There is much to be gained from imagining the end of world in thinking through some of the more i... more There is much to be gained from imagining the end of world in thinking through some of the more intractable problems of the present. I do so in this discussion, focusing on the People’s Republic of China (PRC), whose impressive development over the last thirty years has been accompanied by an equally impressive destructiveness that has produced both awe and ambivalence. The end of the world as we know it may be understood in two senses. The end of the world in a literal sense, which is no longer the purview of a lunatic fringe or religious millenarianism but has moved to the center of global concerns, backed with the authority of science, so that it is those who would deny the possibility that appear as the unredeemable lunatics. Less drastically but equally poignantly, it suggests the end of the world as we have known it, which is a fate that has befallen many with the rise of the modern world, who now seek to recover what they have lost, threatening to bring the same fate upon the victors of modernity. The PRC figures prominently in both senses.
Vita. Photocopy of typescript. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms, 1976. -- 22 cm. Thesis (... more Vita. Photocopy of typescript. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms, 1976. -- 22 cm. Thesis (Ph. D.) - University of Rochester, 1972. Bibliography: leaves 307-321.
This essay offers a historically based critique of the idea of "alternative modernities" that has... more This essay offers a historically based critique of the idea of "alternative modernities" that has acquired popularity in scholarly discussions over the last two decades. While significant in challenging Euro/American-centered conceptualizations of modernity, the idea of "alternative modernities" (or its twin, "multiple modernities") is open to criticism in the sense in which it has acquired currency in academic and political circles. The historical experience of Asian societies suggests that the search for "alternatives" long has been a feature of responses to the challenges of Euromodernity. But whereas "alternative" was conceived earlier in systemic terms, in its most recent version since the 1980s cultural difference has become its most important marker. Adding the adjec-* I am grateful to for reading and commenting on this essay. While their comments and encouragement were most helpful, they are in no way responsible for the final argument. The argument also benefited from audience input at the tive "alternative" to modernity has important counter-hegemonic cultural implications, calling for a new understanding of modernity. It also obscures in its fetishization of difference the entrapment of most of the "alternatives" claimed--products of the reconfigurations of global power--within the hegemonic spatial, temporal and developmentalist limits of the modernity they aspire to transcend. Culturally conceived notions of alternatives ignore the common structural context of a globalized capitalism which generates but also sets limits to difference. The seeming obsession with cultural difference, a defining feature of contemporary global modernity, distracts attention from urgent structural questions of social inequality and political injustice that have been globalized with the globalization of the regime of neoliberal capitalism. Interestingly, "the cultural turn" in the problematic of modernity since the 1980s has accompanied this turn in the global political economy during the same period. To be convincing in their claims to "alterity," arguments for "alternative modernities" need to re-articulate issues of cultural difference to their structural context of global capitalism. The goal of the discussion is to work out the implications of these political issues for "revisioning" the history and historiography of modernity.
There is much to be gained from imagining the end of world in thinking through some of the more i... more There is much to be gained from imagining the end of world in thinking through some of the more intractable problems of the present. I do so in this discussion, focusing on the People’s Republic of China (PRC), whose impressive development over the last thirty years has been accompanied by an equally impressive destructiveness that has produced both awe and ambivalence. The end of the world as we know it may be understood in two senses. The end of the world in a literal sense, which is no longer the purview of a lunatic fringe or religious millenarianism but has moved to the center of global concerns, backed with the authority of science, so that it is those who would deny the possibility that appear as the unredeemable lunatics. Less drastically but equally poignantly, it suggests the end of the world as we have known it, which is a fate that has befallen many with the rise of the modern world, who now seek to recover what they have lost, threatening to bring the same fate upon the victors of modernity. The PRC figures prominently in both senses.
Vita. Photocopy of typescript. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms, 1976. -- 22 cm. Thesis (... more Vita. Photocopy of typescript. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms, 1976. -- 22 cm. Thesis (Ph. D.) - University of Rochester, 1972. Bibliography: leaves 307-321.
