Impacts of Modernities

Impacts of Modernities explores the impact of Western modernity on East Asia. In order to challenge modernization and modernization theory, the volume presents a number of different approaches to, and evaluations of, modernity in historical and contemporary frameworks.

One group of essays looks at the complex relations between modernity and production of space, place, and identity. Contributors consider the spatializing tendencies of modernity, looking at how resistance to modernization has tended to rely on the production of national and local identities, which may serve to reproduce and reinforce the logic of modernization in new registers. Of particular importance is the legacy of comparativism in our contemporary disciplines. Other essays explore the historically specific relations that arise between nation, empire, and representation. Contributors reconsider the alleged particularlity of national languages and scripts, asking whether the insistence on the particular does not already entail an access to the universal and thus maybe to empire. Still other essays question whether the prime characteristics of modern power— subjection and sovereignty— continue to define power relations within the contemporary world order.

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