Transgressing the Modern: Explorations in the Western Experience of Otherness

Abstract: A companion volume to Exploring the Modern: Patterns of Western Culture and Civilization (Blackwell, 1998). Both volumes offer a perspective on the central features of what we take to be western modernity, drawing on literature, art, cultural history, and theory. This volume pursues the theme of transgression, in that what is construed as ‘other’ can both be devalued and proscribed, but can also be a source of fascination and creativity, and examines this through debates on the ‘civilizing process’, the colonial experience, the construction of ‘insanity’, modernism in the arts, gender stereotypes, and the appeal of ‘nature’. Both books conclude with explorations of the possible significance of trends and tendencies sometimes called ‘postmodern’, tendencies that suggest the central importance of the reflexive dimension of the modern.