Niklas Luhmann's modernity: the paradoxes of differentiation 0804739927, 9780804739924

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NIKLAS LUHMANN'S MODERNITY The Paradoxes ofDifferentiation

William Rasch

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 2000

Scanford University Press Stanford, California

© 2000 by the Board of Truscees of the Leland Sranford Junior University Printed in rhe United States of America library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicatio n Data Rasch, William Nik.las Luhmann's modernity : rhe paradoxes of differentiation I William Rasch. p. cm. - (Cultural memory in the present) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-&047-3991-9 (alk. paper) (paper: alk. paper) I.

Luhmann, Niklas.

(Sociology)

I. Tide.

HM479.L84 R37

2.

ISBN o-&047-3992-7

Sociology.

3. Differentiation

IL Series.

2000

306-dc2I

@

00-057327

This book is printed on acid-free, archival quality paper.

Original prinring 2000 Last :figure below indicates year of this printing: 09

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Typeset by James P. Brommer in u/r3.5 Garamond

Acknowledgments

Revised versions of the following essays appear in this volume as Chapters r rhrough 7: "Theories of Complexity, Complexities of Theory: tJ:abermas, Luhmann, and the Study of Social Systems." German Studies Review 14 (1991): 65-83. "Injecting Noise imo the System: Hermeneutics and rhe Necessity of Misunderstanding." SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism 21 (1992): 61-76. "Luhmann's Widerkgung des !dealismus?: Constructivism as a Two-Front War." Soziak Systeme 4, no. I (1998): 151-59. "In Search of the Lyorard Archipelago, Or: How ro Live with Paradox a.11d Learn to Like Ir." New German Critique 61 (Wimer 1994): 55-75. ''The Limit of Modernity: Luhmann and Lyotard on Exclusion." Soziale Systeme 3, no. 2 (1997}: 25r69. "Immanent Systems, Transcendental Temptations, and rhe Limits of Ethics." Cultural Critique 30 (Spring 1995): 193-221. Published by the University of Minnesota Press. "Locating the Political: Schmitt, Mouffe, Luhmann and the Possibility of Pluralism." International Review ofSociology 7, no. r (March 1997): IOJ-I5. Published by Carfax Publishing, Taylor & Francis Ltd., P.O. Box 25, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OXI4 3UE, UK.

The interview with Katherine Hayles and Niklas Luhmann first appeared as: "Theory of a Different Order: A Conversation with Katherine Hayles and Nik.las Luhmann." Cultural Critique 31 (Fall 1995): 7-36. Published by the University of Minnesota Press.

My endeavor ro come to terms with the work of Niklas Luhmann began as I worked on my dissertation during che 1980s. My advisor, Jeffrey Peck, was gracious enough to humor my diversion, which, after my disser-

,,.,J~~tfr*t!/!ents . ~~ti~i}~~~.~~pltted; ~~came an obsession. ·I am grateful to Peck as well \

' ' ··· ' · \ ' : : . >irre ±:o Klaus Wegmann; who provided me with my first

;jf~~/~~01:~::;~::::;e~::::·::;:kfrom numerous sources. I ,~~~'~g;ih"ank members of Indiana University's Science and Literature AfGr{>up, espec1a!ly Richard Nash, Marti Crouch, and Stephen H. Kelfor niany evenings of stimulating conversation. Early encouragement \~~frqmJohr:t McGowan, despite his profound disagreemencs with some · a~pects of my w6rk, and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Paulo Barbesino, NorBolz, Fritz Breithaupt, Urs Staheli, Salvino Salveggio, Uwe Steiner, Bianca Theisen, and Thomas Wagenbaur have read various essays and offered helpful criticisms. I appreciate Dirk Baecker's invitation to submit work to the German journal Soziale Systeme. James Rollest0n and Carsten Strathausen offered valuable suggestions for revision of the final manuscript. I am particularly grateful to Katherine Hayles for her support and her willingness to participate in the somewhat unorthodox incerview primed in these pages, and ro Niklas Luhmann for his pacience, good humor, and fascinating conversation. Without the generous support and tireless efforts of Helen Tartar, of Stanford University Press, this book wouJd never have seen the light of day. Nancy Young may very well be the closest reader this book will ever have. I owe her a debt of grarirude for the clarification of numerous stylistic and conceptual problems. My chair, Terence Thayer, has been a constant source of encouragement. Financial support has come from the Indiana University Dean of Faculties office. Donna Przybylowicz and Abdul JanMohamed opened up the pages of Cultural Critique to an examinarion of systems theory, and Perer Uwe Hohendahl and Andreas Huyssen were very inreresred and active coedirors of a special issue of New German Critique on Luhmann. My chanks to them fonheir help. . My friend and colleague Andreas Michel has always been a knowle~oeable a11d perceptive reader, and to him I owe a special debt of gratitude. Jonathan Elmer's generosity exceeds the bounds of reason, and his powe.rs of reason are such rhar I am always enriched by any exchange of ideas with him. I owe more co Marc Weiner than I can say. He has been a careful

