“The phenomenology of post-risk society”: temporal configurations of modernity

Abstract The article puts forward a research agenda for the new field of phenomenology that I call “the phenomenology of post-risk society.” The goal of the latter is to establish the boundaries and indicate the essential linguistic markers of the research field which allows us to raise the question of modernity of a new type, that provokes shifting from “the risk society” (Ulrich Beck) to “ the post-risk society ,” which no longer lets us be contemporaries with ourselves. At a certain point we turn into outcasts, unrequired not only by our society, but also by ourselves (“those who left” vs. “those who stayed,” as in the case of Russia in 2022–2025). Provided that we are no longer contemporaries with ourselves, what are the risks of such an existence for us and how can we find a way out of it, that will enable the possibility of finding a new “caring Self” under conditions of “linguistic erosion” when we speak a borrowed language and use the vocabulary of “hate speech?” The article is imbued with essential experiencing of the split world of modernity—experiencing of time corrosion . We think that modern society has gone through a change in the nature of the temporal organizing of experience, characterised by the phenomenon of “ the frozen present ”—by the time that is incapable of saving us, “the present without end,” which is “impossible as a present” (Maurice Blanchot). The new society of “post-risk” holds the increasing danger of the temporal dissolution of identity. The uncomfortableness of the absent present forces humans to group together, to unite with each other based on the principle of “us vs. them.” Being put under pressure of the risks of a new order, society proves incapable of cross-border consolidating which could have empowered it to resist new epidemics and wars in an efficient and democratic way. Destruction of cosmopolitan ties, which “the risk society” could still rely upon, leads to reproduction of semiotic models which do not reflect the new challenges of the global world order. We will trace new temporal configurations of the society of post-risk: the phenomenon of the absent present , the phenomenon of “ the lost future ” (the future is put “on credit”), and the phenomenon of “ the time of loss ” as the time to accept suffering.