Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.

1163/156852412X631637
KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 brill.nl/kron
Global Modernity and Temporal Multiplicity
Raymond L.M. Lee
Anthropology and Sociology, University of Malaysia, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
rlmlee@tm.net.my
Abstract
Global modernity is not only shrinking the world in terms of communication, trade, travel and
many forms of social exchange but also implanting the idea that only the present matters. Tis
logic of presentism is infused with a growing sense of sameness precipitated by the rapidity of
transnational commercialism and the seductive pull of neo-liberal ideologies. In a context marked
by a hypermodern infation of wants and commodities, the notion of globality cannot do without
a perspective that emphasizes the spatialization of time where distance becomes almost
superfuous. Yet the shrinking of the world is not exclusively space-centered since concurrent
exposure to myriad cultures and their histories is producing an alternate sensitivity to time-
centered meanings of modernity. By historicizing change, temporal geographies emerge in the
form of multiple modernities that makes problematic the idea of spatio-temporal uniformity in
a globalized world. Instead, crosscurrents of global interconnectivity are producing varying
patterns of spatial and temporal perception to suggest a new sense of co-evalness or an interplay
of diachronic, synchronic and desynchronized actions.
Keywords
co-evalness, globality, memory, modernities, speed
Introduction
Te advent of globalization has seemingly promoted the idea of a greater com-
monality in todays world based on speedier communications, highly mobile
capital and technological borderlessness. It is as if we have arrived at a point
where the centripetal efects of a New World order are reshaping our sense of
time as having an unprecedented unity. Tis is witnessed in the increasing
reference to the present era as the Common Era rather than Anno Domini to
imply a post-Christian and post-Western form of temporal organization that
embraces humanity as a whole. Te commercialization of rapid air-travel and
increasing ability to electronically experience other locales without leaving
home are among a host of recent developments that have contributed to this
32 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
new sense of time. In todays world, time seems to have become emptied out
(Giddens 1990, 1991) or compressed (Harvey 1989).
Giddenss idea is based on the notion that time is no longer dependent on
spatial location. It can be independently measured because of its separation
from space. People can pace their movements in relation to a standard tempo-
ral measure rather than exclusively to specifc locations. Tis modern sense of
time makes possible the global coordination of any activity without the neces-
sity of spatial presence. Te fexibility engendered by the emptying of time
goes hand in hand with advancements in technology that provide for greater
mobility in travel and communications. Tese speedier movements inculcate
another sense of time as being compressed. In Harveys view, time-space com-
pression occurs because of reduced spatial barriers. Time becomes spatialized
in the sense that spatial categories have a shrinking efect on time. We speak of
travelling from here to there in a matter of minutes or hours as if the measured
time is eaten up by space. Tese descriptions of time seem to convey a notion
of intensifying global interdependency that is temporally corrosive. As Larrain
(1994, 152) puts it, All over the world, what happens in one corner afects the
situation in another faraway corner in practically no time. Tis feeling of
events that are happening in no time suggests a universalized spatialization of
time, which is concurrent with the global spread of modernity.
Modernity has always been global in terms of its difusive voracity, espe-
cially when we refer to the unrestrained appetites of neo-liberal capitalism. But
what makes global modernity seem unique is the push towards uniformity by
the spatialization of time as we experience it in the mass media, electronic
networking and unfettered consumerism. In global modernity, the world has
apparently gone beyond McLuhans global village to become a global archi-
pelago that strives to thrive on sameness. Tis attempt to reproduce sameness
is not only creating an impression of a new spatio-temporal order but also
catalyzing challenges to the putative Western origins of modernity. In short,
global modernity is paradoxically providing a new impetus to re-localizing the
meaning of modernity. It does so by liberalizing attempts to pose alternatives
to the teleology of the Western world. In this view, the possibility of varying
historical trajectories in the unfolding of modernity is itself an outcome of
conceptualizing modernity as global (Dirlik 2003). With this challenge, then,
comes the question of whether the temporal meaning of modernity can con-
tinue to be posed in the singular or needs to be rethought as multiple time-
frames of development. If the second option is considered more plausible than
the frst, we still need to ask how temporal multiplicity can be fruitfully con-
ceptualized to suggest an approach that parsimoniously conjoins the global
and the local.
R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 33
However, recent attempts at synchronizing the global and local seem to
have produced an exclusively cultural approach that considers varying cultural
programs or historical traditions as the basis for rethinking modernity. Tis is
the approach known as multiple modernities promoted by Eisenstadt (2000,
2002) and others (Featherstone 1995, Hefner 1998, Taylor 1999, Sachsen-
maier et al. 2002, Roniger and Waisman 2002, Spohn 2003, Arnason 2006).
But it also has to contend with the question of culture as the basis of relative
stability in order to justify the precedence of the local over the global (Wagner
2010, 55). Featuring diferent historical traditions in modernity therefore sug-
gests a complex intertwining of timeframes that represents diferent under-
standings of development and their enmeshment in global communications,
politics and trade.