fWi1tjr J¥t,

ben

Acknowledgments

ix

critic of nearly all chat I have written and a long-standing friend without whom I would not be where I am-literally. Cary Wolfe has been my "partner in crime," as he likes to call it, on a number of occasions, including the special issues of Cultural Critique and the Multidisciplinary Faculty Seminar on systems theory and postmodernity that we codirected. His energy, drive, and no-nonsense work ethic are unmatched. My thanks to him for rhe "collaborative years." Eva Knodt was my first partner in crime. She and I invited Luhmann for a two-week stay as a fellow of the Instirure for Advanced Study at Indiana University, organized a conference entitled "Systems Theory and Post~ modernity," and coedited the New German Critique issue. When she gets wind of an idea, she'll track it down m the ends of the universe. Her decision to leave the academy and pursue a real life among the California redwoods was a splendid personal decision but a terrible loss for the profession, This book is dedicated co my wife, Christine R. Farris-whose own research on the paradoxes of interdisciplinary writing programs and whose fierce observations of the world constantly help me keep my ideas in sharp focus-and to our daughter, Alison Elizabeth Farris Rasch, without whom, why bother. -W.R.

Contents

A Note on Translations

xiii

Introduction: Paradise Losr, Modernity Regained

I

1

Theories of Complexity, Complexities of Theory

29

2

Injecting Noise into the System

52

3

Construcrivism as a Two-Front War

70

4

In Search of the Lyotard Archipelago

5 The Limit of Modernity and the Logic of Exclusion

108

Immanem Systems, Transcendental Temptations, and the Limits of Ethics

124

6

7

Locating the Political Appendix: Two Interviews Theory of a Different Order: A Conversation wirh Katherine Hayles and Niki.as Luhmann

171

Answering the Question: What Is Moderniry? An Interview with Niklas Luhmann

195

Notes

225

Works Cited

233

Index

243

A Note on Translations

English quotations cited from foreign-language editions are my translations. Quotations cited from published English translations are the work of those translators unless otherwise indicated. Italics in quotations follow the cited sources unless otherwise indicated. Full information on sources is given in Works Cited. -W.R.

-~~-·-· Introduction: Paradise Lost, Modernity RegainedJ .-j" ? . , i 'i If there is a signific::uu diffcrc1lcc bctwttn Luhmann's diagnosis of modernity and me i;ontemporary discourse un pu:nmutlc::mism, it would have to b,, sought, it

seem~ to me. in me theoretical rigor wim which Luhmann minks through and embraces the t;Ull,sequcnces of muderniza1iou-,iot b«a.u11C the society in which we live i5 du: best of all possible worlds, bur hcc.1.usc an accepcancc wirhour nostalgia of the scrucmral liminuions of modernhy is a precondition, and possibly the only way, of finding creative solutions to irs pmblem.8. ....:..F,va Knodr, foreword to Niklaa Luhmann, Social Syst=

The: studies contained in this volume: serve as an introduction to the rhought of the: German social theorist Niklas Luhmann, who d i ~ leaving behind an enormous body of work that only now is begiruung to receive the attention it is due in the Anglophone world. The volume is an introduction, but no primer, no step-by-step explanation of key terms and concepts. Such explanation occurs, to be sure:, but only in the: context of a larger examination of the nature of modernity as Luhmann envisions it. j.'.:Mfil!gnity'] has become a wide-open term, capable of accommodating multiple: and contradictory meanings. For some: it is an on~inc projg;t; for J others it is history; and fur still others it has never happened, .&,r I u.bma.am, it is the precondition of all our ddiberations, chc: "struL-rurc" within whitn ~hi~_th.e_tlii~_g__!S__d~!1.!:: to think the absolute, that is, to overcome me abstraction of the dichotomies, necessitates me overcoming ofhourgeois law (the dissociacion of the right from rhe good) and bourgeois property relations, while to overcome thm requires the ability to think the absolute, a thinking that recognizes their historical contingency. Overcoming dichotomies means reco_gnizing that !hc;y can he over~·;nd such n:cognitiz;~ &sun"";tio~. ~~;~ili;~ who accept ~~otomics as irrefragablJ(giv~_~d those who believe in and des~·ccsolutio~As the title of Rose's s~y indicates, chis latter distinction is thatbci:wa:n sociology and Hegel. ~~~ads ~o~~~n S(!ci_?.~OS}: ~.S..~ .l?..lf! infi!!-i!.4=.,based on the neo-Kantian abma.cr opposition of validity and value (Ro~ _1981, 1-47, m-20). If the "scrucrural metacricique of validity '(D~k~ leads to me absolutizing of the "t~-~!Y. C!)nditioned agent," then the "action-oriented metacritique of values (Webcr)r results in the absolutizing of the "Y!!f,Qnd.itlg__)l_ed !":-1~" (2.12, 214); ·o~·-th.~· one hand, we have the primacy of theoretical reason, the "strucrurc:d" realm of necessity that is nature; on the other, the primacy of practical reason, the free, supc:rsensible, self-positing "Ich" that simultaneously posits its conditioned other. The former leads to an "empty" structural sociology, the latcer to a "blind" action theory. Social theory-whether we label it .. French structuralism" or "German humanism"-becomcs, therefore, a de facto justification of the mod-

