Premodern, modernizáció, modernitás, modernizmus, posztmodern, sokszínű modernitás: Egy fogalom elágazásai

The notions which may be associated with the term ’modern’, are multifarious and divergent in terms of their meaning, that are also changing with the time passing. The Latin word had also been known already in the Antiquity carrying the meaning: just now. It gained its new and standard meaning as late as the 19th century, then already expressing the novelty of something. The term ’modern’ became well-known in historical scholarship due to the modernization theory in which the times of premodern have been distinguished by the emergence of a totally new kind of socio-economic system and age. The word ’modernity’, however, serves to express the total universe of the experience of a man living in the metropolis of the 19th and 20th century. The term ’cultural modernism’ identifies the many efforts of the 20th century in the creative arts, which all tend to negate the nineteenth-century historism. The program of the ’postmodern’ which surfaced at the late 20th century, turned against everything represented by the so called modern both in the arts (mainly in architecture), and the human sciences. The concept of ’multiple modernity’ also appearing at the end of the 20th century has been destined for replacing the European-rooted notion of the linear and teleological vision of history. Within the framework of the latter both the ’postcolonial history writing’ and the ’subaltern studies’ make their best of adequately comprehending the trajectory of the non-European histories.

Keywords: right now, up-to-date, take-off, metropolitan maelstrom, avant-garde,
postmodern skepticism, a non-European time consciousness