1

The Outside of the Global

U R S S T H E L I
University of Bern
1uini nni xo1 xnxx 1uixcs ns viniic1 ns n cioni. n cioni is n
complete or perfect body (OED), a fully self-sufcient and well-balanced
entity. Thus, the globe is by denition all-encompassing, and its perfection,
wherein its beauty is supposed to lie, makes it difcult to imagine an out-
side of the globe. How could it be complete if it depended on an outside?
Recent political and theoretical discourses on the global and globalization
are fascinated with this logic of completeness. Moreover, they are themselves
engaged in creating what they try to observe. The narratives put forward
understand the global as teleological process, awaiting its fulllment in the
imaginary totality of an all-encompassing globality. This all-inclusive narra-
tive does not leave out anyone or anything. Even that which resists the
imperatives of the global has to be integrated into the global whole in order
to achieve and maintain its ideal totality.
The gure of the global is both more inclusive and more exclusive than
older models of society: anyone is anywhere, potentially, part of the
globalit is the dream of a non-antagonistic society come true. The global
cannot have any enemies by denition, since even those who oppose the
global are part of it. However, this all-inclusive stance is not simply an open-
ing up of earlier imaginary constructions of society that were nationally, eth-
nically, or culturally coded. It is also a pervasive totalizing gesture, which
tries to make the outside of the global unthinkable. In this respect, dis-
courses on globalization often seem even more universalistic than earlier
versions of totalizing theory have been. While, for example, the logic of cap-
ital certainly does not create an anti-essentialist perspective, it was still sen-
sible to the contradictions within global capitalism and the very limits of
this logic. In contrast, discourses on globalization often resemble a teleo-
logical world view, claiming that ever more social spheres are becoming
globalized, leaving nothing untouched by the hegemony of the global.
The rhetoric of globalization produces political and theoretical effects of
closure that are often neglected by the practitioners of globalization theory.
Accepting a notion of the global as a teleological gure of completeness pre-
cludes crucial politico-theoretical possibilities; it constitutes an exemplary
case of a politics of the construction of the unthinkable (Laclau :8:) that
makes unthinkable that which does not t in with the hegemonic denition
of the global.
My paper tries to trace how the global and the world are used in con-
temporary theories of globalization, and the totalizing effects they create.
What is at stake is a concept of the global that would be able to account for
its own constitutive outside (cf. Staten :8(; Laclau :o). To put it differ-
ently, deconstructing the global requires us to trace that which is excluded
by talking about the global, and to examine how these constitutive exclu-
sions affect the very possibility of globality. Such a conceptual operation
becomes necessary if we want to avoid a totalizing gesture that uncritically
inherits concepts of totality. While, for example, the Althusserian discussion
of the concept of totality has highlighted the potentially essentialist pitfalls
of the idea of an expressive totality (Cullenberg :6), recent discourses on
globalization appear to be a resurrection of the idea of an expressive total-
itybe it as local expression or signature of the global, or the local adapta-
tion of the global. In both cases, the essence of the global reveals itself in the
local adaptations that are only seen as surface phenomena of a totality
organized by the logic of the global.
The Out s i de of t he Gl oba l 2
T H E G L O B A L I N P O L I T I C A L D I S C O U R S E S
Although my argument on the global will primarily be an epistemological
discussion of how the idea of the global works as a theoretical concept, I
would like to start with a brief glance at how the metaphor of the global is
used in contemporary political discourses. In so doing, I will try to show that
the conception of the global as totality produces analogous problems within
political and theoretical accounts of the global. Such a move may help us to
understand what is politically and theoretically at stake in a notion of the
global that tries to make its outside unthinkable.
The rst example is characteristic of many social-democratic govern-
ments in Western Europe. In :, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and
the German chancellor, Gerhard Schrder, published a manifesto on global-
ization, outlining its consequences for a newly revised social-democratic
politics. Globalization here denotes the absolute limit of any social-demo-
cratic political project: Modernization is about adapting to conditions that
have objectively changed, and not reacting to polls (Blair and Schrder :;
my emphasis). This second modernity corresponds to a world of ever
more rapid globalisation. Globalization here becomes a necessary, basically
economic process that forces even leftist governments to adapt to that
process: there is no viable outside of globalization, since the global as such
is seen as the incarnation of objectivity, which is juxtaposed to the subjec-
tive, potentially populist politics, primarily based upon opinion polls.
Globalization is presented as something that will take its course, and from
which everybody will benet if national policies do not interfere. Those who
dare to stay outside of the world of globalization are punished by the mer-
ciless inexorability of these forces.
