Rules for the Incommensurable

1. The Fair of Meanings

In the years between the second half of the 1970s and the explosion of the recession of 1989-1991 (United States) and 1991-1994 (Europe and Japan), the gradual emergence of post-Fordism generated a growing “existential malaise,” a climate of pervasive insecurity, a social and political disorientation whose explanation exceeds the conjunctural data.1 This climate of uncertainty, the “no future” widely anticipated by some youth movements of the 1970s, can be attributed to several factors: mass unemployment; the pauperization and occupational instability of ever-increasing sectors of the population; the awareness that investments were creating less occupation and that in absolute numbers they were in fact reducing it; problems related to the aging of the population and the financial difficulties these problems were beginning to cause. But it is only in the years of the recession that what had previously remained latent emerged in its full gravity and complexity. The recession of the early 1990s simply tore away the “veil of ignorance” that allowed us to postpone addressing the new socio-economic paradigm politically.