ABSTRACT
This is a study of an unfamiliar and unfashionable topic: the darkness of modernity. It pertains to issues that lie unacknowledged as secularity gains the upper hand on the culture of modernity. An illusion is presented that dark matters signified by superstition and the irrational have been eradicated, so that to think in such terms is to doom sociology with regression. But as the limits of secularity become clearer, most notably where the imagination withers and postmodernity demands enchantment, something is felt missing that renders postsecular all the more plausible. It concerns the return of religion, most notably Islam. But something else comes, a realisation that the configurations and arrangements of modernity as it matures generate fragments that have to be assembled in some credible way to mirror the times. Fear of the unknown draws attention to dark matters that still irrupt, thus shattering illusions that these have been exorcised by the gifts of reason. To handle these matters, the notion of sociological noir is created in this study for the purposes of exploring these inconvenient matters so capriciously disregarded.