Thus, reformed social-democratic parties such as New Labour dene
themselves not in contrast to globalization but rather as midwives of a nec-
essary historical process. The semantic distinction that is used in order to
account for globalization is that between traditionalists and modernists:
traditional social democrats still cling to their traditional values of solidar-
ity without adapting them to the changed societal conditions; in contrast,
new social democrats are well aware of the need to accept objective
processes of globalization. The distinction traditional/modern or simply
Ur s St he l i 3
old/new is organized by a temporal logic that is related to a social episte-
mology: only a new perspective allows us to grasp the reality of contem-
porary societal structures. Observing a traditional social-democratic
rhetoric from this perspective enables one to discredit the old perspective
in two ways: it is, rst, historically wrong since it takes a position external
to processes of globalization; this makes it, second, objectively wrong
because it has lost any perspective that would allow one to recognize the
real processes of globalization. The discursive strategy that makes it
impossible to stay outside of globalization becomes very clear in this exam-
ple: the outside is historically dened as that which preceded globalization,
and that is why New Labour has to avoid becoming an evolutionary left-
over from an older social formation. Thus, the only outside of the global is a
historical outside whose contemporary remnants are not only politically but
also epistemologically doomed to perish.
This modernist political rhetoric of globalization is certainly not the
only possible political account of the global. Let me briey look at how polit-
ical groups who are highly critical of globalization and who understand
themselves as social movements against globalization (e.g., groups such as
attac) articulate the global and globalization. Globalization is seen here as
the new face of capitalism, which will destroy the particularity of local com-
munities. The hegemony of capitalism becomes global, homogenizing all dif-
ferences and singularities. The anti-globalization movement ghts for the
survival of cultural differences, and against the all-pervasive economic logic
of globalization. Interestingly, the anti-globalization movement nds itself
in a paradoxical position: its own protests are globalized and homoge-
nizedit would not be easy to identify the local particularities of the
protests in Genoa, Seattle, or Davos. Only the background landscapes
change. Many anti-globalization movements are well aware of this paradox
and try to reformulate their stance against globalization. There are at least
two discursive possibilities for doing this: rstly, what is criticized is not
globalization per se, but rather the fact that globalization has not yet
reached its full potential. Globalization, driven by multinational corpora-
tions, has to be supplemented by the globalization of human rights. Thus,
the anti-globalization movement becomes a globalization movement calling
The Out s i de of t he Gl oba l 4
for a more complete globalization. Secondly, the target of the protest is
specied. It is not simply globalization that is criticized, but rather capital-
ist globalization. What is needed, in contrast, is a globalization from below
(Brecher, Costello, and Smith zooz). In contrast to New Labour, which
denes its stance for globalization in terms of the distinction between tra-
ditional and modern, anti-globalization movements employ a hierarchical
distinction between below and above, or a sectorial distinction between
the sphere of human rights and the sphere of economy.
Although the view of globalization put forward by Blair and Schrder
and the perspective of the anti-globalization movement are clearly different,
they also have some common characteristics. From both perspectives, glob-
alization is seen as a universal force with laws of its own. Globalization is
basically conceived of as a neutral process whose inevitability is simply
accepted (Krishnan and Skanthakumar zoo:). To put it differently, what they
share is the same discursive framework, one that constitutes globalization
as a fully achievable object. It is a framework that posits globalization as a
neutral force of its own, which somehow has to be dealt with. Anti- and pro-
globalization statements primarily differ in their take on how to judge glob-
alization: it is either seen as a chance for economic prosperity, or
alternatively as a homogenizing and dehumanizing force that has to be
attacked. Still, there is a difference in their emphasis on spatial and tempo-
ral aspects of globalization. A pro-globalization politics uses a temporal
(and not a spatial) argumentative logic: globalization is not only a process of
acceleration that obliterates traditions, but in addition, a politics t for glob-
alization has to be prepared so as not to miss the opportunity to jump on
the globalization bandwagon. In contrast, anti-globalization movements use
a spatial logic with an inherent hierarchy: spaces of production have to be
supplemented with spaces of rights; spatially dened cultural identities have
to be preserved from the de-rooting force of globalization. The ght against
globalization, then, becomes primarily a spatially dened struggle, defend-
ing from below those spaces that are not yet fully captured by processes of
globalization. It is not least this focus on space that makes the anti-global-
ization movement look outmoded from the perspective of a modernist pro-
globalization movement: spatially bound traditions are seen as historical
Ur s St he l i 5
leftovers that are nothing but an impediment on the way to an ever more
globalized world. In this sense, the proponents of globalization generally
emphasize the decreasing importance of space, which is obliterated by new
technologies of communication.
These two admittedly oversimplied political examples of the usage of
globalization point to the theoretical problem of how to conceive the bound-
aries of the global. This is not simply an academic question, but rather, as the
examples may have shown, a crucial political issue as well: How is it possible
to formulate a critical perspective on globalization without always already
having accepted the discursive framework that makes it possible to talk
about globalization?
