To enable political and economic participation for all, we must initiate a social transformation that fundamentally alters the affective conditions of capitalist societies. As Felicitas M. Kübler argues in her “Deep Democracy” series contribution, we must move beyond a culture of bourgeois coldness, which justifies suffering and sacrifice, and create a society based on solidarity.
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The world is in turmoil. It seems that hardly a day goes by without new, horrific reports of destruction or the threat of it. Most recently, for example, there were Donald Trump’s bellicose threats against Iran, such as “A whole civilisation will die tonight.”
Implementing solidarity-based and democratic projects, such as those demanded by the Iran’s civilian population, seems increasingly impossible. This impossibility is always linked to suffering. Yet, in recent years, this suffering has become increasingly accepted, while solidarity protests fizzle out. A climate of coldness toward those who are suffering and those who wish to show solidarity thus appears to be solidifying.
In light of these developments, this text will examine an affective structure – coldness – that is relevant to society’s handling of the upheavals of the polycrisis. I argue that this coldness poses a central challenge to the implementation of Deep Democracy.
Justification of suffering
By ‘coldness,’ I refer to the concept of “bourgeois coldness” coined by educator Andreas Gruschka. This concept can be traced back to the earlier works of the Frankfurt School, particularly “Dialectic of Enlightenment” by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Bourgeois coldness is the emotional framework through which suffering is both perceived and rationalized. However, this does not mean that bourgeois coldness translates into emotional coldness or an absence of emotion. Rather, it justifies suffering and frames it as a necessary evil. For instance, environmental destruction resulting from infrastructure projects and the subsequent loss of human and animal habitats are portrayed as an inevitable consequence of progress.
Philosopher Henrike Kohpeiß defines coldness as a component of colonial structures in which indifference toward the suffering of others is linked to paradigms of reason. Thus, indifference and the justification of suffering are central aspects of bourgeois coldness.
In summary, the concept of bourgeois coldness makes tangible why the asynchrony of current crises – the catastrophe elsewhere – is so widely accepted, even integrated into and rationalized as a necessity for the continued existence of political-economic conditions. Central to the reflections in this text is that people are not indifferent, but have become cold through structural dynamics – meaning that coldness does not merely represent an arbitrary affective structure, but is key to capitalist societies and thus constitutes a structural challenge for Deep Democracy.
Functionalist mindset
Bourgeois coldness is an affective structure that affects everyone. Coldness is a form of subjectivation embedded in capitalist relations and the competitive relationships associated with them. Coldness is not merely a coping mechanism for crises and suffering. Rather, it is part of everyday life in capitalist societies, where subjects must distance themselves from others for the sake of self-preservation. Only through coldness can the subject reconcile itself with conditions that fundamentally alienate it from itself and others.
I am more concerned with the affective structure associated with alienation than with alienation itself. Modes of thought involving distancing and rationalization also come into play here. While the subject suffers under its alienated, cold existence, this state is regarded as a necessary evil for one’s own survival. In the process, other people are increasingly reduced to the functions they fulfill for the subject. This means that people are not seen as complex individuals, but rather as representatives of social roles – as cashiers, bus drivers, dentists, or teachers, for example.
This functionalist mindset stands in the way of empathetic relationships, which are a prerequisite for solidarity. This erosion of solidarity is both an expression and a product of a coldness that is inherent in conformity to social conditions and thus facilitates their reproduction. Deep Democracy aims to overcome both these conditions and the underlying coldness. After all, Deep Democracy is founded on solidarity.
Resistance to coldness
At the same time, there is repeated resistance to these conditions. The coldness and functionality of these conditions do not only cause suffering to others. People suffer from direct confrontation with the cold and may perceive their own suffering and the suffering of others as something that ought not to be. This acknowledges not only the suffering caused by homelessness, displacement, environmental damage, or an authoritarian regime, but also problematizes the social dynamics of normalization and turning a blind eye.
Protest actions and solidarity-based organizing attempt to counter these cold conditions. However, these forms of resistance are complicated by the fact that they are also embedded in social conditions and can reproduce structures of coldness. Even in protests, concrete people and experiences can disappear behind numbers; complex fates can dissolve into one-dimensional functionalizations; and causal social structures can be neglected.
Performativity of protest
Coldness can also manifest through the performativity of protest when the focus shifts from the cause of the protest to the emotional expression through which the individual can express their deformation by the cold world. In attempting to counter these cold structures, subjects run the risk of reproducing them.
Even if coldness can persist in political and social activism and protest, it is nevertheless important to acknowledge such and other attempts to overcome coldness. Donations following environmental disasters or support for civilian sea rescue in the Mediterranean can save lives and alleviate concrete suffering. Protests in solidarity with the civilian population in Iran are nonetheless an important signal and part of the discourse on what kind of world we want to live in. Financial, symbolic, and practical support for humanitarian organizations, civil society initiatives, or environmental protection groups may not be able to break the increasingly authoritarian and repressive conditions, yet they can bring about change in specific cases.
Especially in light of the current authoritarian climate and the increasing erosion of progressive achievements, the preservation and promotion of such initiatives and organizations is important.
Finding new forms of ‘being together’
Coldness as a subjectivizing moment is deeply inscribed in our social structures. Coldness is also present in this text, as it is in social criticism that attempts to view social structures ‘coolly and rationally’ from the outside to work toward change. Even structures of solidarity can reproduce moments of coldness.
Thus, the realization of Deep Democracy faces the challenge of responding to current societal structures of coldness. Yet, such a project must be carried out by individuals who carry within them moments of coldness imposed by these conditions. Against this backdrop, it becomes clear that the project of Deep Democracy requires institutional and affective transformations.
In light of the subjectivation described above, which emerges from coldness as an affective structure, the Deep Democracy project is also about finding new forms of ‘being together’ that transcend abstract forms of Western humanism and hollowed-out commitments to human rights.
Instead, these new forms must be concrete and practical, understanding indifference and coldness as aspects that must be overcome. Therefore, Deep Democracy must aim not only at participation but also at transforming the affective conditions under which solidarity becomes possible.