Introduction

The postmodernist rejection of Hegelian World History as a grand universal narrative of explanation had an undoubted ethical and political value as it facilitated the rise of marginal voices and the rediscovery of oppressed pasts, like the Jewish memory of the Holocaust or the revelation of the horrors endured by African slaves during the “Middle Passage.” The striking different outlooks on Transmodernity exemplified by Rodríguez Magda, on the one hand, and Ateljievic and Rifkin, on the other, point to the extraordinary complexity of the paradigm shift currently taking place. As Sardar argues, in countries with a Muslim culture, tradition is not considered as a static and backward force that must be rejected and even suppressed in order to progress, but rather as the dynamic force that “will take them forward, with their identity intact, to a transmodern future”. This chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.