Resonanz

I read the author’s German Thesenpapier, an interview in the German podcast Jung & Naiv, as well as this book. It’s my understanding that he’s widely received in the academic world and has also gathered a considerable following there. Apparently psychoanalysts also like him.

The work is far too big for me to comment on it in detail, I also read this book in a way of jumping back and forth, trying to find things that are useful to me. The main thing I admire Rosa for is his project of painting a vision for the future, a way of talking about what positive societal change could look like that goes beyond “more of this” or “less of that”. As he rightly points out, such visions are pretty rare.

The central idea of Rosa is that the concept of resonance is helpful for elucidating some things that are happening in today’s societies, and that we can understand what a better future would look like by understanding what a world with more spaces for resonance could look like. To me, the idea of resonance is too individualistic to capture what my utopia looks like. It centers the liberal individual and their relationship to the world around them. Even in cases where resonance is experienced as part of groups (Rosa loves heavy metal concerts as examples) it’s about the individual’s experience in it. In one way, this feels like it makes the whole thing a more psychological than sociological project. In another way, I find it limiting insofar as I think the most relevant unit for thinking about society and human potential are groups, not individuals.

The most useful formulation of resonance to me was the idea of creating a precise counter-term to the imprecise term of “alienation”, which, as Rosa rightly notes, is used in a sprawling and generally ill-defined manner. The attempts at using physics metaphors often left me confused – I felt like Rosa might be forgetting that he’s using a metaphor, and as if a physical truth about the physical concept of resonance in some way implies, justifies, or even gives the slightest bit of evidence towards a similar truth obtaining in his sociological idea of resonance. Similary, all the references to actual physical examples (like skin conducting) or neuropsychology (“mirror neurons”) sounded uncomfortably bullshitty. I think Rosa should either come out and make a (likely falsifiable) claim that some empirical, physical thing correlates to his idea of resonance, or skip the gesturing towards it altogether. Same applies for the reference to psychoanalysis – I understand it’s common for philosophers to bring it up as a practice and a metaphor, but it did make me think that Rosa doesn’t quite appreciate that psychoanalysis is bullshit.

In some way, the idea of resonance feels a bit too much like a complicated form of the advice to stop and smell the roses for me. And I’m not even quite sure why I’d dislike that! I think it feels … incomplete, or unexciting, as if the best future is one in which can take more walks in nature and occasionally experience ecstasy at a concert. Or, put differently: In my personal experience, I do not struggle with resonating in those ways, and I certainly do not think that this completes the political project, although I do share the idea that everybody should have the economic means to live that lifestyle if they wanted. I think maybe I just want us to think bigger than once again recourse to work & family as axes of resonance?

Rosa argues that spaces of resonance are being undermined by late modernity’s constant drive towards acceleration, i.e. ever-increasing rates of outputs (whether in goods, ideas, or experiences). While this analysis is an attractive one to people who feel overwhelmed (I’d imagine this idea appeals to old people, my mum certainly loved it), it seems one could equally well make the opposing argument. Indeed, on the right it’s common to decry the great stagnation of our times, usually evidenced by decreased rates in productivity growth (here’s a random blogpost) or by pointing to a a slow-down in great scientific discoveries and innovations since 1970. Rosa would likely avoid this argument by saying that he’s talking about the “logic of acceleration” in late modernity, not any particular fact of acceleration, but then how isn’t this just talking about vibes?

In general, a lot in the book feels like hot takes, argued with reference to this new model. This becomes apparent whenever those hot takes are odds with one’s own lived reality. I cannot at all relate to what Rosa says about romantic relationships, but I’m willing to accept that I’m an outlier. But then it’d be nice to have some data though – did Rosa just talk to some friends, read some books of German poetry, and then decide this is how people do romance and then explain how resonance is relevant for it? Is there even supposed to be evidence? Do you become a sociologist just by having more compelling hot takes? How different would this book feel if Rosa took a break of it for a month and wrote love letters to all his friends and family and then reassessed how common alienation in romance is? Are these even relevant questions to ask? I did appreciate Rosa’s reading of the poetry he refers to, and feel like I understand those differently now – so the book works as a form of literary criticism for me I guess.

So all in all I’m not sure – I found the book interesting, and it’s come up for me in conversation since, and some of the ideas are helpful in explaining and communicating with people. I don’t know if this makes it good. The author says he wants to make sociology more precise, but it also seems like he’s just creating a new field with endless opportunities for funding, since you could study Resonance anywhere and everywhere. Maybe that’s just sociology’s form of “Take a noun and study it”? (taken from this great short essay on psychology).