[-empyre-] Is Modernity our Antiquity

["Christophe Bruno" <christophe.bruno@unbehagen.com>]

So, first I would like to apologize again for Aliette's bad English. One 
never apologizes too much... ;-)

I have some difficulties I would like to discuss, and I'm sorry if my 
approach looks a bit naïve but I'm not so familiar with all this academic 
stuff (thank you wikipedia and if I'm wrong please blame them ).

Lucio mentionned (and criticized) the idea of Eco about a New Middle Age. 
However, I think that there is some truth in Eco's idea (I haven't read Eco 
though ;-) in the sense that to me postmodernism appears as a transitional 
period.

I feel very close to Lyotard's or Danto's ideas about the end of a master 
narrative, however what I feel also very strongly is that this period 
without any master narrative is not immortal either. The problem is that 
since we've been  more or less embedded in it (depending on our age), we may 
not yet realize it. Of course there is 9/11...

Between Antiquity and Renaissance, there was a long period of latency. This 
period was crucial in that it gave Antiquity  its status of "Golden age". 
Assuming that postmodernism really means something (which I believe is 
true), the answer to the question "is Modernity our Antiquity" may depend on 
this other question: "is Postmodernity for ever", because in the case it is 
not, Postmodernity may indeed play the role of this latency period. Without 
any latency period, I can't imagine how Modernity could be our Antiquity.

Answering yes to this last question ("is Postmodernity for ever") might not 
seem completely stupid, because after all, if we are grown up enough to be 
able to get rid of our totalitarian ideals, there is no reason why we should 
go back to some previous state... But things don't work that way... (We 
encounter here a kind of paradox, because in a sense, Postmodernity may 
carry in its very definition the idea of an everlasting state: if we are in 
a state where the question of progress is negated, somehow the question of 
time arises in a different manner)

The problem I have now is that there seem to be several fields that have 
been experiencing postmodernist eras, at different times of history:

For instance, postmodernism in history, à la Lyotard, was coined in 1982, 
but its historical formation lasted from 1979 (the Iranian revolution) to 
1989 (Berlin wall) (I'm not sure that the use of the term "history" here is 
legitimate, but.)

Postmodernism in art, à la Danto, is from 1981, but Danto situates the 
transition in the sixties with Pop Art.

But now, here is what I thought: the postmodern state is not reserved to 
history or art. We could apply it to science for instance. If we assume that 
posmodernity has to do with some crisis that arose from the too pregnant 
presence of a totalizing ideal, then we could say there has been such crisis 
in mathematics: the crisis in the roots of mathematics which ended with 
Gödel (in the 30's). There has been such a crisis in phyics with Quantum 
Mechanics at the beginning of the XXth century. You can also claim that Dada 
had already all the ingredients of postmodernism
Cf http://www.sociology.org/content/vol004.001/locher.html

So, some aspects of postmodernism might not be so specific to our late 
period. But, I still follow Lyotard, because the most important thing here 
is postmodernism in history! This is the real validation step! Warhol, 
Gödel, Duchamp, why not Mallarmé, might be operators of some relative 
postmodernity, but the real stuff is history. So Postmodernity still means 
something, and can still be dated.

Now the next step: I would like to isolate now one of these threads (ie one 
of these fields that might have experience some modern to postmodern 
transition). And in fact the one I would like to show you developped indeed 
from modernity to postmodernity but finally went back to some "modern state" 
in a hidden way. This is called the irony of history. If I'm able to isolate 
one of these threads, then we might have the beginning of an answer to the 
D12 question.

Here is one of these threads: it is called the World Wide Web:

a) the WWW preconcept as a social network was born with Jeremy Bentham 
utilitarianism.
b) Totalitarian ideologies of the XXth century are a first attempt to 
implement Bentham's panopticon over a part of mankind. In the mean time, 
just after ww2, Turing sets the basics of computing machinery. And finally, 
in 1989, the end of these attempts marks the end of Modernity.
c) the WWW can be considered as a characteristic implementation of 
Postmodernity
d) With the rise of Google and global terrorism, WWW is turning into a 
Benthamian panoptic structure of colonization of intimacy and semantic 
capitalism.

So my conclusion for the moment is as follows:
1) postmodernity is not for ever 2) postmodernity is indeed a latency period 
3) postmodernity is a "ruse de l'histoire" that allows us to realize some of 
the ideals of modernity without coping with the unbearable.
Eventhough I mentioned only one thread, I believe we can say that we are in 
a phase of achievement of some of the nightmarish ideals of Modernity, but 
somehow, ironically, postmodernity turned out to be the condition for this 
achievement, the first attempts (nazism / stalinism) having failed.

And for now, I don't see any positive rediscovery of Modernity, that could 
make us escape this situation.