When We Talk about Modernity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5732292 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Colin Symes (0000-0002-9748-7446, corresponding author), Carol Symes |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 116 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 715-726 |
| Publication date | 2011-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1086/ahr.116.3.715 |
| OpenAlex | W2116511651 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 16 |
SOME MODERN PEOPLE HAVE DISCOVERED a new world. Its people are not like Modern people. Their society seems primitive, their intelligence undeveloped, their emotions excessive. Their lack of Modernity clearly justifies their subjugation. Colonization begins, with the seizure of un-Modern property facilitated by the legal and moral arguments of Modern intellectuals. In the process, some un-Modern elites unwittingly facilitate their own eradication; meanwhile, a few Modern people go native, embracing un-Modern lifestyles and values. Gradually, un-Modern artifacts are transferred to Modern metropoles, where they are prized by private collectors and the curators of competing imperial museums. The un-Modern comes into vogue, inspiring Modern fashions, theatrical genres, artistic schools. Un-Modern mythology circulates in translation; un-Modern languages are objects of study. Enthusiasts even attempt to enact aspects of un-Modern life, while popular culture reflects increasing fascination with un-Modern stories and settings. By this time, though, there is no way to write the history of the un-Modern world—at least not from an un-Modern perspective. No un-Modern people survive as witnesses to their own past. Their very landscapes have been transformed. A few sites will be “restored” as romantic refuges, but most will become wastelands where the detritus of Modernity is dumped
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Early Modern Europe · Literature · Modern art · Modern history · Modern life · Modern medicine · Modernity · Modernization theory · Political science · Romance · Sociology · Classics · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law
Nicholas of Cusa and the Kairos of Modernity
Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World
Gripping It by the Husk
Polemical Comparisons in Discourses of Religious Diversity
Common Threads
The Vanguard of the Atlantic World
Periodization and “The Medieval Globe”
Continents and consequences
A New Politics of the Middle Ages
Christian civilisation’, ‘modern secularisation’, and the revolutionary re-imagination of British modernity, 1954-1965
Writing, Voice, and Person-Making
Why Medieval Allegory
Medievalists in the Mirror
Tangible belonging and national indifference
Three Points About History, Especially for Non-Historians
The Erasure of the Middle Ages from Anthropology's Intellectual Genealogy
| Citations per year | 1.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2014 - 2025 (12) |
| Highly cited | No |