In this paper, I attempt to argue that global modernity is premised on an
exaggerated notion of time-space compression that gives the impression of a
centripetal force unifying many regions of the world. Tis force may produce
an efect of emerging sameness in many regions that are purportedly modern
in social, economic and political organization as well as regions that are sup-
posedly transiting to modern forms of organization. To say that this force has
an independent status in forging lines of dependency between various regions
would be tantamount to ignoring the capitalist underpinnings of emerging
sameness. What needs to be emphasized is that global modernity cannot be
conceptualized without reference to the engines of capitalism. In that sense,
time-space compression cannot be experienced if capitalism were not allowed
to run ahead of itself (Castree 2009, 46). Even with capitalism, especially in
its neo-liberal incarnation spreading like prairie wildfre, there still remain
many contextually situated temporalities that are not fully aligned with the
currently manufactured sameness. Tese temporalities may continue to main-
tain and promote their contextually situated forms of knowledge (Adam 1995,
161) although they are not completely isolated from the efects of global capi-
talism. It is this Janus-faced character of contextually situated temporalities
that has given rise to the concept of multiple modernities. In order to discuss
these interfaces, I will frst examine the meaning of global modernity, time and
speed in relation to the emerging quest for sameness around the world.
Time, Speed and Globality
To speak of global modernity as a new phase of convergence that allegedly
unites notions of time and space may be considered an implicit way of
acknowledging the efects of Western colonialism in the postcolonial world.
34 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
Globality is not simply premised on the idea that the world was suddenly
made anew but is tied very much to the new meanings of dominance and
control stemming from the colonial era. Tis was an era of conquest in both
economic and cultural terms. Te multitude of times that Adam (1995)
spoke about did not stand still but were co-opted into, glossed over or simply
rendered redundant by the chronoscopic lenses of the colonial powers. In
short, colonialists imposed co-evalness on indigenes in order that exploitation
and expropriation could be successfully carried of (cf. Fabian 1983). It is in
these experiences that the Wests image of itself as modern came to be per-
ceived as a more advanced developmental state by the colonizers and colonized
alike. Edward Saids (1979) description of this engagement and its conse-
quences as Orientalism puts into clear perspective the colonial context in
which all discourses of modernity and modernization need to make relevant.
It would, of course, be farfetched to construe globality as Orientalism writ
large. Yet the terms of domination inscribed into globality cannot be fully
divorced from the Orientalist perspectives that have been incorporated into
the language and thinking of the modern world. Even during the colonial era,
the notion of the modern was impressed on the colonized as the need to be not
left behind in the race towards progress. Te Orientalist image of non-Western
backwardness led to a greater assertion of moral superiority on the part of the
West. It is with this outlook that Western thinkers of the nineteenth century
(such as Mill, Ricardo and Hegel) complained about the unenlightened state
of Asians and South Americans (Larrain 1994, 19-20). Te colonized them-
selves may have accepted to a certain extent the nature of this distinction
because of the overwhelming power of the colonizers. But in the long history
of Western colonialism, endorsement of these stereotypes by the colonized was
never simply given without the spilling of blood and bouts of protracted resist-
ance. In other words, despite the intense struggles the colonized came to rec-
ognize the importance of becoming modern in order to achieve sameness with
the colonizers. For this, they sought empowerment through institutional and
cultural practices identifed with modernity as the means to re-position them-
selves in the rapidly changing postcolonial world. In this regard, the colonized
in gaining independence lost no time in setting up themselves as striving
towards modernity to gain the respectability they believed had been denied
them.
In the postcolonial era of global capitalism, former colonials are participat-
ing voluntarily in the widening networks of multinational commerce and
imagining themselves as no longer mired in the ascribed categories of the colo-
nial past. Tis composes one aspect of globality where the deepening proft
R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 35
motive and ardent striving for economic advantages have sufused a vista of
sameness over loosened borders in intra-planetary quests for realizing the
spoils of El Dorado. Yet perceived cultural diferences could not be readily
repressed and so posed an intransigent problem to the vista of sameness deliv-
ered insouciantly by the carriers of modernity (Berger et al. 1973). Even as the
colonized felt compelled to converge on the same trajectory towards moder-
nity, their cultural histories were not immediately made equivalent to the nar-
ratives of the modern West. In the light of this paradox, achieving sameness
within the context of cultural diference implied a search for alternative means
to transcend the conundrum of culture. What could be more appropriate for
this task than the burgeoning felds of technology and consumption where
instrumental utility and franchised pleasure exceed the meaning of traditional
cultures? In global modernity social perception and interaction are reducible
to a common way of defning the world as commercially pliant and uniformly
serviceable, as seen in the idea of McDonaldization (Ritzer 1995). In this way,
the notion of cultural diference becomes masked by a new spatio-temporal
sense based on technological innovations and consumerist cravings that know
no boundaries. Rather than just harking back to cultural histories, globality
emphasizes the new postcolonial terrain of instantaneous communication and
gratifcation. It subsists on the rapid access of capital, goods and technology
that has also come to be treated as the way of the hypermodern. Tis is very
much a world of the present rather than of the past. Te hypermodern can be
defned as a presentistic condition in which the modern becomes repeatedly
infated by its own excesses.
1
It refers to a situation of almost limitless produc-
tion of the newor what are passed of as the newthat eventually takes on
a life of its own. Social perceptions and wants are then organized according to
the rapid and sustained production of the new in tandem with technological
inventiveness. Within the context of global capitalism, this inventiveness con-
tributes to the sense of fexibility in production as well as an intensive genera-
tion of surplus. Te meaning of surplus is not only concerned with a scenario
of overproduction but also with the runaway feeling of wanting more, never
less.
