Modernity, Heterotopia, and Homeless Texts

Abstract

A shift toward “historical epistemology” has altered the nature of scholarship on modernity and nationality. 1 Departing from objectivist and Eurocentric historiographies, postmodern and postcolonial scholars have began to reactivate the sedimented practices that naturalized “the nation” and instituted Europe as the original home of modernity. 2 As the foundation of modern historical narratives, “the nation” is being revisited by scholars who view it not as a concrete and observable reality but as a modernist style of collective imagination, societal organization, and self-disciplining of citizens. 3 By the contingent deployment of territory, history, language, ethnicity, and culture, the architects of modern cosmopolitical order naturalized the nation as a serially continuous and homogeneous entity endowed with a distinct identity and characteristic. By structuring thought-ways, patterns of identity, nations and nation-states regulated the modern time’s expanding gap between the “space of experience” and the “horizon of expectation.” 4 In the new age of “fateful simultaneity of spring and autumn” 5 when everything seemed “pregnant with its contrary,” 6 the apocalyptic expectation of the radical rupture of the time to come was transformed into an anticipated and planned “progress” toward the future. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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