Recreational experientialism at ‘the abyss’: rethinking the sustainability crisis and experimental politics

Abstract

In light of mounting complexity and uncertainty, and challenged by the ever-accelerating pace of societal change, politics and policy making have become increasingly experimental. This also applies to sustainability politics and the project of a socio-ecological transformation. But can late-modern societies experiment themselves out of their sustainability crisis? Prompted by this question and seeking to contribute to a more complex understanding of experimental politics, this article first rethinks the notion of the sustainability crisis and, on that basis, then reconsiders established understandings of experimental politics. It focuses on self-proclaimed advanced-modern societies in the global North and suggests that, reaching well beyond more established readings of the term, their much-debated sustainability crisis ought to be understood as a crisis of their ideal and self-understanding as liberal, democratic open societies. As regards experimental politics, the article focuses specifically on social movement-based experimental politics which is widely regarded as a promising pathway toward a socio-ecological transformation. Yet, the conceptualization of the sustainability crisis suggested here raises questions about this interpretation. Supplementing established readings of social movement politics as transformative experimentalism, it prompts a reinterpretation as recreational experientialism: helping to cope with the transition of late-modern societies toward a modernity beyond the ideal of the open society. The article takes a mainly conceptual, social theory-oriented approach.

Keywords:

• Late-modern society
• socio-ecological transformation
• experimental politics
• planetary boundaries
• open society
• post-apocalyptic environmentalism

At the edge of an abyss

In a seminal text of the emerging eco-movements, Edward Goldsmith and colleagues warned in the early 1970s that the termination of “the industrial way of life with its ethos of expansion” would be inevitable “within the lifetime of someone born today” (Goldsmith 1972, 2). The authors noted that “industrial economies appear to break down, if growth ceases or even slows, however high the absolute level of consumption”; and this would cause not only fundamental “disruption of ecosystems” but also the “collapse of society.” In the wake of growing social inequality, they predicted, “whole sections of society will find good cause to express their considerable discontent in ways likely to be anything but pleasant for their fellows.” And “at times of great distress and social chaos,” it would be “more than probable that governments will fall into the hands of reckless and unscrupulous elements who will not hesitate to threaten neighbouring governments with attack.”

Techno-managerial policies of sustainable development and ecological modernization delayed the fulfillment of Goldsmith’s predictions. They bought some extra time for western consumer societies—not only ecologically, but for the continuation of their economic, social, political, and cultural order, too (Sarkar 2001; Streeck 2014; Blühdorn 2022a). At the current conjuncture, however, the accelerating spiral of social, ecological, and political crises as well as debates about the Anthropocene and the transgression of planetary boundaries (Crutzen 2002; Rockström et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2018), have given the old warnings new urgency. Those “born today” who Goldsmith was referring to in the early 1970s, are now in their 50s; and they are, indeed, witnessing how even in countries such as the United States governments fall “into the hands of reckless and unscrupulous elements,” while others, such as Putin’s Russia, not only threaten “neighbouring governments with attack.”

“We are on the edge of an abyss and moving in the wrong direction,” the United Nations Secretary-General warned at the body’s plenary in September 2021. “Our world has never been more threatened or more divided, we face the greatest cascade of crises in our lifetimes” (Guterres 2021). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demands “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” (IPCC 2018, 1). But as Goldsmith had noted already in the early 1970s, modern society “has given itself no machinery” for looking at its crises “as part of a general…pattern, preferring instead to deal with its many aspects as if they were self-contained analytical units” (Goldsmith 1972, 5). Nor have international institutions and policy regimes managed to address the multi-dimensional sustainability crisis with the pace and “the most careful synchronisation, integration and orchestration” that already Goldsmith regarded as indispensable for any radical socio-ecological transformation to succeed (Goldsmith 1972, 17). In any case, the modern state is deeply implicated in the established order of unsustainability and, in addition, dependent on democratic legitimation. Against this backdrop, it seems structurally unable to deliver anything like the dramatic changes (Hausknost 2020) which according to many scientists and political activists are urgently required (e.g., IPCC 2022). Hence, social movement-based and civil society-driven experimental politics is often presented as the most promising strategy and site for inducing a structural transformation toward sustainability (e.g., Wright 2010; Meyer 2015; Meyer and Kersten 2016; Schlosberg and Craven 2019; Brand et al. 2021).

This confidence in the transformative capacities of social movement- and civil society-based experimental politics has a long tradition. In the 1970s and early 1980s, that is, at the time when the new social movements and critical sociologists first launched their project of new politics (Müller-Rommel and Poguntke 1990) and the reflexive modernization (Beck 1997; Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994, Beck, Bonss, and Lau 2003) of post-industrial societies, these narratives were novel and energizing. But today, capitalist realism (Fisher 2009), the tide of alternative facts and conspiracy theories (e.g., Fischer 2021), the recession of democracy (Diamond 2015; Blühdorn 2020a, 2020b), and the late-modern end of illusions (Reckwitz 2021) make for an entirely different context. In fact, today, even the most fundamental ideal and narrative that underpins the self-perception of Western societies as advanced and their claim to moral superiority and international leadership, that is, the idea of the liberal, democratic open society, has come under pressure. Major challenges include the inherent contradictions built into this ideal, its potential incompatibility with the notion of “non-negotiable planetary preconditions that humanity needs to respect” (Rockström 2009b), the new systemic competition between authoritarian China and the self-proclaimed free world and, most recently, Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine—which is widely portrayed as an attack on the ideal of the open society (e.g., Biden 2022).

Against this backdrop, and assuming that late-modern societies may indeed be on the threshold to a societal transformation still waiting to be conceptualized, this article investigates the role and potentials of social movement-based experimental politics. Its objective is not to assess the effectiveness of experimental politics in comparison to approaches assuming certainty with regard to both the nature of the problems to be addressed and appropriate solutions to be applied. Instead, the aim is to contribute to a fuller understanding of experimental politics by rethinking it in light of the particular condition of late-modern societies. For this purpose, I first explore how the sustainability crisis which experimental politics is said to help resolve, and how “the abyss” at whose edge late-modern societies are supposedly standing, may best be conceptualized. Moving beyond framings, for example, in terms of a crisis of capitalism, I subsequently suggest that this sustainability crisis ought to be understood, not least, as a crisis of the ideal and self-understanding of modern societies as open societies. From this perspective, I then critically review the interpretation of social movement-based experimental politics as prefiguring and pioneering the socio-ecological transformation. This discussion argues that, in a number of respects, this experimental politics shares central features, ideational elements—and problems—of the open society. Hence, the potential of social movement-based experimental politics to resolve this sustainability crisis is, arguably, limited and its common interpretation in terms of transformative experimentalism is questionable. I then proceed to propose a different interpretation: As the model and self-understanding of Western societies as open societies is becoming increasingly untenable, experimental politics bridges “the abyss” in a different sense—by providing social spaces and practices that help to cope with the traumatic experience of late-modern societies’ transition to a social order and phase of modernity beyond the ideal of the open society. Analysis in terms of recreational experientialism is proposed as an important addition to more traditional interpretations of experimental politics in terms of transformative experimentalism. As the belief in the transformative capacities of experimental politics is fading, this new interpretation, arguably, gains in relative significance.

