by Paul-Aurèle Allegrini
In 1970, John Lennon ended his song “God” by declaring that he believed only in “Yoko and (himself).” After renouncing religion, ideology, and cultural icons, what only remained was his relationship with his wife. The gesture reflected a broader intellectual climate post-World War 2 : a growing distrust of inherited structures and overarching narratives. The world narrowed down to the most immediate circle.
This skepticism did not begin in the 1960s. In the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche questioned the supposed neutrality of morality and faith, and exposed their historical construction and their entanglement with relations of power. In the 20th century, political catastrophes intensified this distrust. The general confidence in universalist narratives fractured, and the concept of rationality, regarded since the Enlightenment as the instrument of human emancipation, appeared capable of organizing massacres as well. Gilles Deleuze formulated in a 1987 conference that the coldest exercise of rationality had manifested itself in the organization of concentration camps.
The postwar order also transformed the conditions of existence. Exchanges accelerated globally, information multiplied, identities became more fluid. Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman described this condition as “liquid modernity” : the instability of social bonds and the reversibility of commitments and structures. In parallel, Jean-François Lyotard spoke of post-modernity as an “incredulity toward metanarratives.” Meaning became impossible to achieve, which prompted a nihilistic or ironic vision of human existence, or became reduced to subjective experiences.
This shift forms the core of the problem. As meaning is no longer assumed collectively by any form of morals or belief, it is redirected toward the individual. Even the desire for a common narrative becomes suspicious, because it evokes the possibility of domination.
In the vacuum left by the collapse of grand structures, responses become either private or unstable. In Jim Morrison’s dionysian aesthetic, shamanic trances promise a way out through loss of control, a shared intensity in musical concerts experienced as immediate truth. In the manga Neon Genesis Evangelion, the “Third Impact” idea of merging subjectivities seeks to abolish separation between consciousnesses in order to eliminate solitude itself. In Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, or its modern homage in Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza, endless celebration and aestheticization appear as attempts to sublimate an existential void no longer framed by any kind collective narrative. These works differ in tone and medium, yet they share a common feature: they seek to find a post-post-modern form of truth, of absolute, to fill the existential void.
The privatization of that void is not neutral either, and also follows existing socio-economic hierarchies. “Love”, in its contemporary sense of sexual and romantic action, often invoked as a universal refuge against the absurdity of human existence, operates within systems of selection and competition. Dating applications classify, filter, and optimize profiles according to implicit societal standards of desirability. The recent growth of “looksmaxxing” communities, in which individuals attempt to optimize their physical appearance according to algorithmic standards of desirability, illustrates how market logic penetrates intimacy itself. Even the idea of sexual fluidity is rigidified into products and micro-struggles that are marketable and scalable on a global scale into corporate-friendly identity politics. “Rave culture” or any kind of ecstatic self-loss experiences are places of underlying social control and regulations and lose their fluid essence when they become “mainstream” — which again shows the impossibility of a global-scale deconstruction of domination structures.
The more meaning is deinstitutionalized, the more responsibility for producing it falls on individuals. This burden is not experienced equally, because some have the material, cultural and geographical conditions necessary to inhabit philosophical instability and others do not.
But the need for narrative and belonging does not disappear. When no legitimate common horizon seems available, and material conditions degrade, simpler narratives find space to thrive. The success of figures such as Donald Trump, and more broadly of nationalist and populist movements, cannot be explained solely by media polarization or manipulation. It corresponds to the promise of restoring an intelligible “we” within a morally fragmented environment.
This reconstruction of a form of common takes exclusive and violent forms. The saturation of the structural void by simplified narratives recreate rigid and excluding structures of domination similar to those post-modernism sought to deconstruct. Hannah Arendt insisted on the necessity of a shared world for politics to exist at all. When no shared world or common roots exist, attempts at “rebuilding” are really just creation of homogenizing and antagonistic structures.
Thus, the contemporary problem of meaning lies in the difficulty of instituting shared meanings that do not solidify into excluding domination. The absence of collective frameworks does not eliminate the desire for belonging, nor make subjectivities unite into a harmonious and unexcluding unity — a collective “blob”, so to speak. It rather weakens humanity’s ability to live collectively, and alienates individuals.
The question therefore remains open. How can a common world be produced without reproducing the logics of exclusion that critical thought has exposed? How can collective meaning be articulated without reverting to totalizing myths? Certainly, subjectivities and individualistic perceptions exist within any structural form and must be considered with importance, but the refusal of any universalistic or shared horizon carries political risks for human coexistence.
References :
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.
Deleuze, Gilles. “What Is the Creative Act?” Lecture at FEMIS, Paris, May 17, 1987.
Durkheim, Émile. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Translated by John A. Spaulding
and George Simpson. New York: Free Press, 1951. Originally published 1897.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.
Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Originally published 1979.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. Originally published 1887.
Lennon, John. “God.” On John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Apple Records, 1970.
Fellini, Federico, director. La Dolce Vita. Italy: Cineriz, 1960.
Sorrentino, Paolo, director. La Grande Bellezza. Italy: Indigo Film, 2013.
Anno, Hideaki, director. Neon Genesis Evangelion. Tokyo: TV Tokyo, 1995.
Le Dragon Déchaîné 