Introduction

We are situated at a point in history where what s characteristic of many western industrial societies is, that the allocation of social rights to a certain extent follows the allocation of economic resources within the given society. Capitalism has systematically and over time brought down the barriers of the institutions defending equal social rights, which has resulted in an increase in the autonomy and rights of the individual on behalf of collective social rights. This theme is touched upon in the works of respectively Peter Wagner (1994) and Luc Boltanski & ve Chiapello (1997), and both works give a detailed elaboration of the displacements and de-conventionalizations leading to the current state of capitalism at this point in history. As a starting point I have chosen Boltanski & Chiapellos discussion about authenticity in the modes of production or lack of the same in what they term the new spirit of capitalism, which also entails a description of the latest city type; the projective city. After introducing the concept of loss of authenticity, I will proceed to look at how this has influenced modern identities, and according to which regime of justification these identities are created. After describing modern identities in a world devoid of authenticity I will describe how personal relations are affected. This is relevant according to the shift in city, since it has influenced not only the creation of modern identities but also the interdependence or lack of the same in modern society. Furthermore I will show how the interplay between modern identities and personal relations are also influenced by the urban environment, especially since it to a still higher degree is becoming an environment focused on surfaces and exteriorities. Henri Lefebvre1 will be introduced as a secondary source, so the critical standpoints in the two primary sources can be discussed with regard to Lefebvres description of the creation of spaces in modern society. Furthermore it is relevant to involve Henning Bech s

Henri Lefebvre was known for his activity in the French neo-marxist movement Situationist International . These were known for their activity in the field of retaining the urban space, since they meant that it should not be appropriated by central or economic powers.

sociological studies of the homosexual environment and of the homosexual as a phenomenon characteristic of modern times in relation to the making of the projective city and the connectionist world. This is relevant since the flexibility demanded of people in a connectionist world is a trait found in modern homosexuality, thus the required flexibility in a person s everyday life is not necessarily an entirely new phenomenon, since it has existed yet hidden away - in the age of organized modernity within a certain repressed group of society. This paper is therefore an attempt to show that the requirements and significant signs of the projective city flexibility, loss of personal authenticity, superficial relationships etc. is not a new phenomenon, although it does belong to the age of modernity, and it is becoming more clear and more influential with the creation of the projective city.

Rising demand for specific liberation

With the end of the golden age of welfare, as often referred, new demands were put forth as to the world of work. The existing norms, which had helped create a society of relative stability, in the western world, with low unemployment and rather equal social rights for those that happened to fall outside the system, proved to be inadequate for the younger generation. To them this world of work proved to be rather harsh in the sense, that it upheld a strict hierarchy at the workplace, as well as it offered no real possibility of selfrealization outside the path of work chosen by each person. Especially the concept of selfrealization was a large issue, and can be said to be one of the major differences between the generations. The taylorist mode of production rather monotonous assembly line production in the factory proved insufficient to an entire youth generation with a higher general level of education. So as a political manifestation of a generation s discontent with the labor market s rigid way of meeting their demands of authenticity and autonomy, students revolts broke out in 1968, and became a demarcation point in the transition of modernity into a new era. Nevertheless, according to Wagner this revolt was not only political, but proved to be a cultural generational conflict also, with the emphasis on the

cultural. (Wagner: 144). It is also important to notice, that the dissolving of these organized norms came to stem from human beings and not abstract forces. (Ibid.: 144). Since not only the youth movements demanded more freedom and autonomy, but other groups such as women s movements fought for similar rights, a great uprising became a reality. Wagner describes it as an attempt at de-conventionalization and recreation of

ambivalence in a social order that was regarded as over-conventionalized and closed to any freedom of action beyond the pre-established channels . (Wagner: 145). It is interesting to note that the widespread opinion was one of over-conventionalization, something which can be understood as coherent with his description of the era as organized modernity. What Wagner describes as a cultural revolt by different actors in society, Boltanski & Chiapello describes with the term critique. By distinguishing between two forms of critique, artistic and social, they describe which norms are mostly challenged in which way at different points in the modern era. Through artistic critique the norms of the former generation were challenged, and it can thus be compared to Wagners term of cultural revolt through collective uprisings as a means of de-conventionalization. According to Wagner as well as Boltanski & Chiapello a period of crisis followed the rather stable period of organized modernity (to use Wagner s description of the period). Since Wagner s description fits well a period of stability and organization of the nation states through the implementation of a central government, a fitting description for the following crisis period could be disorganized modernity. To underline the previous statement I will emphasize the development of the labor market as described in Boltanski & Chiapello. Since the younger generation cried out for autonomy and authenticity in relation to their work, severe changes were made to the labor market to be obliging towards these demands. But since the trade-unions, a key constituent in building the secure welfare state, played a still minor role and the employers came to play a major role in this transformation, the rights of the workers blue-collar as well as white-collar were greatly undermined, and the entire labor market befitted the wants and needs of the employers.

