When all that was solid melted into air... For decades,
intellectuals from Benjamin to Bourdieu, Berman to Foucault, have
been in thrall to this vision of the mid-nineteenth century. It
shaped and underpinned their most influential thoughts, its legacy
insinuated into institutionalized theories of culture. In this new
book, that vision implodes, as if in a cultural supernova, its
exceptionalism and limitations exposed. The story of modernity
fades before a spectacle of linkages, stretching from and into the
depths of history, the breadths of place. And, in a parallel
substitution, the vast territories of the former Spanish Empire's
thread through the narrative, rather than lurking on the
peripheries, no longer just the fallen founders of modernity.
Instead of modernity goes to the very heart of comparative cultural
study: the question of what happens when intimate, dynamic
connections are made over place and time, what it is to feel at
home amid the lavish diversity of culture. This ambitious
interdisciplinary book reconsiders foundational figures of the
modern western canon, from Darwin to Cameron, Baudelaire to
Whistler. It weaves together brain images from France, preserved
insects from the Americas, glass in London, poetry from Argentina,
paintings from Spain. Flaubert, Whitman, and Nietzsche find
themselves with Hostos from Puerto Rico and Gorriti from Argentina.
The flotsam and jetsam of history - optical toys from Madrid - sit
with Melville and Marx. The book ranges over theoretical fields:
trauma and sexuality studies, theories of visuality, the philosophy
of sacrifice and intimacy, the thought of Wittgenstein. Instead of
modernity is an adventure in the practice of comparative writing:
resonances join suggestively over place and time, the textures of
words, phrases and images combine to form moods. This book will be
of interest to anyone concerned with the question of modernity and
with the fate of cultural theory and comparison. -- .
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