"pre;~p~e;~_~n~!!ier"

..E~1~·

Introduction

5

ern order precisely hecawc it ~ reference to "transformative activity," as well a.f~ visU::i.k.._µgiy~g,£9k ik.,m of rh$..E.~-~-~QJ1,.~.4..r.~4.X~~: Ir has manifested itself as the M~f; :i~ftique of ideology, as:fi~y4fun.ps¥d1ow..i.!rs}~; and as the socioid~;Ji¥ :'._kp,:owledge, but in such manifestations latencies have J.?.Qt been seen as tlle'

1:picessary, enabling blind spot for the production of knowledge.

Rather,

C$'ey have traditionally been interpreted in Enlightenment fashion as err(?!; /~ff deformation ofkno\1\_'.i~dge thac can be cleared up, brought to the.light

)~f,day, and fllI~d (Luhmann 1990d, 90-91). Once one understands the /;~ture· of observation, however, one is forced to recognize, formally, the fie1niingent nature of such universal models. The original procedurei'§p:ericer Brown's command "Draw a distinction .... Cali it the first dis:i~Jti~fiori" (Spencer Brown 1979; 3)-is itself made within ~-~£~~..!:2..ll!.~~. !'.:~~-unseen .and u~eeable. distinction_ that allows for th: e~~;ptualiza;!,tie!i::Qfpl;>servation,_to_ begin with. The phrase that calls forth the observ:(~b{e yvorld i~ already made within that world. Observation, from its very ,f~eg~nriing,'-'! can only be carried on within the field of observation. Ir can ?#rli-er .observe _the unmarked .?P~_o.:_ that: _is wnmµcted as)t.s origio.oiic~

i)?.'n.i act:epts

rhat the injunccion ro observe from its very inception is en)~fshed a$.~~§.i:ihat unfolds over time but never resolves or becomes t~#.nsparem to itself, then one is forced to acknowiedge that the Enlight·ideal of observation gives way to more complex, statistical, and :; :0~¢en:ain" models in which the ill~~~ri.atiofl.__ ?f 5-~ad.?:""S _i::.§5.r~jts__o!l!l. tfil.lM_@and every gain in information, every gain in order, is accompanied and increased disorder!i\)

in

J~~ment

]*}l:;ss

\ifo)< ·. !!;).·.··. i•

1};:y;-

The Stakes

:;:.k::>· :AH of which causes Luhmann co wonder why Lyorard, who appeals

;~~)he ~ e critique of Enlightenment science and of Enlightenment pre~ !J?,~pticm to .ah Archimedean perspective, is J!g]___!S~t.f:.~_.£9~.~~i.~½____;~~ ~,.u§ifyjf me gjffer1:!}_C.( and phrase his version of the inevitability of la-

