全球化的现代性、文化及普世主义的问题

Global Modernity,Culture and the Problem of Universalism

随着全球化取代现代化成为当代变迁的一种范式,需要重新界定现代性。这种重新界定的现代性,即是“全球化的现代性”。全球化通过放弃欧洲中心的目的论,以包容现代性发展中不同历史轨迹的可能性而有别于现代化。它为现代性带来欧美之外其他地区的经验和传统文化遗产。由此,一元现代性破碎为多元的和可选择的现代性。“多元现代性”提议全球化的多元文化主义,寻求以不同的文化方式实现现代的可能性来控制对现代性的挑战,它标志着现代性的扩展或普世化。全球化的现代性,作为当代的条件,不是以现代性的瓦解为标志,而是以其围绕一个全球性中心的重构为标志,尽管必然是一个缺席的中心。

As globalization has replaced modernization as a paradigm of contemporary change, it calls for a reconceptualized modernity, that I describe as ＂global modernity.＂ Globalization differs from modernization by relinquishing a Eurocentric teleology to aceommodate the possibility of different historical trajectories in the unfolding of modernity. It brings into modernity the voices, experiences and cultural legacies of others. Thus, a single modernity breaks into multiple and alternative modernities. ＂Multiple modernities＂ suggests a global muhicuhuralism, and seeks to contain challenges to modernity by conceding the possibility of culturally different ways of being modem. It may signify either the proliferation of modernities, or its universalization. Global modernity as a contemporary condition is marked not by the disintegration of modernity, but by its reconfiguration around a global center, albeit of necessity an absent center.