josé joaquín brunner

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Notes on Modernity and Postmodernity in Latin American CultureAuthor(s): Jos Joaqun BrunnerSource: boundary 2, Vol. 20, No. 3, The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America (Autumn,1993), pp. 34-54Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/303339

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Notes on Modernity and Postmodernity in Latin American Culture

Jose Joaquin Brunner

Startingfrom the vantage pointof the contemporarydebate aboutmodernity,Iwant to discuss here some problemsof LatinAmericanculturein relationto its future.

The Ambiguous Status of CulturalQuestionsIfirst need to explain,however,whyone should be interested insucha discussion anyway. Seized as we are by the great themes of the mo-ment-the foreign debt and the economic crisis, unemployment and thedifficultiesof industrialization,he CentralAmericanconflict,and the pro-cesses of redemocratization-what capacity of attractioncan culturalprob-lems have, especially ifthese, as is frequentlyhe case, tend to overflow heusual categories at hand? To meaningfullyspeak of culturerequires thatwe refer to collective representations,beliefs, cognitivestyles, the commu-

nication of symbols, language games, the sedimentationof traditions,andso on, and not only to the quantifiableaspects of culture:namely, to themovements of the marketof culturalgoods.boundary2 20:3,1993. Copyright? 1993 byDukeUniversityPress. CCC0190-3659/93/$1.50.


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Brunner Noteson ModernityndPostmodernity35The Latin Americansocial sciences have only marginallypreoccu-

pied themselves withthese culturalproblems,perhaps because theirstudydoes not fall high enough on the ladder of academic prestige or becausethey do not lend themselves easily to the prevailingmethodologies. Cul-ture, as such, still appears to us as a supplement, identified,accordingtoan old aristocraticconception, withthe fine arts, with the Sunday editionsof the great urbannewspapers, and withthe conspicuous consumptionofartworksand symbols invested withan aura of prestige.This "cultured" ision ofculture,otherwiseabsurdinan age of the pri-macy of the forms andcontents of mass culture,of the media and the cultureindustry, s also sometimes a symptomof denialproducedby a deeper, andtypically modern, tendency: the predominance of the interests, includingcognitive, of instrumentalreason over the values of communicativeratio-nality;the separation of a technical sphere of progress that includes theeconomy, science, and materialconditions of daily life fromthe sphere ofintersubjectivelyelaborated and communicated meanings, those found in-dissolublyanchored in a life-worldwhere traditions,desires, beliefs, ideals,and values coexist and are expressed precisely inculture.This reactive negation leads easily to the extreme of affirming hatculture,as a symbolicdomain, is incomprehensible oranalyticreason andthatonly an empathetic approachsuits it-an affirmation hat leaves a con-siderable part of the social sciences out of the game and encloses thedebate about the culturaluniverse ina new esotericism, this time made upof intuitions,mysteries, and, inthe best of circumstances, poetry.The attemptto conduct ourownexplorationwithina relativelyknown,and shared, frame of reference, such as modernity,has as its purpose toavoid the double danger of, on the one hand, a purelyfunctionalistvisionof culture-obstacle orpromoterof modernity?-and, on the other,an eso-teric vision of culture,one that resists thoughtand cannot be thought.

The Problems of Modern RationalityAs a pointof departure, I willbegin withthe reportof the EconomicCommission for LatinAmerica (CEPAL),"Crisis and Development: The

Present and Futureof LatinAmericaandthe Caribbean." In hisdocument,the culturaldimension of ourproblems,of crisis as well as of development,1. See CEPAL,Crisisy desarrollo:Presente y futurode AmericaLatinay el Caribe,vols. 1-3 (Santiago, Chile: CEPAL,1985).


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36 boundary / Fall1993and of our time, present and future,is barelytouched on. The most pro-found and vitalissues of cultureare notmentioned;norare the moredirectlysociological, economic, and political ssues that make up the organizationof culture.

Instead, the report adopts the traditionalBehaviorist idea that cul-ture needs to adapt itself to modernityand to producethe motivations andattitudes required or the optimum performanceof modernsystems of pro-duction, reproduction,and social rule.Allthis, moreover,in the context ofa relatively ingenuous concept of modernityand modernization that pre-cisely ignores the contemporarydebate over these topics. Thus, the reportdeclares:

The process of modernization is a contemporary mode of socialchange, of general validity,that is extended to the entire planet.Itsupposes a self-sustained economic growth,the total availabilityof social resources, the diffusionof the rationaland secular normsof culture,the freedom and growthof social mobility,and the corre-sponding attitudinalransformations.2

Later,the reportadds, in a similarlyBehavioristvein:Inorder to have modernization t is necessary that there come intoplay mechanisms of empathythat incorporatevalues, models of be-havior,and aspirationsoriginatingromthe most dynamiccenters ofcivilizationand that can shape demands. Nevertheless, institutionscannot be moved, they must be transformed; ifestyles cannot bechanged by the free functioningof the "demonstration ffect";theymust be creatively adapted so that they do not cause disturbances.The capacity of adaptationis perhapsthe distinctivefeature of mod-ern societies. Ifmodernization,because of its empathetic essence,responds to exogenous influences, our societies need to internal-ize it with regard to their specific histories, indigenous resources,and possibilities,throughthe developmentand free exercise of cre-ativity.It s clear,on the otherhand,thatadaptiveand self-sustainedtechnologicaldevelopmentconstitutesa centralcomponent of mod-ernization, even though the lattergoes beyond it as a total socialprocess.3