Te term hypermodernity is generally associated with the work of Gilles
Lipovetsky (2005) who is concerned with the impact of unbridled moderniza-
tion, economic deregulation and scientifc advances on individual lifestyles.
1
Te idea of a predominant present is also derived from the impact of telecommunications
technology that has created an indelible sense of the timeless present (Castells 1996) and of
society as being telepresent to the whole world (Virilio 1997, 25).
36 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
His emphasis on the need to rethink the idea of the postmodern as shifting
into a hypermodern context replete with cultural surpluses and individualistic
desires suggests a new codifcation for the dominance of multiplicity in social
life. To be more specifc, he imagines this multiplicity as a hyperbolic spiral:
In every domain there is a certain excessiveness, one that oversteps all limits, like an
excrescence: witness diferent technologies and the mind-blowing ways in which they
have overthrown the boundaries of death, food and procreation. Te same thing can
be seen in the images of the body produced in the hyperrealism of porn; television and
the shows it broadcasts that play with the idea of total transparency; the Internet gal-
axy and its deluge of digital streams: millions of sites, billions of pages and characters,
doubling in numbers every year; tourism and its cohorts of holiday-makers; urban
agglomerations and their over-populated, asphyxiated, tentacular megalopolises. In
the fght against terrorism and crime, millions of cameras and other electronic means
of surveillance and citizen identifcation have already been installed in the streets,
shopping centres, public transport and businesses: taking over from the old disciplin-
ary and totalitarian society, the society of hypersurveillance is on the march. Te fren-
zied escalation of more, always more has now infltrated every sphere of collective
life. (32)
In Lipovetskys (2005, 52) view, excess of everything is inseparable from the
breakdown in traditional and institutional frameworks and the growing
addiction to accelerated time. To be hypermodern is not just looking to the
past or future but to continually renew the present in the service of hyper-
consumption. If the hypermodern is regarded as a hyperbolic spiral sucking
up everything in its path, then it is not unreasonable to imagine all identities
as open to multiple reconfgurations. Tis was precisely the meaning conveyed
by his remark on the redeployment of the collective imaginary that does not
discriminate between the traditions of the East and West or diferent kinds of
knowledge (Lipovetsky 2005, 67). Ultimately, it is not a question of decon-
structing traditions but of the way they are reworked in accordance with indi-
vidualistic desires. Tis reworking of traditions signifes a code for emphasizing
the present as a means for utilizing the past in constructing new identities. In
the ideology of the present, the past and its traditions are not whimsically
dismissed as irrelevant. On the contrary, the past is continuously exhumed
and reinvented in order to inject new meanings into the present. Tis is a
feature of hypermodernity that is structured by a paradoxical presentthe
immediacy of the past to proliferate an infation of memory (Lipovetsky
2005, 57-8). Te hypermodern does not seek severance of the past but sources
it for self-fulflment, an excess of presentistic logic that lays claim to the
R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 37
preservation of cultural heritage and what Lipovetsky (2005, 59) construes as
the transformation of memory into spectacle.
Tis reference to hypermodernity not only serves to exemplify the postco-
lonial globality of consumptive meanings but also the ways in which excess
and acceleration codify the demand for sameness in identity reconstruction. If
hypermodernity is addressed as an unstoppable trend, then its global march
only serves to increase the uniformity of consumerist desires and perceptions,
the ubiquitous thirst for newer technologies, and the need to know that one is
always on the cutting edge and unlikely to be left behind. Te difusive capac-
ity of the hypermodern may be seen as having a levelling efect on local identi-
ties everywhere by superimposing the presentistic logic of renewing the past
through cultural and technological commodifcation. In every global nook
and cranny where the hypermodern has become irresistible, individuals may
experience the exhilaration of knowing that they are on par with, or even
wanting to be ahead of, others anywhere with similar orientations. Local iden-
tities with colonial pasts may not necessarily be erased but become bracketed
by and beholden to the quest for re-moulding the present. In that sense,
hypermodern globality is introducing a new co-evalness that attempts to bring
together a synchrony of fexible identities nurtured by presentistic logic.
One of the tenets of this logic concerns speed, the means by which identity
becomes fused with the push for instantaneous results. In a sense, the hyper-
modern conditions people to expect ready access to and quick turnover of any
commodity. Performance on all levels is quantifed in terms of dominion over
time with the anticipation that the efort expended is as good as or better than
the state in which time has little or no priority. A relevant example is the self-
deprecating proviso for quick delivery pizza where time loss in delivery
amounts to a pizza given free of charge to the customer. Here the focus is not
on hurrying to complete a job perfunctorily but to customize haste as part of
an indispensable pattern of connectivity. It is the interconnectivity of ideas,
information and actions that is giving rise to a highly compressed sense of
temporality addressed by Hassan (2003, 233) as network time. For him, glo-
bal communication technology is contributing to a form of intricate network-
ing with the efect of digitally compressing clock-time. Tis type of networking
developing from the information technology revolution is creating a new tem-
porality that is displacing our taken-for-granted notions of time in the work,
home and leisure environments. It is a temporality that is internally asynchro-
nous and bears an instrumentality enhanced by contextual diversity and vola-
tility (Hassan 2003, 235-6). A consequence of this temporality is the disruption
of the proportional correspondence between physical distance and temporal
38 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
expenditure, leading to a sense of generalized social acceleration (Rosa 2003).
