ABSTRACT
Modernism has apparently become involuted in premodern attachments in the name of the primordial ties in which it continues its work of dissolution. In one part of Europe, a kind of premodernism has apparently emerged, characterized by the reappearance of primordial ties of real or imagined ethnicity and mutually exclusive belongingness, each group ready to deny to others what it claims for itself. Modernization may have gone over into postmodernity, but this is no end stage either. A new plurality of cultures and histories of people around the globe are awaiting acknowledgment of both the similarities they share with others and the right to differences that may set them apart. Learning how to live with friction, while seeing its janus-face in a holographic perspective and not forgetting the potential it holds out for controlling and utilizing it, may after all be what is needed to guide one through postmodernity.