2. CEPAL, Crisis, vol. 3, 5.3. CEPAL, Crisis, vol. 3, 6.


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Brunner Noteson ModernityndPostmodernity37CEPAL's formulation s typicallyeclectic and limits itself to gloss-

ing over the problems of culturaladaptationthat it poses. Nevertheless,it allows us to make out the questions it avoids: for example, the conflictbetween formalrationality based on the calculabilityprovided by the mar-ket) and substantive rationality directedby values and goals). Thus, thereportsustains that modernization upposes the "internalizationf rationalnorms" but immediatelyadds that in order for such an internalizedratio-nalityto constitute an "integrating nd stabilizingforce,"not destructive ofthose minimalprescriptivenuclei requiredby integration, t should "incor-porate the criteriawhichpermit tto elaborate the conflicts between growthand equity, present affluence and accumulation,social demands and thelimitsof expansion of supply, present and futurecomparativeadvantages."Where do these criteriacome fromand howare they made compatiblewithother criteria offormalrationality)hat are imposed bythe functioningof themarket? Because the rationalityhat the CEPALdocument speaks aboutis not the same as the one, accordingto Weber, that is at the foundationof the processes of modernization,butrather s one that "makes implicitacomprehensive concept of efficiencyinthe administration f resources andopportunities,"accordingto the CEPALreport.Creativity,notas a functionof the marketor as the incessant revolu-tionizingof the means of productionand allsocial relationsthat Marxattrib-uted to the bourgeoisie, but as an individuallyr socially acquiredattribute,becomes the centerpiece of this model. The CEPALreportgoes so far asto speak of creative modernizationas "thestylizationof a political processof the search for social efficiency,"especially necessary in the conditionsof crisis and profound ransformations hat affect the region. Itis important,therefore,to ask about the sociological conditions of this creativity.Inmodernity,one of the principlesof creativity,he liberationof ener-gies that transformedculture, was, as Habermasdemonstrates,4 he sepa-ration of the spheres of science, morality,and art fromthe fieldof religiousand metaphysical justificationsand theirconversionto esoteric domains ofexperts, a process thatresultedinthe penetrationof these spheres by eco-nomic and administrativerationality,a rationality ompletely distinct fromthat which rules the transmission and reproductionof values and norms.Does the path of modernization n LatinAmericapass throughthese sameforms of the rationalization f culture hat have alreadyprovento be efficient4. Jurgen Habermas,"Modernity,n IncompleteProject,"n HalFoster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic:Essays on PostmodernCulturePortTownsend:BayPress, 1983),3-15.


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38 boundary / Fall1993in the liberationof creativity?Ifitdoes, how can such a strategy be madecompatible withthe declaredobjectiveof maintaininghe sought-afterratio-nalism within a frame of values and goals that pointto integration,"socialefficiency,"justice, and solidarity?And what does it mean, in the LatinAmerican context, to "adapt"models of behavior and aspirations capableof shaping demands from the most advanced capitalistcenters, and, atthe same time, to do this "creatively,"ccordingto our "specifichistories,indigenous resources, and possibilities"?Ifdemand is notculturally utono-mous-how could itbe ina universe of an internationalmarketof messagesand goods-can the supplyof creativityand productsbe managed locally,and, furthermore,can it be anchored in the traditionsand beliefs of theinternalculture?At heart, the CEPALdocument assumes a noncontradictorycon-ception of modernityin its suppositionof an uncomplicatedand "creative"access to what it calls the "rational nd secular norms of culture."Of whatculture? We know that neoconservatives stigmatize "irrationalist"enden-cies inWesternculture, nasmuch as these can no longerprovide he valuesand motivations required by the economy; and that progressives, in thefashion of Habermas, denounce the contradictions between a technical-instrumentalrationality,which permeates all of social life, and a commu-nicative rationality,which is seen as interruptedby the first in a way thatprovokes a replacementof meanings by consumer goods. To whom do weappeal, then, to obtain the culturalrationalism hat is made to appear asa presuppositionof the advance of modernization?Or,is this proposal, inits cultural mplications,nothingmore than an ideological "bargain,"notherof the many that LatinAmerican intellectualsand technocrats have pro-duced in recent years in their eagerness to appropriatea modernitythatdoes not adapt itself to their models and forecasts?The question at hand involves,perhaps, a double misunderstanding.First,about the natureof rationalitytself.What,exactly, does the CEPALreportmean when it stipulates a rationaland secular culture as the foun-dationof the processes of modernization?The rationality f the market,forexample, is very different rom the rationality f politics,and both differ, nturn,fromtechnobureaucraticrationality.neach case it is a matter of per-sonified rationalities, nstitutionallymediated,tied to intereststhathabituallyinteractin a conflictivemanner.Inculture,these rationalities mprint ogni-tive styles, define values, introducehabits,and stimulatevaried personalitystructures.Therefore, there are no "rationalnorms" hat can be so outsideof their context:the laboratory,he competitivemarket,the noncompetitive


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Brunner NotesonModernityndPostmodernity39market,the state, the parties, et cetera. A complex cultureaccepts, out ofnecessity, these various types and forms of rationality hat, according toone's adopted pointof view, can also be stigmatizedas irrational.The second misunderstandinghas to do withthe acquisitionof theserationalities.The CEPALdocumentemphasizes an adaptationand internal-ization of norms that would come initially"fromoutside" but, once appro-priated,would formrationallyorientedvalues, motivations,and behaviors.Howwillthis process of transference and acquisitionof rationalityhappen?Itis easiest to imagine the process as takingplace throughmodes of col-lective learningbased on life experiences that condition this learning:themarket, education, the multiplebureaucraticor quasi-bureaucraticstruc-tures of civil society, corporationsand unions, et cetera. But it is preciselythese situations of learning,of existing, that willsocialize individuals andgroups in contextuallyconditionedand, therefore, by necessity, diverselysituated "rationalisms."Inotherwords, there does not seem to be anything ike a homogene-ously rationalizedculture.