i'.~~cy in tetms of a ''victimology." From Marx to Lyorard, Luhmann writes,

I06

Lyotard Archipelago

"the excluded is determined as a class or in some other way observed as human, mourned, and reclaimed for society. Were society ro respond as demanded to this complaim, it would still not become a sociecy that excluded nothing" (Luhmann 1994c, 36). Such a response would always produce further "silences" and further exclusions, for exclusions cannot be thought except by way of exclusion. Any--··---. attemnt to ~----··-~-.. think--...the unirv nroduces an ex. -··~-·.-.r-·~"'"'·--.. ---·---··-·-,-=L.. ..r....: __,____,_____,____ ., ___ cess.rhat cannot.be contc1in, is made not by God but byrationali.!J itself. This paradoxical relationship between a distinction and ii:s resultant, yet presupposed, space is what allows distinctions co be so easily g~Q!~_g!YB~9· Despite the efforts of Kam, who drew limits around reason,"H_~~,l who historicized it, Marx, who materialized it, and Popper, who made it cririciza.ble, we sdlfcan see-as Jacobi, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and others saw-that the belief in re~~sjust as muJJly.a, logical Xfu.£er3:.~iY:~...-~.!!L?.iso, asJ1J~.-~,lllotive language suggests ("secret sharer," \'~Ko;;;ge");. a last ;~;id~e ()f, po5-sibility oferhical. action~ The system pro: noise; Lyot~d. v.ams to h~ar that noise as a "ca.IL" It is on this issue that a profitable Auseinandersetzung (debate) between the two can con:#nlie. The point of comemion is whether rhat which presents itself as the \,ther of a system-and ultimately that which presents irself as the other

:ever,that

:luces

f~o~

n2

Limit ofModernity

of modernity-is to be thought of as modernity's logical limit or as its moral conscience.

The Logic of Exclusion

In a succinct if indirect: manner, Lyotard expresses the dilemma felt by many who are no longer rempted by the call for a radical transformation of society..'.'.Ali policies," he writes, "is only (I say 'only' because I have a revolutionary past and hence a certain nostalgia) a program of administrative decision making, of managing the system" (Lyotard 1993, 101). With a touch of self-deprecarory irony, he acknowledges the collapse of a 200year-old Enlightenment/Marxist tradition of oppositional politics, yet distances himself from what remains in its place in the aftermath. This dual gesmre is key to undemanding his attempt to think both rhe inevicability and ,he possible instability of modernity. In The Postmodern Condition, rhe famous demise of the metanarratives of emancipation and Bi/dung already signals the rejection of this political tradition. Even the opposition between "traditional" and "critical" theory no longer holds, Lyotard realizes, because the Archimedean efforts of critical theory have disintegrated into postulates of "utopia" and "hope." In essence, critical theory, which has variously grounded itself in some historical subject (first the prolerariat, then "the Third World or the srudem:s"-and one can easily add ro Lyotard's list) or in categories such as "man or reason or creativity" (Lyotard 1984,..13), has lost its ability to occupy an outside or oppositional posirion and has therefore become just one more reguiator of the system. In "countries with liberal or advanced liberal management," critical theory has, in so many words, become co-opted, while in communist countries (ro the extent that they still exist) it has become the system itself. Thus, "everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx's Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in one way or another as aids in programming rhe system" (Lyotard 1984, 13). Dis[llantling the eschatol9gy_ 9.(!!m@f~pation remains ~_..t-1:ieme rhroughout Lyota.rd;s wrii:Ing~of the 1980s and e~ly199os:·rn-"Rewriti"ng·Modernity," Lyorard attacks the hermeneui:rc;~f;~~embering, which has.·· proceeded "as though the point were to identify crimes, sins, calamities en:-J gendered by the modem set-up-and i.n the end to reveal the destin.y thay){~ '?1~ an. orac\e. at the beg1n.ni.ng ot modernity would. have pre?ated. and. fultrli.j\¼ ... ,,~·,,,,

Limit ofModernity

Il3

m our history" (Lyotard 1991, 27). In "The Wa!I, the Gulf, an.cl the Sun: A Fable," oppositional criticism and the interest in emancipation, far from opposing the system from the outside, are seen as necessary means by which the system improves its efficiency (Lym:ard !993, n3-14). But perhaps most telling, and most poignam, is his 1989 introduct:ion to a republication of his essays on the Algerian war for independence, essays originally written during his association with the group "Socialism or Barbarism" in the 1950s and 1960s. Here, the demise of the Enlightenment/Marxist political project is delineated with great clarity: The presumption of the modems, of Christianity, Enlightenment, Marxism, has always been that another voice is stiffed in the discourse of "reality" and that it is a question of putting a true hero (the creature of God, the reasonable citizen, or the enfranchised proletarian) back in his position as subject, wrongfully usmped by the imposter. What we called "depoliticization" twenty-five years ago was in fact the announcemem of the erasure of me great figure of the alternative, and at the same time, that of the great founding legitimacies. This is more or less what I have uied to designate, clumsily, by the term ''postmodern." (Lyotard r993, 169) Yet, with this acknowledgmem of the toral collapse of the project of emancipation, Lyotard is faced with a dilemma: If one rejects the traditional/ critical opposition as outdated, and if one rejects the historical narratives of emancipation and knowledge from which this opposition could gain nourishment, where does one tum to escape the deadening embrace of what Lyotard variously calls the system, the monad, and the erhos of development? If one can no longer think the disenfranchised other as the sire for oppositional political acrivity, is the attempt to think the other bereft of aH significance? Lyotard is cen:ainly not claiming that the problem of exclusion in theform of pofaical oppression has disappeared, or that exclusion is now somehow to be preferred. Rather, he simply observes that the inclusion of the excluded (the proletariat, the Third World, women, ere.) as the subject of history can no longer be proposed as the basis of an emancipatory political program. The challenge then becomes one of thinking exclusion in ways not compromised by utopian projections of the great ahemacive. The dynamic logic of exclusion is an inherent feature of Luhmann's :l#stems theory, a feature that has become increasingly highlighted with ref\fr~nce to George Spencer Brown. Spencer Brown's "laws of form" serve as ··· I1ement, a logical shorthand, for the enforced selectivity that is the ''J~,of Luhmann's notion of complexfry and rhus of his notion of sys-