1
In what follows, I want rst to discuss one of the most
popular attempts at resolving the dilemma of the all-pervasive notion of the
global. The distinction between the global and the local is that which is sup-
posed to make it possible to grasp an outside of the global. I want to trace
how this distinction is used in cultural studies, where it is intended as a crit-
ical tool. However, this distinctiondespite its critical stance, I would
arguenecessarily fails to address the frictions within the global itself. Thus,
in a second step, I suggest a different way of thinking the global in terms of
a paradoxical logic of the world, drawing from Niklas Luhmanns theory of
world society, Jean-Luc Nancys conception of the world, and chaos theory.
G L O B A L H E G E M O N Y / L O C A L R E S I S T A N C E ?
During the last twenty years, cultural studies has been trying to globalize
itself, institutionally and conceptually. An important discussion on how to
think of global cultural processes has emerged (Denning zoo:; During :;).
It is here that the distinction between the global and the local has
become an important theoretical tool (e.g., Wilson and Dissanayake :6;
Stratton and Ang :6; Ang :8). This distinction is crucial for two reasons:
on the one hand, the distinction between the global and the local lends itself
to an (at rst sight) unproblematic articulation with one of the classical
research areas of cultural studies: processes of media reception; on the other
hand, cultural studies tries to maintain its critical and anti-hegemonic polit-
ical stance by establishing the local as a site of resistance.
The Out s i de of t he Gl oba l 6
Let me rst briey elaborate the former point. One of the analytical
advantages of a cultural studies framework for studying media culture is the
heightened sensitivity towards the reception or decoding of cultural mean-
ing (e.g., Hall :;; Morley :8o; Fiske :8;). The receiver herself becomes an
active instance within the circuit of culture, producing her own meanings
that are not necessarily in line with the hegemonic coding of cultural prod-
ucts. Similarly to the decoding processes within media culture, the local
becomes a place that opens up different ways of decoding the global. The
global is now juxtaposed with the local, and the local becomes the specic
and particular that is juxtaposed with the abstract universal (Ang :8).
This argument is normally intrinsically linked with a second one, identi-
fying the local with a privileged site of micro-politics and resistance. Thus, a
typical cultural studies reading of a media product and its audience assumes
that the local reception of the product enables some sort of resistance to the
hegemonic macrostructure. In this sense, John Fiske (:() has linked the
possibility of resistance to the micro/macro distinction. He locates resistance
on the micro-level, since it is only here that new meanings are generated and
that potentially subversive readings are developed. The macro-level, in con-
trast, becomes the level of global hegemonic formations and of structures of
domination, constituting a circuit of their own. What reemerges within this
framework is the highly problematic sociological distinction between a
micro-level and a macro-level (e.g., Knorr-Cetina :8:). This distinction seems
to be the organizing principle of many conceptual oppositions that are often
invisible, but nevertheless crucial to mainstream cultural studies.
Micro Macro
resistance hegemony
practice structure
concrete/particular abstract
reception/decoding culture industry/encoding
local global
Figure 1. Micro/Macro in Mainstream Cultural Studies
Ur s St he l i 7
Cultural studies cannot escape the sociological debate of the eighties about
how to relate micro- and macroanalysis. This may seem somewhat ironic,
since cultural studies has tried to dene itself precisely in opposition to
mainstream sociology, which was often identied with structural function-
alism.
2
Instead of focusing on functionalist models of social structures, cul-
tural studies primarily analyzes local microstructures that are opposed to
hegemonic macrostructures. However, focusing on the potentially subver-
sive effect of local micro-practices does not problematize the dualism
between micro and macro. Thus, the question of the local/global is rein-
serted into a fairly traditional framework, simply reversing the distinction by
claiming the analytical privilege of the local and the micro-level.
The global may present itself in the uniformity of capital logic, yet cul-
tural studies still happily expects local sites of resistance to open up. From
such a perspective, it is on a local level that global meanings are rearticu-
lated and processes of resignication take place. The local, then, is concep-
tualized as the site of resistance to capital, and the location for imagining
alternative possibilities for the future (Dirlik :;, zz). Critical analysis has
to account for the autonomy of the local and to show how global processes
manipulate the local in order to functionalize and integrate it within a
homogenizing logic (). The global threatens the integrity of the local. That
is why it is seen as a hegemonic machine that tries to functionalize local
knowledge and innovations.