In the previous I have described how the period after the second World War was a period of stability and great development, yet also that society came to be static in many ways with regard to the world of work. In the following I will elaborate on Boltanski & Chiapellos concept of a city, and the construction of the same, a concept seemingly coherent with Wagner s description conventionalization as a means of organizing society. Boltanski and Chiapello describe a city as a logic of justification, and according to them, six cities have been identified inspirational, domestic, reputational, civic, commercial and industrial (Boltanski & Chiapello: 23). During the golden age of welfare the prevailing city was a compromise between the industrial and the civic city, but had also incorporated elements of the domestic city. (Boltanski & Chiapello: 23-24). The prevailing of these logics gave a set of norms referring largely to a society where the common good was to be found through solidarity both in work and in politics (respectively the industrial and the civic city), and where the individual allocation of resources, primarily economic, had to respect and adhere to these justifications. With the demands put forth from different groups in society, the following period necessarily had to rely on a different set of conventions, which according to Boltanski & Chiapello cannot be interpreted in the language of the six existing cities , [(Boltanski & Chiapello: 24) wherefore a new city is under creation, namely the projective city.

Creation of new identities

To understand why and how this city is created, it will help to look into a project of late modernity often referred to as the creation of identity either collectively or individually. As part of the process of stabilization of society under welfare regimes in Europe, collective identities emerged, and to a wide extent defined the creation of a coherent society through an organization of identities. As examples could be mentioned national identities, class identities or even gender identities (the latter being for the one gender somewhat oppressive), and these helped maintain a steady political landscape with regards to securing social rights (Wagner: 158-9). The problem according to Wagner was that

affiliation to the different collectives was often not a choice but rather a social determinism prevailing in the stable society. Therefore the liberation from class determinism were - roughly put - followed up by a prevailing thought of determinism with regards to the creation of and belonging to a collective identity. It seems therefore inevitable that the question of personal autonomy should be raised at some point, which it was during the revolts around 1968. So part of the project of establishing a new city was the granting of individual autonomy for everyone, which also entailed a struggle against the existing social determinism. The projective city, as identified by Boltanski & Chiapello, has granted this autonomy to people, and has also meant the right to create an identity independent of social affiliations. Furthermore the projective city has been identified as a world of connections, where one is free to create social and/or professional connections, but also as a world where these connections can be determining for your success or failure. (Boltanski & Chiapello: 107-21). The latter is to be seen in the light of the reorganizations made to the labor market from a static to a highly dynamic version, where the degree of flexibility in the single person in relation to his or her connections is an important factor determining success. The creation of the projective city, where such personal traits have become important in deciding whether one is described as a great man or little person (Boltanski & Chiapello: 114) necessarily has resulted in a transformation or metamorphosis of the individual and his or her self-understanding. This is seen in the light of a constant demand for adjusting to the given situation, and especially seen in the light of a city, where self-realization to a high degree is bound up on ones professional connections and thus ones work. Boltanski & Chiapello term this a loss of authenticity for the individual, in the same degree as the consumer society brought with it the loss of authenticity in relation to the articles or goods produced for the market. (Boltanski & Chiapello: 439-41). It might be possible to conclude that the change in the practices of production in the post-war era has further led to a change in the practices of social production. This production has also changed with the new demands put forth by the different cultural and political collectives, and to further understand the creation of