u4

Limit ofModernity

tern formation. Ali choice, all observation-as the ace of making distinct.ions, of making "cuts" in the world-is a process of inclusion by way of exclusion. As Luhmann explicitly points out: The concept of form refers to the posculare that operarions, insofar as they are observations, atways designate one side of a distinction, acruali1.e it, mark it as the. st~ting point for fim:her operations-and not the other side, which is, as it were, simultaneously carried along empty [die im Moment gl.eichsam leer mitgefuhrt wird} . ... The rheoretical provocation. of the concept ... resr.s on the fact that it postul:ares chat soiiiething is excluded with every t.'Xecution of an operation-at first purely as a matter of &.er., then, however, as a maner of.logical necessity for an observer who has the ability ro distinguish. (Luhmann 1970-95, 6: 240)

What is inceresting here is the distinction between matters of fa!.1: and log"' ical necessity. On the level of operations, exclusions are by-producrs of an enforced selection, a reduction of complexiry, an identity formation. A sysmn.c.-living, social, or other-defu1es itsdf against a background, which, as the system's environment, remains inaccessible. We srart off, as it were, iri a room with two doors. When we walk through one (marked, for instance, "male"), the other door ("female") disappears from view. The door not chosen, however, remains with us (wird leer mitgefuhrt) precisely as rhe door nor chosen, ai. an included exclusion, a potentiafrcy chat can be activated, but never as if from ground zero. We can never walk back out rhe door we chose, only through additional doors, which may now be marked differently, jusr as we, by now:, are marked difforemly too. One can walk ~h,rpugh the "male" door (or, more precisely, be walked through it at birch), and then, if one happens to be of a romantic habit of mind, attempt to think .androgyny, bur it will always be a male-centered androgyny, an androgyny ·"seen" from the perspective of one who initially entered the "male" door . and who therefore "c:arr.ics wirh him" rhe rejected "female" door as a per:manent blind spot. 2 ' As an operacion, all this remains racher unproblematic: Ir is che way of the world. Controversy--that is, choice of pcrspecrive-arises on the level of observation, indeed, rhe level from which the above desctiption was m~dc. Exclusion was presented as a logical necessity, not just a factual· occurrence. Of necessiry, choice precludes ether possibiliries. By way of the inclusion/exclusion distinccion, observation sees rhat rhc operation of observation includes what it chooses and excludes what it does nor. Seen from rhis "logical" point of view, exclusion is presemed as unavoidabk

Limit ofModer-nhy

1.15

)Jt.ist because one can observe the excluded as excluded does not mean thac · :the excluded can now be painJ.essly included, f~f.._t:l!i.d9g_~~J?.!?.~~rvation~ ·· a;lso operates by way of excl_~§lon--a~..can--sei~-formeL~~!-;li,t!\i9.D:;:::~~:~I;_ _~~;;:~y,-,; ·onf}'oy-way·of"a-n~~ exclusion. Try as we might, we have not de~ iii~p'e.r,xu.rises..in.§}'Stems as rhe ability tQ. affinn 91:reject communi,c:g~on\ ~4:d.,e::IJ}Qf.!?.:cy is rh~s-de::. ·fin~°J -~ pre,~riously.~ be morally evil or acsthecically ugly; he need noc appear as an economic i,J~.tnpecitor" (26) or as a "debating adversary" (28). We are enjoined, then, to interpret this distinction symbolically or psychologically, but rather to }~¢.hifrie11ds and enemies the alignments of political groups. "A.n enemy exonly when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people con::;:fiijnts a similar collecrivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy" (28). i:;~e11re;''che enemy in the political sense need not be hared personally," but l