The transition to global liquid modernity: The revolt of the masses in the undefined neighbourhood

Abstract

Here we examine the framework of theoretical congruence of the change from the solid to the liquid phase of modernity using a review of La rebelión de las masas (The revolt of the masses) by Ortega y Gasset, interpreted from the limitless context of communicative relationships on the Internet. In his posthumous work, Retrotopia, Bauman proposes the notion of an undefined neighbourhood to explain the acceleration on the web of the same consumerist tendencies that characterized the individualism of mass culture. He also establishes a pattern of continuity in the resurgence of identity trends in the framework of the so-called undefined neighbourhood. We approach, in a hermeneutical manner, the interrelationship between both concepts. If the options available for individual communication through the Internet are reabsorbing the patterns of consumption and identity of cultural massification and reproductive consumerism then, according to Bauman, the revolt of the masses can be understood as an exacerbated result of the individualism that feeds the consumerist tendency of the globalized undefined neighbourhood.