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Re: Modernity & Politics
by kjkhoo
29 May 2003 08:55 UTC
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Threehegemons@aol.com wrote:

But putting that aside, if the question is what appeal modernity has, a lecture from Foucault about how its all disciplinary anyway isn't really apropo. The 'attraction' of modernity is certainly not the black box camera in the school bus.
Yes and no, as I hope the ff. should make clear.

Modernity holds a lot of appeal for a lot of people--not only people who want a new t-shirt or a car, but also people who want liberal divorce laws, modern medicine, the ability to sleep with who they want, the bright lights of the big cities... Yes, the promise of modernity often turns out to be a fraud--inaccessible to some, not what it seems to others. Yes, as well that 'traditional' cultures aren't uniformally stifling (although many are, in many ways). Yes as well some people are pushed into modern life because they're kicked off their land, not because they want to enter it. But if you want to develop an account of the spread of modern ideals that moves beyond colonial elites and western settlers, you'll have to take seriously some of the experienced drawbacks of people living in 'traditional' contexts and some of the experienced promises of modernity (and keep in mind that the romantization as well as denigration of 'pre-modern' life is a vital tradition of modernity/post-modernity).
I guess a problem in such discussions is everyone has in mind paradigmatic examples. I think distinctions must be drawn. For instance, the appeal of the modern in such archetypal patriarchal and class and caste riven societies as China or India would pretty much be as you construct it. Although there's still the consideration of the construction of "autonomy" -- there is a sense in which it is an empty signifier into which one's preferred idea of "autonomy" is poured.

But there are yet others. In a few days I'm going to a dinner on the occasion of a harvest festival part of which is a 'beauty contest', previously an unknown which is not to say that there were no standards of 'beauty' but measured as by, e.g., the shape of the calves and the arms (probably seen in relation to ability to work and to walk long distances, since it was also applicable to men), of societies where formerly the booze flowed freely, divorce was liberal, sex was pretty free, and women went around topless (with strict regulation as to unwanted touches of the exposed breast by men), and the worst curse being for a woman to wave the skirt cloth (a fairly skimpy affair) in which she gave birth over whoever or whatever it was she wished to curse. Sure there was also much that was stifling -- but really, is modern society any different in terms of the combination of the 'liberating' and the 'stifling'?

Which brings us back to how and why some notions of autonomy gain ascendancy over others, often only to come around again. To go back to my own paradigmatic examples -- so the women were taught to robe themselves as 'morality' to begin with, then as 'autonomy', and now are being taught to selectively disrobe by way of current modes of dress also as 'autonomy', to which elders and men now object in their sisters and daughters, but will happily ogle at in others.

Then people rail against 'traditional' leaders, mainly because they no longer play 'traditional' roles of largesse and stewardship, but have gone in search of their own economic, social and political autonomy, while insisting on the subservience of 'the people'. So the people also go in search of their own autonomy in this regard.

As you say, denigration or romanticisation of the non or pre-modern is part of modernity's own construction. But this is precisely where rather than casting modernity as meaning autonomy and the non or pre-modern as stifling it, an investigation into notions of autonomy and of the ascendance and decline of different notions as well as their interaction is, I think, a much more fruitful exercise than casting the attractions of the modern as the 'autonomy' it offers.

When that has been done, it may perhaps be possible to weigh up which forms and notions of autonomy are 'better' than others. To be non reflexive about the notions of autonomy in the modern is, I think, not on, no matter how attractive we moderns may find those notions.

kj khoo

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