Page 170 - Contribution To Phenomenology
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CULTURAL LOGICS AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES                163

                It  has  been  noted  that  modernity  contains  its  antimodernism.  While
              the  latter  is  parasitic  on  modernity,  it  cannot  form  any  ties  with
              nationalistic  archaizations,  since  it  does  not  contain  any  unifying  principle
              and  cannot  offer  ritualistic  resistance  against  modernization. Although our
              previous  discussion  painted  postmodernity  as  an  undisciplined  process  of
              accepting  a  modern  arbitrary  signification,  it  can  become  self-conscious
              of  its  own  mature  abihty  to establish  connections among various  analytical
              fragments  of  modernity  not  by  positing  an  encompassing  discourse,  but
              by  tracing  resonances  among  institutions and disciplines  of  modernity.^ At
              this  level  of  postmodern  awareness,  it  may  be  possible  to  regard  the
              postmodern  awareness  of  modernity  as  a  nexus  among  various  facets,
              the  discrete  components,  of  modernization  and  nationalistic  archaization.
              Such  a  bridge  comprises  diverse  resonances  that  can  find  connections
              unnoticed  by  modern  analysis.  Thus  one  can  find  legahsms  in  scientific
              language,  hidden  valuations  in  positivistic  philosophies,  salvific  rhetoric
              in  secular  politics,  and  capitalist  economies  in  the  fundamentalist
              promises.
                Given  these  relationships,  we  can  enunciate  the  current  factors  that
              appear  within  and  in  face  of  Western  modernity:  there  is  the
              modern-antimodern  crisis,  requiring  their  mutual  impUcation  and  mutual
             exclusion;  there  arise  the  archaic  moves  as  nationalistic  and/or  ethnic
             searches  for  identity  that  may  be  the  inner  disruptions  of  modern
             homogenization,  its  inner  threats  that  constantly  promise  a  protective
             enclave  of  sacral  unity  and  archaic  identity  against  the  winds  of
             self-reUance  and  autonomy.  Then  there  are  the  partial  mythical  univer-
             saUties  with  claims  to  salvific  transcendence.  The  antimodernity,  as  we
             saw,  rejects  the  presence  in archaization, the  representational  subject, and
             even  signitive  processes.  As  a  result,  postmodern  awareness  takes  the
             modern   facets  and  traces  their  resonances  and  intersections,  without
             positing  a  necessary  continuity  among  them.  It  is  of  note  that  each  facet
             resonates  with  and  incorporates  differently  the  facets  of  other  modes  of
             consciousness  into  systems  of  shifting  networkings  which,  in  their
             openness,  make  incomplete  sense.  Thus the  archaic level,  while  surpassed
             and fragmented, is  traceable  in  the  specific  hierarchy  of  modernizations,
             at  least  in  symbohc  designs.  For a  particular  hierarchy  to  be  vaUd within




                ^  Hans Bertens, "Die Postmoderne  und ihr Verhaeltnis zum Modernismus," in  Die
             UnvoUendetervemunft: Modeme  versus Postmoderne hrsg. Dietmar  Kamper  und Willem
             van Reijen, (Frankfurt  am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 46-98.
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