From Modernity to Transmodernity
The universal cultures (e.g. the Chinese, Indostan, Islamic, etc.) were invaded by the expansion of European modernity at the end of the fifteenth century (which was simultaneously capitalist, metropolitan colonial and eurocentric) plunging them into a deep crisis of lack of creativity. We are now at the end of this process. The following four moments allow us to describe what is happening in present times:
First, the universal cultures are rediscovering the value of their own “ethical-mythical core” (as Paul Ricoeur would say) which was despised, denied as nothing, placed in the senseless by the hegemonic modernity.
Secondly, from their own critical resources and in dialogue with modernity (not rejecting its advantages, but denying its negative effects) and with other postcolonial cultures of the South, universal cultures have started to reflect on their own on the reasons for the centenary crisis of the colonial epoch.
Thirdly, in a continuous process of intercultural translation with modernity and with other postcolonial cultures, universal cultures are reconstructing the history of their own traditions (an interpretation which is impossible for eurocentric modernity itself because it neither possesses the language nor the daily and traditional experience of the despised cultures).
In the fourth place, universal cultures are producing again growth in their own culture (which was stopped from the moment of the modern invasion organized by Europe and the United States), having as project: a) not the construction of another modernity, b) not even the construction of a future universal culture (as a univocal and identical culture) in continuity with the European and North American modernity, but c) the passage to a new age of the world, a new civilizatory process different from modernity, which is what we call transmodernity (transmodernity being completely different from postmodernity which is still eurocentric).
This project of the construction of a new pluriverse overcomes modernity in all its aspects:
- ecologically from the postulate of the “perpetual life” it will be necessary to learn the respect for nature from the postcolonial cultures;
- economically beyond capitalism, from the horizon of the postulate of the “kingdom of freedom” it will be necessary to overcome “the modern myth of progress”, to move to “zero quantitative growth” and to develop cultural qualities of the human life;
- politically from a critical republicanism in the participative democracy (without denying representation) the majority of the postcolonial people will become autonomous actors (and not the corrupt elites of the political and financial bureaucracies of the North);
- militarily, from the postulate of the “perpetual peace” it will be necessary to organize an internationally egalitarian cosmopolitanism
It will be a transmodern age and not an age of multiple modernities of the former kind. It is a project of a planetary pluriverse that dos not destroy the differences but submits to the richness of the diverse cultures.