Cultural HeterogeneityAs we understand it,Octavio Paz's critiqueof modernitypoints pre-cisely to this voluntarismof the ideologies of modernismand modernizationin LatinAmerica.5And Paz is not the onlyone who has made this point;itsantecedents can be traced farbackinthe historyof LatinAmerican hought.What,then, is expressed by the relativemalaise withmodernity hat recursin the region with almost the same frequency and force with which new

modernizingprojects are launched? We can answer this in the followingway: What produces the malaise is the periodicconflict of those forms ofmodernizationwhose suppositionis invariablyhe adoptionand extensionof rational models of conduct withwhat, for lack of a betterterm, we maycall the culturalheterogeneity of LatinAmerica.This is notthe same thingas supposingthatoursocieties are formedby a superimpositionof historical,cultural ntities inthe mannerof geologi-cal layers that slide on top of each other,every once in a while producingbreaks and greattelluricupheavals. Itmaybe thatsome compelling imagesin LatinAmerican literature till functionwithin his logic, habituallydepart-5. See OctavioPaz, Children f the Mire Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress,1974), 148-64.


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40 boundary / Fall1993ing from the even more basic opposition between nature and culture. Inthis sense, the whole cycle of Pablo Neruda'spoetry represents better thanany analysis the drama of a culturethat seeks to entreatnature on its ownbehalf, making it participatein the loves and sorrows of individuals andpeoples at the same time that it reflects as culture a superimpositionofhistories that have not arrivedat a complete synthesis.The notion of culturalheterogeneity refers us instead to a kind ofregional postmodernismavant la lettre that, nevertheless, is fullyconstitu-tive of our modernity.Carlos Monsivais, in a prose collage, has insightfullycaptured this:Cable television. Superhero comics. Quick and poorly translatedhumor.An infinityof productswhichsatiate, invent,and modify ne-cessities. Television programs whose weekly apotheosis is nour-ished bythe victories of the NorthAmericansystem ofjustice. Books

(best-sellers) where the mechanics of success programthe imagi-nation and writing.Extremelyrefinedtechnologies. Videocassettes.Satellitecommunication.The ideologyof MacLuhan'sglobal village.Videodiscs. Strategies of consumptionwhose implacable logisticsdestroy all artisanal perspective. The "philosophy"of the biggestseller in the world. Movies which have globallyimposed the rhythm,themes, and pointof view of NorthAmerican ndustry.Software andhardware.Internationalnews agencies. Contemptforthe historyofeach nation.Homogenizationof "desirable"ifestyles.The impositionof a global language. Acircuitof ideologicaltransmissionwhichgoesfrom publicityto pedagogy. Controlof the "computerrevolution."Magazines which distribute"femininity."he periodic reorderingofthe life-styles adjustableto technologicalchanges.6The culturalheterogeneity reflectedinthis collage, inthe "postmod-ernist"grafts and allegories of our modernity, s, like this modernityitself,a productof the internationalmarket.To paraphrase Raymond Williams,our identitiesno longerappear as such butratheras sectors of the interna-tional market, especially in the area of culture.There subsist infinite ocalculturalexchanges that formthe frameworkof our daily life, that mass of

more or less direct interactionsinwhichcustoms, use values, images, and6. Carlos Monsivais:"Penetracion ulturaly nacionalismo,"n Pablo Gonzalez Casa-nova,ed., Nointervencion, utodeterminaciondemocraciaen AmericaLatina Mexico:SigloXXI,1983),75.


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Brunner Noteson ModernityndPostmodernity41beliefs accumulate. But throughand above this framework-can we stillcall it national?-flow and are articulatedmessages and institutionsandcircuitsfullyincorporatednto a modernitywhose heart is farfrom the heartof "our" ulture.

Culturalheterogeneity, therefore, refers to a double phenomenon:(1) of segmentation and segmented participationn this global market ofmessages and symbols whose underlyinggrammar is North Americanhegemony over the imaginaryof a greatpartof humanity Iwillreturn o thispoint);(2) of differentialparticipation ccordingto local codes of reception,groupand individual,nthe incessant movement of the circuitsof transmis-sion that extend fromadvertising o pedagogy.Whatresults from his doubleand explosive, segmented and differentialparticipations something simi-lar to what is proclaimed by certain representativesof postmodernism: ade-centering, a deconstruction,of Western culture as it is represented bythe manuals;of its rationalism, tssecularism,its key institutions; f the cog-nitive habits and styles itsupposedly imposes ina uniformway-somethingthat resembles Monsivais's collage; something that "generates meaning,"but a meaningoutof place, taken out of context,a graftonto another culture.Culturalheterogeneitythus means something very different han di-verse cultures (subcultures)of ethnicities, classes, groups, or regions, orthan the mere superimpositionof cultures,whether or not these cultureshave found a way of synthesizing themselves. It means, specifically, asegmented and differentialparticipationn an internationalmarket of mes-sages that "penetrates"the local frameworkof culture on all sides andin unexpected ways, leading to an implosionof the consumed/produced/reproduced meanings and subsequent deficiencies of identity,yearningsfor identification,confusion of temporalhorizons, paralysisof the creativeimagination, oss of utopias,atomizationof localmemory,and obsolescenceof traditions.Thus, Monsivais concludes, "itsvalues substituted . . . byothers whichbasicallymodernizeappearances and take advantage (forthemarket)of the innovations of the age, a collectivitycan no longer manageto confront its experiences orverifyits legitimate goals."7

A Multiplicityof LogicsWhat precise, specific meaning can the invocation of rationalism ncultureand society have, then, inthis "postmodernism"hat characterizes7. Monsivais,"Penetracion,"6.


