Modernity Reconfigured, or, Empire and the End of Habermas Versus Foucault

Central to debates in social theory about the relationship between modernity and critique has been the opposition, variously construed, between Foucauldian and Habermasian perspectives. Particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, and into the 2000s, these iconic figures stood for differing positions on the nature and purpose of human rationality, the workings of power in modern (and perhaps postmodern) capitalist societies, and the meaning and purpose of “critical theory.” As many papers and advanced course syllabi show, the opposition itself became a tool for thinking about democracy, capitalism, violence, and so on.

            However, this opposition was underwritten by a surprisingly similar theoretical narrative of modernity informed by a comparative-historical sociology of national states and economies, and this narrative is in important ways incorrect and incomplete, for it excludes empire and colonization from its causal stories and cultural interpretations. A reading of the explicit and implicit historical sociologies of Foucault and of Habermas is presented, highlighting these absences. The paper then explores the recurrence of this absence in other theories of modernity or modernities, including Wittrock and Eisenstadt.

            What, then, is the alternative? Too often, alternatives are themselves presented in terms informed by “Habermas versus Foucault,” modern versus postmodern, etc. In an effort to resist this tendency, instead of proposing a new all-encompassing position, this paper examines how three concepts that are simultaneously analytic and normative would shift in their meaning and use, if we were to incorporate the sociology of empire into our understanding of modernity and critique. First, the relationship of the concept of power to the concept of instrumentality or instrumental reason is reconsidered. Second, the concept of fantasy, and the possibility of a hermeneutics of modern fantasies, is explored. This leads to a final reflection on the concept of modernity itself.