modernity

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is 'the second overcoming of gnosticism' which comes to full expression in the fundamentally secular idea of human self-assertion.

according to Blumenberg, the system of the modern epoch consist essentially in 'the second overcoming of gnosticism' and comes to full expression in the fundamentally secular idea of human self-assertion' (in Jefferey stout).

is a concern with the present and with the self.

The indeterminancy of the modern is, however, commensurate with the indeterminacy of the objects (or whatever they might be) to which talk of modernity almost invariably alludes: the present... and the self. It is even unlikely that we would talk of modernity at all, unlikely at least that we would conceive of it quite so diveresly, were we not also uncertain about the character of the present, and of our place within it' (Faubion 1988:366)

is a condition of loss... the loss of faith in an 'ethically ordered' life world, in what anciently would have been called 'the cosmos'.

The point, though elaborated in the past two decades by both Foucault and Blumenberg, is in some measure originally Weber's: that modernity, before it is anything else, is a condition of loss, the loss of faith in an 'ethically ordered' life world, in what anciently would have been called 'the cosmos' (Faubion 1988:366).

is a force which for a long time had the power to represent, to accelerate, or to summarize. Today it is much less than an essence, but still much more than an illusion.

So is modernity an illusion' No, it is much more than an illusion and much less than an essence. It is a force added to others that for a long time it had the power to represent, to accelerate, or to summarize a power that it no longer entirely holds' (Latour 1993:40).

is a form for which coloniality opened up the conditions of possibility.

Coloniality as the constitutive side of modernity emerges from these latter two narratives, which, in consequence, link cosmopolitanism intrinsically to coloniality. . . ..Coloniality, in other words, is the hidden face of modernity and its very condition of possibility. ' ((Mingnolo public culture 12(3):721)

is a historically unprecedented amalgam of new practices and institutions, institutional forms, new ways of living, new forms of malaise, progress, and rationalization.

Modernity' is that '[h]istorically unprecedented amalgam of new practices and institutional forms (science, technology, industrialproduction urbanization), of new ways of living (individualism, secularization, instrumental rationality)... and of new forms of malaise (alienation, meaninglessness, a sense of impending social dissolution). Progress and rationalization' (Charles Tayor in Modern Social Imaginaries)

is a period extending from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (in the case of europe) to the mid to late twentieth century which is associated with capitalism and notions such as progress.

refers to a period extending from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (in the case of Europe) to the mid to late twentieth century characterized by the growth and strengthening of a specific set of social practices and ways of doing things. It is often associated with capitalism and notions such as progress.'

is a phantasm, because the strict opposition between nature and society, object and subject, body-thing and mind which characterize modernity, characterise the ideological self-understanding but not the praxis of modernity.

For Latour, modernity is a phantasmagoric interlude characterised by the strict opposition between nature and society, object and subject, body-thing and mind. . . . . Modernity is a phantasm, because the main differences named above characterise the ideological self-understanding but not the praxis of modernity. This becomes particularly clear in its relationship to things and, more generally, to the non-human, under which Latour includes living entities, artefacts and machines, networks, technical infrastructure and material institutions. The cultures that according to Latour were dismissed as premodern and exotic by modernity were characterised by categorical and practical intermingling with non-human entities: this is exactly what made those cultures seem unenlightened. In contrast, modernity establishes an order in which everything is either a subject or an object, either nature or society, belonging either to things or to the mind. However, upon closer inspection this distinction turns out to be self-deception. But if this disjunction is valid as 'enlightened' and modernity itself identifies with the Enlightenment, then this self-identification is illusory: we believe that we are modern, but we never have been. The very thing that modernity accuses premodem cultures of, he argues, namely mixing up conceptual oppositions, in fact applies perfectly to modernity itself. Yes, the same obscene melange of human and non-human has continued to grow throughout all of modernity. This mixing up is also typical of fetishism. That is why the very era that considers itself so decidedly anti-fetishistic is in fact the age that spread fetishism wider than ever before. It is not just older, 'primitive' societies or some remaining minority cultures that are fetishistic, but modernity itself. If modernity is in fact precisely that which it believes it is so radically different from, then modernity is an illusion. Perhaps this idea really is provocative. It will be examined first in a closer discussion of Latour... in later chapters, it will be shown in detail, in the scientific history of fetishism, that Latour's critical position towards modernity is almost as old as modernity itself. It will become clear how much modernity, fighting against the 'false magic' of premodern and non-European cultures, was in fact subject to a kind of self-enchantment, which it remains unaware of right up until the very brink of its destruction. The difference to Latour will be that the insight that modernity is an illusion (we have never been modern) does not occur beyond modernity in a postmodern era, in deconstruction, in a second or self-reflexive modernity that will follow the fi rst epoch, rather it is structurally part of it. Modernity in fact means that self-enchantment and its Enlightenment belong together just as fetishisation and its criticism do.

modernity, n.Memes

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