Abstract

Given that the modernist narrative seems inexorably headed for Chapter 11, the search for alternatives tends to turn, first and foremost, to allegedly transcended, “pre-modern” models of social organization. This helps explain not only the thriving, but also a return to religion and tradition. This state of affairs is routinely used to relegitimate the faltering of such an obviously “emancipatory” undertaking as the modernist project by reinforcing standard modernist theodicy, according to which all evil is a function of “greed” and, most of all, the persistence of “superstition and myth,” i.e.,religion and tradition. Cause and effect are reversed: the project is presumably…