbours its own dangers, the capacity to create new forms of hegemony, or power, or to strengthen existing ones. In other words, one must remain vigilant, if not sceptical, towards the rhetoric, hermeneutics and normativity of crisis, especially in the context of the increasing tendency on the part of democratic states to “solve” problems through the declaration of the state of exception.
The diagnosis of crisis is always formulated from a certain discursive position and almost always within a specific power dispositive. If the diagnosis of crisis is a warning of some kind, a critique of crisis is also a warning against the dispositive of crisis and its potential practical – social, economic and political – implications. When told of a crisis, we should exercise caution and not rush to the sort of action or solution we are often told is preferable or, worse, inevitable.
Similarly, when told that crisis has become the general, permanent state of the world, we should be even more cautious, first because such a diagnosis can lead to a total and possibly totalitarian solution, and second because by including everything under the diagnosis of crisis, crisis itself runs the risk of becoming meaningless, that is, of no longer being associated with the unusual, the exceptional and the urgent.
Miguel de Beistegui is the author of A Philosophy of Crisis (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). He will be presenting his work at an LSE event on 4 November 2024.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Daboost / Shutterstock.com
