Identity and Modernity in Latin America

Jorge Larrain

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745667515
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

In this important new book Jorge Larrain examines the trajectories of modernity and identity in Latin America and their reciprocal relationships. Drawing on a large body of work across a vast historical and geographical range, he offers an innovative and wide-ranging account of the cultural transformations and processes of modernization that have occurred in Latin America since colonial times.

The book begins with a theoretical discussion of the concepts of modernity and identity. In contrast to theories which present modernity and identity in Latin America as mutually excluding phenomena, the book shows their continuity and interconnection. It also traces historically the respects in which the Latin American trajectory to modernity differs from or converges with other trajectories, using this as a basis to explore specific elements of Latin America's culture and modernity today.

The originality of Larrain's approach lies in the wide coverage and combination of sources drawn from the social sciences, history and literature. The volume relates social commentaries, literary works and media developments to the periods covered, to the changing social end economic structure, and to changes in the prevailing ideologies.

This book will appeal to second and third-year undergraduates and Masters level students doing courses in sociology, cultural studies and Latin American history, politics and literature. .

1

Modernity and Identity

Prior to studying the issues of modernity and identity in Latin America it is necessary to clarify, if only very briefly, some theoretical aspects related to these concepts in order for the reader to know what I shall understand by them and where I stand in relation to conflicting theoretical traditions.

Dimensions of modernity

Modernity is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, which requires to be studied from a variety of angles. Although the first writings showing an awareness of modernity as something new appear fairly early in the work of Machiavelli, Bacon and Descartes, the idea of modernity was given a decisive formulation in the discourse of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. The emergence of modernity is thus associated with a particular time (the eighteenth century) and a particular geographical place (Europe). The philosophical discourse of the Enlightenment understood modernity on the basis of key ideas such as freedom, tolerance, science, progress and reason, and in opposition to metaphysics, superstition and religion.

The ideas of freedom and individual autonomy at all levels were particularly important. When Kant wanted to define what Enlightenment was about, he asserted that it was basically related to autonomy of thought, ‘to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another’.¹ For Hegel, too, freedom and subjectivity were the very foundation of modernity and for this reason he could say, ‘the principle of the modern world is the freedom of subjectivity.’² Freedom appears as the basic and inalienable human right. At the economic level it means the possibility of pursuing one’s own interests within a free market; at the political level it means the pos-sibility for each individual to participate with equal rights in the formation of the political will; in the private sphere it implies ethical autonomy and the possibility of self-realization.³

However, as Wagner warns, this emphasis on subjective freedom is accompanied and virtually constrained by the recognition that there are also collective ends, common objectives and values that exist prior to individuals, that should limit individual freedoms. This is the source of the ambiguity that surrounds modernity.⁴ And this very ambiguity has sometimes allowed very unilateral interpretations of modernity. Touraine, for example, has argued that for a long time modernity was defined fundamentally as a function of instrumental reason, science and technology, and that this other dimension of subjectivity, freedom and creativity has been concealed and subordinated in spite of being half of a complete idea of modernity.⁵ Hence the objective of his critique is to ‘delink modernity from a historical tradition that has reduced it to rationalization, and introduce the theme of the personal subject and subjectivity’.⁶

The ideas of freedom, tolerance, science, progress and reason were also crucial to Marx, Weber and Durkheim, who contributed to the foundation of sociology in the late nineteenth century. Their theories could be said to be important attempts at understanding modernity. Each of them underlined a different angle of modernity. For Marx, what was at the basis of modernity was the emergence of capitalism and the revolutionary bourgeoisie, which led to an unprecedented expansion of productive forces and to the creation of the world market. Durkheim tackled modernity from a different angle by following the ideas of Saint-Simon about the industrial system. Although the starting point is the same as in Marx, feudal society, Durkheim emphasizes far less the rising of the bourgeoisie as a new revolutionary class and very seldom refers to capitalism as the new mode of production implemented by it. The fundamental impulse to modernity is rather industrialism accompanied by the new scientific forces. In the work of Max Weber, modernity is closely associated with the processes of rationalization and disenchantment of the world. These processes entail that

