Abstract
This article charts a course from the literature of the classical world through to a select number of classic texts in sociology by Marx, Weber and Bauman, and some more recent psychoanalytically informed studies, to offer a metaphor for the vicissitudes of structure and fluidity in this time of turbulence and extremes. The episode from Homer’s Odyssey featuring the passage of Odysseus and his men between the twin monsters of Scylla and Charybdis is seen as offering an image of the two tendencies of our time towards extreme forms of fluidity in the form of the liberalisation of markets and marketisation of most private and public sectors on the one hand, and a proliferation and mutation of bureaucratic practices seen as an aspect of structural conditions on the other. The dysfunctional relation and polarisation of these tendencies and their consequences are analysed in turn as leading first to a culture of narcissism (Lasch, 1978), then to perversion (Long, 2008; Hoggett, 2010) at a social as well as a socially constructed individual level. The article makes use of free association and amplification in working with images and metaphors.
Highlights
We live in turbulent, confused and confusing times
These extremes are what the title alludes to, and cognisant of Hobsbawm’s (1994) historical work. These extremes do not exist in isolation from each other, it is the nature of their relation and how they manifest in different guises and combinations in public service institutions and what they produce that is the subject of this article
It does this by drawing on some classic images: starting with the episode from Homer’s Odyssey of Odysseus navigating between Scylla and Charybdis, the twin monsters standing in for the dangerous aspects of extreme fluidity and petrified structures; moving to Bauman’s ‘liquid modernity’ and Weber’s ‘iron cage of bureaucracy’ from his classic work on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which are explored and elaborated with reference to Lasch’s (1978) Culture of Narcissism and other more recent psychoanalytically informed perspectives
Summary
We live in turbulent, confused and confusing times. Depending on one’s location and context one’s experience may go from one extreme to another in terms of how much and what kind of control and bureaucracy one might be subjected to or how much speed and enterprise be expected and demanded of one. As the standard categories that characterised organised modernity have been increasingly questioned, in the hope that differences could be embraced along a spectrum without discrimination, the need for some structure has resurfaced along with fraught debates as to who is included and excluded by the various initials associated with such: LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQI etc This is in my view another aspect of the tension between fluidity and structure in terms of identity and its relation to individual and social aspects. My argument overall is that the structures the neoliberal environment offers have taken away any sense of containment and are having a range of difficult effects on individuals and organisations Nothing new in this argument, Weber, Lasch and more recently Harvey (2005), Layton (2010) and in this journal many others (2014, issue 19, vol 1 and 2) have made the case that the neoliberal ideology has eroded the social welfare safety nets that were available in the UK. All kinds of distinctions have become blurred, students are consumers, yet paradoxically outputs of my activity in terms of KPIs, as measured by numbers related to retention, progression and employment market ready graduates
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