I came across an essay I wrote not too long ago, in which I attempt to analyze the meaning of "modernity." I think it is a nice way to conclude my series of posts about religion, and it also clarifies some of the attitudes I have expressed about religion and science. So I paste an extract of the essay here:
At its heart, modernity may be described as a particular set of relations (among people, institutions, discourses, practices, and objects), forged through global interactions, imbued with centrifugal inertia, and undergirded by an ideology of progress that simultaneously creates modernity’s Other. This last point, in particular, warrants emphasis: while modernity involves the creation of certain sorts of relations, it also entails the production of its own contradictions and oppositional forces. I could employ the language of physics and muse that every action is enabled by an opposite reaction; or I could invoke Foucault and note that where there is power there is resistance (and modernity is, indeed, an active, dominating force). However, the situation is more complex than that.
Perhaps a more effective way to employ Foucault at this point is to recall his contention that one may find, by examining differences and disjunctures, that they are sustained at a “deeper” level (using his archaeological metaphor) by a common logic or rule of dispersion. For the relations and discourses that constitute modernity, this rule is activated by the notion of the subject, which developed (at least according to Foucault) as a result of the Protestant Reformation, which, incidentally, also provided an opening for the reconfiguration of institutions and domains of authority from which modernity ultimately emerged.
The idea of the subject made possible epistemological, ontological, and social-moral frameworks that serve as rules of dispersion for particular institutional and discursive domains. For example, the epistemological logic of the subject-object divide specifies a set of positions that one can take as to how this divide may be mediated (i.e. how one can know). The delimitation of these positions, in turn, was part and parcel of the shaping of separate institutional domains for science and religion: scientists established their legitimacy and independence from religion by laying claim to a distinct mode of knowing in which personal experience is made subject to a set of extra-individual, impersonal constraints; the Church, for its part, was able to counter-assert and maintain the relevance of its own authority by rebuilding itself on complementary epistemological ground – privileging a propositional type of “belief,” yet in reference to a different set of objects left to it by science (the “supernatural”) and by recourse to tradition or personal revelation, the epistemological alternatives to scientific method. In a general sense, the epistemological basis of science has been imputed with modernity to a greater extent than either of these alternatives, but more importantly, it is considered modern to wholly distinguish between these modes of knowing along with their appropriate realms of application (“nature” for scientific method, “supernatural” for tradition and intuition). Thus, a modern, rational religion (Christianity, deism) is one that recognizes its own limits, whereas any nonscientific belief or practice that intrudes on the territory of science is derided as “magic” or “superstition,” the truly pre-modern. It is, then, a single epistemological rule of dispersion that allows science and religion to coexist, on complementary epistemological grounds, even as these grounds interact and come into ever-changing articulations with each other, continually calling their boundaries into question (witness Creation Science), and likewise a single epistemological framework that simultaneously creates modern reason and pre-modern superstition.
Ontologically, the existence of the subject enabled formulations of human nature, will, and consciousness, which in turn specified several modes of being as a human. Enlightenment philosophers delineated a way of being human that is characterized by the social contract, in which individual goals are pursued, yet checked and ultimately subordinated to the collective good. The philosophers argued that this mode of existence was preferable, in particular, to one alternative: a state of nature, which is marked by unrestrained self-interest and violence. Later social theorists outlined another type of human existence that Durkheim termed the collective conscious, where individual thought and will derive from and are subordinated to the group. Although Durkheim and his followers valorized and romanticized the collective conscious to a certain extent, others viewed it as coercive and patriarchal. Regardless of these different attitudes, however, this mode of existence, as well as the “state of nature,” were unanimously held as representatives of the pre-modern, while only the social contract has been deemed modern. The modern state (and its associated mode of governance) is assumed to operate under the social contract, protecting human rights and promoting the general welfare of the population. This contrasts with the pre-modern tyranny of chiefs and kings, as well as the “mechanical solidarity” of ethnic groups and tribes. Here, as with the epistemological framework, these ontological juxtapositions are derived from a single rule of dispersion, while the positions, in practice, cannot so easily be separated from one another. On the one hand, the phenomenon of the nation-state and nationalism demonstrates how group loyalties and sentiments may be utilized by state governmental apparatus. On the other hand, we have Agamben’s contention that human rights discourses and biopower (a derivative of governmentality) further solidify the basis of sovereignty (rather than making it irrelevant) by allowing it to intrude on life itself. The foundations of genocide and terrorism are just as modern as constitutional law.
