In an age where much of our time is spent in front of screens or within supermarkets, retail chains, airports, and hotels chain, we increasingly inhabit what Marc Agué (1992) calls “non-places.” These functional and transient environments disrupt traditional experiences of conscious awareness and connection, altering how we think about and engage with the old around us. This is not to say that places of traditional social life – such as the family home and historic public square – cease to exist. But rather, that Agué’s concept of supermodernity highlights something important about how contemporary experience is increasingly shaped by an era defined by excess: an overabundance of information and the proliferation of anonymous, interchangeable spaces.
How Does Agué Compare Place and Non-place?
In the modern, material world, places are spaces where social life thrives. Within the context of supermodernity, however, a rather peculiar geography of non-places has proliferated, shaped by an era of excessive information and expansive, transient spaces. Unlike the traditional organic places that constitute the social world, non-places are designed for consumption or transit, rather than social and cultural engagement.
However, this is not to say that non-places exist in absolute terms. Instead, Agué’s anthropology of supermodernity employs the paring of place and non-place as a tool to measure the degree of “sociality and symbolization of a given space.” A place is rich with historical meaning and the energy of creative social life.
From the family home to the historic public square, places of worship, and spaces of associational life, places anchor personal and collective identities, historical memory, and interaction. They symbolize belonging and continuity, connecting people together through tradition, custom, and community.
In contrast, non-places are transient anonymous spaces that lack historical and relational depth. Airports, chain hotels, supermarkets, and the screens of computers, smartphones, or television. These (super)modern spaces are defined by functionality over meaning, and commodification and consumption, over social or cultural connection.
What Are the Implications of Non-place?
The brilliance of Agué’s analysis lies in its nuance. Supermoderntiy is not framed as total, places still very much exist. The point is that as we spend more and more of our time in non-place, the more we live ‘rather oddly,’ Agué argues, ‘in an intellectual, musical, or visual environment that is wholly independent of his [sic] immediate physical surroundings.
In places, individuals tend to feel connected to tangible experiences of belonging, culture, history, and community. While in non-places, the general experience is of anonymity and detachment. Individuals tend to function as passive consumers or travellers. As Mark Blacklock (2023) has pointed out, the contemporary implications of the rise of non-places are many and varied. The most crucial aspect of supermodernity is the paradox of anonymity.
While non-places like airports and retail chains promise anonymity, access to these non-places still demands proof of identity. In the case of the airport, identity must be proven by a passport and boarding card. Retail chains increasingly seek to verify identity through membership and reward cards that require an email address. Agué recognized that the rapid proliferation of supermodernity – the digital world in particular – would ‘increasingly require us to prove who we are’ (Blacklock, 2023).
How Do We Define Identity in the Context of Supermodernity?
In the context of supermodernity, identity, as Richard Seymour (2019; 2024) has observed, becomes a form of continuous work. Through the non-places of smartphones and computer screens, a labour or near-constant identity formation is extended to almost everyone. Participation in digital communities requires perpetual crafting of a “digital self” that satisfies the given platform’s demands for accountability – and monetizable content.
In the case of social media, one’s digital self must be agile, responsive, and ready to join collective movements or online trends with immediate effect to stay relevant. The relative anonymity experienced in the non-place of the airport, for instance, is not extended in the same way to the smartphone user.
While it is certainly true that the formation of a digital identity may provide some with a sense of security and belonging, it often reflects a notion of identity that is less about self-expression and more about the imperatives of digital platforms. These platforms demand relentless production and validation of the self, turning identity into a tool for profit and surveillance rather than personal fulfilment.
In this sense, Marc Agué’s anthropology of supermodernity reveals the tension between the relative freedom of anonymity granted by non-places and the deepening alienation of digital identities. Above all, his analysis offers a powerful commentary on the radical transformation of identity, community and social meaning in our times.