Such an understanding of the global process of integration within a
hegemonic world project even haunts approaches that are sensitive towards
frictions within the global. Stuart Hall (::) has, for example, described
globalization as a contradictory hegemonic process that nevertheless still
threatens to absorb all local differences: It is wanting to recognize and
absorb those differences within the larger, overreaching framework of what
is essentially an American conception of the world (z8). In contrast to
Fiske, Hall develops a more subtle argument: it is not simply the local that
becomes the site of pleasures, but rather global processes produce local sites
themselves (cf. Hardt and Negri zooo, (o). Still, in Halls narrative of global-
ization, too, the local functions as a logic that contradicts global processes:
The return to the local is often a response to globalization. It is what peo-
The Out s i de of t he Gl oba l 8
ple do when, in the face of a particular form of modernity which confronts
them in the form of the globalization I have described, they opt out (Hall
1991, 33f.; my emphasis). Here, the global becomes a force in its own right,
confronting local sites of resistance and requiring a response. Ultimately,
the local designates the possibility of opting outi.e., it is supposed to
offer an outside of the all-pervasive global structure.
3
The global hegemonic formation is seen as a homogenizing and univer-
salizing force; in contrast, there are concrete people, with their own (pos-
sibly lost) location, speaking out against these processes (Hall) or engaging
in pleasurable activities of local resistance (Fiske). The global/local distinc-
tion, then, is fully based upon the dichotomy between micro and macro;
what the global/local distinction adds is only that it deals with a particular
form of homogenization and universalization. The nation-state, which pre-
global cultural studies often identied with a particular hegemonic regime,
is now replaced with global hegemonies. However, the assumption in both
cases that the local and its micro-practices guarantee a critical and anti-
hegemonic position remains unchanged. The global/local nexus is, of course,
open to different articulationsand there are certainly very different ways
of relating the global and local in cultural studies. Most of the more sophis-
ticated approaches assume a dialectics between the global and the local,
leaving the integrity of neither term intact. From this perspective, the local
is also always already global, since the idea of pure local cultures seems
rather an imaginary of the Wests longing for authenticity than a useful ana-
lytical category. The same is true for the global: there are no purely global
processes that do not require local negotiations and adaptations. Think of
the oft-quoted MTV example: even global mass culture has to integrate
some local cultural elements in order to attract a global audience.
However, what remains a crucial problem within this perspective is that
the outside of the global is mainly pictured as a form of local resistance.
Here, cultural studies encounters the same problem that anti-globalization
groups have been confronted with: What about the possibility of local resist-
ance if these forms of resistance are globalized as well? Does this mean that
they have also become victims of subtle and pervasive processes of global-
ization that even functionalize the struggles against globalization (e.g., as
Ur s St he l i 9
material for global news)? What is problematic in these assumptions is that
the global is primarily seen as a logic of universalization that exploits all
local particularities without being affected by these particularities. In focus-
ing on contradictions that arise from plural local articulations, one tends to
neglect the aporetic nature of globalization itself. Why does cultural studies
assume it is the local that primarily produces contradictions and aporia?
The answer, as I have tried to show, seems to be pre-given: local sites make
it possible to rearticulate the meaning of hegemonic discourses. Such an
idea, however, rests upon the notion that there are global networks of mean-
ing that are noncontradictoryand that only become contradictory in the
course of their local application.
Problematizing the local/global distinction does not amount to a call for
a return to earlier versions of macroanalysis. Instead, it questions the very
idea that there are, somewhere, global forces that inuence, contradict, or
rearticulate local sites. Even more problematic is the idea that the global is
expressed through the local, because it evokes the notion of an expressive
totality once more. Since Althussers critique of such a concept of totality, its
deeply metaphysical implications have become very clearand it strikes me
as ironic that the advocates of the local sometimes refer to this theoretical
gure, which completely predetermines what the local is going to look like.
Even if one does not assume an expressive relation between the global and
the local, and if one posits the global and the local in a dialectical relation-
ship, it is still difcult to escape from the essentialist trap of this distinction:
the very idea that it is possible to locate the site of resistance on either a
local micro-level or a global macro-level tends to reinstate an unnecessary
dualism. Ultimately, the distinction remains caught within an oversimplied
juxtaposition of local resistance and global hegemonies. Trying to think the
outside of the global in this way essentializes both the global and the local,
since it turns the particular local against the universal globalas if the
predicament of the particular would automatically interrupt the dialectics
between the two terms.
Thus, the most obvious problem lies in the identication of the local
and the global with different self-contained spheres that can be separated
from the large hegemonic processes. It ends up with a parochialism of the
The Out s i de of t he Gl oba l 10
local and a homogenization of hegemonic strategies. This false dichotomy
(Hardt and Negri zooo, () is mirrored in the political dimension and pro-
duces highly problematic political consequences: if the local is the exclusive
locus of resistance, then a political analysis necessarily neglects the antago-
nistic constitution of the hegemonic discourses. To put it differently, it for-
gets the very impossibility of a fully realized hegemonic structure by always
already having decided where resistance will take place.
