Recreational experientialism at ‘the abyss’: rethinking the sustainability crisis and experimental politics

Abstract

In light of mounting complexity and uncertainty, and challenged by the ever-accelerating pace of societal change, politics and policy making have become increasingly experimental. This also applies to sustainability politics and the project of a socio-ecological transformation. But can late-modern societies experiment themselves out of their sustainability crisis? Prompted by this question and seeking to contribute to a more complex understanding of experimental politics, this article first rethinks the notion of the sustainability crisis and, on that basis, then reconsiders established understandings of experimental politics. It focuses on self-proclaimed advanced-modern societies in the global North and suggests that, reaching well beyond more established readings of the term, their much-debated sustainability crisis ought to be understood as a crisis of their ideal and self-understanding as liberal, democratic open societies. As regards experimental politics, the article focuses specifically on social movement-based experimental politics which is widely regarded as a promising pathway toward a socio-ecological transformation. Yet, the conceptualization of the sustainability crisis suggested here raises questions about this interpretation. Supplementing established readings of social movement politics as transformative experimentalism, it prompts a reinterpretation as recreational experientialism: helping to cope with the transition of late-modern societies toward a modernity beyond the ideal of the open society. The article takes a mainly conceptual, social theory-oriented approach.