Modernity is the permanent urge to modernize, not a destination

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

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Redefines modernity as process rather than state — a useful conceptual correction against static notions of ‘the modern era’.
• XREF: Connects to Bauman’s other work on liquid modernity and to Beck’s reflexive modernization; pairs well with my notes on relentless self-propelled modernization.

Related

• Modernity is defined by the permanent compulsion to modernize, not by any achieved endpoint (similarity 0.94)
• Modernity is best understood as compulsive, self-propelling modernization, not a completed state (similarity 0.87)
• Modernity is defined by an permanently unfinished, self-transcending orientation toward the unrealized (similarity 0.85)
• Modernity consists in the destabilization of the subject, not mere progress (similarity 0.84)
• Modernity’s fleetingness revives a longing for permanence, against which progress itself appears as self-annihilation (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity is a universal maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity names real novelties of capitalism even though it cannot explain them (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity is a contested power project, not a natural state of progress. (similarity 0.80)
• Modernism defined itself as the subjugation of space to human purposes (similarity 0.80)
• Modernity names the felt conviction of newness that postmodernity has lost. (similarity 0.79)
• Modernity is defined by its endemic, incurable unfinishedness. (similarity 0.79)
• Modernity is a political project institutionalizing conflicting principles, not a state of affairs (similarity 0.79)
• Modernity is a deliberate power project, not a natural unfolding (similarity 0.79)
• Modernity is trouble and a problem, not simply progress (similarity 0.78)