Alone
In what ways is aloneness figured in relation to questions of community? Are there particular forms of solitude to be found or nurtured within scenes of radical togetherness? How might one navigate between being-alone and loneliness? To individuate or to exit while remaining attuned to the demands and joys of mutuality? Being-alone may be captured as a position or framework for reflecting upon what it means to be-in-common, to live in a social world (already, this scene of writing I’m enacting is one of aloneness…). While “social ontology” is underscored within the Communities in Movement project so as to unpack and delve into the interdependencies that constitute subjectivity and ecologies of relation, it is equally important to question how aloneness, and loneliness even, is deeply embedded within experiences of community. From the troubling state of being without to the desire for escape, from depression and loss to withdrawal and positive exit, aloneness opens up a range of complex views. Is being-alone a position by which to examine ideologies of privatization, and a subsequent “economic subjectification” leading to contemporary forms of loneliness? What becomes of aloneness within the social practices that seek, by way of “commoning” and the ideology of sharing, to create conditions of togetherness? As Roland Barthes maps by way of the concept of “idiorrhythmy”, the tensions between individuality and public life – the timings and spacings between singularity and plurality – underpin the very question of how to live together.
Following the covid-19 crisis, experiences of self-isolation and quarantine, and the call for more “caring economies”, underscore being-alone in more pronounced ways. From such experiences, and crises, new articulations and practices of community and collectivity become signals of resistance – a perseverance in the face of isolation and lockdown. Equally, with the interruption of “the economy of the event”, and the hyper-productive mechanics of social and cultural presentation, the emergence of a new sense of “positive withdrawal” or postponement also takes hold, giving way to a feeling of relaxation for some: a suspension in which to take stock of oneself, or to reflect upon the state of affairs. Being-alone becomes a time and space of “doing nothing” – a sudden lapse, a slowness, affording a more pronounced sense for “the care of the self”. Solitude, even loneliness, in this case, might be cast as a situation for attending to the immediate, the local – that is, a route toward reinventing one’s singularity. In other cases, quarantine becomes a scene of intense togetherness: the caring of homebound family members, the managing of new precarity and mental strain, an intensification of home-work, manifest an experience of “being alone together”.
What can we make of these diverse states of singularity? From self-isolation to loneliness, positive exit to being forgotten, what does aloneness teach about private and public life? Is being-alone a privilege, a loss, a gain? While “public intimacy” and the presentation of the private self is firmly embedded in the dynamics of network culture, what new understandings of loneliness emerge – in what ways does “globalization” and the “precariat subject” figure loneliness in new ways? And what forms of idiorrhythmy punctuate current understandings of common life?