Modernity and modernities. Challenges for the historiography of modern architecture
Hilde Heynen
1.The concept of modernity
In my book ‘Architecture and Modernity. A Critique’ I related the history of the Modern Movement in architecture to the conceptualization of modernity by authors such as Marshall Berman, Jürgen Habermas and Jean Baudrillard. According to these authors, modernity is what gives the present the specific quality that makes it different from the past, and which points the way towards the future. Modernity is often described as a break with tradition, and as typifying everything that stands for the new, the innovative and the daring.
Since the 18th century, the century of the Enlightenment in Europe, modernity was seen as bound up with critical reason – the idea that there is no ulterior authority, thatmen’s capacity to critically question everything takes precedence over any form of Revelation. Modernity hence is constantly in conflict with tradition and it embraces the struggle for change. In the 19th century modernization gained ground in the economic and political fields. With industrialization, political upheavals and increasing urbanization modernity became far more than just an intellectual concept. In the urban environment, in changing living conditions and in everyday reality, the break with the established values and certainties of the tradition could be both seen and felt. The modern became visible on very many different levels. In this respect Marshall Berman insists that a distinction should be drawn between modernization (the socio-economic process), modernity (the condition of life) and modernism (the body of tendencies and movements that embrace modernity).[i]
Modernity hence mediates between a process of socio-economic development known as modernization and subjective responses to it in the form of modernist discourses and movements. One can further draw a distinction between different concepts of modernity – programmatic and transitory. The advocates of a programmatic concept interpret modernity as being first and foremost a project, a project of progress and emancipation. They emphasize the liberating potential that is inherent in modernity. A programmatic concept views modernity primarily from the perspective of the new, of that which distinguishes the present age from the one that preceded it. A typical advocate of this concept is Jürgen Habermas. He formulates what he calls the `incomplete project' of modernity as follows:
"The project of modernity formulated in the 18th century by the philosophers of the Enlightenment consisted in their efforts to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic. At the same time, this project intended to release the objective potentials of each of these domains from their esoteric forms. The Enlightenment philosophers wanted to utilize this accumulation of specialized culture for the enrichment of everyday life - that is to say, for the rational organization of everyday social life."[ii]
In this programmatic approach two elements can be distinguished. On the one hand, according to Habermas - with specific reference to Max Weber - modernity is characterized by an irreversible emergence of autonomy in the fields of science, art and morality, which must then be developed `according to their inner logic'. On the other hand, however, modernity is also seen as a project: the final goal of the development of these various autonomous domains lies in their relevance for practice, their potential use `for the rational organization of everyday social life'. In Habermas' view great emphasis is placed on the idea of the present giving form to the future, i.e. on the programmatic side of modernity.
In contrast to this programmatic concept the transitory view stresses rather the transient or momentary. According to Jean Baudrillard, the programmatic is gradually giving way for the transitory, in which modernity is no longer a project but rather a fashion:
“Modernity provokes on all levels an aesthetics of rupture, of individual creativity and of innovation which is everywhere marked by the sociological phenomenon of the avant-garde (...) and by the increasingly more outspoken destruction of traditional forms (...) Modernity is radicalized into momentaneous change, into a continuous traveling and thus its meaning is changing. It gradually loses each substantial value, each ethical and philosophical ideology of progress which sustained it at the outset and it is becoming an aesthetics of change for the sake of change (...) In the end, modernity purely and simply coincides with fashion, which at the same time means the end of modernity.”[iii]
Modernity, according to Baudrillard, establishes change and crisis as values, but these values increasingly lose their immediate relation with any progressive perspective. The result of this loss is that modernity begins to run away with itself and sets the scene for its own downfall. Thinking the transitory concept of modernity through to its conclusions can lead to the proclamation of the end of modernity and, taking it one step further, to the postulation of a post-modern condition. Generally, one can state, at least as far as the architectural discourse is concerned, that modernism in architecture is mostly based on a programmatic understanding of modernity, whereas postmodernism rather embraces a transitory concept of the same.
For Marshall Berman it is precisely the relationship between all these divergent aspects that makes modernity so fascinating. For the individual the experience of modernity is characterized by a combination of programmatic and transitory elements, by an oscillation between the struggle for personal development and the nostalgia for what is irretrievably lost:
"To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are."[iv]
The character of modernity is indeed ambivalent and contradictory. Modernity provokes changes on all levels, and destroys traditional forms, destroys the world as we knew it. That means that for most everyone involved with modernity, there is on the one hand joy in the change, in the process of improvement, but on the other hand, at the same time, regret because many things of the past have been destroyed.