identities after the revolts of 1968, I will now turn to Lefebvre and his theories on how social space is created in a modern urban environment. Henri Lefebvre, writing in the 1970 s about reproduction of different productions economic, social, biological etc. also sees this tendency towards greater individualization in society. And also he writes about a loss of authenticity in modernity. In this respect of his theories on modernity, it is possible to distinguish a similarity with some of the prominent names of the German Frankfurter School such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, since he is also worried about the loss of authenticity brought about by the mode of production and consumption, especially in the post-war years. Trying to promote a neo-Marxist point of view, he greatly warns against the reproduction of social relations as becoming a question of promoting the individual on behalf of the collective. Thus he states that the reproduction of social relations should not become an individual project, nor should it be a strategy adopted by the state through pre-determined representation in different forms and through the central government s appropriation of the urban space but it should be a collective project coming from below. (Lefebvre, 1976: 34-41). Through this bottom-up political representation the authenticity, so he states, is to be rediscovered in different areas of production, among others reproduction of labor power and social relations. He formulates the loss of authenticity as a disappearance of the referentials (Lefebvre, 1976: 21) at the moment when capitalist production was given the room for reproduction of its social relations. The referentials referred to are mainly to be understood as historical points of referential, and is tied together with Lefebvre s Marxist opinion of capitalism as a false ratio, and as a period that has put a halt to the natural progression of history. Also it is related to a general loss of meaning having led to a loss of identity at a collective level . (Ibid.). This all mounts to Lefebvre, being a modern critic of society, believing in an authenticity that has somehow been undermined by the consumer society promoted through capitalism, especially in the post-war period. His belief in this lost authenticity must be seen in the light of his critique of the everyday, which imply a critique of capitalism as a creator of false desires and

illusions and therefore a market for the products it itself creates. To him a false or illusory world is presented to us every day, one which shows not reality as it is, but reality as we wish it to be on films, in magazines etc. This illusion leads us to believe that in order to live in this world we must alter our everyday appearance and personality, so it fits the world we without knowing it are being presented. (Lefebvre, 1958: 230-33). This illusory world is furthermore kept in production (to stay in the Marxist terminology) by the creation of commodities to satisfy the individual, even though none of these massproduced commodities are actually produced for any individual. The capitalist mode of production thus constantly presents people with answers to their individual needs, which have led to a commodification of everyday life - hence Lefebvres harsh critique of everyday life in the post-war period. (Lefebvre 1976: 34-8). Therefore, if it is true that the project of self-realization and liberation has only led deeper into a world of illusions, then the authentic world must lay waiting somewhere beyond this illusion. But if the illusion is nothing more than an explanation to a project that has failed, because capitalism has incorporated the demands of a whole generation and used them for its own advantage, then the solution to the problem of a loss of authenticity on the other hand could be, as Boltanski & Chiapello explain, not only a critique of capitalism, but also a self-critique on behalf of the project demanding authenticity and autonomy. In this case they are right in writing that authenticity should not necessarily be sought for as much as the entire concept of authenticity probably should be reformulated in order to fit a new project and in order for artistic critique to reformulate a renewed critique towards the capitalist mode of reproducing the relations of production. (Boltanski & Chiapello: 467-8). An argument to support this conception is also found in the concept of tests, a concept very important for maintaining or destabilizing the current regime of justification, in this case the projective city. By appropriating and incorporating the demands formulated in the artistic critique from around 1968 and onwards, capitalism has more or less given itself an advantage when it is tested with regards to the justification of the demands of autonomy and authenticity. If the critique is constantly referring to a

concept or understanding of authenticity that capitalism has already incorporated, it is easier for the system to ward of these claims by referring to the fact that it has already been compliant to the demands of artistic critique. Another weighty argument for the reformulation of artistic critique is found in the fact that capitalism is today based on a global market and not on a national or local market. Goods or relations formerly understood as authentic must now be seen in relation to a world market. The urban reality, earlier fragmented and colonized by a centralized national government to use a term by Lefebvre has also gone global, wherefore the project of reclaiming authenticity is not an individual task (it is not the individual that has to find his authentic self in a national society, as it was earlier), but might seem a collective task. Therefore it seems probable to think that new collectives might need to be formed, somewhat in the same way as the working class could exceed national borders in their struggle for social rights. Then again it becomes a question of whether these collectives should be formed with earlier ones as templates (the class-society for example) or whether entirely new collectives need to be formed. I have just described how the formation of the projective city, as well as a constant and unconscious reproduction of the social production in capitalism, has but created a world devoid of personal authenticity. In the following I will use the concept of lost authenticity to go further into detail with the urban environment, and show how it is not a phenomenon entirely new to the urban settlement of the modern nation states, since the phenomenon of modern homosexuality, because of its repressed role in society, has had to rely on the very same personal relations and non-authentic personalities as is characteristic of the projective city.