Throughout the article, I am focusing specifically on liberal-democratic, post-industrial societies in the global North which perceive of themselves as advanced-modern and have been described as late-modern societies (e.g., Reckwitz 2021). As regards experimental politics, I focus specifically on eco-egalitarian and eco-democratic social movements which are often conceptualized as prefiguring and pioneering a great socio-ecological transformation. And as regards my conceptualization of the sustainability crisis and my suggested reinterpretation of experimental politics, these are explicitly not meant to fully replace but to supplement established interpretations so as to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between experimental politics and the sustainability crisis. Overall, I am taking a mainly conceptual, social theory-oriented approach.

Conceptualizing “the abyss”

Can late-modern societies experiment themselves out of their sustainability crisis? To answer this question, a more specific understanding of this crisis is a necessary precondition. What exactly is this sustainability crisis, this “abyss” at the edge of which “we” supposedly stand and which experimental politics can supposedly help to bridge? What exactly is it that cannot be sustained? To these questions, there is more than just one answer. Conceptualizations in terms of biophysical conditions have recently culminated in alarming warnings about the possible extinction of the human species and the uninhabitability of planet Earth (e.g., Rockström et al. 2009). Given the perceived urgency of the threat, their primary emphasis is on mobilizing immediate action. But debates in terms of planetary boundaries and a safe operating space for humanity as specified by Earth-system scientists such as Johan Rockström and colleagues disregard that—limiting their mobilizing force—such concepts are only seemingly objective points of reference which, in fact, always remain contingent on malleable social norms (Brand et al. 2021; Blühdorn 2022b, 2022c). Also, these conceptualizations of the crisis divert attention from scenarios much more likely—and in fact real—than extinction and uninhabitability: those of increasingly violent social conflict and war to which already Goldsmith referred (Goldsmith 1972). It has become commonplace to stress that the social distribution of the impacts of the sustainability crisis is radically unequal, even in the wealthiest countries; and so is the capability to adapt. Hence, there is no collective we standing at the abyss. The COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, or the energy and food crisis in the wake of Putin’s assault on Ukraine all illustrate, to what extent the supposedly unifying ecological question is, in fact, a radically divisive social question. And, correctly, many observers have pointed toward tendencies of de-civilization and brutalization which might take late-modern societies toward a new Hobbesian state of nature where, for many, life may well become brutish, nasty, and short again—even in the affluent global North (Honneth 2012; Latour 2017). So, for the purposes of theorizing the particular condition of late-modern societies, their sustainability crisis and “the abyss” at the edge of which they are said to be standing, these conceptualizations are not particularly helpful.

Post-Marxist analyses and critical sociology, in contrast, commonly frame this sustainability crisis as a crisis of capitalism. Time and again critical sociologists have pointed out that capitalism has always been built on inherent contradictions; and today, they suggest, its “deep-seated crisis tendencies” have become “painfully obvious” (Fraser and Monticelli 2021, 8). From their perspective, the present sustainability crisis appears, first and foremost, as a crisis of the growth-dependent economic system which at the planetary boundaries cannot be sustained, not least because, as Goldsmith had warned already in the 1970s, “indefinite growth of whatever type cannot be sustained by finite resources” (Goldsmith 1972, 3, original emphases). Critical theorists acknowledge, of course, that the sustainability crisis also has dimensions “which appear to be non-economic” (Fraser and Monticelli 2021, 6, original emphasis). Yet, ultimately, these analyses trace all its dimensions to the deep-seated contradictions and tendencies of self-destabilization of capitalism, which become particularly virulent in its present globalized and financialized appearance (e.g., Fraser 2015).

This kind of analysis captures important aspects of the current sustainability crisis, but it devotes little attention to causes other than the inherent contradictions of capitalism, which might be no less significant. Also, it makes implausible suggestions about the new condition that may emerge in the wake of the current crisis, that is, beyond “the abyss.” Unlike the apocalyptic perspective of extinction, post-Marxist analysis does look past the current crisis, yet, it tends to frame this crisis as a step toward a less alienated and destructive, and more liberated, post-capitalist order to come (e.g., Mason 2015; Kallis 2019; Jackson 2021; Brand et al. 2021). From a normative point of view, this is perfectly legitimate. However, for the time being at least, neither the collapse of capitalism nor the emergence of a post-capitalist society that will overcome the multiple problems of the established order of unsustainability seem particularly likely. Instead, capitalism is proving even more adaptable and resilient than critical sociology has so far conceded (e.g., Boltanski and Chiapello 2017). And while capitalism may well continue to survive, the social norms which critical theorists use to categorize the present condition as a crisis and as unsustainable—democracy, ecological integrity, universal human rights, autonomy, social justice, inclusion—may not endure (e.g., Ophuls and Boyan 1992; Streeck 2016; Blühdorn 2020a, 2020b). This is a traumatic but very real scenario; yet, one that critical social science systematically neglects. Hence, for conceptualizing late-modern societies’ sustainability crisis and “the abyss,” analysis in terms of the contradictions of capitalism seems insufficient, too.

To clarify what exactly is in crisis, for what reasons, and to what effect, we need to zoom in more specifically on the critical conjuncture at which advanced- or late-modern societies currently are located. That is, we need to capture the specifically late-modern features of the societies at issue. In trying to do so, there is good reason to hold on to the assumption that contradictions inherent to the established order are the cause and trigger of the crises affecting advanced-modern societies and, furthermore, also the motor of transformative societal change. After all, their internal divisions, fragmentations, polarizations, and increasingly irreconcilable conflicts, very visibly, belong to the most distinctive features—and challenges—of late-modern societies (e.g., McCoy, Rahman, and Somer 2018; Reckwitz 2020). Also, there is also good cause to hold on to the assumption that the “ethos of expansion” (Goldsmith 1972, 2) and the issue of finiteness, which Goldsmith and many others had highlighted early on, are a constitutive parameter of the systemic crisis concerning late-modern societies (e.g., Bauman 2000; Rosa 2015). For, reappearing in the guise of planetary boundaries and increasingly violent struggles about limits, borders, distribution, and exclusion, the issue of finiteness is, undoubtedly, a focal point of contemporary politics.

