Rewriting Modernity

This article rereads Paul Virilio, drawing on the distinctionbetween topography and topology to argue a case for Virilio as a rewriter of modernity. Invoking Jean-François Lyotard’s notion of rewriting modernity as an unbroken process of accumulation founded on affective life in “Re-writing Modernity” and “Argumentation and Presentation: The Foundation Crisis,” it enlists topology as a horizontal spatial structure that enables us to rethink space, time,and modernity outside the limits of the “squared horizon,” where the“squared horizon” is viewed as a spatial and textual metaphor for framing perspectives on the past, present, and future. The analysis deconstructs the topography of the “squared horizon” as a relationality in an unfolding continuum, where spaces exist ontologically and where the immaterial forces of the dromospheric and the atmospheric generate a relational and historical connectedness

Europe and the emergence of modernity. The entanglement of two reference cultures

This article offers a theory of the notion ‘reference culture’ by taking as major examples modernity and Europe. Both constitute reference cultures and while different are closely related. A certain entanglement took place between the emergence of modernity and the formation of European culture whereby the latter came to be one of the main carriers of modernity. However, they need to be separated in that Europe, while being the first major expression of modernity, is not the only embodiment of modernity. Modernity can be termed a first-order reference culture and Europe a second-order one. While there have been many second-order reference cultures, the European one was an influential and powerful one, but it was also a temporary one. This article sets out the main features that define the specificity of Europe. Against accounts that emphasize a master narrative or an underlying cultural unity to Europe, it is argued that crucial to the making of Europe was the formation of modes of communication that enabled common practices to develop across a range of different cultures. In this way, it is argued, Europe consolidated as a consequence less of endogenous factors than exogenous ones. Important, too, was the mobile nature of European culture which facilitated translation into other cultures and which was also receptive to modernity. The twentieth century has witnessed the emergence of other varieties of modernity and the global decline of the European mode

Agency beyond subjectivity : the unredeemed project of May Fourth fiction

This paper is part of a larger project in which I make a case for the central importance of the problem of free will to considerations of Chinese modernity. I begin by distinguishing between two key aspects of modernity and the Enlightenment: (1) subjectivity, or the realm of consciousness including the capacity for critical reason, and (2) agency, or acting on the world outside consciousness in a way that makes a difference. I then suggest that neglecting the development of rational agency cripples the force of the commitment to human freedom that drives the project of modernity. In calling attention to agency and proposing to explore its place in modern Chinese fiction, I do not mean to belittle the first line of inquiry into subjectivity and its various aspects. My point is simply that investigations of subjectivity can encompass only one part of modernity, one aspect of modern consciousness and only some of the questions that modern literature can pose. Modernity may mean a rise of individual consciousness, yet equally crucial is the possibility that reason can advance human freedom

The Particular Logic Of Modernity

A discussion of the logical role of particular concepts in Robert Pippin's reading Hegel as a theorist of modernity, with special reference to the question whether modernity can be surpassed or left behind

Modernity and Sustainability

Since always sociology disclaimed about the role of science and technique. First, it used to analyse the firms, making some critics, during their period of the highest expansion and industrialisation, and later focussing on their unpredictability and uncontrollability. Science and technique follow the fate of modernity. The human activities through science and technique modify the society and, as it’s happening any time more, they create risks even more uncontrollable. From the risk hypothesis we pass into the threat until arriving to a real crisis. From the different crisis of the post-modernity era, the most severe seems to be the environmental one. This work analysis how, through the risks linked to the unpredictability of human actions we arrive to the modernity and post-modernity crisis. Attention is put on the consequences of this crisis, driving men to solve the existing problems, creating from the beginning the base principles of the society itself, in a sustainable path

Urban history and modernity in Central Europe

This historiographical review discusses recent literature on cities in modern Central Europe – mainly on Berlin and Vienna – which reflects the great variety of approaches to urban history and underlines the importance of urban history for the study of modernity. The history of urbanisation was a central event in the history of modernity. Especially in the Central European capitals of Berlin and Vienna, where modernisation and urban growth started later and then advanced quicker than in West European cities, all aspects of social, political, economic, and cultural modernity and its consequences can be observed in detail

The Construction of Touristic Modernity in Xizhou

Tim Oakes’ (1998) concept of touristic modernity accurately describes how the Chinese national discourse surrounding tourism, as both a tool for economic growth and nation-building, has shaped what the local reality has become for many towns and villages in the peripheral regions of China, especially those with large populations of ethnic minorities. Specifically in the Dali Bai Autonomous Region, foreign tourism followed by nostalgia-fueled domestic tourism has transformed Dali into a commercialized tourist destination, which has begun to spill out to other towns around the lake such as Xizhou. Touristic modernity is not, however, a singular homogenous force that culturally and physically transforms a given location overnight; instead, the construction of touristic modernity is a process that involves multiple contributing actors. In Xizhou, where the construction of touristic modernity is in its beginning stages, three main actors who are contributing to this process can be identified: domestic tourists, the Linden Centre, and local people