Inauthentic relations in a world of surfaces

If the authenticity has been removed from the everyday sphere of the human life-world, what then is left for people to admire, be astonished about or to be affected by? It seems

that the western capitalist society more or less has accepted superficiality as the mode of conduct in our dealings with objects and subjects, which means that our focus is on the surface projected by people and things. According to Boltanski & Chiapello this development can be derived from an artistic critique more able to be adopted into the changes capitalism had to undergo, to make it seem more plausible and persuasive to a new generation. But as mentioned earlier, the revolt of 1968 was fuelled by other than political activists, wherefore it came to be a cultural revolt as well. One of the groups claiming their rights at about this time was the homosexuals of the western liberal societies. It seems obvious that an organized modernity focusing to a high degree on the domestic logic was oppressive towards this group, since they didn t have the rights and possibilities to form their own domestic sphere. Nevertheless, if we accept the fact that the urban environment is one of the things that is characteristic of modernity, and also accept that the phenomenon of modern homosexuality as described by Henning Bech in When Men Meet (1997), and focusing only on male homosexuals is in some way a product of the urban environment, then it is also plausible to assume that an urban environment characterized by still more authenticity and autonomy is an environment fit for modern homosexuality. With a still greater focus on personal development, different groups were granted freedom to realize themselves, but the concept of homosexuality in the modernity incarnate this liberating spirit of the projective city, something that is in no way to be understood negatively or judgmentally, but more as an attempt to show the similarities between the projective city and Henning Bech s description of the homosexuals life-world. When it comes to the creation of identities, the post-modern theorists explain it by claiming, that there are no longer any stable identities in the world, and that modernity has helped undermine the individual identity in such a way that even if one believes to possess an identity, then the surroundings will make him unsure of this. This tendency can be traced back to the upcoming of consumer society, at least if we consult Henri Lefebvre. With the creation of a parallel illusionist world, where there was a possibility for people s

needs and wishes to come true, it was no longer necessary to relate to the everyday world, since what was needed was also provided for by the modern production system. When capitalism reached a natural barrier with respect to possibilities of commodifying objects, new products had to be commodified. Capitalism turned to natural things and the possibility of commodifying these. (Boltanski & Chiapello: 439-43). In this connection we have seen the commodification of persons become highly widespread, which has also meant a colonization of the personality, since this has to fit the service provided.
the commodification of the authentic made it possible to revive the process of transformation of non-capital into capital, which is one of the principal motors of capitalism, on new bases and, consequently, to meet the threat of a crisis of mass consumption that loomed in the 1970s. (Boltanski & Chiapello: 443).

As can be seen, it comes down to the question of whether anything is non-commodifiable. The authentic, as discussed earlier, has every reason to regard itself as defenseless towards a capitalist production system that constantly has to expand and invent new products while at the same time finding new markets for these products. This is the reason why, among others, Lefebvre warns against a process of unconscious automation when it comes to the reproduction of social and technical modes of production within the capitalist regime. With the transformation of non-capital into capital (quote above) persons have become part of not only the reproduction of social relations but part of the reproduction of the entire relation of production within this very system, thus there is no longer any division between the person and the labor he is willing to sell to the market. The person becomes the very labor he has to perform, also meaning that the labor necessarily must fill yet more in his everyday life. According to Boltanski & Chiapello this leads to a growing anxiety in modern society based for several reasons. (Boltanski & Chiapello: 455). But one of the primary reasons is that the sphere of work to a still higher degree intrudes in people s private spheres. The projective city has brought about a still greater tension between requirements of flexibility in relation to the world of work and of