Yet, rather than applying this dual lens of inherent contradictions and the confrontation with limits only to the analysis of capitalism it, today, arguably, needs to be applied, a least as much, to the idea of the liberal, open, and cosmopolitan society. For, at the present conjuncture, the really new and distinctive feature of late-modern societies is, arguably, not so much the old clash between capitalism and the limits to growth, but the clash between planetary boundaries and the ideal and narrative of the open society and the free world. Or, speaking in terms of contradictions: At the current conjuncture, the causes and the distinctive quality of the multi-dimensional sustainability crisis are located not (only) in the inherent contradictions and the built-in tendencies to self-destruction of capitalism but, at least as much, in the inherent contradictions and the built-in tendency to self-destruction of the liberal ideal and narrative of the open society. Historically, capitalism and liberalism have co-evolved and are closely connected to each other. But, conceptually, they are distinct, and in the late-modern condition, in particular, this latter clash is, arguably, a distinctive characteristic of the sustainability crisis that is receiving far too little attention. Put differently, critical theorists are entirely right in saying that the “deep-seated crisis tendencies” have become “painfully obvious,” but these are not just the contradictions and crisis tendencies of capitalism but of the open society, too.

The open society

Since publication of Popper’s (1945) The Open Society and its Enemies, in particular, the narrative of the open society has been constitutive to the self-understanding and self-legitimation of Western countries, their self-description as advanced, and their claim to moral superiority and global leadership. Following the collapse of the bipolar world order of the Cold War, that is, when its enemies seemed to have disappeared, the open society seemed invincible, and voices warning of a possible “return to something resembling the premodern, closed polity” (Ophuls and Boyan 1992, 192; emphasis added) became, more than ever, the “bêtes noires of environmental political theory” (Dobson 2013, 242). But today, the recession of democracy (Diamond 2015), the autocratic-authoritarian turn that is reshaping liberal-democratic polities (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019; Blühdorn 2022b), and the new international competition of liberal and autocratic systems have shifted the open society back into the center of political debate. Indeed, in the wake of concerns about planetary boundaries and peak everything (Heinberg 2007) a key question is, as Dobson once put it when discussing Ophuls’ work, “whether a closed world, in resource terms, brings in its train a closed society, in political terms” (Dobson 2013, 247, emphases added).

In addition to the internationalization of the economy and the liberalization of trade, today’s self-descriptions of Western societies as open societies comprise at least four constitutive dimensions: the first is ideational, the second relates to political organization and constitution, the third focuses on societal structure, and the fourth is centered on individual self-realization. At the ideational level, open societies are defined, in line with Popper, by their rejection of absolute political truth and totalizing claims to a privileged insight into the good, right, and necessary. In positive terms, this implies a commitment to pluralism, innovation, diversity, negotiation, incremental development and adaptability, within a normative framework of individual freedom and universal human rights. At the level of political organization and constitution, open societies are defined, most notably, by their commitment to liberal democracy, the separation of powers, and the rule of law. This political constitution is meant to secure the open society’s constitutive values and provide a framework in which they can flourish. As regards their structure, open societies are differentiated into a variety of function systems (e.g., law, health, education, media, economy) with each of them governed by its own particular logic. This functional differentiation increases the ability of Western societies to deliver evermore differentiated societal needs and to maintain a high level of innovativeness and problem-solving capacity. And in terms of individual self-determination and self-realization, today’s open societies feature an unprecedented diversity of individual identities and lifestyles, and an extraordinary expansion of individual life-worlds and horizons for self-realization. Already Popper had regarded the confines of the nation-state as an interim arrangement, but today’s understandings of the open society are much more explicitly underpinned by, and oriented toward, the idea of an open cosmopolitan world society.

All four dimensions distinguished here are equally constitutive for the self-perception of late-modern societies as open societies. In fact, the four dimensions are inseparably connected to each other and together underpin these societies’ claim to being advanced and superior. Yet, in exercising its constitutive principles and seeking to fully realize its ideals, the open society progressively undermines its own foundations and produces side-effects which it cannot manage. And in the late-modern condition, the distinctive features and strengths of the open society seem to have metamorphosed into major weaknesses. At the level of the open society’s basic values of freedom and self-determination, the logic and dynamic of emancipation, that is, the persistent challenging of all established norms and restrictions as contingent and unjustified, also hollows out the open society’s own normative foundations and, in a dialectic process, eventually triggers an authoritarian turn (Polanyi [1944] 2001; Bauman 2001; Fraser 2019; Blühdorn 2022b). At the level of societal structure, functional differentiation massively increases the development of specialized knowledge and problem-solving capacities but, at the same time, it generates substantial problems of complexity and unforeseen side-effects. Thus, the principle of functional differentiation itself endangers the societal achievements it secures (Luhmann 1989; Beck 1992). At the level of political organization, the combination of both previous factors progressively unhinges democratic institutions, which increasingly fail in terms of both systemic performance (problem-solving capacity) and democratic performance (political participation, representation, and responsiveness), with this dual legitimation crisis triggering democratic ambivalence and anti-democratic movements (Blühdorn 2020a, 2020b). And at the level of individual self-determination and self-realization, the open society leaves individuals unprecedented scope for autonomous self-development, but the loosening of traditional ties and commitments, and the rejection of all fundamentalisms, also leave individuals with the challenge to make self-guided use of this potential and to accept full responsibility in the case of failure (e.g., Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002; Bröckling 2015; Reckwitz 2020).

Thus, the pursuit of its own logic progressively destabilizes the open society. Successive waves of further opening, one might say, persistently push open societies beyond the level of contingency and complexity that they can handle (Reckwitz 2021). The climate and ecological crisis, the social inequality-, recognition-, and social exclusion-crisis, the crisis of democracy, and so forth, that exist today are just some prominent examples providing evidence of how the open society, simply by exercising its constitutive principles, that is, by pursuing its ideals of openness and its logic of continuous opening, renders itself unsustainable and untenable. The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically exposed how for open societies, their constitutive principles, in all four respects distinguished above, individually and in their mutual interaction, metamorphose from a strength and ideal into weaknesses and stumbling blocks nurturing profound disappointment, disillusionment, and frustration—and giving, as Goldsmith put it, “whole sections of society good cause to express their considerable discontent in ways likely to be anything but pleasant for their fellows” (Goldsmith 1972, 5). This is the specifically late-modern condition; but as noted above, this condition does not necessarily signal any apocalypse. Much more likely is the transition to a new phase of modernity beyond the narrative of the open society.

