Impacts of Modernities

Thomas Lamarre is a professor of Japanese Literature at Cornell University. Kang Nae-hui is a professor of English at Chung-ang University.

Traces 3: Impacts of Modernities not only claims but practices trans-disciplinarity and trans-culturality: different disciplines and cultures are talking with one another (instead of talking to one another or even about the 'other'). Reading this volume is becoming involved in the painful efforts of finding a new intellectual habitus in thinking about coeval yet unequal 'modernities' beyond abstract dichotomies like 'East' vs 'West', 'traditional' vs 'modern', etc. -- Steffi Richter, Universitaet Leipzig Today, modernity is perceived as a failed attempt to deal with the re-entrenchment of religion in places as diverse as the White House and Afghanistan's Tora Bora caves. The problem begins with the perception of modernity less as the preponderance of the Subject than the 'disenchantment of the world'. Weber's European experience of the nineteenth century seems not to notice modernity as an eschatological narrative; dominant secular faiths promoting the idea of progress, similar to some forms of religion, have always espoused the idea of the Subject that conquers whatever is other to it, including the body. Such vigilant super-ego insists that the pain and the wounds of today is a necessary sacrifice for future bliss - be it a classless society, a continuous growth, or a reunion with the divine. In other words, when we look into how different histories evolve, religion and modernity are not strange bedfellows as commonly believed. To invite different histories to speak out is Traces' challenge. -- Goenawan Mohamad, author of Conversations with Difference