Finally, a related social-moral logic, which posits a fundamental tension between individual and collective ends, specifies several possible relations between social organization and resource distribution. According to the demands of progress, it is modern to recognize that resources flow most efficiently and fairly via competition and freedom of choice, while the pre-modern alternatives are “primitive communism” at one end and unequal distribution of wealth sustained by inheritance or other non-market-driven mechanisms at the other. The latter was first represented by the aristocracy, to which the emerging bourgeois was opposed, and later by monopolies and corporate “corruption.” The opposition of the former to the modern, competitive free market has been largely construed as a division between socialism/communism and capitalism. Again, these alternatives are the possibilities derived from a single social-moral framework, and again, their boundaries are not discrete in practice. Capitalism, while driven by competition, is also sustained by state regulation and social welfare programs (without which it would have collapsed), is inherently monopolistic (controlling and coordinating differential parts of the production process, for example) and generates massive global inequalities without allowing the “losers” a fair competition.
We have seen, then, how the concept of the subject served as an organizing principle, which shaped as it was simultaneously shaped by newly emerging institutional and discursive domains: namely, science and the associated notions of reason and rationality; governmentality and discourses about human nature, individuals, and rights; global capitalism and the ideology of competition and choice; as well as their pre-modern Others which these movements generated, and which helped to sustain them. Like the boundaries among various points of dispersion, or between modernity and its Other, the limits of these institutional and discursive zones are blurry, overlapping, and continually shifting. Science, for example, is subject to market forces, dependent on corporate resources, funded by the state, and employed in the service of governmentality and state sponsored violence. These, then, are not distinct domains, as much as they are types of relations that mobilize overlapping sets of people, resources, practices, and ideas. Yet the separation of these relations into discrete categories, and the upholding of an ideal of purity - fearing the dangers of admixture (for example, science tainted by politics or corporate interests, the market manipulated by the state) – is nevertheless fundamental to the way in which modernity and the ideology of progress are constructed.
Might it be effective at this point to invoke Latour’s notions of hybridity and purification? Latour asserts that the defining characteristic of the “modern Constitution” is an ideological purification of objects into the categories of “nature” and “society” with a concomitant, albeit unrecognized, increase in the production of hybrids of these categories. Perhaps one could add to or substitute for “nature” and “society” the categories of “science,” “religion,” “politics,” and “economics.” Certainly, the preceding discussion has demonstrated the way in which these “modern institutions” are, in fact, hybridized, while sustained ideologically as separate categories through the work of purification. However, one could argue, a la Kant or Durkheim, that categorization is a universally necessary means of ordering and interpreting the world, and that purification and hybridity are essential components of that process. In other words, everyone “purifies” an inherently “hybrid” reality according to a set of categories, whatever those categories may be. This is not distinctly new or “modern.”
Yet, for Latour, the categories of “nature” and “society” are not incidental. Rather, he contends that they possess a particular efficacy. For example, transferring insights from physics about mass and forces into political realm resulted in a powerful strategy of domination. However, the nature-society divide may be viewed as one aspect of the broader distinction between pre-modern and modern, in that “nature” is generally used to index origins, primitive beginnings, that from which modernity is to be distinguished (natural versus technological, man-made; state of nature versus the social contract, nature versus cities, industrialized cores), while “society” is perceived to be the vehicle for cultural evolution that has come to replace biological evolution in the human species. The efficacy of this distinction, then, lies in the fact that it upholds and makes possible an ideology of progress, which is foundational to the dominating impulses of modernity. Furthermore, one may argue that to speak of transfers or hybrids complicates an understanding of the ontology of these categories, whereas from the perspective adopted above, in which the categories are viewed as types of relations, the particular efficacy noted by Latour may be explained in terms of the way in which different relations of power sustain and reinforce one another.
Having established key institutional/discursive domains of modernity, such as science, governmentality, and capitalism, as types of relationships among people, practices, objects, and discourses, one can view the emergence of a “modern” order in terms of a reordering of such relations that Europeans initiated both locally and abroad. However, this statement needs to be qualified. Relations are never one-sided, and those that are constitutive of modernity were created through the mutual interaction of landlords, peasants, merchants, and statesmen, as well as of plantation owners, indigenous leaders and laborers, slaves, administrators, and middlemen. Everyone participated in the construction of the relations that lie at the heart of modernity, even if a minority ultimately benefited. Therefore, while modernity may have involved the development of something new and different, European men cannot be given all the credit (if credit is to be given).