Planetary boundaries

Very importantly, this destabilization of the open society is not, as Ophuls and many others have suggested, just a matter of the finiteness of its material resource base. Just as much, it is the implication of the open society’s logic and dynamic reflexively undermining its own cultural and political foundations. Still, the specification by Earth system scientists of biophysical planetary boundaries, and their transgression, dramatically accelerate this destabilization. They increase the visibility and politicization of the inherent contradictions of the open society. They expose to what extent the narrative of Western, supposedly advanced and universal values, for its own sustainability, has always relied on the principles of inequality and exclusion. While invoking supposedly universal values and rights, the European and Western project of autonomy, emancipation, and the open society has always been based on the exclusion, colonization, and exploitation—of other people(s), the biophysical environment, and the future. And the specification of planetary boundaries and their transgression also reveal to what extent the narrative of the open society has nurtured and engrained evermore demanding understandings of freedom, subjectivity, self-realization, and a good life whose generalization has long become entirely impossible. Unsurprisingly, therefore, as planetary boundaries are being hit and transgressed, the supposedly universal norms and values which, at the declaratory level, advanced-modern societies have always committed to are, ever more openly, being suspended. In the name of sustaining the understandings of freedom and self-realization which some parts of society—and humanity at large—regard as their non-negotiable rights and emancipatory achievements, others are being excluded (Blühdorn 2017, 2020a; Brand and Wissen 2018; Lessenich 2019). This is evidenced, most visibly, by the tremendous significance of migration politics and the increasing fortification of the supposedly open societies. It illustrates how the narrative of the open society becomes untenable and the logic of further opening itself propels the transition of late-modern societies into a new modernity that renegotiates established modernist values.

No less importantly, the specification of planetary boundaries also exposes the structural inability of liberal, democratic open societies to deal with the consequences of their transgression in the decisive, coordinated, and sustained manner that scientists and activists demand—which further propels the post-liberal, post-democratic, and post-inclusive reconfiguration of societal institutions (e.g., Shearman and Smith 2007; Wainwright and Mann 2013; van Reybrouck 2016). In fact, the open society is systematically ill-equipped for dealing with planetary boundaries because, per definition, that is, qua open society, it does not accept any non-negotiable imperatives of limitation and restriction. And given their inherent logic of acceleration, increasing contingency, and differentiation, late-modern societies are finding it more difficult than ever to respond to their sustainability crises with “the most careful synchronisation, integration and orchestration” (Goldsmith 1972, 17) that already Goldsmith had demanded. At the present conjuncture, tipping points and tipping cascades, therefore, render the “dynamic of destruction” even more “difficult to influence by human actions” than at earlier stages and ever more unlikely to be “reversed, steered, or substantially slowed” (Steffen et al. 2018, 6). They are tipping points into a new modernity.

Untenable self-descriptions

Thus, the crisis that late-modern societies are having to confront—and which experimental politics is supposed to help resolve—is quite clearly not simply a crisis of the capitalist system but, in a much more fundamental sense, a crisis of the ideal, self-understanding, and legitimation narrative of Western societies. In the late-modern condition, this ideal and self-description has reflexively undermined and unhinged itself. The contradictions and crisis tendencies built into the idea of the open society are indeed becoming “painfully obvious” and are rendering it unviable in biophysical, political, and cultural respects (e.g., Rosa 2015). Since the latter part of the twentieth century, efforts of reflexive modernization (Beck 1997; Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994, Beck, Bonss, and Lau 2003) have aimed to address the unforeseen side-effects of societal development. But they always reconfirmed the core values, logic, and agenda of the open society and, thus, also reinforced its contradictions and tendencies of self-destabilization. Hence, if “the abyss” which late-modern societies are confronted with today is, not least, their post-foundational excess of contingency, reflexive modernization has, with the best of intentions, persistently deepened and widened it. Therefore, self-proclaimed advanced-modern open societies may, in line with Goldsmith’s warnings, easily turn into failing societies. If their systemic crisis is not just a crisis of capitalism but one of the fundamental ideal, narrative, project, and self-description that supports and sustains them, this crisis erodes and suspends exactly those norms, values, and promises which a liberated, post-capitalist society was supposed to fulfill, that is, which underpin both the critique of present societal conditions and the vision which progressive politics is said to prefigure and pioneer. Exactly this, that is, the coincidence of, first, the painfully obvious destabilization and untenability of the established societal order and, second, the collapse of the progressive prospect and promise is, arguably, “the abyss” at whose edge “we” are standing. And this we is not humanity at large, but late-modern open societies, in particular.

Critical theory and sociology, and those strands of sustainability research explicitly understanding themselves as progressive and transformative in the established sense, do recognize that, borrowing Gramsci’s words, the old is dying, and the new cannot be born (Fraser 2019). But they hold on to the belief that, eventually, their new will be born. They do not engage with “the abyss” in the above sense nor acknowledge that something new is, in fact, already being born to fill the void. What cannot be born, it seems, is, first and foremost, the kind of society that eco-emancipatory movements and critical sociology have always been campaigning for (also see Streeck 2016, 35f). Indeed, at the current conjuncture, a socio-ecological transformation of late-modern societies, and of global society, as these movements and sociologists have been demanding it for decades, seems ever more unlikely. Instead, the logic and dynamic of the open society progressively dissolve the normative foundation or yardstick for the diagnosis of a legitimation crisis in the Habermasian sense. And rather than triggering any emancipatory transformation as envisaged by critical theorists and sociologists, this paves the way toward an entirely different society and modernity—beyond the norms and the narrative of the open society. To this new modernity, critical sociology—given its own normativity—necessarily remains blind. But as America’s apparent slide into fascism (e.g., DiMaggio 2022), China’s explicit claim to becoming the new global superpower, and Putin’s attack on Ukraine disperse the remains of the self-satisfied belief in the end of history and further exhibit the precariousness of the open society, further analysis along these lines seems imperative.

Pioneering the socio-ecological transformation?

