The Uncontrollability of the World

by Hartmut Rosa

If I want to speak with you, I don’t have to wait until our paths happen to cross again, I can just call you. If I want to listen to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, I don’t have to wait until it is being performed in concert, or even until I’m at home with my music collection; I can immediately download to my smartphone a recording that features masterful playing in the highest audio quality. And if I long to visit Egypt, I can book a flight in the middle of the night, for this very weekend. Thus 24/7 appears to be a logical response to the uncontrollability of resonance. The supposedly fundamental contradiction of modernity would thus seem simply to be resolved. But is there something not quite right with this story? The theoretical answer to this difficult question, which requires analyzing the form of a resonant relationship, is that resonance always implies bilateral movement. It is not enough that I have access to and can take hold of the world. Resonance demands that I allow myself to be called, that I be affected, that something reach me from the outside.