4
T H E I M P O S S I B I L I T Y O F T H E G L O B A L
I have tried to argue that the local/global distinction does not provide the
conceptual tools to deal with the outside of the global. This distinction
tends, ironically enough, to reify the global by stressing the subversive poten-
tial of the local. In what follows, I would like to offer a rst draft of an ana-
lytical strategy that addresses the problem of the global in an altogether
different way. I will draw very selectively from Niklas Luhmanns theory of
world society and a poststructuralist concept of the world. My contention is
that a deconstructive reading of the notion of the world as horizon may help
us to escape the impasses of the local and global distinction.
It would be impossible to provide even a short introduction into
Luhmanns highly complex systems theory of modern society here.
5
Instead,
I will merely focus on his take on the status of the concept of the world, and
how it makes it (im)possible to think the outside of the global. Niklas
Luhmanns (:;, :(ff.) theory of world society may at rst sight resemble
an approach that is even more totalizing than the idea of the global.
Nevertheless, the concept of world society becomes interesting in the con-
text of our discussion for two reasons (Luhmann :;; Stichweh zooo).
Firstly, Luhmanns social theory is highly temporalizedwhich means that
it does not use the spatial distinction between the global and local as a foun-
dational concept. As we will see, this does not mean that the distinction
global/local becomes useless, but it changes its theoretical status. It is, sec-
ondly, due to his skepticism about the use of the metaphor of the local/global
that Luhmann opts for the notion of world as the horizon of society.
What, then, does the world mean within systems theory? Here, systems
Ur s St he l i 11
theory is not that different from approaches such as Roland Robertsons the-
ory of globalization (:z), which emphasizes the world as horizon. Thus,
whatever happens, for example, in the economic system does not primarily
orient itself by national horizons, but it takes the world as a whole as its ori-
entation. Global ows of communication, new communication technolo-
gies, and global networks are certainly crucial for the constitution of world
society. Still, Luhmann emphasizes that a merely structural analysis does
not sufce to dene world society. The question that has to be answered is
how the globality of these operations and networks is produced. And it is
here that Luhmann suggests taking the semantics of the world seriously,
since it is this semantics that produces the horizon of the world. Thus, for
Luhmann, the world is neither simply an economic process, nor an objective
process that absorbs local differences. Rather, Luhmanns perspective helps
us to take seriously the discursive strategies that construct and maintain the
world as horizon.
Understanding the world as horizon (and the discourse of the global as
one particular way of formulating this horizon) signicantly changes how
we think the outside of the world. What could be external to this horizon?
Is there a critical position that allows us to grasp the precarious nature of
this horizon? The problem becomes even more difcult if we follow systems
theorys assumption that there is only one world society in modernity
(Luhmann :;, :(ff.; cf. Nancy :;, ;). Premodernity consisted of dif-
ferent, coexisting worldsthus, there was a plurality of world societies. One
can easily imagine that these worlds existed simultaneously without know-
ing anything about each other. Still, the outside of these worlds were other
social worldsand it is precisely the status of the outside that has changed
with modernity. World society is a paradoxical construction of a society with
an outside that is not really an outside: The horizon of the world retreats if
one tries to approach it; what emerges is a new outside which cannot, in
principle, be the outside of the world (Stichweh zooo, z6; my translation).
We know that there is an outside, but as soon as we try to grasp it, it escapes
because it has become a part of the world. The boundary between the world
and its outside shifts all the timeand still, it is impossible to go beyond
this horizon.
6
The Out s i de of t he Gl oba l 12
We will never succeed in accounting for the outside of the world if we try
to grasp that which is beyond the world.
7
However, there isand this is cru-
cial in our contextan essential non-accessibility within the world. The
horizon of the world that allows society to describe itself as world society
cannot be represented within this horizon: The unity of the world is, thus,
no secret, but a paradox. It is the paradox of the world observer who is in the
world but who is unable to observe how she observes (Luhmann :;, :(;
my translation and emphasis). To put it differently, the unity of the world is
impossible because the construction of this would require us to introduce an
observer external to the world. Of course, another observer may easily
describe this world observer, but she will be confronted with the same prob-
lem that she cannot observe herself observing another observer. Thus, the
paradox of the unity of the world is intimately related to the necessity of
blind spots: there is no observation without a blind spot of its own.
8
The notion of the world as horizon, in and of itself, is a totalizing theoret-
ical gure. However, in dening this horizon itself as intrinsically paradoxical,
Luhmann tries to account for the inaccessible nature of the world. Taking this
assumption seriously, the status of the global/local distinction changes
signicantly. Like any other distinction, this distinction becomes a discursive
tool of observation and loses its status as conceptual distinction. Thus, func-
tional systems may observe themselves by using the discourse of globalizing
and describing them as global and local systems. However, the local is not the
outside of the world, since it is an observational construction produced by a
particular mode of observation. The local, then, is not simply a marginal site
of resistance, but it is itself produced by different scales and measurements
that are used for observing the worldand, thereby, hiding the paradox of the
world.
