Why Novum?
Explaining the thinking behind my newsletter
Earlier this year, I was sent a few sections from Ernst Bloch’s three-volume series The Principle of Hope (1954) as part of a reading group. It has stayed in my thoughts ever since. It’s also inspired the new name of this newsletter.
While The Principle of Hope may sound like the title of a self-help book, it’s not. Bloch’s work is a philosophical exploration of how dreams of the future enter our imagination and move history. He traces these ideas through fables, folk stories, religion, literary utopias, political movements, and historical events.1 Bloch contrasts them with those ideas imprisoned by the present moment and its repetition, obstructing life’s alternatives and thus eliminating hope itself. The series has been described as a “vast and disorderly exploration of the manifestations of hope on all levels of reality."2 It’s also had an impact on science fiction.3
What I especially liked about Bloch is that he views “the new” as a category unto itself. For him, it goes by many names: it is the OBJECTIVE POSSIBILITY… THE FRONT… ULTIMUM… THE HORIZON… and lastly, his most-used descriptor, NOVUM.
I couldn’t help but latch onto this last word when I first read it. Novum is the possibility of the “unexpectedly new” to come about, said to be latent in the time in which one lives.4 Unlike fantasies, these future possibilities are linked to actual material conditions, and their intensity varies depending on historical circumstances. The sensibility behind novum is purposeful skepticism toward the present state of things and their permanence. The concept appears again and again throughout Bloch’s work.
As he writes:
Ages in which nothing happens have almost lost the feeling for the Novum; they live in habit and what is coming is no such thing, but rather as circumscribed as what happened yesterday. But ages like the modern one, in which history, perhaps for centuries, stands in the balance, have the feeling for the Novum in the extreme, they sense what future is, with bated breath, by working to promote what is approaching, [to make] the approaching possible.5
Only with the farewell to the closed, static concept of being does the real dimension of hope open. Instead, the world is full of propensity towards something, tendency towards something….6
Not only the subjective, but also the objective conditions for the expression of a Novum must therefore be ready, must be ripe, so that this Novum can break through out of mere incubation and suddenly gain insight into itself.7
Novum can be likened to a kind of zeitgeist: a mix of conditions that possesses the right ingredients for historical newness, be it in culture, politics, world affairs, economy, or everyday life. Some times are naturally more predisposed to this than others and, as a result, have much more weight on the future. I would say our time feels novum “in the extreme.”
Applying the Frame
My Perspective
The Principle of Hope was published in three installments during the 1950s. Some seventy years later, I would argue its frame is much more relevant today. This is because there are multiple drivers of novum at present and, therefore, many unknowns.
In my view, the three leading ones are as follows:
Firstly, there is technology and the internet: it is indisputably the leading accelerator of change today and has developed far faster than can be processed politically, culturally, or socially. Just in terms of cognition, it has caused a transformation within us that has only just started and is still poorly understood because it is so without precedent.8 The sweeping instability it has wrought, coupled also with its boundless possibility, leaves us with so many unknowns.
Historically, modernity has largely been the story of Western power and its expansion. But today, the West is in the process of being decentered as other emerging powers seek their own seat at the highest level. In our increasingly multipolar world, grand narratives on civilizational and regional identities are staging a comeback. Here, we also have many unknowns, especially when we consider the growing scarcity of Earth’s resources. Just as importantly, a global middle class has also emerged for the first time. This new generation of non-Western masses will inevitably ask something of the world as it becomes imbued with new meaning.
Finally, capitalism isn’t what it used to be. It’s now deeply financialized, value creation more immaterial, and its world more and more machine-led. Labor’s slide continues unabated as its share of total economic output drops to historic lows. So many old ‘economic laws’ taken for granted no longer apply. And on top of it all, we’re right on the cusp of artificial intelligence being used on a mass scale, bound to uproot innumerable people. The entire coordinates of value creation are out of sync, causing discontentment and stagnation.
Together, these drivers form the foundation of my perspective.
Amid all this flux, the term 'interregnum' has been thrown around to describe the present time. Interregnum is defined as a transitional period prone to crises when all kinds of “morbid symptoms" are said to appear. But what’s less often mentioned is that its original writer, Antonio Gramsci, spoke of interregnum as affecting different levels: the global, the state, and the social.9 I'd say we’re arguably 3 for 3. All levels are being fundamentally transformed.
I view novum and interregnum as closely related concepts. One begets the other: during periods of interregnum, novum appears.
After the 2020 pandemic started, I think today's way of living really sunk in for so many people. There’s this real frustration over what it lacks, a general feeling of misalignment over what should be its priorities. We can interpret the Great Resignation as a symptom of this malaise. I always liked writer Lauren Berlant’s description of living today as involving a kind of "cruel optimism." Technology is expected to keep improving (hence the optimism), but its ends remain relatively cruel. Maybe you share these same sentiments.
In all, I’m happy to say this newsletter’s direction now better aligns with my thoughts, and I hope you find it worthwhile. My previous title for this substack was Thinking Historically and I felt it lacked focus. This new frame is instead something concrete to build upon while still allowing me to discuss historical context to some degree.
Amid our interregnum, I feel like there’s no better time for the spirit of novum.
https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/27/moylan.html
Ibid.
Bloch is concerned with “scientifically plausible possibilities,” unlike fantasies. He calls this novum. The materialism behind the concept has made it a popular idea within science fiction.
Ibid.
The Principle of Hope, pg. 288
Ibid., pg. 18.
Ibid., pg. 124
An interesting graphic from a 2016 paper from the wikipedia entry for metasystem transition, or the development of higher forms of organization. We are thought to be in such a transition now.
https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/96/3/767/5712430