Modernity is defined by the permanent compulsion to modernize, not by any achieved endpoint

Evidence

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 fulfillment. “Modernization” is not a road leading to the station called “modernity.” Modernization - the continuous, unstoppable, compulsive, obsessive, and in many ways self-propelling, modernization - is the very human condition the concept of “modernity” stands for; the permanent urge to modernize is modernity. Were the modernizing thrust ever to grind to a halt, this would not augur the completion of modernity, but its demise or bankruptcy. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 432

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens the definition of modernity as an open-ended process of self-propelled modernization, not an achieved condition — useful for grounding uses of ‘modernity’ elsewhere in the vault.
• XREF: Connects to how ‘racial formation’ theories in Omi/Winant treat race as an unstable, ever-reforming process rather than a fixed structure — a parallel between modernity’s self-propulsion and race’s continuous reformation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 432