9
Sari Wastell (zoo:) has shown how, for example, the juxtaposition of
global law and indigenous local law depends on observational tools of meas-
urement that allow one to distinguish global and local types of law. Looking at
the global from this perspective thus diverges from a primarily spatial dis-
tinction between the global and the local. It now becomes an observation that
is characterized by how it deals with its own blind spot: [G]lobal belies the
particularities of its perspective just as local denies a certain breadth of
vision (Wastell zoo:, :). To put it differently: the global denies its own par-
Ur s St he l i 13
ticularity in pretending to be a perspective without a blind spot. Using dis-
courses on the local and global, then, is a particular way of making invisible
the constitutive paradox of the worldthe impossibility of its unity.
We can deepen Luhmanns idea of the impossibility of a global represen-
tation (i.e., that of the necessary blind spot of any observation of the world)
by turning to a deconstructive reading of this impossibility. Jean-Luc Nancy
(:;, zooz) addresses this question of how to represent the world (le
monde). He juxtaposes the world with its representationi.e., a world view
(Weltanschauung) such as discourses of globalization: In short, it is per-
missible to think that the world is still withdrawn [en retrait] from that
which it has to be, from that which it could be, indeed from what it already
is, due to some aspect which we cannot yet make out (Nancy zooz, :; my
translation). Now, this world, which is characterized by a radical contin-
gency, is confronted with a world view that has to reduce the contingency of
the world: A world viewed/seen [monde vu], a represented world, is a world
which is suspended under the gaze of a subject-of-the-world (8; my trans-
lation). Similarly to Luhmann, Nancy also suggests a crucial shift in the
notion of the world. Earlier concepts of the world projected a world in (dans)
which one existed, while now the position of existence has changed to an
tre-au-monde ((o; my emphasis). The world, then, takes on a double
meaning: that of the world as representation or world view, and that of the
mere aporetic happening of the world. What becomes crucial is that the
world takes place, that the world is to come without ever fully arrivingand
it is precisely here that we can locate the experience of the contingency of
the world. Emphasizing this radical notion of contingency is crucial because
it makes it possible to evade a linear understanding of the development of
the world in terms, for example, of globalization. The constitution of the
world, then, is not a linear historical process approaching its completion.
Political projects (such as New Labour) that uncritically emphasize the
linear, temporal nature of globalization are caught in just such a teleological
trap. In emphasizing the radical contingency of the world, an attempt is
made to avoid this pitfall by imploding the linearity of time.
One might object that, in referring to Nancy, I have introduced a philo-
sophical argument that is (possibly too) far away from our initial problem of
The Out s i de of t he Gl oba l 14
thinking the outside of the global. However, the two arguments are intrinsi-
cally linked. The distinction between the global and the local often works as
a domestication of contingency. Global processes are understood as neces-
sary (e.g., economic) processes that, in turn, have to confront local contin-
gencies. Such a view implies an essentialist understanding of the global,
since it assumes a teleological structure of the global. To put it differently:
whereas the experience of the world is contingent and necessary at the same
time, the global/local distinction dissolvestoo easilythe aporetic struc-
ture of the world by simply attributing contingency to the local and neces-
sity to the global. Thus, what comes to the fore is that the spatialized
distinction between the global and local misses precisely that which
Luhmann and Nancy consider the preeminent characteristic of the modern
semantics of the world: its openness to an unforeseeable future that cannot
be reduced to a linear narrative. For Luhmann, contingency becomes the
primary orientation of the modern semantics of the world (:;, :(), and
for Nancy, what has to be thought is the contingency of the worlds factual-
ityof the world taking place. It is Nancys perspective that shows us that
the contingency of the world cannot be reduced to the possibilities of the
world within its horizon, but rather to the cracks in the horizon itselfthat
which necessarily escapes the world view. We have called this the paradoxi-
cal structure of world observation: the unity of the world is neither a meta-
physical foundation, nor a logic of globalization. Rather, it is the blind spot
of the world that every world observation produces anew, thus opening up
the world to its contingency.
This contingency is the mode of being of worldly communications,
always threatened by their representation as global processes. Represen-
tations of the world such as world views are totalizing devices, suspending
the world they are trying to represent. This is not to say that we can do with-
out these world pictures; on the contrary, it becomes one of the most impor-
tant tasks of social theory to show how these devices worknotably, to look
at their textual and visual rhetoric. How does a world view institute itself as
the instance of the global? Which strategies are used in order to make the
particularity of the global invisible? These are crucial questions for any
social and cultural analysis concerned with the analysis of globalization
Ur s St he l i 15
aiming at the power/knowledge nexus of discourses on the global. This
implies analyzing the very rhetoric of globalization in terms of hegemonic
strategies that make it possible to create a global position of enunciation.
