modernities, such work resists the idea that modernity has a single lineage or
is a univocal practice. This resistance is also served by acknowledging that
every version of modernity includes, right from the start, its critics. ‘‘There
must be something in the very process of our becoming modern that con-
tinues to lead us, even in our acceptance of modernity, to a certain skepticism
about its values and consequences’’ (Chatterjee 1997 , 14 ). Although he writes
from a position deep inside Europe, Max Weber helps reveal just what this
something is, just how modernities of all kinds generate their own critics.
1 Disenchantment and the Problem of
Meaninglessness
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Max Weber ( 1864 – 1920 ) identiWed the central dynamic of modernity as
Entzauberungor de-magiWcation, usually translated into English as disen-
chantment. Disenchantment names the processes by which magic is gradually
supplanted by calculation as the preferred means for enacting human ends.
Disenchantment is itself an instance of a more general process of ‘‘rational-
ization,’’ which in turn encompasses several related processes, each of which
opts for the precise, regular, constant, and reliable over the wild, spectacular,
idiosyncratic, and surprising. In addition to eschewing magic as a strategy of
will (‘‘scientizing’’ desire), rationalization alsosystematizesknowledge (pur-
sues ‘‘increasing theoretical mastery of reality by means of increasingly
precise and abstract concepts’’);instrumentalizesthinking (methodically at-
tains a ‘‘practical end by means of an increasingly precise calculation of
adequate means’’);secularizesmetaphysical concerns (rejects ‘‘all non-utili-
tarian yardsticks’’); anddemystiWestraditional social bonds in favor of those
founded on the shared reason of all men (Weber 1981 , 293 ).
Systematization, instrumentalization, secularization, demystiWcation: the
shared grammatical form of these terms emphasizes the fact that moderniz-
ing transformations are ever ongoing, never fully completed. There will
always be some phenomena that remain resistant to full mathematical or
social-scientiWc analysis. These remnants, in Weber’s account, are to be left
aside until such time as scientiWc knowledge has advanced further into the
logic of nature and society, or they are relegated to (the distinctly modern
214 jane bennett