2.Multiple modernities
Whereas Berman and the other authors discussed thus far treated modernity as a singular phenomenon, since the 1980s the idea has emerged that modernity can take on different forms and that it is not the same everywhere. As Duangfang Lu states, in a recent contribution to ‘The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory’:
“To think the modern is to think the present, which is necessarily caught in the ever-shifting social, political, and cultural cross-currents. For many decades, modernization was depicted in social sciences as a broad series of processes of industrialization, rationalization, urbanization, and other social changes through which modern societies arose. The concept has been heavily criticized for its Eurocentric assumptions in recent years. It assumes, for example, that only Western society is truly modern and that all societies are heading forthe same destination. With the epistemological break triangulated by the poststructuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial theory, the dominance of this biased progressive historicism and its associated binaries (modern/traditional, self/other, center/periphery, etc.) are challenged. The questions about modernity, understood as modes of experiencing and questioning the present, are re-thought.”[v]
The understanding that modernity might have different manifestations was already evoked by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, in arguing that Eastern Europe under communism went through its own form of modernization, and was thus facing other challenges. According to him the breakdown of communist regimes in 1989 had to do with the contradictions within their implementation of modernity. These contradictions were rooted in the nature of the vision that combined the basic premises of modernity, together with far-reaching strong totalitarian orientations and policies. He thus spoke about multiple modernities, stating that
“The actual developments in modernizing societies have refuted the homogenizing and hegemonic assumptions of this Western program of modernity.”[vi]
Also postcolonial theorists argue that the Western / European model of modernity was in fact just one among many – not the leading beacon that other countries were following, but rather a specific historical configurations of forces that led to a specific outcome, whereas in other parts of the world other configurations necessarily led to other outcomes – no less modern, but modern in another fashion. DipeshChakrabartycoined the phrase ‘Provincializing Europe’ – the title of one of his books – to point to the fact that the history of European social relations is not necessary a model that is being emulated everywhere else.[vii] Hence it doesn’t make a lot of sense to see e.g. Karl Marx as an authority for eternity, because he happened to understand the logics of 19th century political economy in Europe. For sure, he claims, Marx remains a major philosopher and economist, one can still be inspired by his worldview and his work, but it would be wrong to think that ‘Das Kapital’ offers a key for interpreting each and every crisis wherever in the world. ‘Provincializing Europe’ mainly addresses his fellow Indian intellectuals, arguing that they should try much harder to understand the historical specificities and the path dependency of India’s subaltern classes. A Marxist or neo-marxist framework of interpretation can be helpful to that end, but certainly doesn’t offer the last word of wisdom to deal with these specific challenges. Marx, he argued, needs to be brought back to his real stature, which is that of an interesting intellectual whose analysis certainly carried a lot of weight when applied to 19th century Europe, but whose legacy should not be seen as the sole route to truth in understanding different trajectories of modernization in different parts of the world.
Jyoty Hosagrahar, a postcolonial historian of architecture, applies these thought in her book on Delhi, which she appropriately called ‘Indigenous Modernities. Negotiating Architecture, Urbanism and Colonialism’. Her argument is that the Indian residents in Delhi formed their own form of modern dwelling, in taking some things from the colonizers while refuting others. Hence there is a modern Delhi that is not colonial Delhi, but that is not ‘traditional’ either. Hosagrahar also contributed to ‘The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory’, where she wrote the chapter on postcolonial perspectives. According to her postcolonial perspectives have relocated discussions of modernity to ‘other’ locales and reframed modernist conversations about inclusion and exclusion. They emphasize global interconnections, and the interplay of culture and power in imagining, producing, and experiencing the built environment. She emphasizes a broad definition of postcolonialism, which includes perspectives that give voice to struggles against all types of colonialisms, and enable and empower alternative narratives and forms.[viii]
3.Architecture and identity
If the historiography of modernism in architecture has seen quite some additions the last couple of decades, one of the more important revisions has indeed to do with postcolonial critique. This critique starts from the assumption that modernism and colonialism are in some ways intertwined – that they cannot be seen as intellectual discourses that are totally separate. For one thing, this has to do with an economic context. Take for example the Van Nelle factory, one of the famous icons of modernism. This was, in fact, a coffee, tea and tobacco factory - which means that this icon of modernity got into the world as a result of colonial expansion, colonial policy and colonial production. It cannot be denied therefore that the Van Nelle factory was part and parcel of the whole colonial condition.