there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed.⁷

Each one of these three sociological versions contributes an insight into crucial aspects of modernity, thus confirming its multidimensional character. But there is more. Modernity could also be understood as a form of self-consciousness, as a specific mode of life and as a vital experience. As a form of self-consciousness it expresses the consciousness of an epoch which considered itself new vis-à-vis an obscure and stagnant past. According to Habermas, Hegel was the first philosopher who developed a clear concept of modernity precisely because he spoke of it, in a historical context, as a new age.⁸ Modernity does not respect its own past and regards itself as the result of a transition from the traditional to the new. Benjamin too defined modernity as ‘the new in the context of what has always been there’, as a discontinuity of experience which is related to the past.⁹ This novelty is related to a powerful feeling of self-confidence and superiority in respect of both its past and other societies which are considered to be backward. According to Bauman, this faith in its own principles and in the superiority of its own mode of life has led the European intellectual elite to considering European modernity as the point of reference for the interpretation of history, as the measure of other forms of life which appear immature, incomplete, underdeveloped or inferior.¹⁰

This feeling of superiority in respect of backward societies is not merely the result of a casual or ex post facto comparison, but is connected with the way in which modernity itself was born. It is precisely when Europe ‘discovers’ America that it can affirm itself as the centre of world history. America was the first periphery of modern Europe. As Dussel has put it, ‘modernity as such was “born” when Europe was in a position to pose itself against an other, when, in other words, Europe could constitute itself as a unified ego exploring, conquering, colonizing an alterity that gave back its image of itself.’¹¹ The discovery and conquest of America is therefore ‘a part of the process of the constitution of modern subjectivity itself’.¹²

Yet modernity’s self-consciousness was not acquired in one go and has evolved historically. Berman has distinguished three phases in the history of modernity.¹³ From the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century the levels of consciousness are low. The first writings which show some consciousness about modernity are still struggling to find the appropriate language to express the new reality, which they do not fully understand. The second phase, starting with the revolutionary wave of the end of the eighteenth century, spans the whole of the nineteenth century. In this period the European public shares the experience of living in a new and revolutionary epoch. The very idea of modernity receives its definitive formulation with the enlightened discourse of the eighteenth century, which highlights the new ideas of science, progress and reason.¹⁴ The third phase, in the twentieth century, witnesses the expansion of the modernizing processes all over the world, with the consequent development of a universal consciousness about modernity.

Another dimension of modernity has been explored by Giddens, who has argued that ‘modernity refers to modes of social life or organisation which emerged in Europe from about the seventeenth century onwards and which subsequently became more or less world-wide in their influence.’¹⁵ These modes of life combine democracy with industrialism, general education with a mass culture, world markets with big bureaucratic organizations. They are characterized by their accelerated pace of change, by their globalizing tendencies, by their reflexivity and by their new institutions. Giddens argues that modernity is separated from the past by three main discontinuities: first, the accelerated pace of change which characterizes modern societies; second, the wide scope of change processes which become global; and third, the intrinsic nature of modern institutions which cannot be found in the past.¹⁶

To these three discontinuities mentioned by Giddens I would add a more fundamental philosophical one: modernity made the human being the centre of the world, the measure of all things, as against the old theocentric worldview which prevailed in medieval times. The human being becomes ‘the subject’: the basis of all knowledge, the master of all things, the necessary point of reference for all that goes on. The world ceases to be an order created by God and becomes ‘nature’, with its own autonomous logic which the subject must know in order to use it.