In the present context, this analysis provides the background and foundation for reconsidering the common portrayal of experimental politics as a promising strategy for inducing a socio-ecological transformation of advanced modern societies. Having conceptualized the sustainability crisis and “the abyss” at whose edge “we” are said to be standing from the perspective of the specifically late-modern condition; having established that this crisis is neither only a biophysical crisis and abyss, nor just a crisis of capitalism, but a crisis of the ideal and self-understanding of late-modern societies as open societies, we may now turn to the questions: Can these societies experiment themselves out of this crisis? Can experimental politics resolve this crisis? I am addressing these questions from the perspective of a very specific conceptualization of the sustainability crisis, of course; and as regards experimental politics, I will focus specifically on eco-egalitarian and eco-democratic, bottom-up social movement- and civil society-based experimental politics. These two parameters, obviously, qualify the validity of the answers I will provide.

As stated in the introduction, major parts of the academic literature ascribe social movement-based experimental politics significant transformative capacities (e.g., WBGU 2011; Kallis and March 2015; Schlosberg and Craven 2019). In fact, in the recent literature, social movement-related narratives of hope (Blühdorn 2017) are often surprisingly similar to the discourses of prefiguration and pioneering which emerged at the time of the new social movements in the 1970s and 1980s (Touraine 1981; Habermas 1987; Melucci 1989). Back then, the eco-emancipatory new social movements diagnosed a systemic crisis; in fact, some strands were convinced that the system is bankrupt (Kelly 1984). Yet, it was a historical context saturated with the belief in the reinvention of politics and the project of a second, reflexive modernization (Beck 1992, 1997)—powered by social movement experimentalism. This new politics (Müller-Rommel and Poguntke 1990) was to build, bottom-up, new egalitarian, inclusive, democratic institutions as well as new infrastructures; new forms of collective, deliberative, and responsible decision making; new forms of production and consumption; new understandings of prosperity, happiness, and fulfillment, and so forth, which would eventually fully replace the established culture and institutional arrangements.

Today’s social movements and experimental politics, however, are situated in an entirely different context, shaped, inter alia, by an extended period of ideological market liberalism; by an internationalized, deregulated, and financialized form of capitalism; by the transition to the digital society; by profoundly ambivalent attitudes toward democracy, public reason, and cosmopolitanism, and, not least, by the prevalence of very different understandings of subjectivity, identity, self-determination, and a good life (e.g., Sennett 1999; Bauman 2001; Reckwitz 2020, 2021). Once again, a diversity of social movements and other political actors are diagnosing systemic crises, but at the current conjuncture, the diversity of these movements is a major obstacle to collective action; and the popularity of conspiracy theories, alternative facts, and post-truth radically challenges belief in the maturity and responsibility of citizens. In fact, late-modern societies are deeply divided and social polarization is rife. And a prevailing sense of capitalist realism (Fisher 2009) suggests that, realistically, there is no alternative to the established order. “Despite the widely felt reality of an acute system crisis,” Fraser (2015, 287) notes, “intense suffering and pervasive malaise do not become a practical force for social transformation.” Rather than by any utopias and hopes for a much better society, political debate seems to be shaped by dystopic fears of extinction and collapse (panic), by the determined defense of past achievements and established lifestyles, and—in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in particular—by the traumatic collapse of what, retrospectively, appears as the illusions of eco-pacifist and democratic-emancipatory movements of earlier decades.

Still, today’s social movement-based experimental politics is widely ascribed considerable transformative potential; it is supposed to pave the way for late-modern societies’ socio-ecological transformation. Yet, the conceptualization of these societies’ sustainability crisis sketched above sheds major doubt on the chances of social movement politics delivering on this expectation. For, in terms of its underlying logic and values, this experimental politics is, in fact, very much in line with, rather than radically different from, these societies’ self-description as open societies. Not only is the institutional setup and self-understanding of a polity as an open society a necessary precondition for new, alternative politics to thrive, but the whole idea of societal innovation and transformation driven by social movement actors and alliances—diverse, nonhierarchical, pluralist, self-determined, uncoordinated, emancipatory, and experimental—is very close to the idea and principles of the open society and its incremental politics. By definition, both the open society and social movement-based new or abnormal politics (Fraser and Monticelli 2021, 4) are skeptical of routinized, constricting, ossified, and bureaucratized politics. Both are committed to being innovative, creative, solution-seeking, and outside the box. Both are multi-directional, inconsistent, potentially contradictory, and reversible. Both value trial and error, the temporary, the tentative, and the provisional. Both follow the emancipatory logic and accelerate the dynamic of opening up.

Hence, if, and to the extent that, late-modern societies’ crisis of sustainability can really be conceptualized, as suggested above, as a crisis of the ideal underpinning the self-understanding and legitimation of modern societies, it is uncertain how social movement-based experimental politics, being itself much in line with the logic of the open society, might resolve this crisis and bridge “the abyss” at whose edge late-modern societies are said to be standing. If the sustainability crisis of late-modern societies is the condition where, in the wake of successive waves of further opening, that is, challenging and transgressing established norms and boundaries, the open society has run into a crisis of its biophysical foundations, a crisis of its political model (liberal democracy), and a crisis of its notion of subjectivity and modes of subjectivation, it is difficult to see how emancipatory, social movement-based experimental politics may help to address the open society’s excess of contingency and triple untenability. Not only does it share central features of the open society but, just like the latter, it is systematically ill-equipped to secure the determination, coordination, and persistence that already Goldsmith and colleagues had demanded at their time. At the planetary boundaries, social movement-based experimental politics necessarily reproduces rather than resolves the problems of the open society. Social movement experimentalism does not add anything categorically new or different; or as Niklas Luhmann (1996, 75) once put it, “the alternatives are without an alternative.” In fact, social movement-based experimental politics might be said to even reinforce the inherent contradictions and thus the crisis of the open society. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the argument that the emancipatory social movements have themselves contributed to, rather than helped to resolve, the multiple crisis of late-modern societies, has recently become very prominent (e.g., Lilla 2017; Norris and Inglehart 2019; Fraser 2019). For, whatever its declared intentions, social movement politics, in practice, has never managed to reconcile the inherent tension between its commitment to limitation and restriction, on one hand, and its equally strong commitment to liberation and emancipation, on the other (Blühdorn 2022b).