In the book ‘Back from Utopia’, which was edited by Hubert-Jan Henket and myself (2002), we tried to come to terms not only with the physical heritage of the Modern Movement, but also with its ideological heritage. In my own contribution I raised some issues, some questions of colonialism, which I summarized as follows:
“In postcolonial theories the interconnections between the Enlightment project of modernity and the imperialist practice of colonialism have been carefully disentangled. Following the lead of Edward Said’s Orientalism, it is argued that colonial discourse was intrinsic to European self-understanding: it is through their conquest and their knowledge of foreign peoples and territories (two experiences which usually were intimately linked), that Europeans could position themselves as modern, as civilized, as superior, as developed and progressive vis-à-vis local populations that were none of that (…) The other, the non-European, was thus represented as the negation of everything that Europe imagined or desired to be.”[ix]
This is, in a nutshell, the argument that Edward Said developed in his seminal book Orientalism (1978). Edward Said (1935-2003) was a Palestinian intellectual, born in Jerusalem, who became a scholar teaching at Columbia University, in New York, in the field of comparative literature. The central theme in his work is the relation between cultures. His book Orientalism starts from the assumption that the Orient is not an inert fact of nature: what we call the Orient is in the East because our point of reference is Europe. Men make their own history, he claims, they also make maps and these maps then structure our conception of reality:
“Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in, and for, the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.”[x] (Said 1978, 5)
In art, the term orientalism refers to a whole series of images which form a certain tradition that depicts the fantasies of Western painters about the East. Famous topics are women in the harem, women making toilets, women leading a life of luxury and laziness – or men, brave men confronting the desert alone on a horse (think of the imagery in films like David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia). Also in literature you have orientalist works, just like academic studies of the East fall under orientalism. The Orient in most of these examples captures the imagination, and evokes a very specific kind of image, with often erotic associations. Often the images suggest decadence and lascivity, a kind of looseness which is seductive, but at the same time there is an implicit moral message about the dangers of such luxury. The Orient is thus represented as full of mystery and secrets. Its people are represented as being very enigmatic, very indirect, as persons you cannot easily get to know and hence as individuals who might be unreliable. The implicit message these images and texts bring about is that the orient might be threatening, and that, therefore, it needs to be brought under control. And that message acts as a kind of alibi for the civilizing mission of the West. This kind of imagery is e.g. infamously represented in a comic strip with which we, as Belgian children, made an acquaintance with Chinese culture: Hergé’s renderings of ‘Tintin in China’.
Others have made analyses of the biases and prejudices that speak from such an imagery. In the architectural world these biases are also present, albeit in a form that u often difficult to decipher. One example, deftly analyzed by Gülsüm Baydar, is the famous volume of Banister Fletcher on the world history of architecture (first edition 1896). This volume is significant for many reasons, among them the fact that it is the first attempt at writing a world history of architecture – which is in itself a daring and ambitious undertaking. Banister Fletcher thus already starts from the assumption that also other parts of the world – outside of historical Europe – might harbor valuable architecture, in itself a recognition of the value of other cultures. Nevertheless the way he represents and maps these ‘other’ architectures reveals colonialist and imperialist overtones. In his ‘tree of architecture’, the non-European architectural heritages are represented as branches that spread out from the main trunk. Thus he features Egyptian, Assyrian, Peruvian, Indian, Mexican, Chinese and Japanese architecture on the lower branches. The European styles, however, occupy the higher levels of the tree, with Greek and Roman antiquity solidly positioned on the trunk, as a fountainhead from which the rest of history springs. European traditions are thus seen as ‘historical styles’, meaning that they contain the seeds for further development. The non-European styles are ‘non-historical’, meaning they represent some eternal past (or some eternal present for that matter), and are not expected to further develop or produce any meaningful offspring in the foreseeable future. Hence the superiority of the European styles is literally inscribed into this figure. There is no way, in the imagination of Fletcher, that the non-European styles could measure up to them.
Gülsüm Baydar is quite critical of Fletcher’s representation. She comments that
“… Fletcher’s method tames the nonhistorical styles by submitting them to the same framework of architectural analysis as the Western ones. (…) Indian and Chinese and Renaissance and modern turn into conveniently commensurable and hence comparable categories”