What Comes after “Modern”?

Richard Ostrofsky
(June, 1998)
For some time now, there has been a consensus amongst art critics and
students of recent history that the “modern” age is over – that modern styles
and sensibilities are definitely passé – and that something new has taken
their place. The changeover is seen as having occurred at various points in
time, depending on the particular field: The end of the modern age in
physics is marked by the discovery of atomic instabilities and by the rise of
quantum mechanics. In painting it is marked by the trend away from
representational art. In philosophy it is marked by Marx and Nietzsche’s
recognition of the willful self-interestedness of human understanding, and
by Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and the divided subject. In politics
it is marked by a crisis of faith in the possibility of rational government and
technological utopia that began with the First World War, and whose end is
not yet in sight. In business and industry it is marked by the rise of
electronic information technology and the relative decline of assembly line
manufacture. But wherever one marks the change, there is widespread
agreement that our world today is increasingly post-modern – characterized
by styles and sensibilities markedly different from those of the modern era,
which are now either vanished or moribund.
There is, to repeat, a clear consensus that the world has changed
radically since mid 19th century – the heyday of the “ modern” era – but
none yet on the new world that since has come (or is coming) about. Hence
the persistence of the term post-modern, which tells us what our world is no
longer, but nothing at all about what it is. Bolder suggestions have been
made. For example, it has been suggested that we think of this time as the
Information Age, which is apt enough but gives too much weight to the
predominant technology of this period, and not enough to its cast of mind. It
is fitting enough to think of Information Age as the next term in a sequence
that runs Bronze Age, Iron Age, Age of Steam, Age of Electricity. But what is
the next term in the sequence that runs Classical, Medieval, Rennaissance,
Reformation, Modern?
It occurred to me the other day that we could do much worse than think
of this as the Diasporan Age: the Age of Scattering and Dissemination. The
term “diaspora”, of course, is most familiar in connection with Jewish
history and the Jewish experience. It refers to the condition of a people
dispersed from its homeland and scattered “among the nations”, living
always to some extent (however accepted, assimilated and comfortable they
may become) as “strangers in a strange land”, as the Bible puts it – or, less
bleakly, as guests, among a host population that is not “of the tribe”. But
what struck me was that almost everyone today is a kind of “Wandering
Jew”, awaiting some Messiah – some Bringer of coherence and solidarity –
in a diaspora of his own.
In the first place, it is hard to think of a nation, whether or not it still
holds on to the real estate that it considers “homeland”, that has not been
scattered around the globe. Whether as agents of empire or as refugees from
it, seeking commercial gain or safety or employment, there are people of
your tribe everywhere – whatever tribe that is. Whatever your tongue, in
every major city today you will find “lantzmen” who speak it and
“strangers” who do not.
Second, as the Internet phenomenon is making clear, tribe and language
are only the beginning. Every religious affiliation, every profession and
trade, every conceivable cultural, sportive or sexual interest now has its web
rings, its news groups, its chat rooms and its mailing lists. No matter how
obscure or deviant your interests are, you can find kindred spirits
everywhere in the world, local sub-cultural leaders or would-be leaders, and
points of entry to the little community for converts and newbies.
From this perspective, the “global village” metaphor is not a happy one
at all. It is true that the urban scene is tending to be much alike everywhere,
since any movement or interest that can attract a following in one city can
probably do so in another. We are all human, and nothing human can be
really strange anywhere – however convenient it may sometimes be to
pretend that we find it so. But conversely, culture has become so diverse
that no one is exactly like anybody else, and everyone is living in a diaspora
of his own. The most ordinary life today consists of half a dozen or more
competing affiliations: linguistic, ethnic, religious, political, sexual, and
sportive; to particular arts and sensory modalities and genre; to a
professional guild, to a nation, a region, a city and a neighbourhood
association; to one or more employers or to none. If you count up the
possible choices for each of these, and do the math, you will see that even
with a global population of 7 billion or so, and allowing for the fact that not
all combinations are possible, there are still many more ways of being a
person than there are people. This is not at all the characteristic of a village,
where life is homogeneous, and everyone is much the same.
But the feature of these times that make the tag “diasporan” particularly
apt is our sense that in all this scattering, seeds are being sown. New forms
of life are visible everywhere, and a new cultural landscape is being
prepared. Or perhaps the seeds are more like anthrax spores – or like the
dragon’s teeth of Greek mythology that will shortly spring up as armed men
and fight each other to the death. Optimism does not come easily these
days. But, for better or worse, new growths are shooting up everywhere,
seeded by the contact and clash of disparate cultures and by the necessity to
reconcile them in the interests, not just of coexistence, but of personal
survival.