April 27 I revisited "my [and, of course, my unknown-to-me and
presumably me-to-him-also classmate, George W's...] alma mater", Yale
for an afternoon to attend the opening of a symposium on
Hermann Broch.
As always on the rare occasions I visit New Haven, I took the
opportunity to see if the [used to be] Yale Coop [now become a
Barnes and Noble...] had any books I would not
find "back home". I looked assiduously, and only one book in the whole
store seemed to ask me to buy it. I'm so far only 1/4 thru it,
but it does indeed look like a very good pick.
Tentative guidance for our postlapsarian age
(excuse my lapse here --> of course I meant to say:
after the fall of the Berlin Wall we now not only know all what is good and
true,
which we already knew before the wall came down,
but also, along with the formerly oppressed people now liberated, we now have
and enjoy
every good thing, especially the blessings of freedom of global enterprise....)
Henri Lefebvre, _Introduction to Modernity_, Verso, 1995
Lefebvre begins by making a distinction dear to my
heart: the distinction between modernity and modernism.
Modernism is the belief persons on seeing the sun come up in the morning
have that what *they* are doing is something *new* (and important!)
and, of course, better than what "people did in the past".
*We* are what everything else before us was aspiring to become,
in our Armani suits and with our laptops, commuting on the freeway
in our new 2002 model Explorers....
Each day sees the rebirth of this triumphal amnesia ("fashion", etc.),
which does not see itself as tomorrow's superseded discard.
Modernity, on the other hand, is the process of self-doubt
and critical self-reflection -- the endeavor to
shape our form of life in terms of "thinking the meaning"
of what we are doing, whatever it is, rather than
"just doing it" (being in the thrall of the latest new
thing as if it was better critically justifiable and not just new decoration
on the same old sheds (In Venturi we Trust), etc.).... (It is in this
sense that I use the word "modernity" and assert that
"We have never yet really been modern.")
Speaking of the quality of life in France in 1960, as
he observes the construction the high-rise workers'
housing apartment blocks in a new town, Lefebvre, who sees himself as
a marxist and [I'm not exactly clear here yet] even a communist,
notes: "Over here, state capitalism does things rather well. Our
technicists and technocrats have their
hearts in the right place, even if it is what
they have in their minds that is given priority. It is difficult to
see where or how state socialism could do any differently and any better."
This is an incisive and witty book (Lefebvre sees irony as
a necessary skill in our still
pre-historic age, i.e., an age in which the shape of social
life still does not transparently instantiate cooperative
self knowledge that man makes himself on the basis of conditions he
has not made but rather our life is still "guided" by
an invisible hand.... Lefevbre's text "is up there", in my
estimation, with Cornelius Castoriadis and Enzo Paci.
_Introduction to Modernity_ -- a subject which, to borrow a trope from
Heidegger, is always worthy of being rethought from its
root once more, in part because it still has not yet
been thought through and cannot ever be fully thought
through except to the extent that we realize we always need
to revisit it and think it through yet again....
A book I want highly to recommend.
"Yours in discourse...."
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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