Developing an Off-Liberalism
Julie Mehretu: Babel Unleashed, 2001.
At the turn of the millennium, Svetlana Boym recast nostalgia and the modern in The Future of Nostalgia. To complicate “the deterministic narrative of twentieth-century history,” Boym proposed the term “off-modern”: “The adverb off confuses our sense of direction; it makes us explore sideshadows and back alleys rather than the straight road of progress.” This project of the off-modern disrupts conventional narratives of teleology and temporality. According to Boym, “instead of being antimodern or antipostmodern, it seems more important to revisit this unfinished critical project of modernity, based on an alternative understanding of temporality, not as a teleology of progress or transcendence but as a superimposition and coexistence of heterogeneous times.”
In addition to illuminating some of the inner tensions and conceptual valences of “the modern,” off-ness might also be useful for rethinking one of the central political modes of modernity: the liberal. The “off-liberal” affords a way of complicating certain teleological narratives of the “liberal” order premised on radical autonomy. Rather than being merely anti-liberal or anti-postliberal, the off-liberal reveals (and perhaps revels in) the heterogeneity of sources for the so-called “liberal” order. In doing so, it subverts ideological narratives of “liberalism” at the same time as it casts light on what makes “liberal” practices both enduring and provisional. The arc of history does not bend toward one specific instantiation of “liberalism,” and that potential for diversity and flexibility has implications for the understanding of the institutions and habits often associated with the “liberal.”
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke
Certain teleological narratives present liberalism as a glorious or cursed unfolding of individual autonomy. By this narrative, Thomas Hobbes’s definition of “liberty” in Leviathan as “the absence of external impediments” helps initiate a tradition for which liberty is the unshackling of the autonomous will. In the Second Treatise on Government, John Locke codifies this sense of liberty by laying out a model of politics premised upon individual self-direction (especially regarding the disposal of property). That project of radical autonomy leads, according to this narrative, to John Stuart Mill’s individualism and to laissez-faire economics. Supporting a redistributive welfare state, the “progressive liberalism” of the twentieth century in some ways cuts against laissez-faire liberalism. But, in many ways, the two sides of liberalism share a common premise: the goal of politics is to maximize autonomy. While proponents of “classical liberalism” hold that restraining government is the best way to do this, allies of “progressive liberalism” argue that government intervention is needed to preserve individual autonomy in the face of economic inequalities, various purportedly “repressive” traditions, and the disruptions of the market. These theoretical divisions have some corollaries to practical politics. In the United States and many other nations, classical liberals have often identified themselves with a free-market “right,” while supporters of progressive liberalism have often identified with the “left.”
The preceding narrative of “liberalism” has some compelling turns, and it has certainly been influential. However, the off-liberal turns to the “sideshadows and back alleys” of contemporary liberty. Rather than seeing this liberty as the apotheosis of some revolutionary project of autonomy, the off-liberal instead explores how the practices of contemporary “liberal” societies draw from a range of influences, many of which predate that theorizing of Hobbes and Locke. Moreover, many of the concepts identified with “liberalism” (from tolerance to market rights to democratic responsibility) can also be seen in a range of works—both across time and around the globe—that are outside the conventional canon of modern “liberalism.” The off-liberal’s more heterogeneous and cosmopolitan view of liberty unsettles deterministic accounts of what “liberalism” is fated to become.
Many discussions of the “liberal” or “liberalism” conflate liberalism as a theory of autonomy with liberalism as a set of practices or institutions. Those institutional elements of liberalism might include democratic governance, a market economy, protections for freedom of speech and religion, the rule of law, and limits on central power. This conflation has been appropriated by both triumphalist and declinist accounts of liberalism. Triumphalists, for instance, might argue that the institutions of many modern democracies are a product of liberalism as an ideology, and, thus, critics of theoretical liberalism aim to overthrow democratic governance and replace it with autocratic rule. The off-liberal, however, complicates the notion of a direct correspondence between ideology and practice. In doing so, he or she looks at the range of possible justifications for purportedly “liberal” practices—and all those justifications might not be based on the project of autonomy. Rather than seeing a single route to modern political liberty (itself a contested concept), the off-liberal charts diverse paths.
Furthermore, the off-liberal highlights tensions within the standard tradition of “liberalism.” These tensions indicate a further resistance to reducing “liberalism” to some ideology of autonomy and suggest some of the alternative paths within the “liberal” tradition.
This project of complicating the “liberal” has gained increasing scholarly interest in recent years. Helena Rosenblatt illustrated the diverse ends of political “liberals” in The Lost History of Liberalism. Charles Larmore recently argued in What Is Political Philosophy? that “political liberalism,” in order to be viable, needs more than some mere ideological principle of autonomy but in fact depends upon broader social and political bonds. Svetlana Boym herself aimed to bring out the complexities of liberty in the last book published during her lifetime, Another Freedom.
The Conversation by Arnold Lakhovsky
Current intellectual and political disruption might suggest even more the utility of the off-liberal. The neoliberal model of the person as an autonomous consumer has come under increasing intellectual and practical pressure. Recovering a more capacious narrative of liberty and its sources could help open up a range of possibilities for political narratives—for instance, the deeper opportunities of belonging and obligation, or the way state action can both suppress and reinforce liberty. As the sequel to this article will explore, charting the off-liberal’s paths can reveal a liberty founded on commitment, interpersonal connections, and a personal depth that goes far beyond some mythology of radical autonomy.
Fred Bauer (@fredbauerblog) is a writer from New England.