Modernity is best understood as compulsive, self-propelling modernization, not a completed state

Evidence

Modernity is an inherently transgressive mode of being-in-the-world. Visions of order are born out of dissatisfaction with the existing state of things, and attempts to make them into flesh give birth to new disaffections and new, revised – and so deemed to be improved – visions. Modernity rolls and blends into one the act of drawing a frontier and the resolve to transcend it. All orders constructed under the aegis of modernity are therefore, even if only unintentionally, local, temporal, until further notice – bound to be reshaped before reaching fulfilment. ‘Modernization’ is not a road leading to a station called ‘modernity’. Modernization – continuous, unstoppable, obsessive and in many ways self-propelling modernization – is the very human condition the concept of ‘modernity’ stands for; obsessive modernization is modernity. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 651

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines modernity negatively as perpetual self-transgression rather than a terminal condition — key for the theory vocabulary.
• XREF: Connects directly to the Islamophobia toolkit’s account of how totalizing order-making recurs; also echoes Beck’s ‘modernization of modernity’. — connects to: Modernity consists in the destabilization of the subject, not mere progress; Modernity is defined by its endemic, incurable unfinishedness. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 650; Contemporary transformations are modernity’s self-radicalization, not its ending — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 127 (+6 more)

Related

• Modernity consists in the destabilization of the subject, not mere progress (similarity 0.92)
• Modernity is the permanent urge to modernize, not a destination (similarity 0.87)
• Modernity is defined by its endemic, incurable unfinishedness. (similarity 0.86)
• Modernity is defined by the permanent compulsion to modernize, not by any achieved endpoint (similarity 0.85)
• Contemporary transformations are modernity’s self-radicalization, not its ending (similarity 0.84)
• Modernity’s fleetingness revives a longing for permanence, against which progress itself appears as self-annihilation (similarity 0.82)
• Modernity is a universal maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal (similarity 0.82)
• Modernity’s core is an irreducible enigma that cannot be overcome (similarity 0.81)
• Modernity is defined by an permanently unfinished, self-transcending orientation toward the unrealized (similarity 0.81)
• Radical break and continuity claims both fail without a temporal-analytic definition of modernity (similarity 0.80)
• Defeated anti-modern resistance persists latently and eventually uses modernity’s own tools (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity is trouble and a problem, not simply progress (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity’s institutional framework has itself been set in motion. (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity is defined by wholesale reflexivity, not merely love of the new. (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity’s disaster is not backwardness but the domination machinery itself. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Contemporary transformations are modernity’s self-radicalization, not its ending #corroborates (0.88) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 127
• Modernity is a runaway engine that permits partial steering but never full control #corroborates (0.85) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 334
• Modernity is defined by wholesale reflexivity, not merely love of the new. #expands (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 99