Ecologically speaking, eco-emancipatory thinking, movements, and experimental politics have always experimented with new criteria, practices, and procedures of individual and collective (self-)limitation, but these experiments tended to remain exactly that, experiments, and thus, temporary, non-committing, and reversible. They supplemented rather than substituted. They tended to further extend the range of available options, but much more rarely closed options down. And they mostly remained in the niche rather than reconfiguring the mainstream. Speaking in terms of social justice and equality, a consensus has been emerging that the new social movements have tended to prioritize what Boltanski and Chiapello (2017) call artistic critique, which is concerned with issues of self-realization and cultural identity, over social critique, which is oriented toward social justice, equality, and redistribution. Undoubtedly, the emancipatory social movements have contributed to the expansion of prevailing understandings of freedom, self-determination, self-realization, and a good life well beyond standards which might be generalized. They have contributed to the emergence of a constellation where the unrestricted self-realization of some is being pursued at the expense of the exclusion of others (Brand and Wissen 2018; Lessenich 2019; Blühdorn 2020a). In this sense, the emancipatory social movements and their experimental politics are co-responsible for the fact that even at “the edge of the abyss” late-modern societies keep moving, as Guterres put it, “in the wrong direction.”

Fraser’s term progressive neoliberalism (e.g., Fraser 2017, 2019, 11f; Fraser and Monticelli 2021) captures this co-responsibility. While Boltanski and Chiapello still argued that neoliberal thinking had, in a sense, colonized new social movement politics and co-opted it into the new spirit of capitalism, Fraser suggests a form of active complicity, “a real and powerful alliance” between “mainstream liberal currents of the new social movements” and “the most dynamic, high-end symbolic, and financial sectors” of the neoliberal economy (Fraser 2019, 11). Pursuing ideals of diversity and a politics of recognition, she argues, “the dominant currents of the new social movements” (Fraser and Monticelli 2021, 14) became part of a “new hegemonic bloc” (Fraser 2019, 14), helped to cast “a veneer of emancipatory charisma over the predatory political economy of neoliberalism” and “thereby created the soil that nourished the Right” (Fraser and Monticelli 2021, 14). So, just as urban experimentalism and transformation discourses are often portrayed as fully aligning with neoliberal thinking (e.g., Lauermann 2018; Evans, Karvonen, and Raven 2016; Westman and Castán Broto 2022) social movement-based experimental politics, too, is accused of reproducing rather than challenging the established order of unsustainability. But the “neoliberal commonsense is not all of a piece,” of course; it “harbors latent and subordinate elements,” Fraser reminds us, “that could, in principle, be activated in a bid for counter-hegemony” (Fraser 2015, 184).

Bridging the abyss to a new modernity

So, this analysis does not imply that social movement-based experimental politics has no critical and transformative potential at all. And, very importantly, its agenda is not a normative critique of eco-emancipatory social movements. But the triad of (1) the proximity of social movement-based experimental politics to the distinctive features of the open society, (2) the unresolved contradictions inherent to eco-emancipatory thinking itself, and (3) the “unholy alliance” (Fraser and Monticelli 2021, 14) of progressive social movement politics with market-liberal agendas, sheds substantial doubt on the narrative that eco-egalitarian and eco-democratic social movement-based experimental politics can make a major contribution to resolving late-modern societies’ sustainability crisis, and take them toward a society that will provide a good life for all within planetary boundaries. And as right-wing populists, too, are co-opting and reconfiguring established understandings of emancipation and autonomy, there is even more uncertainty about what kind of societal transformation these ideals might instead power (Lütjen 2022; also see Dannemann 2023 in this special issue). This uncertainty further reinforces the perception that late-modern societies are at the edge of an “abyss” and in some kind of interregnum period (e.g., Streeck 2016, 36–46; Fraser and Monticelli 2021). It raises the question how else the current tide of experimental politics and academic discourses about these practices may relate to this condition of late-modern societies. Contemporary forms of experimental politics require new forms of interpretation which correspond more closely to the specifically late-modern state of societies “at the edge of the abyss.”

One such explanation for the current prominence of experimental politics is that highly flexibilized, complex, accelerated, and post-foundational societies (Bauman 2000; Marchart 2007; Rosa 2015), quite simply, have no alternative. Per definition, open societies have always been committed to pluralism, incrementalism, openness, and innovation. Yet, in the late-modern condition, that is, in light of unprecedented uncertainty, complexity, and contingency, this commitment is ever less a matter of choice, but one of necessity (e.g., Bulkeley 2021). Also, in view of late-modern societies’ accelerating spiral of crises—financial, economic, climate, pandemic, migration, war; in the wake of, as Streeck (2016, 72) put it, the “long and painful period of cumulative decay, of intensifying frictions, of fragility and uncertainty,” regular, rule-based, and institutionalized politics, in many respects, has been unhinged, and experimental politics has become the normal mode of emergency management. The COVID crisis, the climate emergency, and the governance of the implications of Russia’s attack on Ukraine provide ample evidence. But supplementing this explanation, and no less important, is, arguably, that experimental politics addresses specific social grievances and needs which are particular to the late-modern condition. This perspective takes into account that in contrast to the new politics of Beck’s second or reflexive modernity, today’s experimental politics is—whatever its self-descriptions—arguably, not primarily concerned with prefiguring and pioneering the socio-ecological transformation but, at least as much, with practices of adaptation and resilience to conditions which, as quoted above, seem to have become “difficult to influence by human actions” and unlikely to be “reversed, steered, or substantially slowed” (Steffen et al. 2018, 6).

Resilience has been defined as the ability of a system to remain stable and return to its previous condition after an external irritation or shock (e.g., Gunderson 2000). It measures “the amount of change a system can undergo and still retain the same function and structure while maintaining options to develop” (Nelson, Adger, and Brown 2007, 396). “In the political economy literature,” Streeck notes, “the term resilience is…used both for the capacities of individuals and groups to withstand the onslaught of neoliberalism, and for the ability of neoliberalism as a social order, or disorder, to persist in spite of its theoretical poverty and practical failure to prevent or repair its own collapse” (Streeck 2016, 40). “The more resilience individuals manage to develop at the micro-level of everyday life,” he points out, “the less demand will there be for collective action at the macro-level” (Streeck 2016, 40). Adaptation, in turn, is about the ability of a system to cope with and make constructive use of changes which it has failed to foresee and cannot avoid (e.g., Smit and Wandel 2006). Accordingly, in crisis-ridden late-modern societies, to develop adaptive capacities is a key objective of the governance of (un)sustainability. For, borrowing Streecks words again, resilience and adaptive capacities are “what keeps an entropic, disorderly, stalemated post-capitalist interregnum society going” (Streeck 2016, 41).

