ABSTRACT

Speaking of modernity is not unlike speaking of the divine-the concept adheres through a faith in its object, but nonetheless is continually contested by divergent interpretations, different narratives.1 Thus, despite its wide acceptance and employment in different academic contexts as a reified category, modernity remains a highly problematic concept, its application often complicated by ideological considerations. Thus, modernity has retained an ambivalence captured well in the “well-qualified” comment in Jane Austen’s Persuasion that “modern minds and manners” bring about “a state of alteration, perhaps of improvement” (Austen, Persuasion, p. 38).2 This unease about the value of modernity is not easily discounted, despite the dominance of positivistic approaches to it; indeed most often this ambivalence flows from the very point with which I began these comments: the contested nature of modernity.