Resonance is a quality of human relationships with the world proposed by Hartmut Rosa. Rosa, professor of sociology at the University of Jena, uses his resonance theory in Resonanz (2016) to explain social phenomena through a fundamental human impulse towards "resonant" relationships.^[1]

Background

Rosa outlined the cause of several crises of modernity through his monograph on social acceleration and dynamic stabilisation.^[2] In this monograph, Rosa put forward social acceleration as the cultural logic of modernity and the cause of the modern burnout crisis, environmental issues, and mass alienation.^[3] Resonance sets out to provide a solution to the alienation caused by social acceleration in late modernity.^[3] He theorises that resonance, a normative experience in which an individual experiences a transformational, responsive, and affectual relationship to the world, is the solution to the extremes of alienation caused by modernity.^[3]

Definition

With the aim of theorising a sociology of 'the good' in dialectical opposite to alienation, Rosa outlines the following definition of resonance:

...a kind of relationship to the world, formed through affect and emotion, intrinsic interest, and perceived self-efficacy, in which subject and world are mutually affected and transformed.

Resonance is not an echo, but a responsive relationship, requiring that both sides speak with their own voice. This is only possible where strong evaluations are affected. Resonance implies an aspect of constitutive inaccessibility.

Resonant relationships require that both subject and world be sufficiently “closed” or self-consistent so as to each speak in their own voice, while also remaining open enough to be affected or reached by each other.

Resonance is not an emotional state, but a mode of relation that is neutral with respect to emotional content. This is why we can love sad stories.^[3]

Resonance term

The acoustic term resonance describes a subject–object relationship as a vibrating system in which both sides mutually stimulate each other. However, as with a tuning fork, they do not merely return the received sound, but speak "with their own voice". The subjects' relational abilities and sense of their places in the world are influenced and reformed by such resonant experiences. Negative or alienated experiences, then, are those which lack resonance, and provide what Rahel Jaeggi terms 'a relation of relationlessness'.^[3][4] This is evidenced in the relationship of the newborn to its caregivers, by whose reception or rejection of interactions the fundamental attachment patterns develop. Resonance is therefore a way of approaching the question of successful relations between subject and world in the sense of "good life", which marks a significant departure from a critical theory primarily focused on relations of alienation.^[5]

In his monograph, Rosa employs a variety of metaphors to illustrate the concept of resonance. He likens it to being one's 'wire to the world' and compares it to the phenomenon of two tuning forks vibrating in harmony, each producing their own distinct voice.^[3]

The possible points of reference of such resonances are ubiquitous and are described in four axes:

• Horizontal resonances take place between two (or more) people, in love and family relationships, friendships or political space.
• Diagonal resonance axes are relationships to the world of things and regular activities, such as school or sports practice.
• Vertical resonance axes are relationships to abstract, ontological categories, such as nature, art, history or religion.
• A recent fourth addition to resonance theory by Rosa is the axis of the self, the extent to which one feels a non-alienated sense of relation with their own body and psyche.^[6]

In all these contexts, resonant experiences are juxtaposed with silent or instrumental world relations, determined by an orientation towards domination and attaining resources, which are primarily concerned with the achievement of a useful goal.^[5] For example, a mountain tour aimed at tourists can either be a resonant experience (as an intensive confrontation with the demands of the hike and encountering nature), or a more purpose-oriented, instrumental, and therefore, "mute" experience.

Relations that are controlling, hostile or anixous result in "silent", non-resonant experiences. Rosa argues that much of consumer culture promises resonance commenting "Buy yourself resonance! is the implicit siren song of nearly all advertising campaigns and sales pitches." However, the attempt to control the experience of resonance ends up inhibiting the experience by instrumentalising it. Rosa argues that mediopassivity, a stance of the subject being not entirely active or passive in an experience allows enough uncontrollability for resonance to take place.^[7][8] Another prerequisite for the establishment of resonances are the strong evaluations of the subject, which give the object a significance that goes beyond desire or attractiveness.

If an attempt is made to outline as resonance what people seek and long for in their innermost being, it is by no means conceived as a permanent state that can be established, but always as a selective, momentary success or self-transformation that stands out against the background of a world that is predominantly silent, instrumental. Resonance in this sense is therefore essentially characterized by the fact that it cannot be produced systematically and intentionally, but is ultimately unavailable.