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42 boundary / Fall1993LatinAmericanmodernity?Modernity annot be read,inthe fashion of Mar-shall Berman, as a singular collective experience of the modern, nor asvariations of that same experience that in the long run tend to converge. Ifwe were to proceed that way, we wouldhave done no more than to trans-pose the conception of modernization hrough stages to the conception ofour modernity.What seems more reasonable is to imagine modernityas a trunkfromwhichnumerous branches andsub-branches extend inthe most varieddirections. Inthe case of LatinAmerica,as we noted, the motorof moder-nity, the internationalmarket, provokes and then reinforces an incessantmovement of heterogenizationof culture,employing,stimulating,and repro-ducing a pluralityof logics that act simultaneously,becoming interwoven.Logics that, from a Eurocentricand Enlightenmentpointof view, we couldproperly call modern, such as those of secularization, formal rationality,bureaucratization, ndividualization, uturism,alienation, et cetera. Logicsof the collective imaginary,at the same time shaped by a local historicalmemory (which is itself sometimes varied and contradictory)and by theseductions of the mass media, as occurs withthe telenovela. Logicsof iden-tification based on economic, social, and culturalpositions; social logicsof differentiation n a worldwhere consumption distributes,at the sametime, signs of status; sacrificiallogics of giving, expenditure,and fiestas,which, by themselves, do not manage to resist the commercializingforceof the market;political ogics of articulationand mobilization,which are notimmune to the internationalization f militancies;renewable modern logicsof terrorand fear ina universeof the disappeared,torture, tate and privateterrorism,and of the markslefton society by repression.

For this reason, proposals for modernization,whether traditionalornew, that do not assume as a central fact of their "efficient" perationthisculturalheterogeneity in which they are called upon to materialize them-selves condemn themselves to remainon the terrainof ideological volun-tarism.

Endogenous CreativityWe consider ita sign of the times that global proposals, in the man-ner of great laboratory ests that claimto design, on the basis of totalizingrationality,he modernizationof this or that society, are not in favor,at themoment, in LatinAmerica. On the other hand, more modest proposals for


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Brunner Noteson ModernityndPostmodernity43the local or partialrationalizationof society are being introducedinto thedebate, such as CEPAL's trategyforthe formationof "endogenous nucleiof technological dynamization."The CEPAL eportnotes apropos the futureof LatinAmerica:

One starts from the premise that creativityis a complex processin which a wide range of agents and motivationsparticipate: argeindustrialplants tied to small and mediumones, institutes of tech-nology, institutes of basic science, the organisms which preparequalified personnel at the different evels, the mass media, and thecentral state ministries and organisms which define policies andnorms.... The interactionbetween these agents and their motiva-tions is decisive for the process of creativity.8This is a strategy of local rationalization hat contains elements ofthe state and the market,of endogenous creativity,and of the appropria-tion of externaldynamics;that supposes complex interactionsbetween theeconomy, politics, the administration,and culture; hat valorizes, by over-

lapping them, both instrumentalefficiency and communicativerationality.More than the design of a modernsociety, or even of its economy, it is theoutline of a system of relations wherein creativityencounters sociologicalconditions of operation.Itremains to be seen, however,whether the institutionsof culture,the means of communication, institutes of trainingand centers of forma-tion, research laboratories,universities,and so on, are in a condition to beincorporatedinto an enterprise of this sort (withan "inward" rientation,so to speak), when for a long time they have danced to the rhythmof therequirementsof theirdifferentialntegration nto internationalmarkets. Forexample, universitiesin LatinAmerica have been, more than anythingelse,enterprises of intellectualcriticism,of professionalcertificationand socialmobility,leaving their participation n enterprises of accumulation to themediationof complex international ircuits.Their functionhas consisted ofgrowing,ina sense, against the market,preservingat the same time,wherepossible, theirindependence from he state, underthe suppositionthatonlyas such could they aspire to be the "conscience of the nation."Theirpoliti-cization, not at allsurprisingunder these circumstances, reflects a typicallyantimodernfeature of LatinAmericanmodernity:a low level of autonomy,8. CEPAL, Crisis, vol. 3, 72.


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44 boundary / Fall1993ingeneral, of culture and of its institutional phere, and, in particular, f thesciences, which runs parallelto a high degree of autonomyof politics andideological creation.The "new"proposals of development, which attemptto escape theglobalism of certain previousdesigns and which insist on local rationaliza-tions of "nuclei" hat combine institutional egments of the economy, theadministration,and culture,seem to better understand he fragmentarycon-ditionsof regionalmodernity;but at the same time,they can findthemselvesinvolved in the heterogeneity of culture and in the sometimes perverseeffects that this provokes inthe development of local cultural nstitutions.

