Toward a Feminine-Matrixial Understanding of Modernity: Subjectivity-as-World-Fabric, the Ecology of Love, and the Temporality of Just Now

Abstract

ABSTRACT Building on the definition of contemporary modernity as an “ecology of fear,” this article formulates a counter-hegemonic concept of modernity that is not oriented toward a future end but toward the intensities of the present moment—referring to the Latin root of “modernity,” which means “now,” “just now,” or “presently.” The article asks whether we can ever grasp the event of “just now” and, if so, what new paradigms of thought and action might emerge from this particular condition. For this venture, the article calls on the Matrixial Theory developed by feminist psychoanalyst, philosopher, and artist Bracha L. Ettinger since the 1980s. With Ettinger’s theory, the modernist narratives of fear, anxiety, death, and sacrifice—as put forward by Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger—are redefined from a specific transitive perspective, as are the processes of subjectivation and sociopolitical practices of the (Post-) Anthropocene. This article thus serves as an innovative call not to put aside modernity but to become modern in the first place—to initiate an “ecology of love” and start caring for momentary and compassionate forms of thought and action beyond phallocratic paradigms.