Flirting with Modernity(3)

Warning: this post is not fully cooked. It is a little meandering, but I am sharing it all the same. Sometimes you need to clear the way for whatever is coming next. The overall aim of this series is to understand what modernity means and whether people are right to think it might be ending, or that we need to compost it, or hospice it, or outgrow it... I begin by wondering why I am doing that, then look at a major theorist of modernity, Anthony Giddens, who suggests ‘the separation of time and space’ is a major part of the universalising or ‘one worlding’ quality that characterises what modernity does and why it matters. I notice, however, that the Geographer Doreen Massey thinks differently, and that many of our problems arise from a lack of imagination over what space can be, and submitting too easily to space’s subordination to time. That leads me to look laterally at the metaphysics of space, and even the esoterica of space. From there, it’s a long way back to the idea of modernity, but they are related issues in my mind. I wonder if there is a connection between the role of space as a form of resistance and our apparent inability to resist the speeding up of time leading to collapse. It’s one of those posts that jumps around a lot and never quite lands, but I don’t currently have time to edit it into a more presentable state. Thanks for your understanding. The writerly life means sometimes you have to answer the front door in your pyjamas…

I keep asking myself why I am bothering with this inquiry into modernity. I fear I may be complicit in a perennial promise that never quite delivers. I wonder if I have become the host of a banquet for words, who sit down next to other words, where authors are toasted, ideas start to schmooze, concepts get up and dance, but everyone goes home alone.

Perhaps I should set aside all this heady stuff, ever yielding to the mind’s compulsions? I am told I should BREATHE, and get back into the body. It’s not clear what happens next, and I’m not supposed to ask. But I have completed this epic quest enough to know there is a there there. And from there, I could perhaps live a different life. I’ve always wanted to ...