Modernity, postmodernity or capitalism?

Abstract

Abstract This article challenges the currently fashionable periodization of history since the eighteenth century into two major phases, 'modernity' and 'postmodernity'. Questioning the conception of 'modernity' itself, Wood emphasizes the specificity of capitalism in opposition to other aspects of modernity with which it is conventionally associated, and argues that if we are now witnessing an epochal shift, it is not a transition from 'modernity' to 'postmodernity' but the maturation and universalization of capitalism. The 'universalization' of capitalism is then distinguished from 'globalization', a concept which, she argues, obscures more than it reveals. Keywords: CapitalismModernityPostmodernityGlobalizationEnlightenmentPeriodization