we have never been modern

is a phrase suggesting that, despite what we may think, we have never fully adopted modern rationalism, and have always been at home in the internally inconsistent or the outright contradictory.

we have never been modern: the repertoire of modern critical analysis has always been internally inconsistent if not outright contradictory, and, more importantly, we have always been at home in the nonmodern world, living comfortably with hybrid combinations of natural and social objects/subjects' (Latour We 109-111 in Current anthro vol. 46,5 2005 p.722

we have never been modern, n.All

we have never been modern