Social theory

As a sociological theory, resonance theory deals with the social conditions that promote or hinder successful relationships. If the striving for resonance is regarded as a primary motivator for humans, its concretization depends to a large extent on historical, geographical and cultural conditions. In particular, existential hardship and political repression complicate resonance experiences, and in certain cases make them completely impossible. The promise of modernity is therefore to make resonance possible by overcoming political capriciousness and improving material resources. Rosa sees this promise as an inherent contradiction of modernity. The conditions of modernity have created what he terms social acceleration, an approach to time which is geared towards increasing resources in as short a time as possible. This results in a logic of increase, which requires a constant continuation of improvement and multiplication of resources. This is accompanied by an increasing pressure to accelerate: in order to maintain the status quo within a modern society, societies must continually increase the number of services, innovations and material production opportunities. Rosa sees this mode of dynamic stabilization as constitutive for modernity: while pre-modern societies transform themselves adaptively, i.e. in response to changed conditions, modern society is virtually defined by its compulsion for continuous transformation.^[9]

While the current phase of late modernism is characterized by a high resonance sensitivity and expectation of its subjects, the mode of dynamic stabilization results in a loss of resonance possibilities. Rosa notes three essential manifestations of the current crisis of modernity:

• the ecological crisis due to the finite nature of natural resources compared to an unlimited expectation of increase
• the political crisis, which arises essentially from the fact that democratic negotiation processes are too slow for the accelerated technological and resulting social changes and are therefore regarded as ineffective or obsolete, and
• the psychological crisis of the subjects, which is overwhelmed by the acceleration and therefore see itself exhausted (burn-out).

Resonance theory is thus in the tradition of critical theory from Marx to Adorno and Horkheimer to Habermas and Honneth. It shares the central finding of alienation as an obstacle to a successful life, but attempts to contrast this description ex negativo with a positive counter-concept, the concept of resonance. Honneth, for example, has already made this attempt with the concept of recognition. Despite all the conceded vagueness and diversity of the concept of resonance, Rosa sees this as a universal concept that includes concepts such as recognition, justice or self-efficacy.

Reception

Rosa's work and the resonance theory formulated in it are controversially received and discussed. On the one hand, the author is attested originality^[10] and the courage to analyse the fundamental issues and, in contrast to the Critical Theory often summarised with Adorno's "There is no right life in the wrong one" ("Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen"),^[5] the optimistic perspective is emphasised which is oriented towards potentials for overcoming the stated crisis. Such an appreciation of resonance theory as a positive continuation of critical theory can be found with Anna Henkel.^[5]

Micha Brumlik sees in the comprehensive combination of interdisciplinary strands the completion, but with it also the end, of Critical Theory, which thereby loses its "theoretically informed irreconcilability looking coldly at society".

On the other hand, it is precisely this comprehensive derivation of the concept of resonance from a multitude of perspectives and contexts that is criticized to the effect that "resonance" has an almost arbitrary effect, that the concept lacks precision,^[5] and that it is therefore ultimately unsuitable as a social-philosophical basic concept, as Rosa postulates it to be.^[5]

Another point of criticism refers to Rosa's alleged recourse to the intellectual world of Romanticism, to which he wanted to return without pointing the way.^[11] Rosa does indeed frequently refer to the resonance sensitivity of Romanticism even in conscious contradiction to rationalist concepts, but at the same time sees the danger of purely subjective emotion instead of resonance in the way Romanticism thinks.^[1] Thus he rather describes the continuing effect of the resonance concepts of Romanticism in modernity, without propagating a return to it.^[1]

Finally, Rosa's book argues that the socio-political outlook on concrete solutions is poor and that he ultimately fails to explain how resonance can be socially established as a response to the accelerating crisis of modernity. Despite the reference to political reform proposals such as that of an unconditional basic income and emerging pilot projects of a post-growth economy, Rosa himself rejects this claim, however, because he shares "the question of how one could get from the social formations of 'the Middle Ages' into modernity: In both cases it is a fundamental transformation of the world relationship..."^[1]

References