Being attuned to network time implies a normalization of instantaneity
brought about by the accelerated delivery of information and commodities.
But Hassan (2008, 14) also argues that acceleration is essentially an empty
gesture or an illusion that constitutes the reality of the information society.
In other words, a desynchronized network conjures up alternative or compet-
ing notions of personal time aligned with the development of new comfort
zones. For instance, in the example he provides (Hassan 2008, 16) of a digit-
ally outftted executive who debunked the acceleration hypothesis by insisting
that time in the network age had actually slowed down, it is the illusory nature
of speed that loosens all interpretations of time. For this executive, accelera-
tion was only experienced by previous generations of migrants who under-
went intense struggles and abrupt changes in society and technology whereas
the present generation found no angst in the transition to newer technologies.
Here, we witness the transition to network time as creating new comfort zones
abetted by the illusion of speed to impress upon various people (such as the
executive) that the world is decelerating rather than accelerating. Speed is,
therefore, shrinking space as well as altering personal time in relation to a new
sense of leisure. As a global phenomenon, speed is not only introducing new
meanings of convenience and comfort but also creating an emergent discourse
of sameness that underplays clock-time diferences in favor of presentistic
identities for interaction in online communities such as Facebook.
Tus, the postcolonial reinvention of co-evalness brought on by the hyper-
modern drive to reduce all memory to performance and all needs to wants is
another way of cultivating desynchronized actions in the service of a neo-liberal
capitalist hegemony. Te technologies that are fuelled and shaped by this
hegemony contribute to new perceptions and experiences of spatio-temporality
tempered by the efects of acceleration. However, shrinking the world through
these technologies is ironically unveiling its multiplicity more rapidly than
when these technologies were not available. Global modernity may be centrip-
etal in many of its economic, cultural and political efects but it is also cen-
trifugal in the many challenges and forms of resistance arising from the quest
for individual autonomy or feelings of exploitation and injustice. It is in these
challenges that the desynchronized notion of time constituted by the idea of a
network or information society cannot be unequivocally taken as an uncon-
tested terrain of spatio-temporality. Within the networks that are redefning
social and cultural communication in asynchronous terms, the idea of poly-
chronicity or competing trajectories of time is being mooted as multiple
modernities to ofset the hubris posed by the presentism of the global era.
R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 39
To show what this means in the redefnition of time and space, I will next
discuss the current implications of pluralizing the term, modernity.
Space Re-temporalized
First of all, pluralizing modernity may be considered a logical outcome of the
hypermodern perspective. Multiple modernities represent the process of
reconfguring the past to address the cultural uniqueness of the varying states
of modern development in the contemporary world. Tis process is supported
by a presentistic logic that dissociates it from the Western model, which
assumes an exclusive linearity going back to the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. It is this logic that allows claimants of multiplicity to argue for the
equal recognition of individual reconstruction of the past. For them, the
present is uniquely structured by individual histories and not exclusively by
the spatio-temporal confgurations of Western modernity. Lipovetsky (2005,
65) addresses this logic as a state of hyper-recognition that rejects every form
of the contempt, depreciation or sense of inferiority under which one might
sufer and demands the recognition of the other as equal in his or her difer-
ence. Taken in this way, multiple modernities are not merely eforts in rewrit-
ing history but projects of cultural renewal in the hypermodern context of
memory manipulation.
To manipulate memory is another way of re-describing the shoals of time.
Tat is to say, the past is actually never laid to rest but constantly revived in a
manner to retell the meanings of the present. Tis represents an inquiry of
temporal choice that places the primacy of time over space in order to assert
particular historical efects on current developments in selected regions of the
world (cf. Cox 2002, 14). Rather than explaining why and how the world has
shrunk, this form of inquiry attempts to show that the interactions and strug-
gles of diferent temporal zones condition the parameters of globality. It sug-
gests that unless these zones are properly understood as specifc contributors to
the present idea of co-evalness, the meaning of globality will simply remain
underdeveloped as a concept of spatial control and domination. By probing
these zones, time comes to be treated as related to cultural fows and recon-
struction. Only through time-centered lenses can globality be broken down
into varying trajectories of cultural and social transformation that have come
to be represented as multiple modernities. In a major statement concerning
such an inquiry, Eisenstadt (2000, 2) explained that the idea of multiple
modernities presumes that the best way to understand the contemporary
40 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
world . . . is to see it as a story of continual constitution and reconstitution of a
multiplicity of cultural programs. It promotes the notion that modernity has
never been a singular condition of social transformation but multiple condi-
tions that have yet to be closely analyzed. Tis approach takes into considera-
tion the varied meanings of cultural tradition and attempts to bring into view
the signifcance of modernization in the ongoing encounters between diferent
cultural complexes.