Social movement-based experimental politics may usefully be considered from this perspective. This does not mean to fully deny its prefigurative and pioneering, that is, its critical, radical, and transformative dimension. Yet, at the current conjuncture, in the climate of capitalist realism; in the wake of tendencies of decivilization and brutalization which, as cited above, might lead late-modern societies toward a new Hobbesian state of nature (Honneth 2012; Latour 2017); in light of the recession of democracy (Diamond 2015) and the end of illusions (Reckwitz 2021); or, in a nutshell, “at the edge of the abyss,” strategies of adaptation and resilience are becoming ever more essential. What is required are, first, practices of resilience in the material sense enabling individuals, communities, and societies to withstand, as Streeck (2016) put it, the onslaught of material inequality and neoliberal austerity policies. Second, and no less important, strategies of resilience are also required in the psychological sense, that is, practices helping to withstand the moral and psychological pressures characteristic of late-modern societies “at the edge of the abyss.” Common to both is that they are no longer primarily directed to a socio-ecological transformation; for, “resilience is not resistance” (Streeck 2014, 40). Instead, the emphasis is shifting toward coping with the prevailing order of unsustainability and late-modern society’s metamorphosis beyond its ideal and narrative of the open society.

The first dimension, that is, that of material provision, has received a lot of attention in the recent literature on new everyday environmentalism (Meyer 2015; Meyer and Kersten 2016), the new politics of sustainable materialism (Schlosberg and Craven 2019), subsistence, self-sufficiency, and simplicity (Paech 2012; Kallis 2019); and self-provisioning in the cracks and interstices of neoliberal society (MacGregor 2021; Kousis and Paschou 2017). The second dimension, that is, resilience in the psychological sense has been addressed, for example, in work conceptualizing social movements and experimental politics as practices of simulation, narratives of hope, and as recreational and regenerative (Blühdorn 2006, 2007, 2017, 2020b). More tentatively, it has also been touched upon in recent work on post-apocalyptic environmentalism (e.g., Cassegård and Thörn 2018; de Moor 2022). Here the focus is not on the material needs of the socially underprivileged, but on emotional needs, identity needs, and a sense of loss and disorientation. More specifically, the emphasis is on the irresolvable contradiction highlighted above, that is, the contradiction between the multiple untenability of the established order of unsustainability, on one hand, and, on the other, the ongoing commitment to values, ideals, and identities which, retrospectively, turn out to have played a key role in the emergence of this order and still contribute to its stabilization. As such, this second dimension concerns mainly those autonomy- and self-expression-oriented, supposedly post-materialist middle-class cohorts that have always been the backbone of eco-emancipatory social movements. In the late-modern condition, “at the edge of the abyss,” these social groups, in particular, are finding it ever more difficult to retain their belief in critical reason and the Habermasian power of the better argument, in mature citizens, ecological responsibility, radical democracy, the self-governance of civil society, and so forth. After decades of campaigning, they have to come to terms with the post-apocalyptic realization that another world, as they had always envisaged it, may, after all, not be possible, nor a new politics of precaution, responsibility, and mature citizens—although late-modern societies are, quite evidently, experiencing a transformation of a kind they had never envisaged, but cannot avert.

As planetary boundaries are being transgressed, these progressive and ecologically and democratically committed parts of society, in particular, are confronted with the socio-ecological implications of their prevailing understandings of freedom, emancipation, self-realization, and even democracy. They have to cope with the apparent incompatibility of their emancipatory agendas and achievements with the values of equality, inclusion, universal human rights, and ecological integrity. And they have to come to terms with the traumatic suspicion that these agendas of emancipation, democratization, and reflexive modernization may, unexpectedly, have themselves become part of the problem. At a more general level, the specific dilemma of late-modern societies is that they are determined to retain their values and self-perception as advanced and morally superior open societies while, at the same time, they are becoming ever more painfully aware of the extent to which their emancipatory achievements and the maintenance of their freedom, values, and lifestyles have always been based on radical injustice and exclusion (Lessenich 2019; Brand and Wissen 2018).

In this particular context, and taking into account what some observers have noted about its project logic, its voluntarism, the problems of scaling up, and many participants’ erratic and inconsistent engagement (e.g., Deflorian 2021), social movement-based experimental politics may be interpreted as providing spaces for the reduction of complexity, the reintroduction of normative certainty, and the experience of undivided commitment to moral principles. They may be seen as spaces for the maintenance of activist identities in a context where activist narratives and self-perceptions are challenged by a growing sense that for averting the catastrophe it may be too late and a socio-ecological transformation will never be accomplished. In view of the irreconcilable contradiction between the commitment to the radical alternative and the equally powerful commitment to the defense of established emancipatory achievements; in view of the contradiction between the prospect of increasingly severe catastrophes triggering panic and angst, and the transformative disability of late-modern politics—also including new politics—such spaces are playing an important role. They allow for the articulation and experience of values, commitments, and identities which are incompatible with values and commitments that the same individuals may (have to) practice in other contexts. This performative dimension is not categorically new, of course; it has always been constitutive to experimental politics. Yet, in contrast to the anticipatory and prefigurative performance which has always been at the heart of progressive, avant-garde politics, these late-modern practices may be described as recreational or regenerative (Blühdorn 2017, 2020b). They are recreational, first, in the sense that they focus on the performative reconstitution and experience of notions and norms of subjectivity which, in the late-modern condition, are being liquefied and liquidated (Bauman 2000); and second, these practices and arenas allow for a recuperative break from the agenda and logic that, outside these recreational arenas, govern individual life and late-modern societies at large.

Thus, from this perspective, social movement-based experimental politics may be read as a social practice and mode of political articulation that addresses the specific concerns and grievances of late-modern societies “at the edge of the abyss”: disappointment, disillusionment, conflicting commitments, identity-loss, angst, and panic. Recreational experientialism is a mode of coping with the traumatic experience and irresolvable dilemmas particular to the late-modern condition and to social life in the interregnum. Crucial for this reading is the ambiguity of experimental politics which, on one hand, aims to be an avant-garde and pioneer of radical change and a socio-ecological transformation and, at the same time, is also committed to openness, pluralism, compromise, incrementalism, and reversibility. Given this ambivalence, it is surely correct to describe experimental politics as “continually testing and retesting the limits of possibility,” but it is uncertain whether beyond “envision[ing] real utopias,” it can really “contribute to making utopias real” (Wright 2010, 373; emphases added). Yet, if it cannot, that is, if experimental politics remains unable to upscale its practices and bring about a socio-ecological transformation of society, this must not be regarded as the failure of experimental politics. Instead, the latter’s contribution, strength, and success are, from this perspective, that it allows for the simultaneity of opposites—which is possible only if, and as long as, experimental politics is not scaled up and mainstreamed.

