The Global Turn in Critical Theory Christian Moraru (bio) Let me start off by reformulating two of the questions Jeffrey Di Leo poses in his introduction. The first is, What does theory mean now—how is its meaning shaped or reshaped under globalization? The second asks, What does the latter designate or, what does it represent historically? In relation to these two, here is a third one, as “theory” and “culture” cannot be kept apart: What is culture’s role in the global age or, what does it stand for in a phrase such as “global culture”? Some fancy it as a neutral vehicle set in motion by more powerful forces such as capital circulation. Others see culture and a certain type of globalization at odds, and they pin their hopes on this clash. At any rate, the controversy is healthy. Below, I intervene in it in an attempt at casting light on the dynamic of theory and cultural history over the past few decades. The overall argument I am making is that globalization, and its “theory,” can be better understood against the backdrop of the evolving discourse of modernity, postmodernity, and, particularly, postmodernism. I define the latter as cultural and multicultural critique, and in conjunction with late 20th-century developments of aesthetic, sociological, as well as geopolitical nature. This way, I uncover alliances, conflicts, and analogies that bespeak the enduring effectiveness of the postmodern paradigm. As Scott Lash, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and other sociologists have maintained, there are two modernities, fairly differentiated structurally and chronologically. The thesis of Beck’s groundbreaking book Risk Society—Towards a New Modernization is that “Just as modernization dissolved the structure of feudal society in the nineteenth century and produced the industrial society, modernization today is dissolving industrial society and another modernity is coming into being.” “Today,” namely, 1986, when Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne came out, “[w]e are witnessing not the end but the beginning of modernity—that is, of a modernity beyond its classical industrial design” (10). But what does this “new modernity” mean? What defines it is, simply put, its own attempt at defining itself anew by [End Page 74] assessing, à la Giddens, the “consequences” and, subsequently, by revisiting the premises, of a former, “wealth production”-dominated modernity (Risk Society 12). Beck suggests that a new logic gets the upper hand during a later stage in modern history: the logic of risk. As he explains, “The gain in power from techno-economic ‘progress’ is being increasingly overshadowed by the production of risks.” The latter are no longer “latent side effects” (13). They take center stage because, while a previous modernity mass-manufactured chiefly goods, which translated, to some at least, into “wealth,” the new modernity produces risks—on a global scale. Significantly, modernity reacts before long to this globalization of risks. First, modern technologies have augmented and “universalized” the threats the German critic talks about. In turn, these threats sharpen modern self-consciousness, radicalize its self-perception, and enhance its capacity for autocriticism. Globalized risks call upon modernity to reinvent, reconceptualize itself. They make us more philosophical, more skeptical about the “logic of wealth” and “progress,” of rationality in the Weberian sense. The risks embedded in, and s elf-reflexively uncovered by, the second modernity impinge, in their novel intensity and extensity, 1 upon inherited temporal and spatial categories and thereby upon our basic notions and representations (22). And it is only natural that, both through their materiality and philosophical relevance, modernity’s upshots—more and more seized negatively, in terms of risk, than positively, as “accomplishments”—are the first to become “subject to public criticism and scientific investigation” (13). Furthermore, “the concept of risk is directly bound to the concept of reflexive modernization”—the “new” or “second” 2 modernity. This concept helps us deal with the new hazards and menaces, as well as with modernity—“old” and “new”—itself. They are “politically reflexive” (21) insofar as they induce globalized reflexiveness and criticism, and draw political attention on a large scale. The globalization of risk unifies. It gradually globalizes modern consciousness as “well-distributed awareness of risk as risk” (Giddens 1990, 125), of risk identified as...