The Social Uses of ReligionIna verydifferentregister,we knowthatsome authorshave posited a

supposed tension between modernizationand the "Catholic ubstratum"ofLatinAmericanculture.Inreality, he problemproves to be more complex.Inthe midst of the culturalheterogeneitythat is the salient featureofour regionalmodernity, his religious"substratum"ulfillsa varietyof func-tions, only one of which corresponds to the supposed delegitimizationof amodern work ethic. Moreover, t has alreadybeen shown that in very fewparts of the developed world does the (puritan)work ethic play a key roleany longer in individualmotivationand performance.Everywhere,even insocialist regimes, there is an uncoupling of ethics and performance, andthe market itself increasinglyconditions directlyeconomic behavior andperformance.On the other hand, the "Catholic ubstratum" ontinues to operate,in many parts of LatinAmerica, as a symbolicfoundationfor popularreli-gious practices and, what is moreinteresting,renews the exhausted depositof symbols and desires capable of mobilizingradical(revolutionary)behav-iors on the social and political plane. In many societies of the continent,a prophetic,testimonial,and revolutionary urrent s nourishedby religion,aroundwhich are continuallyrenewed ties of solidarity, eeds of communallife,and the principleof rebellionagainstthe established order.The strugglein Nicaragua between the Catholichierarchyandthe "popular hurch"overthe control of this deposit of revolutionary/counter-revolutionaryegitimi-zations, for example, precisely emphasizes the discussion of the "uses"of this "Catholicsubstratum,"whose importance is increasinglypolitical,ideological, and culturalmore than economic or (work)ethical.The proposalof Puebla to evangelize LatinAmericanculturepartially


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Brunner NotesonModernityndPostmodernity45recognizes this situation,but itsupposes, at the same time,that the culturalheterogeneity of the region can be overcome throughthe elaboration of anew synthesis, whereinthe dimensions of the modern could recuperate asense of the sacred and the transcendentalvia a recouplingwitha Christianethic capable of interruptinghe process of functionalization nd "degrada-tion"of secularized values. The proposalof Puebla imagines the "gestationof a new civilization"hat, beyond modernity,"integrates he values whichit has contributedbut inthe frameof (this)new civilization."9Seen fromthe perspectiveof the questionof modernityand modern-izationon the continent by the year 2000, what progress, new opening, or"solution"does this attemptto "rebaptize"LatinAmericanculture nCatho-lic religiousterms offer?Neoconservativeproposals, followingDaniel Bell'sargument in The CulturalContradictionsof Capitalism,situate the religiousquestion inthe center of developed societies interms of a diagnosis of thecontradictions hat have arisen between economy and culture nlatecapital-ism, whereas LatinAmericanneo-Catholicproposals,such as Morande's,l1still seem to reflect the classic struggle between traditionalismand mod-ernism, secularism and religion,positivismand Catholicism. Is there notentailed here, perhaps, underthe educated guise of civiltolerance, a totalrejectionof modernity,of its inherentdynamicsand values? Is there not therisk of a new "totalizing"roposalthat,precisely by ignoring he radical actof LatinAmericanculturalheterogeneity,seeks to base itself on religioninorder to establish a culturalcontinuity orn to pieces long ago? And whatcan this proposal implyin the area of development, the economy, the newpoliticalsystem, the emancipation of privatelife,the generation of a massculturebased on the culturalndustry,andthe currentlyaccepted principlesof social integrationand control?

Societies without ConsensusNevertheless, as we have had the opportunityo see, the questionof modern secularism is not an issue that only concerns the church or afew Catholic intellectuals.Itis internationallyelatedto various currents ofneoconservatism and, in LatinAmerica,to the not at all marginalconcerns

9. CELAM, ocument fConsultationo the EpiscopalConferences, IIConferenciaGen-eraldel EpiscopadoLatinoamericano1978).10. See PedroMorande,Cultura modernizacion n AmericaLatina Santiagode Chile:UniversidadCatolicade Chile,1984).


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46 boundary / Fall1993of sociologists such as Gino Germani.Even among figuresoriginating romMarxism,such as Leszek Kolakowsky,he modern"disenchantment" f theworldand the subsequent "demolition" f taboos constitute the neurologicalpointof any criticalphilosophyof modernity.We find ourselves confronted here with a reactive sensibility tomodernity hat is widelydisseminated and that, indifferentorms,gives riseto a critiqueof culturalmodernisminvolvinga rangeof issues, fromthe lossof values, the renunciationof ethics in social relations,and the erosion ofnational identities to the destruction of artisticcanons.As Habermas has pointedout, however, this critiqueis surely mis-guided, since it is not possible to imputeto culture,and to the profession-alized agents of culture,intellectuals,the effects of a secularism that hasresulted from the more or less successful development of capitalism inthe economy and society. The problem, in reality, s better formulatedbyGermani when he wonders whether, on the basis of the new conditionscreated in the economy and society, once their repercussions in the cul-turalsphere are known(i.e., secularism), itis stillpossible to guarantee theminimumof consensus and integration equiredbythe functioningof demo-craticgovernments. The alternative,accordingto Germani,are the modernauthoritarianisms,namely, regimes that impose throughforce a total re-socialization of the population, ntegratingeach individualntoa militarizedculture.

Clearly,the underlyinghypothesis is that societies cannot function,indeed runthe riskof disappearingaltogether,without his minimumof con-sensus, "anagreement over foundations,"as Laskiput it in a phrase Ger-mani likes to quote. Thus:Itis not surprisingthat the philosophyof history usually locates thebeginningof the decadence of the great civilizationsprecisely inthephases of acute secularization,even ifthe latter s limited o the elite.Toynbee, Spengler, Sorokin and others give clear examples of thistheoreticalorientation.1It is not our interest to explore the philosophical-historicalmplica-tions of this thesis but ratherto take up its sociological nucleus inthe light

of what we have said. Inthis sense, Germani's thesis is clear: Modernitygenerates serious problems of normative ntegration hat weaken or make11. Gino Germani,"Democracia autoritarismon la sociedad moderna,"n Germaniet al., Los limites de la democracia(BuenosAires:CLACSO, 985),31.