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being someone specific, which means showing personal traits useful for making a career in a world where everything suddenly has been turned into capital. The exteriority of persons thus becomes crucial for proving oneself in a connectionist world. (Boltanski & Chiapello: 461). The stable or authentic identity vanishes in a world where one is judged on exterior qualities, yet this quality has actually been prevalent in certain urban spheres of which I can refer to the homosexual sphere. Authenticity, the projecting of inner qualities through an exterior, is not regarded as important in this sphere, since relationships are fleeting, and the connections made are not meant to last at least on a sexual level. The means of making these multiple contacts thus become the exterior, the constant projection of different identities proper to different situations. (Bech: 123-8). The term camp is used by Bech to describe this discord between interior authenticity and constant alteration of the exterior. The flexibility demanded of people in a connectionist world is thus a personality trait found among homosexuals, while the diversity of personalities is also regarded positively. The further description of the homosexual as a person of existential anxiousness or uneasiness shows us, that the model adopted by modernity for shaping relations is not a positive one, especially since all relations, according to Boltanski and Chiapello, are in danger of becoming relations of interest. (Boltanski & Chiapello: 464-5). One thing worth noting in this context is the constant need for legitimization. Bech describes it as a problem that will always be there for homosexuals. No matter how much their life-world comes to resemble the ordinary life-world, there will always be the matter of legitimization towards the established society. Through this it becomes possible to conclude that modern homosexuality, both shaped by and shaping modern relations, has survived the transformation of modern society, yet it has not led to a stabilization of homosexual relations, rather it has worked the other way around by de-stabilizing ordinary personal relations, especially if these relations reach the same degree of need for constant legitimization. It appears positive that certain groups have experienced personal liberation. Yet the cost of the entire transformation in the mode of production reaches further than the

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immediate urban sphere, since it has created new social classes on the fringe of society. Social exclusion or expulsion has become actuality for a still growing number of people in western societies. The question of social exclusion is very relevant these years and has led Robert Castel to focus on this in his work The Transformation of the Social Question. So far I have reached a conclusion showing that professional relations to a still higher degree influence the personal sphere. How is it then with social relations? One would presume that those not in the labor market would seek comfort in their existing social relations, yet with the transformation of the social this becomes still harder. Castel s thesis revolves around the creation of abstract communities such as the socially excluded seen as an entity or a class in society. Yet while social welfare boomed in especially Europe, a class emerged these years that experienced social exclusion. The state, by making people dependent on social welfare, constructed an abstract collectivity that more or less automatically retired from the surrounding social community. (Castel: 374-5). One can imagine how this has affected social communities when the group of socially excluded expanded after the abandoning of the politics of full employment. The social question is thus no longer only focused around fighting social exclusion, but also has to focus on the degeneration of social communities witnessed during the past decades, where social rights have vanished for many in the western liberal world. If we witness a continuation of a constant demand for autonomy and liberation, it is hard to imagine how social communities are to be rebuilt or formed again. If the projective city is given unlimited space for expropriation, then abstract communities in Castel s sense are to be expected to a still higher degree. It might even be said, that authentic communities (to use the prevailing term of this discussion) are being eradicated in the same rate as authenticity is being in our everyday dealings with objects and subjects of the new spirit of capitalism.

Conclusion

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If the concept of authenticity is jeopardized in its current form, a new concept has to be contrived, as well as a demand for authenticity then has to be true to whatever is thought up. The world is increasingly becoming a hotchpotch of surfaces, which we as human beings have to relate to, and these surfaces are endangering our very life-world, in the sense that we can never be certain whether relationships are of an interested or disinterested nature. Yet it is possible to see a development of a critical potential. The way that the homosexual way of living has merged with the heterosexual and somehow has become universal for sexuality at this given point, shows that the constant focus on exteriority, when dealing with our surroundings, has become the rule rather than the exception. As long as there is consciousness towards this phenomenon, the surfaces are allowed to be detached from the objects. Thus we are no longer dealing with a false representation of these objects but rather with individual representations of different objects. (Bech: 194-217). The positive side to this is of course that the objects are being manipulated by ourselves and not our surroundings, thus it becomes easier to accept the fact that our life-world is being mediated and is not presented to us without any filters. The finding of a new authenticity should not be an individual task but a collective task. The reproduction of social relations must be appropriated by the human species again instead of being dictated by an institution of cultural and behavioral creationism. With regards to the social question, it is hard to predict the future, especially since the demands for authenticity and autonomy won out over demands for equal social rights. But the regeneration of local and social communities will be but one step towards making people less dependent of a central governing power, while another step could be a desire from this very same central government to help raise the general level of education. As proposed by the social democratic opposition in Denmark, it is a possibility to let adults receive a higher amount of social benefits than the educational support while taking courses to develop personal and professional skills. Thus a reintegration into the labor market for those otherwise deemed excluded is a possibility with regards to establishing social communities as the ones Castel has described as withering away.

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