Symposium in Social and Cultural Theory
Contested Modernities: An Inter-Disciplinary Approach
Käsmu Maritime Museum, 14 - 15 August 2006
Organisers: Estonian Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University; Under and Tuglas Literature Centre of the Estonian Academy of SciencesParticipation fee 500.- EEK
Contact and registration: Piret Peiker
Tallinn University, Estonian Institute of Humanities,
Department of English
piretpeiker(at)hotmail.comThe Symposium will discuss the question of modernity, which has re-emerged as one of the central issues in the humanities in the last decades. The once generally un-disputed certainties what modernity is (being “Western” or maybe “Soviet”) and what it involves (secularism, sovereignty of human reason, industrialisation, urbanisation, capitalism or socialism etc.) are being questioned from a variety of quarters. Postmodern philosophers are sceptical about the simple binary oppositions that in their view dominate modern Western thought. Since about 1980s postcolonial scholars and other social thinkers use concepts like multiple modernities and alternative modernities, making a case not dissimilar from those Chinese or German intellectuals and politicians who even in the 19th century insisted on having modernity in their own way. Economic historians now doubt that there is one path to progress and that a society needs to go through the phase of industrialisation to become “modern”. Furthermore, there are scholars who claim that human sensibilities and relationship to the world are still essentially the same as in pre-modernity, and that modernity is thus an illusory notion (Bruno Latour). However, there are numerous other scholars (Gellner, Habermas, Alan Macfarlane), who continue to argue that though the concept of modernity may be a complex and shifting one, as a radical once-and-for-all change in human history modernity is undoubtedly there.
The thematics of modernity has a specific relevance in the Estonian context. The belated, rapid and in some opinion entirely rootless modernisation, which developed in Estonia end of 19th – beginning of 20th century has turned Estonia into a paradigmatic debate case between leading European nationalism scholars (Gellner, Smith). In many ways, Estonia’s fast post-Soviet shift to what Estonian elites consider to be the “modern” Western modernity is an equally interesting case, as both cultural consciousness and practices are changing fast, but certain particular elements of the past remain. The Symposium’s focus on the various – generally contingent – definitions of modernity would help to see the Estonian version(s) in broader global frameworks, and thereby to acquire a new perspective on the processes in the Estonian culture and society.
The organisers hope that the diversity in the participants’ research horizons at this interdisciplinary (anthropology, cultural theory, history, literary theory, philosophy, politics, postcolonial studies, sociology) and cross-cultural symposium will promote a critical reflection on the discrepant legacies of the European Enlightenment, and on the divergent experiences of modernity in ways that mind both what may be shared across “modern” cultures in time and space, as well as their heterogeneity. The following broad topics are for the orientation of the presenters, but their contributions certainly need not be limited to those.
- How does modernity contrast itself to and define itself through what it excludes or represses? To what degree does it contain the primitive, the pre-modern or the anti-modern? Furthermore, is the modernity’s regularly re-appearing nostalgia for its tabooed others something peculiarly modern?
- The relationship between modernity and change: if modernity can well be described as a centuries old tradition of change and debate about change, does it mean that change is really the status quo, that there has not been much change? Is postmodernity (only) a new phase of modernity?
- Belated, multiple, alternative modernities. How is modernity imagined, lived and articulated in different national/cultural locations? How do people around the world become modern nowadays? Is it really something going beyond the mimesis of “the West”? How different from the West can one be, without stopping being modern - can one be modern without capitalism? industrialisation? democracy? the nation state? Should one be thinking in terms of postcolonialism, multiple modernities, alternative modernities, or varieties of modernity?
- Modern subjectivity; individual and collective. Are there different (post)modern ways to conceptualise subjectivity, human agency, identity, terms of interpersonal engagement? How does it impact on social relations? cultural narratives? political systems? everyday life? How does modernity change gender relations and is it radically and structurally different in different cultures?
- Modern aesthetics; literature, art and criticism as modern phenomena. What is the relationship between aesthetic modernity on the one hand, and political and social modernity on the other? Is the way how art and art criticism function as forgers of individual and collective identities and as cultural forums different in divergent cultures? Should one also talk about multiple modernisms and postmodernisms?
- Modernity and modern disciplines. How much and in what way does a scholar’s disciplinary background determine his/her understanding of what modernity is? Are there any specific breakthroughs and/or blind spots relating to particular disciplines?