Inquiry

What makes modernity alluring? What are the cracks in its notion of the singular individual? What are the consequences when the concept of progress is idealized? In his 2020 essay “World-Making, “Mass” Poverty, and the Problem of Scale,” postcolonial scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty asserts that anti-colonial leaders like Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon bought into the vision of the modern world, driven by Enlightenment values, but overlooked its hidden costs: dispossession, environmental destruction, and mass alienation. They sought to end poverty through European ideals of modernization, resulting in the suppression of local cultures, and giving rise to the politics of representation. Modernity ushered in a global shift toward open markets, and finance and global trade transformed the industrialized world, creating developed enclaves in formerly ignored regions while leaving others as “third world misery belts” or “sacrifice zones.” These new social and spatial arrangements generate uneven territorial sovereignties and vulnerabilities, injurious forms of interdependency, and remaindered populations—detailed through the differentiated ways people experience modernity globally.