In multiple modernities, the history of modernity as a Western record is not
considered determinate but open to further review. For this purpose, discern-
ing reviewers attempt to retell the story of modernity not by eviscerating it but
by reconstructing the parts in order to make the whole look diferent. In the
frst instance, modernity is seen as a historical period encompassing new dis-
coveries and worldviews in Europe and later spreading across the world. Eisen-
stadt (2000) grounds this period in the emergence of highly refexive and
ideological identities in contrast to those found in the axial civilizations of the
pre-modern era. Consequently, contests of identities marked the unfolding of
European modernity as continually interwoven with internal confict and
confrontation. He treats these tensions as underlying the crystallizations of
modernities, which spread to the Americas and refected a radical transfor-
mation of European premises. By the end of the twentieth century these
premises impacted on societies in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, constitut-
ing the frst true wave of globalization that entailed the continuous selec-
tion, reinterpretation, and reformulation of [the] imported ideas (Eisenstadt
2000, 12-15). In other words, diference was built into the very idea and prac-
tice of modernity from its emergence in Europe to its absorption in other parts
of the world. But this absorption of modernity by non-Western societies is not
necessarily the same as westernization, since in their own unfolding these soci-
eties are likely to develop indigenous parameters of modernity that may
include a strong anti-Western outlook. Tus, realization that modernity was
never a homogenizing process in the frst place suggests the rejection of a uni-
versalism frst made possible by the expansionary outlook of Western powers.
A critique of these powers facilitated a review of modernitys hubris and came
to promulgate a cultural politics oriented to the construction of new autono-
mous social, political, and cultural spaces (Eisenstadt 2000, 17). Tis cultural
politics implies a form of plasticity inherent to modernity. Politics in this sense
is not just the collective means for making change happen but the potential for
reshaping the very source from which change is initiated. Tis potential is
distinctively modern because it was not fully realized in the pre-modern era
and now came to generate the possibility of multiple visions that could, in
R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 41
fact, be contested (Eisenstadt 2000, 4). As a result, all contemporary societies
possess the potential to reformulate their own visions of modernity.
Eisenstadts rejection of a Eurocentric model of change is also voiced by
Arnason (2006) who refers to multiple modernities as intercivilizational
encounters. Tese encounters raise the question of how diferent cultures
modernize and at the same time transform the meaning of modernity. Difer-
ent meanings of modernity represent dissimilarities in the way the modern
challenge to traditions is perceived, experienced and publicly expressed. In
Arnasons view, the West can lay claim to pioneering modernity but it has not
always been in full control of modernitys unfolding. Tis lack of control can
be partly attributed to modernitys internal divisiveness, which initiated difer-
ent forms of power struggles as well as new understandings of human auton-
omy. Modernity is uniquely Western but it has never been a cohesively
constructed juggernaut. In terms of intercivilizational encounters, the difu-
sion of Western modernity is best understood as an ongoing process with all
participants caught up in the modern transmutation, but each of them pos-
sessing specifc legacies and resources that can be reactivated in inventive ways
(Arnason 2006, 52). Put another way, the spread of modernity cannot be
regarded as an irreversible intrusion into other cultures with long established
traditions preceding the rise of the West. Tese cultures may not necessarily
resist the modernizing efects of the West but possess resilience to reshape their
own traditions while absorbing the products of modernity. Multiple moderni-
ties therefore exemplify syncretistic processes in which traditional elements
intermesh with modern practices to produce new social patterns that are dis-
tinctively unique. Tere are no converging patterns of modernity. Instead, the
syncretism of multiple modernities attests to the cultural openness of the
modernity project.
Tese varied statements on multiple modernities are indicative of an attempt
to create a new paradigm of world development in which modernity is treated
as inherently open and not restricted to a single cultural interpretation of
social transformation. Each interpretation of change implies a specifc turn
that contributes to a multiplicity of worldviews. In this turn, the once colo-
nized realizes visibility and vocality in a world where the modern has become
less identifed with the West. By stressing openness and renewal, the contest
over modernity comes not to be seen as its own unmaking but the source of
new beginnings. Te understanding here is oriented towards a non-linear con-
ceptualization of progress. While linear progression is often associated with
Western colonial chronology discussed earlier, non-linearity ofers a type of
resistance against that chronology by insisting on the necessity to reclaim
42 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
alternative temporalities as possibly providing better insight into the meaning
of modernity. In colonial terms, progression occurs as a type of cultural lever-
age gained through the accumulation of knowledge over time and gradually
imposed on the colonized. Te overall efect was to drain the colonized of
their ties to traditional knowledge in order to attain co-evalness with colonial
hegemony. Multiple modernities constitute a rejection of this co-evalness by
drawing on the theme of openness as a euphemism for investigating the frac-
tures of modernity and diferent lines of contention in modern ideology and
economy (Kaya 2004). Tese fractures present opportunities for reconfguring
the past in order to challenge the assumption that modern progression dis-
poses of the need to embrace traditional forms of identity. Critics like Larrain
(1994, 163) have asked if there is only a single version of identity to determine
what belongs to it and what does not. Tis is another way of saying that tradi-
tional forms do matter and that any attempt to address modernity as progres-
sive determinacy must also be sensitive to its undercurrents of indeterminacy.
Such a perspective also suggests that a postcolonial global modernity does not
necessarily afrm a cultural essence of modernity because the multicultural
nature of the world does not allow for a single or uniform perception of social
change. Instead, multiple modernities imply that there are diferent cultural
and political outcomes for ethnic and religious groups becoming modern.
