More on Modernity and Politics

Khaldoun, I agree that race and Orientalism (as much as class) were central to 
the construction of the discourse of the modern. I don't think anyone has 
suggested otherwise on this listserv.

But I doubt if it is fruitful to see the whole discourse of the modern 
developed in isolation by the elites for mere instrumentalist purposes of 
accumulation. Even elites have to find meaning beyond accumulation. Furthermore 
the subaltern has some say in meaning making too. All discourses to be 
successful in disciplining our vision must be dialogic up to a point. Of course 
that does not mean all voices are given equal air time. Garmsci's concept of 
hegemony explains the problem of domination with subaltern support very well.

Elements of the modern, such as Modernism, are deeply pessimistic, ironic, 
distancing - hardly cultural modes for purposive, active, bourgeois 
accumulators. That is why I find it very difficult to buy your narrow use of 
the concept.

I think it may also be unproductive to turn it quickly into a morality play - 
is it a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know and I don't know whether it 
matters much. It is the shared modern condition. Wallerstein defines it by the 
discourse of change. To put it crudely, the modern is when we think things are 
changing, perhaps too fast and we have to come to terms with it, while the 
"traditional" is when we thought things didn't change much (even when they did) 
and we had to find ways to come to terms with non-change. I think modernity 
produces the polarities of a sterile antithesis, which Berman calls 
"modernolatry" and "cultural despair." Neither of them describe the whole 
thing, although both are a part of it. Note that the most virulently 
anti-modern ideologies are completely modern phenomena.

Furthermore, some have suggested that Capitalism is an adequate term and we 
must not muddy the water with a concept like the "modern." Maybe. But the 
conversation has already begun, perhaps a few centuries before this Listserv, 
and modernity, modernism, and modernization are widely used terms and if we are 
to have an intellectual and political impact we have to engage with that 
conversation. I in fact think modernity is a useful concept, burdened no doubt 
with much, but which concept isn't?

Best
Krishnendu