Other sides of modernity

Posted on by Iansã

There was Spinoza, contra Descartes and perhaps contra Kant. Explain/explore the possibility of not having the mind/body split. There was the counter-Enlightenment but what about critiques of Enlightenment that are not dully postmodern? Modernity carries values like authenticity, and believes in foundations, whereas the postmodern does not. This is why I am far more modernist than postmodernist, but is there some other way out of the contradictions that inhere in the idea of the modern?

There was Benjamin, contra Marx. Explain/explore the possibility of a materialist history that is not totalizing or unidirectionally progress-oriented.

Max Weber is the one who conceptualized “modernity” as the direction of history that had Europe as a model and a goal. He also discussed some contradictions between modernity and modernization.

But modernity is not truly in the skyscraper or the bank or even the savoir faire. It is in the movement of a dangerous gift, transmitted from the West to the rest. Modernity says: we have the good, and we will give – or teach, or sell – it to you. Modernity is salvation through this gift from your prior self. It is Sir Stamford Raffles of the East India Company turning Temasek, the fishing village, into Singapore, the trade hub and aspiring metropolis. It is the magnificent edifice of Cambridge University turning Melissa, the girl who wore cheap pajamas sewn by her grandma to bed, into Melissa, the cosmopolitan, who graduated in a Hepburn dress and a fur hood.

Modernity is someone saying to you: look, we have made you better. And you believing it.

Axé.

5 thoughts on “Other sides of modernity”

  1. BAUDELAIRE. Whom Vallejo liked. From an Egyptian in my MOOC (walk like an Egyptian):

    “yeah speaking of contradictions Baudelaire wrote once about modernity that it is “the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable” , its a sum of contradictions, once it started out with principles of rationality and freedom and individualism and ended up acting its own dominance on ppl, I mean the idea that it represents the exclusive truth and rationality and thus anything opposing will be regarded as irrational and backward is itself an authoritarian idea…!!

    It started with the idea that there is one rational answer to everything through which u can reach truth then it kept evolving new forms and ideas contradictory to each other and forcing the world into this race to hold on to whats “modern” … anyways the evolution of modernism as an idea and the way it is manifested now is a very interesting subject and the effect of politics on its evolution using it as means to achieve political power and domination the ends/means dilemma once its Europe and traditional colonialism and then cold war and US advocating its own capitalist corporate system and promoting american principles as global made humanity more chained to this totalitarian mindset if i might describe it as such in the name of a free and liberal world!!

    So mainly modernism in its popular European form was a call that ended up as means to achieve dominance, that raises the question what does this version of modernism has to do with french revo call and original seek of freedom, where did it all go wrong u know.”

    Reply

  2. It’s good writing and your terms are precise.

    I have reflected much lately on associated sordid topics — although I believe modernity, rather than modernism is the object of my criticism.

    Postmodernism is much worse. Yesterday Mike and I were talking and we discussed that it’s unconscious goal seems to be to level everyone to the level of the traditionally ‘lowest of the low’ in society — the psychologically deranged. We have to sacrifice ourselves so that they don’t feel lonely or disempowered. Don’t talk about health as that is ‘ableism’. Respect people because of their debilities (not even ‘in spite of’ them), etc. The psychology of postmodernism is the psychology of psychiatry. You, the individual, have no knowledge of who you really are, only your own solipsistic sense of your being — your “privilege”. You need others to point out to you what is real and what isn’t — and you ought to thank them for bringing you down and trying to make you conform. Random strangers who pull you down are truly the doctors of the future, teaching you ethics and enhancing your sensitivity to what is really important — the self-esteem of the irredeemably damaged folks in society, who could use your company and moral support.

    The trend of most of cultural leftism is going in this direction.

    Also:

    Reply

      1. I no longer see any point in being for decolonisation when it is clear that people often WANT to be colonised and given some direction — for instance contemporary Zimbabwe following American ideologies and culture.

Leave a reply to Z Cancel reply