Tis approach to multiple modernities therefore hinges upon the subdued
identities of ethnic and religious groups contesting the hegemony of the older
homogenizing programs (Eisenstadt 2000, 18). In treating these identities as
unrelenting claimants of autonomy in central institutions, a model is advanced
not only to challenge the Western monopoly of modernity but also to intro-
duce the idea of polychronicity to distinguish between cultural notions of
progress. Basically, polychronicity revitalizes the agency of the subdued
identities in transforming the meaning of modernity. Each of these identities
feels no compulsion to accept modernity as a linear narrative of progress dic-
tated single-handedly by European thought and experience. Rather, Europe is
treated as geographically fragmented with divergent histories of development
that are complicated by varying associations with non-European cultural
diversities. In this way, the timeframe of development for Europe is seen not
in terms of a totality but as disparate patterns of social and cultural transfor-
mation in which non-European temporalities play signifcant roles. Tese pat-
terns may even come to suggest that non-European co-evalness with Europe
can be reversed if polychronicity is given greater scope in the redefnition of
modernity. Re-temporalizing non-European development necessitates a pos-
sible deconstruction of colonial history by reconsidering the pre-colonial
R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 43
impact of the Orient on diferent parts of Europe or even treating it as the
midwife, if not the mother, of the medieval and modern West (Hobson
2004, 36).
In terms of presentism, polychronicity addresses the globality of non-
European and ex-colonial voices in reshaping the meaning of modernity in
todays time-compressed world. It opens up new possibilities for imagining
global modernity as a complex web of non-linear developments rather than a
convergence of sameness. Yet these possibilities have become realizable because
of desynchronized networks that increase the latitude for re-temporalizing
space. While these networks shore up the fexibility of global capitalism, they
also contribute to a new sense of temporal autonomy that fosters the pluraliza-
tion of modernity. Te openness of multiple modernities refects this auton-
omy to deconstruct the presumed linearity of modernistic progress in European
development and to reinterpret the relative signifcance of non-European
pasts. But in doing so, this autonomy cannot unconditionally disregard the
new complexities induced by the centripetal efects of time-compression in a
globalized world. One of these complexities concerns the rapid emergence of
mlange forms that result from the unrestrained intermixing of cultural parts
from the past and present to reconstitute modernity in almost unlimited ways.
Spatialization of time is not only redrawing boundaries of cultural exclusive-
ness but also instilling new ideas of fragmentation that suggest a syncretistic
condition of dispersal as well as competition. It is a situation where no one
fragment can impose an overarching Weltanschauung on other fragments.
Links between these fragments may give an appearance of interdependence
but in practice the infuence of one fragment over another is not considered
inevitable and irreversible. To understand how this syncretistic condition
relates to multiple modernities in terms of space and time, I next discuss the
new complexities of co-evalness in todays world.
Fragmented Space, Entangled Time
Tere is a scene in the flm Te Only Good Indian (2009) that illustrates clearly
the meaning of entangled time in the fragmented space of modernity. Te flm
concerns the forced assimilation and education of Native American children
in government-run institutions in the United States at the beginning of the
twentieth century. It begins with the recapture by bounty hunters of a runa-
way boy, Charlie from the Kickapoo tribe. He is delivered back to the institu-
tion from which he escaped earlier. Te principal is seen lecturing to the Native
44 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
American children on the benefts of the white mans educational system,
including the use of clock-time for organizing the world. Charlie resists the
system by refusing to speak in English and plans sabotage with another boy.
One night they stealthily ascend the clock tower and make their way into the
room housing the clock mechanism. Tere they wreak havoc on the cogwheels
and chains resulting in the total destruction of the clock. For his mischief
Charlie receives multiple lashings, which make him more determined to fee
for good. Te flm not only makes problematic the white mans burden but
also the quest to impose clock-time on indigenous peoples as part of the mod-
ernizing process. Natives like Charlie are coerced into living in foreign spaces
that are designed to transform their identities and to render a new sense of
time based on the clock for instilling a rationalized way of life. But he rejects
clock-time while living it at the institution and only longs to return to his
tribal way of life.
Metaphorically, the flm attempts to portray a new temporal order that can-
not fully eradicate the time-space perceptions of indigenes. Te co-evalness
introduced and enforced by the colonizers is only sufered by the colonized
who resist it at every given chance. Here then we have a cinematic interpreta-
tion of multiple modernities involving the streamlining of clock time in native
cultures that may be ambivalent about it. On the one hand, resistance through
destruction of the clock symbolizes a rejection of temporal linearity and
rationality. On the other hand, native assimilation to colonial notions of
progress and order only serves to embed them in the co-evalness they regard as
threatening, as exemplifed in the flm by the Cherokee bounty hunter, Sam
who speaks impeccable English, wears Western clothes and admires Western
machines and weaponry. In the end, Sam too begins to doubt the efectiveness
of this co-evalness and seeks to reverse it by returning Charlie to his tribal fam-
ily. From the flms perspective, co-evalness is defned as a diachronic action
that moves colonizers and the colonized towards a new future signifed by
modern institutions, technology and rationality. Part of the white mans bur-
den was to demonstrate to natives the futility of resisting the irreversibility of
modern progress as symbolized by the formidable clock tower. Yet by wrecking
the clock, the natives showed they could still choose to redefne diachronic
action as a type of reversibility. Depiction of temporal hegemony and resist-
ance within a diachronic framework works well to address multiple moderni-
ties as competing forms of linearity and non-linearity. But in the era of
globalization where physical and cultural boundaries have become more
porous, the diachronic may still command the sense of things moving forwards
R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 45
or backwards but it can no longer be presumed as the singularly defning tem-
plate of co-evalness. When rapid itinerancy and interchanges have become
commonplace, the idea of co-evalness is subjected to the interplay of both the
diachronic and synchronic.
