Disjunctive Globalization and the Production of the Unhappy Consciousness

What are the impacts of reconfigured globalization on subjective experience in the local contexts of everyday life in our era of the Great Unsettling? Continuing with the assessment of the current state of globalization offered in his first public lecture, Professor Steger shifts in this talk the focus of analysis from the macro-level of social formations to the micro-level of individual consciousness. In particular, he examines the production of an “unhappy consciousness” torn between the enjoyment of global digital mobility and the visceral attachment to the familiar limits of local everyday life. The 2020/21 Covid-19 pandemic has intensified and accelerated this problematic formation of a divided self, especially through the normalization of new spatial practices in response to the rapid spread of the virus. As restrictions were imposed to reduce the mobility of human bodies even in their immediate environments, the local became an area under assault. The global dynamics discussed in this talk are likely to have a lasting impact on the reconfiguration of subjective experience in the local contexts of people’s everyday lives.