Between the external and internal world. Globalization and the discomfort of emotions

Abstract

This paper calls for the launch of a reflection on the relationships and reciprocal interactions between the ‘external world’ and the ‘internal world’ based on how, socially and culturally, the reality of these two spaces are configured in the era of late-capitalist globalization. A globalization that is marked by the intensification of the processes of the financialisation of the economy, of the decomposition and division of labour, and of the de-localisation and de-territorialisation of production, which results in an increasingly marked lack of distinction among the many spheres of existence in our subjectivities. This work traces a path that moves from the solicitations offered by the contemporary debate in geography - from David Harvey’s fundamental body of work to Doreen Massey’s relational approach - to then focus on the contributions of Paolo Virno, and of Toni Negri and Michael Hardt. The attempt to comprehend how and if the fine border between the external world and the internal world has today been transformed and constituted leads to the connection of a critical reading of the processes of the accumulation of capital in the contemporary world to the important psychoanalytic contributions of René Kaes, which are dedicated to the analysis of changes in subjective psychicformations. If the internal world (of emotions and the unconscious) appeared to be more differentiated in the diverse systems of cultural and ethical values before the ‘crisis of modernity’, at the time of late-capitalism the inner discomfort appears to grow indistinctively, as reflected in the symbolic and immaterial universe of communication that colonises our lives and characterises the present condition of postmodernity.