Abstract
This chapter proposes that humanity has entered a new historical epoch in the evolution of the world-system, one defined by the collapse of the modern world-system. It conceptualizes neoliberal globalization as the final historical phase of the modern world-system. In extreme overshoot and oscillation, the modern world-system’s rule set has become unstable, making for an epistemological ‘Time of the Posts.’ The instability raises questions about how the deep structural changes of the modern world-system’s collapse will affect the meaning of human experience. The essay considers the experience of alienation, one of modernity’s defining features, and its relationship to the forms of knowledge and experience held by those consigned to the periphery of the modern world-system. Building from a post-colonial perspective, this chapter advances the idea of ‘transmodernity’ as the condition and ‘other knowledge’ of the peripherals that emerges from modernity’s alienation. It concludes with consideration of how the collapse of the modern world-system will liberate peripherals from alienation and allow transmodernity to flourish.
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Kuecker, G.D. (2018). From the Alienation of Neoliberal Globalization to Transmodern Ways of Being: Epistemic Change and the Collapse of the Modern World-System. In: Hall, T. (eds) Comparing Globalizations. World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68219-8_9
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