Charles Lemert Identity politics is emerging where and when the Western Imperium, the historical imposition of the

culture of the West across the globe, is dissolving. Once the grip of the universal human Subject is questioned, then theory must, even against its will, turn to life itself; thus to sex and sexualities, to pleasures and pains, and, at the end, to the death of the body. Realm of bio-politics: it is a sphere not easily defined because, since about 1991, the primacy of state power is called into question by forces said to be cultural and economic, when in fact they are biological. These are the forces gathered uneasily under the expression globalization. Whatever is meant by this polysemantic term, what the defenders of the modern will not admit is that globalizing force ultimately put bare life, hence death, on the periodic table of social orders.

New Individualism Global spaces, individualist lives There is no society, only individuals and families. Contradiction: individualist culture on the one hand, and our reckoning of todays global realities on the other

Huge desire for instant gratification The ethic of individual self-aggrandizement reigns supreme in modern society, and that desires for unrestrained individualism, instant gratification and insulated hedonism are written into the fabric of Western culture. Egosim Marriage is a temporary arrangement, rather than for life. New challenge: experimental feel that much of what we do in our private and social lives takes on. Second crucial way in which the ideology of individualism changes in our own time is a consequence of privatization. (cutbacks in welfare provisions or services, as well as the spread of a more market-led, business orientation to the institutions of government) individualism today is instrinsically connected with the growth of privatized worlds. individuals are encouraged to shut others and the wider world out of their emotional lives. anguish, anxiety, fear, disappointment and dread.

Globalization is, at least, about economics and culture. The economic and cultural are each powerful forces that sometimes move in concert, sometimes in tension, but most often in complex and surprising ways. Economically the global nature of international capital has led to a net loss fro the worlds poorest even as it may have pulled some into the comfortable social and economic classes. Paradox: the poor cannot achieve the standards of the well off but they can and do have a better understanding of how the other half lives.

Elliott article Thesis: Rather than heralding a new era of austerity or significant cultural reform of the global electronic economy and its associated fast-speed ways of life throughout the expensive, polished cities, of the West, that the global financial crisis has ultimately produced a reinforcement and intensification of the ethos of new individualism. The Theory of The New Individualism a relentless emphasis on self-reinvention endless hunger for instant change fascination with speed, dynamism and acceleration preoccupation with short-termism and epsodicity

The new individualism can be deciphered from the culture in which people live their lives today especially those living in the polished expensive cities of the West. Corporate networking, short-term project work, organizational downsizing, compulsive consumerism, cybersex, instant identity makeovers and therapy culture: these are just some of the core features of global individualist culture, and the argument was developed that immersion in such a world carries profound emotional consequences for peoples private and public lives. individualism- coined by Alexis de Toqueville in the early nineteenth century to describe an emerging sense of social isolation in American society. Today, individualism suitably modified and adjusted to fit high-speed digital communication innovations and multinational financial transactions spawned by globalization. Self-reinvention pressure to express your own identity consumerism puts pressure on us to transform and imprive every aspect of ourselves: not just our homes and gardens but our careers, our food, our clothes, our sex lives, our faces, minds and bodies. People want constant and instant change! Shopping, plastic surgery, etc. But this does not make you happy because it is only meant for a short time until next time!

Instant change emailing in seconds, buying with a mouse click, drifting in and out of relations with others without long-term commitments. Speed cosmopolitan jet-set culture, continual transgression, seduction and excess Short-termism and episodicity There has been a shift from manufacture to finance, service and communications sectors major changes in the ways people live their lives much more short-term jobs! New economy: flexible , mobile, networked! (Global financier and philanthropist George Soros argues that transactions now substitute for relationships in the modern economy.) -Globalization: not just financial but also social, cultural and political transformations need to be considered! Much social science and newspaper commentary the world over, for instance, tends to assume that globalization refers only to marketization and integrated financial markets, Yet it is increasingly evident that the impacts of globalization are no longer viewed as limited to economic actions and decisions alone, and that various cultural, social and political aspects of daily life are seen as caught up with the forces of globalism. What matters today in the job market is flexibility- the plastic, reshaped sense of self which new forms of work in the global economy at once produce and demand. Thus the typical modern dilemma: how to be flexible enough to survive high levels of personal cultural drift without being left drained of identity? Today there is a lack of self-reflexiveness!!!!! Important for presentation! People need to self-reflect more! what the global economic crash means for our lives and especially our lives in these troubled times. In the so-called recovery from the great global crash, notions of rebuilding, reframing .. have been used to foreclose the possibility of critical self-reflection upon structural factors at work in the evaporation of capital .. strengthening of new individualism! Global structural forces prevent people from acting otherwise New strategies: engagement through detachment responsibility-floating speed of movement or mobilities (this has become today a major factor in social stratification and the hierarchy of domination being free of awkward bonds, cumbersome commitments and dependencies holding back movement was always an effective and favorite weapon of domination)