The Light of High Modern Discipline: Viewing the Birth, Life and Death of the Disciplinary Society in William Hogarth, Joseph Wright of Derby and Edward Hopper

Abstract

Scholars often discern a number of historical stages in the development of modernity. Early modernity saw the birth of modern, existential man (he or she, of course; henceforth: he). Man, so to speak, awoke to himself. The gradual emergence, during the fifteenth century, of opportunity and possibility, indeed of emergence itself, together with the confrontation with the difference of otherness, led to the generation, in the early modern burgher, of a delicate, almost tactile awareness of his intricately contingent world and his uncertain place in it. High Modernity then witnessed a preoccupation with light, particularly with the light that enlightens modern man on his excursions in the world. This is a light that does not just illuminate (or is supposed to illuminate) the path which the self is encouraged to carve out of the sheer potential of the world. It is not just a light that throws light on the carving self itself. It is also a light that should bathe the very process of carving itself in brightness. And more: this light, the light of High Modernity, is a light that is productive. It is a light that produces paths, carving selves, and the process of carving itself. This is a light without which nothing could possibly be carved out of the sheer rock of nature (or so it is assumed in High Modernity). Nothing could ever be produced without this light. This light is a productive light. It produces selves, paths, things, ways of seeing, ways of thinking, ways of governing, indeed, it produces ways of life. In short, it produces forms of life. This is perhaps another way of putting it: High Modern light produces High Modern forms of life. Without this light, there would be - or there would have been - no High Modern forms of life. This High Modern light differs from Plato's light of reason or the divine light of scholasticism in that it is actively and directly productive. It does productive work. It produces subjects and societies. It produces forms of life. And it is produced by the latter in turn.