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Brunner/ Notes on Modernity nd Postmodernity 47

impossible democratic governments, leading to catastrophic solutions inthe guise of authoritarian egimes of total resocialization.Modernization e-duces the validityof certain traditional orms of social integrationand, bypushing toward an ever-increasingsecularizationof culture, reduces thebases of the traditional"prescriptivenucleus,"weakening the old forms oflegitimizationbased on religiousbeliefs. This does not mean, however,thatmodernization does not generate its own forms of integration,over a fullrange of positions from "moral"o "organic" olidarity.The question, especially in LatinAmerica, is whether the culturalheterogeneity constitutive of its own specific modernity,in which a mot-ley collection of traditionaland new forms of normativeprescriptionaremixed, stillmakes possible the functioningof social systems in an increas-ingly secularized world. This question refers us in turn,at a higher levelof abstraction,to the question of the necessary degree of consensus andnormativeintegrationsocial systems need inorder to function. Ifone wereto go by the specialist literatureon this issue, it would appear no systemof society should be able to functionin LatinAmerica, so scarce are theprinciplesof integrationand agreement over foundationsinthe region.Onecould argue that precisely because of this, these societies resortwithrela-tive frequencyto authoritarianegimes inorder to secure theirgovernment,although not their integration.On the other hand, itwouldseem possible, indeed almost obligatory,to argue that, in spite of everything,the kindof societies we have charac-terized by a high degree of culturalheterogeneityactuallydo maintainandreproduce a sufficientdegree of integration,but on the basis of local andpartial orms of consensus that involveonly limitedand differentiatedareasof society. Authoritarianism ould,inthis perspective,be a formof "govern-ing,"of controlling his plurality f forms of consensus whenever they tendto alignthemselves in a catastrophicmanner,polarizingsociety.Such a perspective mightallow us to consider oursocieties as soci-eties without the need for a basic consensus, without an agreement overfoundations, with scarce possibility (and necessity) of conceiving them-selves as "totalities";s societies that,more thanconsensus, need to orga-nize conflict and give rise to agreements of interests;as societies that,morethan recuperatinga political ystem legitimizedbya nucleus of values, needto construct and live with a necessarily unstable one, whichreflects agree-ments over the rulesof governmentcapable of inspiringmutualrespect andof avoidingthe warof each against all.


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48 boundary / Fall1993

Political DisenchantmentThe other aspect of Germani's hesis, accordingto which a constanterosion of the minimumprescriptivenucleus requiredfor social integra-tion makes democracies vulnerable,also needs to be discussed in relationto the politicalfuture of LatinAmerica. As Norbert Lechner has recentlystated,12 he threat of the dissolution and atomization of the social order

broughton by modernization secularismand marginalization)aused andexacerbated an "ideologicalinflation"n the LatinAmericaof the sixties,favoring revolution as the means of nationalliberation,social integration,and economic development, as opposed to what was seen as capitalist"development of underdevelopment."The revolutionaryproposal implied,as Lechner demonstrates, a messianic and fundamentaliststyle of doingpolitics, which carried withinitself a germ of antisecularismin culture. Bycontrast, in the present climate of democratic recovery,the opposite ten-dency finds itselfreinforced,namely, he reappraisalof secularism inculture.Inopposition to what Germanisustains, Lechnersuggests that secularismcan be beneficial for democratic recovery in the region, relieving politicsof ethical-religious compromises, disseminating values of civil tolerance,and producinga certainspiritof negotiation,a "cooling-off"f values, moti-vations, and affects. A new kind of realism,one that values, in Lechner'swords, "the institutionsand procedures,or inotherwords, ... the forms ofdoing politicsover its materialcontents,"wouldpointinthis same direction.What is suggested here is the possibilityof a profane,"disenchanted"notion of politicsthat restricts it to specific areas, taking away its omnipo-tence and freeing it from its anchorage in absolute principles in order tomake itmore flexible and adjustableto immediatechallenges. Such a con-cept resonates withcertaintendencies, themes, and attitudes of postmod-ernism, as Lechner makes clear: Inboth, there is a criticismof the idea ofcomplete subjects, an abandonment of the "masternarratives,"a conver-sion of time into a continuouspresent, a reductionof politicsto an exchangeof material and symbolicgoods. The riskinvolvedfor Lechner, however, isthat this postmodern movement of contemporarypolitics in LatinAmericamay abandon the notion that society can construct itself in a deliberatemanner and thatthe reductionof politicsto a "politicalmarket"may excludeinterests and goods thatcannot be exchanged inthe market:humanrights,12. NorbertLechner,"Problemasde la democratizacion n el contextode una culturaposmoderna" FLACSOmanuscript). echner's ssay inthiscollections a versionof this.


