The Symbolic Function of Transmodernity
Abstract
In this article transmodernity will be described as the symbolic context within which, in the last decades, new formulations of selfhood and community have emerged that challenge consolidated representations of the world. The aim will be to examine and map out an illustrative range of discourses at the core of the transmodern scenario, highlighting the counterhegemonic potential of its symbolic function vis-à-vis modern representations of reality. In doing so, particular focus will be put on some of the major effects of globalisation, namely spatial displacement, virtuality and fragmentation, arguing that these factors help us to understand the ‘critical’ dimension of globalisation as a traumatic process of dislocation of social space. It is by scrutinising these factors that we grasp the ability of ‘transmodern’ formulations of space and community to challenge the position of modern discourses.
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Anzaldúa, G. E. (1999). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.
Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Augé, M. (1995). Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. New York, NY: Verso.
Balibar, E. (2004). We, the people of Europe? Reflections on transnational citizenship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Baudrillard, J. (1988). The ecstasy of communication. New York, NY: Semiotext(e). Baudrillard, J. (1993). The transparency of evil. New York, NY: Verso.
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London, UK: Sage.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London, UK: Routledge.
Brah, A., & Coombes, A. E. (2000). Hybridity and its discontents: Politics, science, culture. London, UK: Routledge.
Braidotti, R. (1994). Nomadic subject: Embodiment and difference in contemporary feminist theory. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Castells, M. (1996). The information age: economy, society and culture: Vol. 1. The rise of the network society. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Constant, H.-B. (1988). The Liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns. In B. Fontana (Ed.), Political Writings (pp. 307-328). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1819)
D’Haen, T., & Bertens, H. (Eds.) 1994. Liminal postmodernisms: The postmodern, the
(post-)colonial and the (post)feminist. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi B.V .Editions.
Dussel, E. (2005). The invention of the Americas: Eclipse of “the other” and the myth of modernity. New York, NY: Continuum.
Ebert, T. L. (1996). Ludic feminism and after: Postmodernism, desire, and labor in Late capitalism. Ann Arbor, NJ: University of Michigan Press.
Foucault, M. (1984). What is enlightenment? (Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?). In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader (pp. 32-50). New York, NY, Pantheon Books.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self identity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Gore, A. (1995). Forging a new Athenian age of democracy. Intermedia, 22(2),
(Summer), 4-6.
Habermas, J. (1981). Modernity versus postmodernity. New German Critique, 22, Special Issue on Modernism. (Winter), 3-14.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The re-invention of nature. London, UK: Free Association.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. London, UK: Harvard University Press.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and democracy in the age of empire.
London, UK: Hamish Hamilton.
Harvey, D. (1990). The condition of postmodernity. An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press. (Original work published 1937)
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. London, UK: Verso.
Jones, S. G. (1995). CyberSociety – Computer-mediated communication and community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Kumar, K. (2002). The nation-state, the European Union and the transnational identities. In N. N. AlSayyad and M. Castells (Eds.), Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam: politics, culture, and citizenship in the age of globalization (pp. 53-68). Oxford, UK: Lexington Books.
Kunstler, J. H. (1993). The geography of nowhere: The rise And decline of America’s man-made landscape. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Lacan, J. (1993). The seminar. Book III. The psychoses, 1955-1956. London, UK: Routledge. (Original work published 1955-1956)
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1987). Post-Marxism without apologies. New Left Review I/166, November-December, 79-106.
Laclau, E. (1990). New reflections on the revolution of our time. London, UK: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2005). Philosophical roots of discourse theory. Centre for Theoretical. Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Essex University. Unpublished paper.
Laclau, E. 2006. On populist reason. London, UK: Verso.
Lipovetsky, G., & Sebastien, C. (2005). Hypermodern times. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester,
UK: Manchester University Press. (Original work published 1979)
Mura, A. (2012). A genealogical inquiry into early Islamism: The discourse of Hasan al-Banna. Journal of Political Ideologies, 17(1), 61-85.
Negri, A., & Zolo, D. (2005). L’Impero e la moltitudine - Un dialogo sul nuovo ordine della globalizzazione (The empire and the multitude - A dialogue over the new order of globalisation). Jura Gentium - Rivista di filosofia del diritto internazionale e della politica globale, I, 1. Retrieved 1 October 2011, from http://www.juragentium.unifi.it/it/surveys/wlgo/negri.htm
Newman, S. (2009). The politics of postanarchism. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
Nunes, M. (1995). Baudrillard in cyberspace: Internet, virtuality, and postmodernity. Style, 29(2), (Summer), 314-327.
Olalquiaga, C. (1992). Megalopolis: Contemporary cultural sensibilities. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Recalcati, M. (2010). L’uomo senza inconscio. Milano, Italy: Raffaello Cortina Editore. Relph, E. (1976). Place and placelessness. London, UK: Pion.
Rodríguez Magda, R. M. (2005). Transmodernidad. Barcelona, Spain: Anthropos.
Roy, O. (2004). Globalized Islam – Fundamentalism, deterritorialization and the search for a new Ummah. London, UK: Hurst.
Sadiki, L. (2004). The search for Arab democracy - Discourses and counter discourses. London, UK: C. Hurst & Co.
Soja, E. W. (1989). Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. London, UK: Verso.
Stone, A. R. (1996). The war of desire and technology at the close of the mechanical age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Taylor, C. (1991). The malaise of modernity. Toronto, Canada: Anansi.
Tocqueville, A. de (2007). Democracy in America. Stilwell, KS: Digireads.com Publishing. (Original work published 1835-1840/1863)
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Tort, M. (2007). La fin du dogme paternal. Paris, France: Flammarion.
Virilio, P. (1991). The aesthetics of disappearance. New York, NY: Semiotext(e).
Virno, P. (2004). A grammar of the multitude: For an analysis of contemporary forms of life. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext (e).
Weber, M. (1946). Science as a vocation. In H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in sociology (pp. 129-156). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1918)
Zielonka, J. (2006). Europe as empire: The nature of the enlarged European Union. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Zizek, S. (2000). The ticklish subject – The absent centre of political ontology. London, UK: Verso.
Published
01-Dec-2012
How to Cite
Mura, A. (2012). The Symbolic Function of Transmodernity
. Language and Psychoanalysis, 1(1), 68-87. https://doi.org/10.7565/landp.2012.0005
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