Modern temporality

In his very good section on modern temporality, Latour argues that modernity assumes that everything in the present, modern moment, is purely modern, novel. Anything that appears that is not up-to-date is a "archaism," and moderns worry constantly that this or that event or trend might "turn back the clock."

But modern temporality is simply impossible; again, we have never been modern. Every moment is a mix of temporalities, and it is certainly the case now: "We have all reached the point of mixing up times. We have all become premodern again."

His catalogue is worth citing: "No one can now categorize actors that belong to the 'same time' in a single coherent group. No one knows any longer whether the reintroduction fo the bear in Pyrenees, kolkhozes, aerosols, the Green Revolution, the anti-smallpox vaccine, Star Wars, the Muslim religion, patridge hunting, the French Revolution, service industries, labour unions, cold fusion, Bolshevism, relativity, Slovak nationalism, commercial sailboats, and so on, are outmoded, up to date, futuristic, atemporal, nonexistent or permanent." Again: "I may use an electric drill, but I also use a hammer. The former is thirty-five years old, the latter hundreds of thousands. Will you see me as a DIY expert 'of contrasts' because I mix up gestures from different times? Would I be an ethnographic curiosity? On the contrary: show me an activity that is homogeneous from the point of view of modern time. . . . As Peguy's Clio said. . . 'we are exchangers and brewers of time.'"

This was the mix of times that postmoderns recognized, and embodied in the earliest explicitly postmodern art form - architecture. Yet, in other respects, postmoderns often remain within the framework of modern temporality, and precisely at those points where it is most critical of moderity: Postmodern styles and moods are considered cutting edge, and anything that is sincere and un-ironic is seen as a throwback to dreaded "modernity."

Postmodern theologians who accuse other theologians who insist on some form of epistemological realism of being "old fashioned moderns" are being perfectly modern even as they speak, assuming that the present moment is a purely postmodern, constructivist moment. (This is not a slam at constructivism, which, in certain forms, gets a lot of things right.) Postmodern cultural critics (mainly Christians - secular sociologists are rarely so simplistic) who assume that culture changed permanently and irreversibly sometime in the last two decades are also still operating in a "modern" framework.

The truly postmodern temporality would recognize the perichoresis inherent in time - that the past is always indwelling us in solid (buildings that didn't go up yesterday) and subtle (today's behavior is shaped to some degree by prior experiences). Time is never pure. It is always mixed.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 11:50 AM

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