Statement 37

There can be no such thing as a History of Modernism in the sense that it has no clear externality to our subject position [much less as an author interested in the subject]. I and many billions of other people embody this proverbial “history”, but how do I ‘know’ that? There is no Archimedean point in our culture to say ‘That is Modern.’ There is no point where I can say this in me is Modern and this in you is Modern. We are both witness and judge, participant and critic, victim and enforcer. And yet without an alternative, The Modern - and its presumptive ‘history’ -a history that does not want ‘to be’ a history  - remains a signifier or a certain type of partition, but it is hard to say of what. But where would the conversation about the Modern and its history be located except within the folds of that partition.