Modernity and Identity.

Abstract

Modernity and Identity is a groundbreaking collective work whichannounces a radical new departure within contemporary debates onmodernism and postmodernism. While dominant conceptions of both modernism and postmodernism arecentered around motions of statis and fixity, for most of theotherwise quite diverse writers in this book, modernity is a matterof movement, of flux, of change and of unpredictability. Modernity and postmodernity are shown to mean, not the ′end of thesubject′ but the transformation and creation of new forms ofsubjectivity. Anthropological concepts are brought squarely intothe heart of the modernity controversies, which are then recast inthe context of tradition, globalization and of the crisis ofidentity in a newly de–centred world system. The possibility of a third way is opened up, rejecting theopposition between the impersonal rationality of high modernism andthe rationalist anti–ethics of postmodernism. The vision in thisbook is that of another modernity, which counter–poses Baudelaireto Rousseau, and loyalist ethics to abstract blueprints for socialand political reorganization. This book will be essential reading for students of sociology,cultural studies, literary theory, anthropology, urban studies and philosophy.