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roots, the sense of belonging,the desire forcertainty, he need fortranscen-dental referents. Secularism then presents itselfambiguously:Itreinforcestendencies that seem necessary, or at least inevitable, nthe present phaseof the recuperationandconsolidationofdemocracies; but,atthe same time,itgenerates a deficitof meaning, motivations,andcollective constructionofthe social orderthat would impede the elaborationof a democraticculture.These postmodern features of political culture in Latin Americashould be included, as I noted before, less in the context of a critiqueofmodernitythan as a consequence of the regionalform of our modernity,which has tended precisely in the directionof a secularizationof the areaof power. The "disenchantment" f and with power in LatinAmerica nec-essarily passes through a dis-dramatizationof power: a reduction of itssymbolic-expressive aspects and an increase inthe instrumental apacitiesof its gestation; a loss of ideologicalaura infavor of the practicalinterestsof actors, which are lost and foundinthe politicalmarket; nshort, a greaterautonomy of politicsbecause of its differentiation nd specialization. Thismeans, of course, that politicsno longer aspires to constructsocial identi-ties, reservingfor itself the colder terrainof changingpolitical oyalties;thatit loses its characteras a "movement" n order to be reduced to "parties"thatare "organization nd program" ut not an existentialcommunitynoranideological-transcendentalvanguard of society; that it no longer providesreferences of certaintynorcommitmentsto principles,limitingtselfto pro-cessing the uncertainties withina game of stipulatedrules;that it retreatsfrom the commanding heights of revolutionor restorationin order to as-sume, in a disenchanted worldand in a realitywithouttoo many illusions,the sphere of the administrationof scarce means, of the negotiation be-tween forces inconflict,of the persuasion of a publicof citizens who do ordo not vote.

The National as a Revolutionary ForceThere is, logicallyand historically, n alternative o Germani'sthesisabout the catastrophic and authoritarianoutcomes of the states of dis-integrationcaused by the process of secularization:that of a "national-

popular"revolutionary rticulation ied to divergentprojectsof socializationand integrationcapable of being politicallyand institutionallyxpressed. Insituations of extensive culturalheterogeneity, the very notion of nationalcollectivity finds itself questioned and permanentlyput intotension, sincethere exists a latent conflictbetween diverse proposals of nationalintegra-


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50 boundary / Fall1993tion. Each of these proposals resorts, for its legitimization, o a differentinterpretation f the nationalpast; each mobilizes a distinct constellation ofnationalsymbols; each imagines the international nsertion of the countryin a differentway; and each is based, in the last instance, on insufficientlysecularized principlesof the construction of the nation. These proposalscan be mobilized ndiscriminately y politicalparties,the armedforces, intel-lectualelites, leadershipgroups incivilsociety, armedrevolutionary roups,charismatic leaders, and churches or sects. Ineach case, it is a matter ofbarely secularized, exclusive, and totalizingproposals. Each contains, forthat very reason, a projectfor the socialization and resocialization of thepopulation,under the hegemonic controlof a class, group,leader,or belief.Faced withthe realityof a "disintegrated" ation,devoid of a basicor minimalconsensus, permeated bythe contradictions, ensions, and con-flicts caused by its heterogeneity, this kind of nonsecular, quasi-religiousproposal, which appeals to total commitment and mobilizes around tran-scendental values and goals, or around a leader who embodies these, canprove to be very powerful.These proposals habituallyofferthe projectof anational modernization ied to a nucleus of values (thenation,the class, pastsplendor, liberation)that offers the minimumprescriptivenucleus aroundwhich to organize the processes of resocializationand the ceremonies andrites of integration.As in the case we looked at earlier of the neo-Catholicproposal forLatinAmerica's future,these are antisecularprojects in the field of culturethat take advantage of the diffuse,but at times extensive, criticismof moder-nity,of its overrationalism, ts ethical pluralism, ts individualism,ts alien-ationand cultural mperialism, t cetera. Perhapsforthis reason, revolutionsin LatinAmerica routinelyhappen in a national context:They are national-popular-national-liberation, national-security,or national-development-movements. Symbols of the national cover a wide range of politicalandstrategic options, but inthe end, they all seek the same thing:to overcomethe culturalheterogeneity constitutiveof society and its "internationalist"dynamic;to curbthe effects of secularism;to cancel the forms, formalities,and "games" of democracy, and to reestablish a governing principleofintegration hroughwhich the majority an be resocialized.

A Peripheral ModernityOne of the threads that runs throughthe debates about modernityand postmodernityin LatinAmerica(but not only there, as we willsee), is


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Brunner NotesonModernityndPostmodernity51that of the changing poles of the modernizationof the world,and of the dif-ferentiated modes of participationnmodernity.Braudelstudiedthis matter,startingfrom the dynamics of capitalismin the productionof the modernworld-system, what he called the development of a "world-economy."Hefound that since the fourteenthcentury,a continuous"partitionf the world"into concentric zones, "increasinglydisfavored inasmuch as one movesaway fromtheirtriumphant enter,"can be observed. The "longdurations"are precisely processes of the centering,de-centering,and re-centeringofthe world-economy:

The splendor,the wealth,and happiness of lifeare unitedinthe cen-ter of the world-economy, n its very nucleus. That is where the sunof history gives brilliance o the most vividcolors; that is where aremanifestedhighprices,highsalaries, banking,"royal"manufactures,profitable ndustries and capitalistagriculture;hat is where the pointof departureand arrivalof the extensive foreign trade is situated,along with a super-abundanceof preciousmetals, of solidcoins, andoftitlesof credit.Alladvanced economic modernitys concentrated inthis nucleus: the travelerrealizes this when he contemplates Veniceinthe fifteenthcentury,orAmsterdam nthe seventeenth, or Londoninthe eighteenth, or New York nthe present.13

Fartherout, in the circle of intermediatecountries, which are "neighbors,competitors,or emulators ofthe center," his modernity, his level of life,de-creases, and the dynamics are no longerthe same as those of the center.Finally, n the marginaland dependent zones, geographicallyfar removedfrom the center, "the life of men evokes purgatory,when not hell."Theirsubordinatedintegration nto the divisionof laborand theirsegmented par-ticipationinthe internationalmarketdrags them inthe wake of a modernitythat only benefits them contradictorily,hat penetrates them from all sides,causing unexpected, and sometimes perverse, effects, creatingand multi-plying the heterogeneity that ends up being their characteristicconditionof life and the barely perceptiblesign of their identity.Recall Monsivais'scollage.Inthe world-economyof contemporary apitalism,"NorthAmerican-ization"appears as a featureinseparablefrommodernity.Fromthere comethe impulses of modernism;there willend up the modernists and modern-13. FernandBraudel,Ladinamicadel capitalismo Madrid: lianzaEditorial,985),102-3.


