Marshall Berman's book is a critique of postmodernism. He urges the readers to reconsider the history of modernity which will enrich our present and may even guide us into the future. In his introduction 'Modernity- yesterday, today, tomorrow' he briefly traces the different experiences of modernity in 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and argues that our ancestors experience with modernity has been much richer.
He begins with this childhood home in Bronx that was demolished to build highway under the orders of Robert Moses. He writes that since highways symbolized modernity, the people opposing the construction (as they were loosing their homes from the demolition) were made to feel guilty, as if they were opposing modernity.
Modernity: Historical experience. Experience of men and women in modern environments.
Modernization: Social processes that bring a maelstrom (industrialization, scientific progress etc) into being, and keep it in a perpetual state of being. People being both subjects and objects on modernization.
Modernism: The visions and values that modernization brings, and gives people the power to be changed and change the world they live in modernism.
History of Modernity
1st Phase: 16th to 18th century : people don’t know what hit them. Beginning to grapple with new ideas.
2nd phase: French revolution – 1790 – end of 19th century – revolutionary ideas, upheavals in social and political lives.
1st Phase: 16th to 18th century : people don’t know what hit them. Beginning to grapple with new ideas.
2nd phase: French revolution – 1790 – end of 19th century – revolutionary ideas, upheavals in social and political lives.
19th century: People can understand what it means to live in modernity. Ideas of modernism and modernization emerge. People are living in two worlds simultaneously.
3rd Phase: 20th century: expands to the entire world. Modernity breaks down society into fragments – people loose touch with their roots.
He critiques post-modernists as being too quick to reduce modernism into a closed monolith that is incapable of being shaped by modern men anymore. He critiques postmodernism as leading towards a nihilistic point of view, and sucking the optimism of modernism. He critiques Foucault and his postmodernist theories for behaving as if everything in the society is new, and modern man does not have any freedom in shaping his/her own world. Berman suggests that postmodernist ideas are "simply iterations of the constant intellectual evolution of modernity itself, that in seeking to destroy the modernist ideas that preceded them they have in fact become simply the newest destructive forces that are inherent in the modern cycle of destruction and rebirth."
3rd Phase: 20th century: expands to the entire world. Modernity breaks down society into fragments – people loose touch with their roots.
He critiques post-modernists as being too quick to reduce modernism into a closed monolith that is incapable of being shaped by modern men anymore. He critiques postmodernism as leading towards a nihilistic point of view, and sucking the optimism of modernism. He critiques Foucault and his postmodernist theories for behaving as if everything in the society is new, and modern man does not have any freedom in shaping his/her own world. Berman suggests that postmodernist ideas are "simply iterations of the constant intellectual evolution of modernity itself, that in seeking to destroy the modernist ideas that preceded them they have in fact become simply the newest destructive forces that are inherent in the modern cycle of destruction and rebirth."
Berman argues that by examining our contemporary society (Today) through the visions and lens of (Yesterday), 19th century modernists will encourage us to create the modernisms of 21st century (Tomorrow). He argues modernisms of the past can help us connect the world and brings together people who are going through the processes of modernization together.
He engages with Goethe's Faust, Marx's Communist Manifesto, Baudelaire's essays on modernity, and Dostoevsky's and Gogol's digresses about Crystal Palace to introduce the vitality and dynamism inherent in early modernist writers.
He engages with Goethe's Faust, Marx's Communist Manifesto, Baudelaire's essays on modernity, and Dostoevsky's and Gogol's digresses about Crystal Palace to introduce the vitality and dynamism inherent in early modernist writers.
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