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CULTURAL LOGICS AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES 155

What lends this shift from presentation to representation, and then to
signification, its dynamics, its flux? We must find an account for its
sudden explosion that promises, in literal terms, globalizing Macdonaliza-
tion of cultural diversities, provoking Jihadic opposition by fervent
nationalisms, ethnocentrisms, and their attendant archaizations. First, the
choice of a specific signitive language is not innocent. Since modern
signification has no vertical nexus, it must be technical in order to access
the world, i.e., definitory of the object and at the same time providing
the rules for constructing the object. As Husserl had noted, mathematiza-
tion is a technique.^^ If one were to assume the classical Platonism where
mathematics is metaphysical presence, then the modern conception of
mathematics as signitive construction of the world could be called, with
Volkmann-Schluck, metaphysics gone wild.^^ This is to say, there being
neither presence of the world nor its representation, one can signify the
world at will. In this sense, the mathematical, signitive reason, turns out
to be instrumental at the service of will. The latter is the modern nomad
that can resignify all events in accordance with its wants and arbitrari-
ness, leading to the well known primacy of power for the sake of power.
The logic of power is its self-incrementation. Unchecked by the vertical
presence of the world—the intentionaUty that requires respect for
quahtative differences imbedded in symbohc designs—the metaphysics of
will has no other object apart from increasing power.^^ This is the magic
of modernity that subtends reason and, resultantly, constitutes the ground
of postmodernity within modernity. All events can be signified at will, and
produce instrumentally through human signification. Yet at another level
this constitutes a catalyst for the modern emphasis on individuality and
for democratization. It is to be noted that this modern level is invoked
by nationalistic and ethnocentric movements, each demanding "freedom"
to decide its own life and destiny—^while using modern technical means
to obtain it in a holy war for the sacred lands of mythical ancestors.
Given this background of postmodernity within modernity, the current
proliferation of postmodern theses can make some sense. Postmoderns

^^ Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomeno-
logy, translated by D. Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 23ff.
^^ Karl-Heinz Volkmann-Schluck, Einfuehrung in das Philosophische Denken
(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1965), 59ff.
^^ Karl-Heinz Volkmann-Schluck, PoUtisches Philosophic (Frankfurt am Main:
Vittorio Klostermann, 1974).