10
However, we should be aware that an analysis of the hegemonic
constitution of the world must grasp the moment of contingency. Post-
foundationalist theories of hegemony, notably Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffes work (:8), have shown that every totalizing gesture also includes
a moment of radical contingency. Laclau and Mouffe posit this moment with
the creation of an empty signier that is able to hegemonize and homoge-
nize particular meanings. The moment that organizes the closure of a hege-
monic system thus empties itself, and opens itself to a radical lack of
determination. This analysis of the paradox of hegemonic self-description
shows exemplarily that the outside of a global hegemonic discourse is not
simply external to that discourse. Rather, it nds itself in the emptiness of
the empty signier which organizes the self-representation of the dis-
course (Laclau :6).
While Laclau and Mouffes account is crucial for analyzing the paradox-
ical nature of the self-representation of the world, it does not fully address
the radical contingency of the world. Experiencing the world means taking
place in the world, and it affords an openness to the possibilities of the
world. How does a world, to use Nancys words, resonate? In order to under-
stand the worldly dynamics of ows of communications, we have to focus on
how their contingency is dealt with. Looking from such a perspective at
what has been called a local/global dialectics makes it possible to posit the
moment of rearticulation differently. Processes of rearticulations, then, are
not simply located, as in mainstream cultural studies, on the local level
where global media products or standards have to be adapted; instead, it is
a certain moment and place within a series of communicative events that
becomes the point of rearticulation.
A good example for such a point of rearticulation is the notion of a
strange attractor which has been developed within chaos theory (Tsonis
:z). The strange attractor describes nonlinear systems that are patterned,
but not self-identical. Events of such a system resemble each other, but they
are not identical. Assuming such a self-similarity introduces a constitutive
The Out s i de of t he Gl oba l 16
openness into the system, since it is now always possible that nonpredictable
events may occur. It is in this sense that we may speak of a radical contin-
gency that cannot be eradicated. This, however, does not mean that there is
simply a dispersion of elements with no regularity. Rather, normalized ows
of communication constitute self-similar linesthey take a similar path.
However, there are also those moments of undecidability where the expected
path is suddenly left. These moments are called points of bifurcation. Such a
point of bifurcation occurs when a system enters a peculiar state of indeci-
sion, where what its next state will be turns entirely unpredictable. . . . The
system momentarily suspends itself (Brian Massumi in Doel :, :86). At
these points, elements that are normally invisible and forgotten become cru-
cial: We expect that near a bifurcation . . . random elements would play an
important role while between bifurcations the deterministic aspects would
become dominant (Prigogine and Stengers :8(, :;6). The frontier of a sys-
tem becomes undecidable. Bifurcation points, then, are sites where the res-
onance of the world becomes visible, going beyond the calculated and
expected possibilities of the system.
11
The idea of fractal systems has been taken up by cultural anthropology
as a useful metaphorical tool for analyzing processes of globalization. Arjun
Appadurai (:8) analyzes the global in terms of potentially chaotic global
ows (e.g., of money, people, goods, or images). Notably cultural forms are
fundamentally fractal, that is, . . . possessing no Euclidean boundaries,
structures or regularities. Thus, it is suggested that we understand fractals,
polythetic classications, and chaos as macrometaphors ((;). Using such
a conceptual vocabularynotwithstanding its vague metaphorical status
highlights discontinuities within global ows, and thus tries to escape an
over-homogenized understanding of global processes. Although Appadurai
still clings to the distinction between global macro-events and local narra-
tives, he points to a dynamics of macro-turbulences that link up with
micro-events (:zf.). However, Appadurai cannot fully escape the main-
stream version of the distinction between micro/local and macro/global
events, since for him, the local still seems to be a question of size. Thus, one
of his privileged examples of the local is local subjects in specic neigh-
borhoods (:8).
Ur s St he l i 17
What I want to suggest is that the very distinction between the local and
the global implodes if we take seriously the idea of points of bifurcation.
The outside of the global, then, is not simply the local rearticulation of the
global, but rather a certain spatio-temporal conguration of ows of com-
munications. It is the point of bifurcation, opening up the systemic logic of
communication, that points to a radical contingency within these ows.
This rearticulation of the global/local distinction is close to Deleuze and
Guattaris (:88, z:8zo) reading of the early French sociologist Gabriel
Tarde. Tarde was, and is still, either marginalized or forgotten within the his-
tory of sociology and social theory. He was wrongly accused of doing social
psychology, since he was interested in micro-ows of imitations, refusing
the Durkheimian idea of the force of collective social representations.
Deleuze and Guattari, in contrast, stress that Tarde helps us to do away with
the usual distinction between micro/macro as different levels. Rather, the
micro (or, in our context, local) aspect deals with the deterritorialization
of ows of communication, while macro is the reterritorialization and
binarization of these ows, making sure that these series are continued.
