An Analytic Account of The Phenomenon of Modernity with Specific Reference To The Way in Which The Acknowledgement of Multiple or Alternative Modernities Impacts The Comprehension of The Phenomenon

Abstract

The term modernity refers generally to an amalgamation of historically unprecedented practices and institutional forms, organizational and knowledge advances, breaking away from one’s obsolescent predecessors, simultaneously. The European traditions such as Renaissance and Enlightenment are referred to specifically as this breaking point. Some basic features of modernity can be described as- a general stress on the application of rational scientific approach to problems and the pursuit of material and economic well being. Accompanied by the values like, instrumental rationality, objectivity, liberty and equality. The theories of modernity have generally been classified into two broad categories, cultural and acultural. Among these two views of modernity, the acultural view is dominant. This acultural theory and its dominance is the point of contention here, as it views modernity to be a culture neutral phenomenon, which has the same trajectory everywhere. This, the essay shows, is a distorted understanding of the phenomenon of modernity and has quite problematic implications, as the belief that modernity comes from one single universally applicable operation served as the basis and justification for the western colonizers’ practices of domination and cultural homogenization. This essay argues that a) modernity is not something that only the west has been blessed with, rather there are multiple modernities. b) It highlights how an exclusive reliance on the acultural theory deprives us of and unfits for understanding and identifying alternative modernities that are different from and that challenge the dominant western conception of modernity.