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Modernity, Modernism and Progress
John Schostak
ELU, 2003
Bauman describes the modernity as follows:
Modernity was after a perfect, one-to-one fitting of names and things, words and meanings; a set of rules free of blank spots and cases overloaded with instructions; a taxonomy in which there was a file for each phenomenon but no more than one file for any one of them; a division of tasks in which there was an agent for every part of the action but no more than one agent for each; in short, after a world in which there is an unambiguous (algorithmic rather than mearly heuristic) recipe for every situation and no situation without a recipe attached. But to create a world matching such demanding standards one needed first to clear the building site of the scattered sediments of past actions, which, as it happened, all stopped short of the ideal. Modernity was therefore the era of creative destruction, of perpetual dismantling and demolition; the 'absolute beginning' was another face of the instant obsolescence of all successive states, and thus never-ending attempts to get rid of yesterday's history.
(Bauman 2001Bauman 2001: 65)
And finally, 'The modern mind is legislative reason, and modern practice is the practice of legislation.' (Bauman 2001: 66).