Against modernity
September 2019
Counter-theorizations of modernity (exposing modernity’s internal contradictions and external limits):
Theorization against modernity (scholarly attempts to identify a way out of modernity):
Instances of demodernity (historical attempts to find a way out of modernity & the challenges of studying them):
Critiques of demodernity (exposing the theoretical, political, and historical limits of these attempts):
- Blaser, Mario. 2013. “Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe: Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology.” Current Anthropology 54(5): 547–68.
- [+] Dube, Saurabh, and Ishita Banerjee-Dube. 2019. “Coloniality, Modernity, Decoloniality: A New Introduction to the Second Edition.” In Unbecoming Modern: Colonialism, Modernity, Colonial Modernities, edited by Saurabh Dube and Ishita Banerjee-Dube, 2nd ed., ix–xxiii. New York & Oxon: Routledge.
- Dussel, Enrique. 1995. The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of “the Other” and the Myth of Modernity. New York: Continuum.
- Federici, Sylvia. 2004. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Brooklyn: Autonomedia.
- Manchard, Michael. 2001. “Afro-Modernity: Temporality, Politics, and the African Diaspora.” In Alternative Modernities, edited by Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, 272–98. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
- Kahn, Joel. 2001. “Anthropology and Modernity.” Current Anthropology 42/5: 651-680.
- Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- O’Gorman, Edmundo. 1961. The Invention of America: An Inquiry into the Historical Nature of the New World and the Meaning of Its History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2001. “Settler Modernity and the Quest for an Indigenous Tradition.” In Alternative Modernities, edited by Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, 24–57. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
- Sarlo, Beatriz. 1988. Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires, 1920 y 1930. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión.
- Scott, David. 2004. Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Duke University Press.
- [+] Scott, David, and Stuart Hall. 2005. “David Scott by Stuart Hall.” Bomb Magazine. January 1, 2005. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/david-scott/.
Theorization against modernity (scholarly attempts to identify a way out of modernity):
- [-] Amin, Samir. 1990. Delinking: Toward a Polycentric World. Zed Press.
- [canvas] Bey, Hakim. 2003. T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. 2nd ed. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.
- [-] Claeys, Gregory, and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds. 2017. The Utopia Reader. New York: New York University Press. (Selectively)
- Graeber, David. 2004. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
- [-] Halfacree, Keith. 2007. “Trial by Space for a ‘Radical Rural’: Introducing Alternative Localities, Representations and Lives.” Journal of Rural Studies 23 (2): 125–41.
- Hébert, Martin. 2016. “Worlds Not Yet in Being: Reconciling Anthropology and Utopianism.” Anthropology & Materialism, no. 3.
- Mies, Maria, and Veronica Bennholdt Thomsen. 1999. The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy. Translated by Patrick Camiller, Maria Mies, and Gerd Weih. London & New York: Zed Books.
- [+] Sellars, Simon. 2010. “Hakim Bey: Repopulating the Temporary Autonomous Zone.” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 4 (2): 83–108.
- Zúquete, José Pedro. 2011. “Another World Is Possible? Utopia Revisited.” New Global Studies 5 (2): 1–19.
Instances of demodernity (historical attempts to find a way out of modernity & the challenges of studying them):
- Conway, Janet M. 2016. “Modernity and the Study of Social Movements: Do We Need A Paradigm Shift?” In Social Movements and World-System Transformation, edited by Jackie Smith, Michael Goodhart, Patrick Manning, and John Markoff, 17–34. Scholar’s Online Copy. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. https://www.academia.edu/32446476/Modernity_and_the_Study_of_Social_Movements_Do_we_Need_a_Paradigm_Shift.
- Halfacree, Keith. 2007. “Back-to-the-Land in the Twenty-First Century: Making Connections with Rurality.” Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie98 (1): 3–8.
- Hess, David J. 2010. “Declarations of Independents: On Local Knowledge and Localist Knowledge.” Anthropological Quarterly83 (1): 153–76.
- Koehnline, James, ed. 1994. Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture. Brooklyn: Autonomedia.
- Leaming, Hugo Prosper. "The Ben Ishmael Tribe: A Fugitive "Nation" of the Old Northwest." 19-60.
- Van Dunk, William “Pooch,” and Paul Ryan. (1979) 1994. “Indian Heritage.” In Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture, edited by James Koehnline, 66–72. Brooklyn: Autonomedia.
- Wilson, Peter Lamborn. "Lost Ancestors: An Introduction to Pooch Van Dunk's 'Indian Heritage.'" 61-66.
- Wilson, Peter Lamborn. “Caliban’s Masque: Spiritual Anarchy & The Wild Man in Colonial America.” 95–116.
- Porter, David. "'Anarchy' in the American Revolution." 161-180.
- Forbes, Jack. "The Dream of Injun Joe: A Page from the Alcatraz Seminars." 365-374.
- Price, Charles, Donald Nonini, and Erich Fox Tree. 2008. “Grounded Utopian Movements: Subjects of Neglect.” Anthropological Quarterly 81 (1): 127–59.
- Maxwell, Barry & Raymond B. Craib, eds. 2015. No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries: Global Anarchisms. Oakland: PM Press.
- Bosteels, Bruno. “Neither Proletarian nor Vanguard: On a Certain Underground Current of Anarchist Socialism in Mexico.” 336–48.
- Craib, Raymond. “A Foreword.” 1–10.
- Cusicanqui, Silvia Rivera. “The Ch’ixi Identity of a Mestizo: Regarding an Anarchist Manifesto of 1929.” 12–21.
- Klein, Hilary. “The Zapatista Movement: Blending Indigenous Traditions with Revolutionary Praxis.” 22–43.
- Federici, Silvia. “Global Anarchism: Provocations.” 349–58.
- Maxwell, Barry. “Afterword, Beginning with ‘A.’” 359–61.
- Miller, Daegan. 2018. This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Linebaugh, Peter, and Marcus Rediker. 2000. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Verso Books.
- Notes from Nowhere, ed. 2003. We Are Everywhere: The Irresistable Rise of Global Anticapitalism. London: Verso.
Critiques of demodernity (exposing the theoretical, political, and historical limits of these attempts):
- Angé, Olivia, and David Berliner, eds. 2015. Anthropology and Nostalgia. New York: Berghahn.
- Angé, Olivia, and David Berliner. “Introduction: Anthropology of Nostalgia - Anthropology as Nostalgia.” 1–16.
- Angé, Olivia. “Social and Economic Performativity of Nostalgic Narratives in Andean Barter Fairs.” 178–97.
- Berliner, David. “Are Anthropologists Nostalgist?” 17–34.
- Rethmann, Petra. “The Withering of Left-Wing Nostalgia?” 198–212.
- Bonnett, Ailsdair. 2010. Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Introduction.
- Lears, T. J. Jackson. 1981. No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
- Preface to the Paperback Edition; Preface; Chapter One, "Roots of Antimodernism: The Crisis of Cultural Authority During the Late Nineteenth Century"; Chapter Two, "The Figure of the Artisan: Arts and Crafts Ideology."
- Preface to the Paperback Edition; Preface; Chapter One, "Roots of Antimodernism: The Crisis of Cultural Authority During the Late Nineteenth Century"; Chapter Two, "The Figure of the Artisan: Arts and Crafts Ideology."
- Nonini, David M. 2013. “The Local-Food Movement and the Anthropology of Global Systems.” American Ethnologist 40/2: 267-275.
- [-] Torgovnick, Marianna. 1990. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1: “Defining the Primitive/Reimagining Modernity.”