In this reading, the supposedly transformative practices of experimental politics then help to cultivate a self-description of late-modern society as being able and willing to perform a radical socio-ecological transformation—which is categorically incompatible with the idea of the open society and the readings of freedom and self-realization prevailing today. In activist communities, de Moor (2022, 942) suggests, holding on to the ethos and narratives of transformation helps to cope with “the emotional challenge of hopelessness and a loss of identity.” And in academic discourse, the interest in experimental politics flourishes not just because, in the long post-Marxist tradition, “vanguardist…attitudes have become deeply ingrained in academic radicalism” (Graeber 2007, 301) but, at least as much, because these narratives actually cater to needs and address grievances specific to (particular parts of) late-modern societies “at the edge of the abyss.” As the societal transformation and the evolution of a new modernity move ahead, this recreational performance of the ideals which are being left behind may be said to have a compensatory and therapeutic function. As, putting it in the words of Cassegård and Thörn (2018, 563-563), post-apocalyptic environmentalism gradually supersedes established forms of apocalyptic environmentalism, and “cultural activism…is meant to facilitate a mental or cultural adaptation to loss rather than to prevent it,” this reading of experimental politics steadily gains in importance. Its significance may be assumed to correspond to the pervasiveness in late-modern societies of psychological disorders, crises, and pathologies (e.g., stress, burnout, depression, drug consumption) as described by Sennett (1999), Bauman (2001), Bröckling (2015), Rosa (2015), Reckwitz (2020, 2021)—and countless psychologists, of course.

Conclusion

The objective of this article has been to contribute to a fuller understanding of experimental politics, which is widely portrayed as the most promising strategy for addressing the sustainability crisis of advanced modern societies. More specifically, the aim has been to rethink social movement-based experimental politics from the perspective of the specific condition of late-modern societies at the edge of an abyss or, as I framed it, at the threshold toward a new phase of modernity beyond their established ideals and self-description. For this purpose, a significant part of the article has been devoted to the questions centered on what the much-debated sustainability crisis actually refers to, that is, what is in crisis and what is to be sustained. Based on a reconceptualization of the sustainability crisis that reaches well beyond more common understandings, I then suggested that the common interpretation of social movement-based experimental politics as transformative experimentalism ought to be supplemented by a different reading as recreational experientialism. The conceptualization of the sustainability crisis as a crisis of the ideal and narrative of the open society, obviously, only supplements rather than replaces other conceptualizations as provided, for example, by biologists, climate scientists, or critical sociologists in the post-Marxist tradition. But it prompts a new interpretation that in the late-modern condition, in particular, has major significance. Indeed, to the same extent that experimental politics fails to deliver on the transformative hopes and expectations invested in it, additional explanations in terms of recreational experientialism are required to explain the sustained appeal of experimental politics.

As regards the suggested framing of the sustainability crisis, it might be worth reiterating that the argument developed here is not motivated by any anti-emancipatory or anti-democratic agenda (e.g., Ophuls and Boyan 1992; Murray 2019, 2022). Nor is it driven by cultural pessimism or historical determinism in the tradition of Oswald Spengler ([1922] 1991). No claim has been made here that the ideal of the open society has ever been fully realized or that late-modern societies (should) no longer portray themselves as open societies. Instead, the agenda has been to explore—taking a descriptive-analytical approach—how the inherent contradictions and dynamic of the open society incrementally undermine the latter’s own foundations, giving rise to an increasingly anti-egalitarian, exclusive, autocratic, and authoritarian society. Seeking to sustain the freedom and self-realization for some of its members, late-modern societies ever more openly suspend the universal rights and ecological imperatives to which they formally continue to commit. This increasingly visible contradiction, I have argued, marks the threshold toward a new phase of modernity beyond Ulrich Beck’s second or reflexive modernity.

Looking from this particular perspective, social movement-based experimental politics seems unlikely to provide the solutions and to develop the transformative capacities often ascribed to it—not in the established sense, at least. Indeed, rather than helping late-modern societies to experiment themselves out of their sustainability crisis, social-movement-based experimental politics may, involuntarily and contrary to its declared commitments, itself be part of the problem and further aggravate this crisis. Again, this suspicion does not imply any moral critique of social movement politics nor any anti-emancipatory or anti-democratic agenda. In particular, there is no suggestion here that authoritarian measures might be required or better suited to achieve sustainability goals (Ophuls and Boyan 1992). Instead, the article further pursues lines of enquiry suggested, inter alia, by Nancy Fraser’s concept progressive neoliberalism and proposes the interpretation of experimental politics as responding to particular needs—material and psychological—specific to late-modern societies at the threshold to a radically different phase of modernity. While social movement-based experimental politics may not contribute much in terms of pioneering the transformation toward a post-capitalist society respecting planetary boundaries and securing a good life for all, I have argued, it may still—as recreational experientialism—help to bridge the abyss at which late-modern societies are standing as they are going through the traumatic experience of moving beyond their self-understanding and established arrangements of the open society.

Not just with regard to my framing of the sustainability crisis, but in other respects, too, I have set up a very specific framework for interpreting experimental politics. I have selectively focused on particular forms of experimental politics, and offered a simplified account of critical theory’s narratives of prefiguration and pioneering. I have sketched a reinterpretation of experimental politics that focuses on only one of its dimensions, and my discussion of the open society oscillates between exploring the concept as a regulative ideal and using it to describe the institutional arrangements and setup of capitalist, liberal, democratic societies in the global North. All this restricts the validity of the analysis I am proposing. At the same time, however, this setup shines a bright light on dimensions of the sustainability crisis and experimental politics that other interpretations routinely eclipse. But at the current conjuncture, where late-modern societies are visibly moving into a new phase of modernity beyond their established self-description and eco-emancipatory commitments, it is about time that the simplistic narratives of experimental politics pioneering the socio-ecological transformation to sustainability are supplemented by interpretations which more closely reflect the specifically late-modern condition.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Cordula Cropp, Andrew Dobson, Andreas Exner, John Meyer, and four anonymous referees for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The research underpinning this article, as well as its open-access publication, have been supported by the Austrian Science Foundation [FWF Grant P 31226].