Accelerating Luhmann

The article is an inquiry into 'the other side' of Luhmann's own concept of reduction of complexity. This inquiry turns out to also be an inquiry into the other side of modernity. What is found is the production of complexity as an inherent part of postmodernity. In the same way that society is both modem and 'post-', systems operate in dialectic oscillation between complexity reduction and complexity production. To facilitate the observation of this oscillation, the notion of ambivalent complexity is suggested. Ambivalent complexity may figure on either side of the difference between system and environment, thus shifting the balance in their relative degrees of complexity. Using the notion of ambivalent complexity, we may analyse not only the possibility but also the impossibility of society.