Modernism

Modernism

According to Soja, “in its broadest sense, modernism is the cultural, ideological, reflective, and, I will add, theory-forming response to modernization” (Soja 29).

Which raises the question: what is modernization? Drawing from the ideas of Berman and Kern in formulating his own thoughts about modernization and modernism, Soja writes:
Modernization can be directly linked to the many different ‘objective’ processes of structural change that have been associated with the ability of capitalism to adapt and survive, to reproduce successfully its fundamental social relations of production and distinctive division of labour despite endogenous tendencies toward debilitating crisis. This defining association between modernization and the survival of capitalism is crucial, for all too often the analysts of modernity extract social change from its social origins in modes of production to ‘stage’ history in idealized evolutionary modellings….Modernization is not entirely the product of some determinative inner logic of capitalism, but neither is it a rootless and ineluctable idealization of history. (Soja 27, emphasis added)

In this last sentence, Soja tries to distance himself from a theory of history that would be overly deterministic—using capitalism to explain everything, a kind of “vulgar Marxism.” Nevertheless, Soja clearly places capitalism front and center in his definition of modernism, partially no doubt as an intervention to theorizations of modernism that have not adequately scrutinized the role of a dynamic capitalist system.

Soja’s definition also implies that there are multiple moments of modernization and, in fact, multiple modernisms (he often writes about the word in the plural—“ modernisms”). Because capitalism is dynamic and needs to change in order to survive, modernization occurs continually.

How would a form of modernism emerge as a response to capitalist-driven modernization? For this, we can turn to David Harvey. Harvey offers the example of high modernist art and architecture. “Fordism and Keynsian state managerialism became associated with an austere functionalist aesthetic (high modernism) in the field of rationalized design” (Harvey 139). Harvey’s use of word “associated” leaves some ambiguity about to what extent high modernism was a reaction to the Fordist order.

One major question for us to think about is—to what extent do cultural forms of modernism emerge as reactions to capitalist modernization? And to what extent can they be seen as independent cultural movements (i.e. Cubist art, psychoanalysis, modernist literature), not determined by the economic material conditions? Soja tries to find a balance when he writes “modernization is not entirely the product of some determinative inner logic of capitalism,” but, on the whole, he veers toward the Marxist, reaction-formation perspective.

Also See: Modernity, Marxism, Materialism