Resonance (sociology)

Resonant relationships require that both subject and world be sufficiently “closed” or self-consistent so as to each speak in their own voice, while also remaining open enough to be affected or reached by each other.

According to Rosa, the subjects' relational abilities and sense of their places in the world are influenced and reformed by such resonant experiences.

Negative or alienated experiences, then, are those which lack resonance, and provide what Rahel Jaeggi terms 'a relation of relationlessness'.

[7] Feeling part of nature, an epoch of history, or a moment of worship is accounted for in the vertical axis resonance.

In all these contexts, resonant experiences are juxtaposed with silent or instrumental world relations, determined by an orientation towards domination and attaining resources, which are primarily concerned with the achievement of a useful goal.

Rosa argues that mediopassivity, a stance of the subject being not entirely active or passive in an experience allows enough uncontrollability for resonance to take place.

If an attempt is made to outline as resonance what people seek and long for in their innermost being, it is by no means conceived as a permanent state that can be established, but always as a selective, momentary success or self-transformation that stands out against the background of a world that is predominantly silent, instrumental.

Nevertheless, Rosa calls for institutional reforms which are geared towards resonance and avoid the kinds of extractive instrumental activity which cause alienation.

[3] It shares the central finding of alienation as an obstacle to a successful life, but attempts to contrast this with a positive counter-concept, the concept of resonance.

[5] Micha Brumlik sees in the comprehensive combination of interdisciplinary strands the completion, but with it also the end, of critical theory, which thereby loses its "theoretically informed irreconcilability looking coldly at society".

Rosa's book argues that the socio-political outlook on concrete solutions is poor and he has publicly shared his dissatisfaction with the paths to post-growth suggested in his original monograph.

[3][14] Despite reference to political reform proposals such as that of a universal basic income and emerging pilot projects of post-growth economies, Rosa does not necessarily provide a direct route to this:It is akin to the question of how humanity was able to move out of the social formations of the “Middle Ages” into modernity.

Both cases involve a fundamental transformation of humanity’s relationship to the world that sets subjective and institutional, cultural and structural, cognitive, affective and habitual levels in motion all at once, without either a clear starting point or a unilinear direction of propagation.

The theory of resonance articulated here, however, attempts to provide a small building block by at least making it possible to again perceive a different form of existence.

Two tuning forks being sounded by a hand (on the left).
In his monograph, Rosa employs a variety of metaphors to illustrate the concept of resonance. He likens it to being one's 'wire to the world' and compares it to the phenomenon of two tuning forks vibrating in harmony, each producing their own distinct voice. [ 3 ]
A picture of Ben Nevis on a clear day. A clear blue sky, a large mountain and a very green forest.
Rosa states that purely aesthetic, easily accessible encounters with nature are not sufficient for resonance, stating that an "active, even combative and resistant relationship with nature", like a challenging mountain hike, can constitute a self-efficacious world relation. [ 3 ]
Turner's painting rain, steam and speed. A very loose expressionist painting style convey a train rushing through intense rain.
Rosa uses Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed to visualise modernity's social acceleration, seeing "clearly the effort to translate the dynamization and fragmentation of the experience of space and the world into a new formal language." [ 10 ]