This essay offers a historically based critique of the idea of "alternative modernities" that has... more This essay offers a historically based critique of the idea of "alternative modernities" that has acquired popularity in scholarly discussions over the last two decades. While significant in challenging Euro/American-centered conceptualizations of modernity, the idea of "alternative modernities" (or its twin, "multiple modernities") is open to criticism in the sense in which it has acquired currency in academic and political circles. The historical experience of Asian societies suggests that the search for "alternatives" long has been a feature of responses to the challenges of Euromodernity. But whereas "alternative" was conceived earlier in systemic terms, in its most recent version since the 1980s cultural difference has become its most important marker. Adding the adjec-* I am grateful to for reading and commenting on this essay. While their comments and encouragement were most helpful, they are in no way responsible for the final argument. The argument also benefited from audience input at the tive "alternative" to modernity has important counter-hegemonic cultural implications, calling for a new understanding of modernity. It also obscures in its fetishization of difference the entrapment of most of the "alternatives" claimed--products of the reconfigurations of global power--within the hegemonic spatial, temporal and developmentalist limits of the modernity they aspire to transcend. Culturally conceived notions of alternatives ignore the common structural context of a globalized capitalism which generates but also sets limits to difference. The seeming obsession with cultural difference, a defining feature of contemporary global modernity, distracts attention from urgent structural questions of social inequality and political injustice that have been globalized with the globalization of the regime of neoliberal capitalism. Interestingly, "the cultural turn" in the problematic of modernity since the 1980s has accompanied this turn in the global political economy during the same period. To be convincing in their claims to "alterity," arguments for "alternative modernities" need to re-articulate issues of cultural difference to their structural context of global capitalism. The goal of the discussion is to work out the implications of these political issues for "revisioning" the history and historiography of modernity.
For centuries, across nations, dialogue between the domestic and the foreign has affected and tra... more For centuries, across nations, dialogue between the domestic and the foreign has affected and transformed architecture. Today these dialogues have become highly intensified. The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture examines how these exchanges manifest themselves in contemporary architecture, in terms of its aesthetic potential and its practice, which, in turn, are impacted by broad economic, cultural and political issues. This book traces how diverse cultural encounters inevitably modify conventional categories, standards and codes of architecture, such as domestic identity, its political and economic representations and the negotiations with what is deemed foreign. Theoretical reflections by distinguished scholars are accompanied by interviews with some of the most influential architects practicing today, as well as stunning visual presentations by professional photographers.
"A book such as 'The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture' hasn’t been published for the past thirty years. This interesting collection poses questions about what constitutes the 'general' and the 'specific' in architecture today, a treacherous and slippery terrain on which the stars of contemporary architecture as well as everyday professionals frequently lose their footing. In 1974 Charles Jencks and George Baird published a similar book entitled 'The Meaning in Architecture.' […] Today, with our pulverised geography and fairly standardised anthropological framework, where can we anchor the 'meaning' in architecture? The latest book examines this complex question with essays (focused on theory) and conversations (design-oriented). Sections of photoessays supplement the in-depth investigation of the theme, in which pictures speak at all latitudes, showing a tangled Babel of technical culture that casts our means in a less certain light."
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The PRC figures prominently in both senses.
The PRC figures prominently in both senses.
"A book such as 'The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture' hasn’t been published for the past thirty years. This interesting collection poses questions about what constitutes the 'general' and the 'specific' in architecture today, a treacherous and slippery terrain on which the stars of contemporary architecture as well as everyday professionals frequently lose their footing. In 1974 Charles Jencks and George Baird published a similar book entitled 'The Meaning in Architecture.' […] Today, with our pulverised geography and fairly standardised anthropological framework, where can we anchor the 'meaning' in architecture? The latest book examines this complex question with essays (focused on theory) and conversations (design-oriented). Sections of photoessays supplement the in-depth investigation of the theme, in which pictures speak at all latitudes, showing a tangled Babel of technical culture that casts our means in a less certain light."
Manolo de Giorgi
Book Review
Domus 922, Feb. 2009
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