I think it is important to understand that all these areas of discontinuity manifested in new and specific modern institutions and social practices were not created overnight and established in a sweeping general process on all fronts at once. Wagner has quite appropriately distinguished between the project of modernity as expressed in the organized discourse of philosophers, which constructs a true imaginary of modernity, and the social practices and modern institutions which each society has really managed to implement and develop. The discourse of modernity has always been more advanced and complete than the actual social practice and institutionalization of modernity in concrete societies. As Wagner puts it, ‘ “modernity”, so to speak, had very few citizens by 1800, not many by 1900, and still today it is hardly the right word to characterize many current practices.’¹⁷

Modernity is also a vital experience. This aspect has been highlighted in contemporary times by Marshall Berman, David Frisby and David Harvey,¹⁸ but its origins can be traced back both to Baudelaire and Simmel. In his famous essay of 1863, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, Baudelaire stated that ‘by “modernity” I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.’¹⁹ Simmel, in his turn, very much insisted on the idea of modernity as a vital experience that privileged the inner feelings of individuals in the face of a complex and changing world. This is why Simmel could define the essence of modernity as ‘psychologism, the experiencing and interpretation of the world in terms of the reactions of our inner life, and indeed as an inner world’.²⁰ But this new kind of subjectivism is not purely positive; it is also a kind of retreat from the tensions that characterize modern life. In analysing two of the most important sites of modernity – the advanced money economy and the metropolis – he detects ‘the increase in nervousness and the preponderance of an inner world as a retreat from excessive external stimuli’.²¹

The emergence of modernity is thus associated with an experience of mobility and social change, with a sense of dynamism; it expresses an overwhelming sense of ephemerality, fragmentation, contingency and chaotic change.²² Modernity not only breaks abruptly with the past but is also characterized by a permanent process of internal ruptures and fragmentation. On the other hand, modernity nevertheless finds in reason and science a sense of the universal and necessary.²³ The simultaneous emphasis on change and science is manifested in what García Canclini calls the renovating project of modernity: ‘the pursuit of incessant innovation and improvement typical of a relation with nature and society which is free from all sacred prescription as to how the world should be’.²⁴

The vital experience of ephemerality and contingency becomes acute in times of more accelerated change and crisis, to such an extent that reality may be experienced as chaotic and feelings of disorientation and fragmentation can overwhelm individuals. These feelings, fruits of the exacerbation and radicalization of the vital experience of modernity, have led some contemporary authors to put forward the idea that modernity is at an end and is being replaced by postmodernity. At first, though, they merely contributed to a more critical appraisal of the process of change without sight being lost of its positive aspects. This was clearly so in the cases of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Freud, for whom the vision of modernity as fundamentally dynamic and progressive had to be balanced by a more complex and critical analysis.

In effect, for Marx the positive experience of change and constant development is complemented by the negative experience of the reiterated destruction of many developmental achievements in the increasingly frequent and profound crises of capitalism. Weber, who described so well the process of the rationalization and disenchantment of the world in the West, also warned that the triumph of instrumental rationality did not lead to a realization of freedom but rather to an ‘iron cage’ of bureaucratic rationality from which there was hardly any escape. Durkheim, in his turn, although very clear about the advantages of industrialism, was aware that the rapidity with which industrialization had occurred could make society deviate from its natural course to organic solidarity, thus producing anomie, inequality and inadequate organization. Freud, too, while basically trusting science and reason, radically challenged the modern belief in a conscious subject fully in command of nature and of the self, by showing the role of the unconscious and instinctive forces that the subject cannot always control.

Little by little, though, the critiques of modernity became more radical and unilateral. Nietzsche, for instance, treated reason, truth and science as mere expressions of the will to power that is there for the enhancement of life. Influenced by him, Adorno and Horkheimer carried out a profound critique of the Enlightenment: its attempts at dominating nature had ended up subjecting human beings themselves to the domination of things. This idea was later developed by Marcuse in his critique of the consumer society and of one-dimensional man: technological reason had ceased to be in contradiction with domination and had increasingly become its new source of legitimacy. While the Marxist, Weberian and Freudian critiques maintained their faith in the unfulfilled...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Modernity and Identity
• 2 The Colonial Stage, Modernity Denied
• 3 Oligarchic Modernity
• 4 The End of Oligarchic Modernity
• 5 Postwar Expansion
• 6 Dictatorships and the Lost Decade
• 7 The Neoliberal Stage
• 8 Key Elements of Latin American Modernity and Identity
• Glossary
• Index