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Saturday, May 19, 2012

Don't waste your time scanning newspapers of 1945 for reports of MODERNITY's demise...

      The current view that 1945 was the year that Modernity died and Post-Modernity was born wasn't shared by many in that crucial year - at least not consciously.
     No doubt, at all, that many in 1945 were alarmed by modernity's latest 'triumphs' - but even more found those triumphs exhilarating in their potential.
    No, 1945 was established as the year that Post Modernity was born (for once, a curiously apt metaphor) by senior university historians picking suspects out of a police line-up after their university had been occupied and trashed, in May 1968.

    Long-haired protester after long-haired protester: it was soon evident that the vast bulk of them had awoken to life, after 1945.
     (Age ??? I'm 22. Hum, 1968 minus 22 equals 1946, again !)
    Baby-boomers, in another words, were leading the charge against all that most 1960s era senior professors held holy: progress and modernity.
   But what boom - merely the regular boom in pregnancies after every one of humanity's wars or could it just be, perish the impure thought, the babies born post the atomic boom ?
   Post the boom and smoke of Dresden ? Post the human smoke of Auschwitz ?
    Modernity's hegemony was broken in 1945 - yes ! - but among babies not yet born.
   By 1965 to 1973 however, they were fully ready to deny that hegemony and did so - in spades....
   So, a revision: Post Modernity was conceived in 1945, but it first started voting with its feet, in 1968.....

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