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52 boundary / Fall1993isms that happen to originatein the periphery.To oppose this realitywitha nationalism tied to traditions and values from the past, to a notion ofnational identity priorto any culturalcontaminationis, to say it in Monsi-vais's own words, to declare that the resistance to culturalpenetrationfindsitself defeated in advance.14

The question is, however, whether it is still meaningfulto speak ofculturalpenetration in any case, since there is no doubt that inthe presentconfigurationof the capitalistworld-economy, he center retains,inadditionto the control over economic and militarydynamics, a conclusive culturalhegemony. The "intermediate" ountries, accordingto Braudel's nomen-clature, see it this way. Baudrillard, eferring o the relation of Europe toAmerica, has said: "Its notonlya question of a disjuncture, tis an abyss ofmodernitywhich separates us." Oragain: "The United States is a realizedutopia." 5We have been accustomed to thinkthe culturalproblem in LatinAmericawithin he parametersof dependency theory.Culturalpenetration?Dependent culture?What we observe, rather,is that modernity,as a dif-ferentiatedexperience in the capitalistworld,has a center, which radiatesa zone of marginal and dependent peripheries where this same moder-nitycreates and re-creates a culturalheterogeneity,which, inturn,in all ofits fragments, breaks, folds, collages, and displacements continues to betied to the hegemonic center. The very identityof these peripheralzonesis partiallyconstructed with the image of this other, in the same way thatits culture is elaborated withfragments of this other culture. In all fields ofculture-science, technology, art, utopias-the importantmodern culturalsyntheses are first produced in the Northand descend later to us, via aprocess in which they are "received"and appropriatedaccording to localcodes of reception. This is how it has happened with sociology, pop art,rock music, film,data processing, models of the university,neoliberalism,the most recent medicines, armaments, and, inthe long run,with our veryincorporationntomodernity.

14. Monsivais,"Penetraci6n,"6.15. Jean Baudrillard,Lautopiarealizada"Paperdelivered tthe Congresson the Euro-pean Cultural pace, Madrid,October17-19, 1985).


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ConclusionsItshould be clear that these notes have no way of concluding. Itisrather a question of initiatinga reflectionwhose largercoordinates are the

ongoing debate about modernity,modernism,and modernization.Ata timewhen a confusing fog of "posts"-postmodernism, postpolitics, posthistory,postvanguard-hovers over modernity, t becomes necessary to recoverthe specific character of modernization nLatinAmerica.Here, among our-selves, the malaise inculturedoes not,couldnot,springfrom he exhaustionof modernity.On the contrary, t arises from an exasperation with moder-nity,with its infinitelyambiguous effects, with its inevitable intentionalism,with its distortions,and withthe problemsthat itbequeaths for the future ofthe region, some of which Ihave brieflydiscussed.Condemned to live ina worldwhere all the images of modernityandmodernism come to us from the outside and become obsolete before weare able to materializethem, we findourselves trappedin a worldwherenot all solid things but rather all symbols melt into air. Latin America:theproject of echoes and fragments, of past utopias whose present we canonly perceive as a continuouscrisis. This sensation of the permanentcrisisof everything, of the economy, institutions,politicalregimes, universities,art, publicservices, privateenterprise,the armedforces, poorlyand barelyhides the fact that we live and think nthe middleof a modernity nthe pro-cess of construction,whose dynamic is increasingthe heterogeneities ofourvery perceptions, knowledges, and information.What happens to us is exactly the opposite of what happens in thatpostmodernity nwhich, accordingto Baudrillard, thingshave found a wayof avoidinga dialectics of meaningthatwas beginningto bore them:by pro-liferating ndefinitely,ncreasingtheirpotential,outbidding hemselves inanascension to the limit,an obscenity that henceforth becomes their imma-nent finalityand senseless reason."16 Forus, itwould at times seem that itis the meaning, words, and experiences thathave founda way to escape adialectic of things that bored them: infinitelyproliferating,elf-empowering,self-essentializing in a game of extremes and mirrors,carriedalong by asenseless reason . . .

But neither is it useful to exaggerate. Here, between words andthings, ideology and society, symbols and instruments,there still tend to16. Jean Baudrillard,atalStrategies(NewYork: emiotext(e),1982),7.


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54 boundary / Fall1993be fragileconnections that permita "comingand going"behind this dreamof modernity hat, only halfaccepted, has nevertheless alreadypermeatedthe society and culture of this partof America.The futureof LatinAmericawillnot be, forthis reason, very differentfrom its present:one of a peripheralmodernity,de-centered, subject to con-flicts, whose destiny willdepend, to some degree, on what these societiesmanage to do with this modernityin the process of producingit throughtheir own complex and changing heterogeneity.

josé joaquín brunner

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