Thus, one arrives at an utterly different distinction between micro and
macro: The difference between macrohistory and microhistory has nothing
to do with the length of the duration envisioned, long or short, but rather
concerns distinct systems of reference, depending on whether it is an over-
coded segmented line that is under consideration or the mutant quantum
ow (zz:). Macro and micro, global and local, then, are not two different
realms; they are also not distinguished by their size or durabilityrather,
they constitute two different perspectives that can relate to the same phe-
nomenon: there is not a local micro-politics that can be separated from the
global macro-politics, but rather every politics is, at the same time, a local
micro- and global macro-politics. Such a reconguration of the distinction
between the global and the local abandons any idea of the local as a self-con-
tained sphere, which is somehow external to the global. In this sense, the
local is not an outside of the global that one could dene in spatial terms;
this, however, does not also imply that the global is a fully constituted, tele-
ological entity. Rather, the global itself is always already structured by its
own impossibility of ever achieving its fullness. Avoiding an essentialist
The Out s i de of t he Gl oba l 18
notion of the global, then, means accounting for the ssures within global
attempts at overcoding micro-ows.
I have tried to show that there are different conceptual vocabularies
available for dealing with this impossibilitybe it the blind spot and the
paradox of the world in Luhmanns systems theory, the resonance of the
world in Nancys work, or Deleuze and Guattaris rearticulation of the dis-
tinction between micro- and macro-politics. It is certainly not possible to
reduce these very heterogeneous ways of thinking to each other. Still, they
point to the need of thinking the global with new theoretical tools that avoid
the conceptual cul-de-sac of mainstream sociology and cultural studies.
This also means that neither the global nor the local are places from which
a hegemonic or an anti-hegemonic self-description can be articulated. The
outside of the global is not a place,
12
be it local or extraterrestrial; but it
becomes the event of the world, haunted by the ever present possibility of
new points of bifurcation. The discourse of the global, then, is a particular
mode of observing and regulating ows of communication. It is a politics of
the impossible, constructing a world viewa hegemonic horizon of the
worldthat integrates the non-global as the local. Thinking the world (and
not simply the global) cannot be reduced to the construction of a hegemonic
globality; rather, it means to account for the way that this very thing has its
outside on the inside (Nancy :;, (), thereby recalling the resonance of the
world.
13

N O T E S
1. Cf. Foucaults Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) on the discursive construction of epis-
temic objects.
2. Cf. Stuart Halls (1980) early theoretical contextualization of cultural studies.
3. Hardt and Negri (2000, 45) formulate a similar critique of the local/global distinction:
It is false, in any case, to claim that we can re(establish) local identities that are in
some sense outside and protected against the global ows of capital and Empire.
4. Although I fully agree with Hardt and Negris (2000) critique of the local/global
dichotomy, I do not follow their suggestion to introduce the new dichotomy of the
Ur s St he l i 19
empire and the multitude. Instead, I will argue that we have to think the impossibility
of the global, thus avoiding Hardt and Negris ontological and substantialist gesture.
5. Cf. Kneer and Nassehi (1997) for an accessible German introduction, and William
Rasch (2000) on modernity and systems theory.
6. The only outside of the world is the nonsocial. In Luhmanns terms, it is the limit of
communication that denes the limit of the world. For Luhmann, this boundary
between communication (i.e., the social) and noncommunication (i.e., the nonsocial) is
absolutely clear (Luhmann 1997, 151). This is certainly a highly problematic assump-
tion, since it presupposes that the materiality of communication can be easily sepa-
rated from the process of communication (Stheli 2000).
7. Cf. Hardt and Negri (2000, 31, 34) who also argue that the empire has lost an outside,
making it impossible to criticize it from a standpoint that is not always already within
the empire.
8. Cf. Luhmann (1991) on blind spots and paradoxes.
9. To be more precise, systems theory speaks here about Entparadoxierung, i.e., the
process of solving paradoxes without ever arriving at a complete solution (Luhmann
1991; Stheli 2000).
10. Cf. Tagg (1991) for a short but very interesting suggestion to think globalization along
the lines of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffes post-foundationalist theory of hege-
mony.
11. This is precisely the moment of the political, as it has been described by Derrida and
Laclau and Mouffe (1985; Laclau 1996): It is a radical moment of undecidability, where
the resources of the system do not sufce to resolve this undecidability.
12. The local/global distinction changes its outline as soon as we take seriously the prem-
ise that space itself becomes an eventa process of unfolding and splaying out (Doel
1999, 7).
13. One might speak of a transimmanence (Nancy 1997, 55) in order to account for this
strange status of the outside. The idea of transimmanence avoids doing away fully with
the idea of an outsideas, for example, in Hardt and Negris (2000) concept of imma-
nence.
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