Modernity and social revolution: a digression about the meanings of immanence and transculturation in modern and contemporary societies

Abstract

Through a bibliographic review, the article discusses the notions of modernity and modernization. It highlights the configuration of both notions in the bourgeois revolutions and considers the present moment, the “global era”, as a new acceleration of processes of socio-economic modernization, rather than a breaking of paradigms that would lead us to “post-modernity.” However, a reflection about some notions proposed by critical thinkers who at some point identified with “post-modernism” must be done in order to better understand both moments of modernity – the present one and the moment of the bourgeois revolutions. These are the notions of emancipation according to Boaventura Sousa Santos and of immanence according to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. This reflection is done here and is supplemented by a reflection about the concept of transculturation. In this way a more plural and complex view of modernity can be constructed.

Key words: modernity, modernization, revolution, immanence, emancipation, transculturation.