If the relations constitutive of governmentality, science, and capitalism, among other “modern” forms, resulted from processes that involved nearly everyone, how, exactly, are they related to the project of global imperialism? Certainly, a governmental form of power, inherently diffuse, is easier to administer at a distance than one based solely on sovereignty, which is centered upon the personal authority of the sovereign and more territorially contingent. As such, the development of governmental institutions and power relations would have supported the colonial agenda. Capitalism, for its part, actually extended the aims of this project (from accumulation of wealth to the creation of markets and dependency relationships) and increased its inertia. Products of scientific research were also instrumental in the success of European conquest; naval transportation, weapons, cartography, and ethnographic descriptions of native culture, for example, were absolutely essential.
At the same time that these pillars of modernity provided the institutional and material support necessary for colonial expansion, their ideological components (ideas about rationality, human rights, competition), operating as a seamlessly integrated whole, provided a moral justification for the exploitative enterprise. Together, these ideological elements composed a master ideology of progress, which held that humans (some humans, at least) were continually improving their lot and gradually approaching a state of perfect happiness, efficiency, and universal knowledge.
In order to sustain the illusion of progress, it was necessary to simultaneously create its opposite – to create the pre-modern and traditional in order to produce a visible teleology. Thus, the ideology of progress involved the construction of a binary opposition (rational, efficient, principled modernity versus the superstitious, emotional, perpetual conformity of the primitive) and the concomitant assignment of real human populations to either side of this division. This occurred across spatial as well as social dimensions: modern Europe (Western Europe, to be more specific) was opposed to the traditional, conformist Orient (or, really, every other part of the world); white was opposed to nonwhite, wealthy to poor, adult to child, man to woman. Hence, the visible teleology could be constructed on virtually every level of scale, at home and abroad, with the added benefit that only a select group of people (white, upper-class, men) could claim the mantel of modernity, with all that it entailed.
The power of the ideology of progress lies in the fact that it legitimates the social order (inequality is the natural result of the “race to the top”) at the same time that it provides a license for those at “the top” to exploit everyone else (in the name of further progress). In this way, colonialism could be viewed as a necessary and natural extension of human progress, a benevolent endeavor to enlighten and uplift all of humankind, while at the same time, the ability to colonize served as incontrovertible proof of Europeans’ advancement over others.
Not only did the relations, institutional structures, and ideologies constituting enterprises like science, governmentality, and capitalism enable the colonial project, but they also possessed an inherent universalizing logic and centrifugal inertia that was served by colonization. Scientists strove for a complete, total knowledge of the world that required unfettered access to other environments and other groups of people. The development of industrial centers required the creation of supply areas for cheap raw materials and markets for manufactured goods across the globe. The ideals of human rights, rational thought, and economic liberalism are premised on a notion of universal, natural capacities of humankind and are accordingly posited as ends to which all human life should be directed, the universal keys to humanity’s liberation from the shackles of tradition. Therefore, the particular relations of discourses, institutions, people and materials that constitute modernity are characterized by a centrifugal inertia that both legitimizes as well as incites expansion and global consolidation. Fitting, considering that this relational constellation was forged in the course of new global encounters and the construction of new transcontinental networks.
We have seen, then, that the development of modern relationships, institutions, and ideologies cannot be separated from the colonial enterprise; that the ideology of progress, in particular, serves as its consolidating logic; and that the separation of the world into modern and pre-modern components is the primary means by which the ideology of progress is sustained. However, in addition to serving as a condition of possibility for the ideology of progress, the “pre-modern” spaces that modernity generates within itself are also utilized as grounds for challenging the ideological and material impulses of modernity. An understanding of this situation requires a treatment of modernity, not as a unified ethos or a monolithic structure, but as a configuration of relations that are constantly being reproduced and reworked. The relations are not stable and the actors involved try to redirect them toward their own purposes, on varying levels of scale. Thus, it should be no surprise that religious fundamentalism, nationalism, terrorism, demonstrations of state sovereignty, anti-colonial and leftist revolutionary movements, and reassertions of territoriality find fertile ground in a “modern” world. Nevertheless, as anthropologists and other social scientists focus their analytic lenses more directly on problems of modernity, they tend to confine themselves to “modernity” as one end of the pre-modern/modern divide (looking in particular at science, bureaucracy, governmentality, and the political economic implications of global capitalism), while many of these seemingly “pre-modern” areas of resistance are in need of more thorough research (particularly religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and territoriality).
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