MDDM Ch. 76 ..a sort of Shadow ever in the Room [747.27]

[Dave Monroe]

Latour, Bruno.  We Have Never Been Modern.
   Trans. Catherine Porter.  Cambridge, MA:
   Harvard UP, 1993 [1991].

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/LATWEH.html

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/reviews/LATWEH_R.html

"Modernity comes in as many versions as there are
thinkers or journalists, yet all its definitions
point, in one way or another, to the passage of time.
The adjective 'modern' designates a new regime, an
acceleration, a rupture, a revolution in time. When
the word 'modern,' 'modernization,' or 'modernity'
appears, we are defining, by contrast, an archaic and
stable past. Furthermore, the word is always being
thrown into the middle of a fight, in a quarrel where
there are winners and losers, Ancients and Moderns.
'Modern' is thus doubly asymmetrical: it designates a
break in the regular passage of time, and it
designates a combat in which there are victors and
vanquished. If so many of our contemporaries are
reluctant to use this adjective today, if we qualify
it with prepositions, it is because we feel less
confident in our ability to maintain that double
asymmetry: we can no longer point to time's
irreversible arrow, nor can we award a prize to the
winners. In the countless quarrels between Ancients
and Moderns, the former come out winners as often as
the latter now, and nothing allows us to say whether
revolutions finish off the old regimes or bring them
to fruition. Hence the scepticism that is oddly called
postmodern even though it does not know whether or not
it is capable of taking over from the Moderns."

http://english.ttu.edu/clarke/WeHaveNeverBeenModern,chapter1.htm

http://www.ensmp.fr/PagePerso/CSI/Bruno_Latour.html/

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Morris" Sent: Sunday, September 22,
2002 6:05 AM
Subject: Re: MDDM Ch. 76 ..a sort of Shadow ever in
the Room [747.27]
> 
> What is _NOT_ modern?

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