Modernism

After reading pages 93-110,I can describe modernity as a term that scholars use to refer to the historical, culture, political, and economic conditions related to the Enlightenment (an eighteenth century philosophical movement)the rise of industrial society and scientific rationalism, and to the idea of controlling nature through technology, science, and rationalism. Modernity is associated with the belief that industrialization, human technological intervention in nature, mass democracy, and the introduction of a market economy are the hallmarks of social progress. The exact dates and conditions of modernity as a period are debated by historians. This is because not all countries became modern in this sense during the eighteenth and ninteenth centuries and because even those countries that did modernize in this way did not all embrace this same notion of the modern. Also not all countries embraced the same ideology of progress in the economy, thechnology, and military power. Whereas modernization was part of instituting a capitalist economy and a liberal democracy in the United States, for the Soviet union modernization in the form of industrialization and technological advacement was tied to Communist ethos of equal benefits and living conditions for all citizens . Imperial Europe played a role in instituting modernizing eneterprises in its colonies. The colonial strategies of modernization were justified by the Eurocentric belief that European practices and beliefs were objectively better than the cultural practices and ways of knowing and living in the world that had been in place prior to colonization.

The conditions of modernity were the grounds for the emergence of modernism. Modernism is a term that refers to a group of styles and movements in art, literature, architecture, and culture around the world dating from the 1800's through the mid to late 1900's. We use the term modern in an everyday sense to mean the present or recent times or to refer to contemporary views and fashions. In reltaion to art and culture, however the term modern takes on a differnt set of meanings .German scholar Jurgen Habermas explains that the concept of the modern has been used over and over again by socities since as long ago as the late fith century. In Haberma's terms the present culture sees itself as the product of a transition from old to new, modeling itself on a past era that is regarded as embodying timeless, classical principles. This all changed with the Enlightenment.

French philosopher Michel Foucault, in the twentieth century, argued that the human subject is constituted in modernity not through liberal human ideals but through the discourses of institutional life of the period. Foucault saw the subject as an entity produced within and through the discourses and institutional practices of the Enlightenment. Foucault's subject is never autonomous but is always constituted in relationships of power that are enacted through discourse.

The term discourse is defined as , in general the socially organized process of talking about a particular subject matter. More specifically, according to Michel Foucault , discourse is a body of knowledge that both defines and limits what can be said about something. Although there is no set list of discourses, the term tends to be used for broad bodies of social knowledge, such as the discourses of economics, the law, medicine, politics, sexuality, technology, and so forth. Discourses are specific to particular social and historical contexts, and they change over time. It is fundamental to Foucault's theory that discourses produce certain kinds of subjects and knowledge and that we occupy to varying degrees the subject positions defined within a broad array of discourses.