Te idea of the synchronic in todays world tends to highlight the coexist-
ence or convergence of cultural forms over the linear momentum of enforced
assimilation. Unlike the colonial sense of modernity as a diachronic imposi-
tion of culture, technology and knowledge, post-colonial modernity fragments
the world in terms of the simultaneous and open-ended nature of cultural
formations. Synchronicity in this sense suggests a type of entanglement that
addresses the interrelationship of diferent modernities without reference to
linear time. Any analysis of this entanglement would frame the complexity of
modernity against the processes and efects of engagement between cultural
groups that might lead to the notion of hybrid modernities (Pieterse 1998,
Terborn 2003). What is meant by hybridity is the mlanges of diferent sym-
bolic forms constituted from diferent cultures. Tis situation implies a lack of
symbolic exclusiveness since the openness of interpretation permits receptivity
to foreign symbols that can be received or altered to represent emergent pos-
sibilities in modernization. Indigenous symbols do not necessarily fade away
or lose their potency but become a means of cultural renewal through interac-
tion with non-indigenous symbols. Each context of modernization would
have to contend with diferent levels of identity attempting to manage the
fuctuations between indigenous and non-indigenous symbols. Te cultural
outcomes are highly complex because the mixing of symbols has diferent
meanings at the ethnic, religious and national levels. Each level represents a
particular sphere of interpretation in which cultural eclecticism can be accom-
plished for various social and political goals. On the other hand, symbolic
mixing can result in a dizzying array of meanings that may work at cross-
purposes to produce highly conficting situations. But as a whole, symbolic
mixing dismantles boundaries to undermine all forms of distinctions in an
outward-looking sense. Tis outward-looking sense makes multiple moderni-
ties an open-ended enterprise that challenges the idea of the modern as cultur-
ally pure. It implies that the syncretism of multiple modernities is utilitarian
in the sense that cultural symbols cannot be prevented from being exchanged,
absorbed, modifed or marketed for the construction or maintenance of cul-
tural identities (Hutnyk 2005).
Multiple modernities are therefore concerned with the synchronous man-
agement of mlange cultures and their marketization to many seekers of
46 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
novelty. Tis is another way of saying that multiple modernities have to sell
themselves in order to be noticed and thereby proft from their claims to
modernity. Hence, the modernities of Asia, Africa and Europe project the
image of being modern in ideological and institutional development and, at
the same time, pronounce their diferences in terms of civilizational histories
and the mixing of these histories. Diferences then become the underlying
strength of the unfolding modernities, each steeped in its own unique tradi-
tions as well as new patterns emerging from interactions with other traditions.
For example, the Cathedral of Cordoba in southern Spain is alleged to be a
former Visigoth church transformed into a mosque by conquering Muslims in
the eighth century and later rebuilt as a church following the eviction of Mus-
lims in the thirteenth century. Today the cathedral is a major tourist attraction
and, according to a tourist pamphlet, it is an ingenious integration of the
caliph structures within the gothic, renaissance, and baroque creation.
Another example: the ancient Luxor Temple in Upper Egypt built during
pharaonic time more than three millennia ago has a mosque attached to its
northeastern side. Tis mosque was built on the temple site around the elev-
enth century and is still in use today. Te temple, on the other hand, is merely
an archeological attraction for bufs of ancient Egypt and the hordes of tour-
ists who fock to gaze on the monumental ruins of the ancient world. Tese
examples of cultural fragmentation, layering and reintegration suggest that the
processes of intercivilizational encounter over the centuries can be taken to
paint a picture of distinctive multiculturalism in an unfolding modernity sen-
sitive to the gaze of a constant stream of visitors. In a sense, the depth of mul-
tiple modernities is measured by the extent of cultural mlanges that sets them
apart from each other. Within the context of global markets, these moderni-
ties are generating symbolic economies that compete in terms of cultural
uniqueness as well as consumptive attractiveness.
Yet this competition is occurring in a desynchronized world marked by
social acceleration and instantaneous communication. While cultural mlanges
proliferate as synchronous fragments in various contexts around the world,
these contexts themselves have become desynchronized in terms of the ways
ideas and actions get conveyed without regard to conventional time. De-syn-
chronization refers to the ways in which simultaneous experiences of events
are organized to transcend the limits of real time in order to actuate the
present as instantaneously available anywhere. Especially in the age of super
microprocessors empowering broadband access in electronic communication,
the vicarious becomes almost indistinguishable from the actual. We can now
bring all kinds of cultural and social events live into our living rooms and
R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 47
workspaces through the Internet and satellite TV. For example, live TV cover-
age of sport mega-events (such as the Olympics, World Cup) can be viewed
anywhere in the world even though they can only be staged in a specifc loca-
tion. In fact, Roche (2003, 107) argues that sport mega-events have overtaken
other mega-events such as World Expos because of their de-synchronization as
media events. While people anywhere can watch the Olympics or World Cup
live on their desktops, laptops or TV sets, one has to actually visit an Expo in
real time in order to experience the events there. In short, Expos are consid-
ered less desynchronized than the sport mega-events. Yet, at the 2010 Shang-
hai Expo there were reports of visitors queuing for hours at many pavilions
just to get their souvenir passports stamped. It was also reported that pre-
stamped souvenir passports featuring more than forty national pavilions were
being sold at USD41 (Jia 2010, Xu 2010). As each pavilion represents a par-
ticular country, so each local visitor with multiple stamps on the souvenir
passport can imaginatively claim travel abroad without having left China.
Although suggestive of a collective mania, this penchant for souvenir passports
also implies an emerging perception that Expos provide a one-stop location
for desynchronized exposure to many countries in the world. Te souvenir
passport may be regarded as a simulation of documented travel to many coun-
tries within the grounds of the Expo.
2
Te examples presented here demonstrate that global modernity and mul-
tiple modernities are not mutually exclusive but coincide to produce a new
sense of co-evalness that interweaves desynchronized actions with perceptions
based on the diachronic and synchronic. Te expansion of network time in
global modernity serves to fulfll a co-evalness attributed to the need for speed-
ier communication. Increasing time-space compression as a type of electronic
alacrity suggests that modernity on a global scale can only be reckoned with as
networks of speed and power that have transcended the hegemony of the clock
(Hassan 2009, 6). In this way, the asynchrony experienced in acceleration
provides a new kind of freedom that makes co-evalness a code for instantane-
ity. On the one hand, this new freedom makes possible the autonomous func-
tioning of fragmented spaces since individuals or individual units of people are
not irrevocably held accountable to observing a standard or specifc order of
2
Te location of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai not only showcased China as an emerging
economic and political powerhouse but also promoted the city as a modern and cosmopolitan
centre that could accommodate many cultures from around the world. Shanghai has been known
to be the most modernized city in China since the nineteenth century. Although its modernistic
profle went into decline after 1949, it is now enjoying a revival in terms of its development as a
city with a hyper-representational landscape (Lagerkvist 2010, 227).
48 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
time. Yet they are able to keep in touch with one another or calibrate their
movements and agendas without being tied strictly to a shared notion of
temporality such as the passing seasons, the mechanical clock, the Gregorian
or any type of calendar. Te co-evalness experienced through de-synchroniza-
tion produces a type of inter-relatedness that is exhilarating in terms of know-
ing the almost limitless accessibility to people all over the world at any given
time.
3
On the other hand, this co-evalness that is allegedly improving system ef-
ciency is also the handmaiden of a neo-liberal economy that is contributing to
new forms of inequality and polarization (Hassan 2009, 8). Spatial fragmenta-
tion consequent to emerging polarization underlies one of the conditions for
re-imagining the contemporary world as embarking on diferent trajectories of
modernization. Diferences emerging from uneven development have raised
the awareness that global modernity with its built-in social acceleration cannot
guarantee a world of sameness just because of habituation to speed. For many
emerging economies, being modern is not merely a measure of increasing
GDP, infrastructural support and systemic capabilities but also the ability to
use cultural memory as a means to reshape the future. Reliance on this mem-
ory may distort the co-evalness achieved through the accelerated pace of glo-
balized social life by slowing down local perceptions of social change. People
may become more nostalgic as they view and experience the changes around
them. Tey may feel the need to recall older forms in order to reintroduce
some familiarity into their event horizons. Such is the case of Shanghai
described by Lagerkvist (2010, 223) as a city that uses nostalgia as a progres-
sive force to carry it into the future. She uses the term retromodernity to
explain the meaning of cultural memory and multiple temporalities in the
reshaping of the citys modern identity. It is in this retroactive sense of futurity
that contemporary Shanghai is able to maintain its unique cultural ambience
while claiming its place in the tracks of global modernity. In other words,
Shanghai operates on network time as well as retrieves diachronic sensibility in
order to excavate the past for creating new futures.
3
Tis feeling was expressed to me by a shipping agent who claimed he could not function
without a desktop or laptop that linked him to clients all over the world. His success as a broker
of cargo was guaranteed by his immediate connection to the network time of the shipping
business world. If we generalize his experience to that of myriad individuals operating within the
complexities of network time, we may come to envisage global modernity in terms of an
electronic interdependency where one can be anywhere and yet nowhere.
R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51 49
Tus, the cultural mlanges of multiple modernities suggest that co-evalness
in the contemporary world can no longer be conceived as a form of temporal
dictation but of temporal co-existence in which the diachronic and synchronic
are juxtaposed against the instantaneous. Within this co-existential frame-
work, multiple modernities are retroactively shaped by nostalgic perceptions
but without being totally cut of from the global parameters of social accelera-
tion. In this way, multiple modernities represent a crossroads of retroactivity
and instantaneity. It is an attempt to make plausible the meaning of plurality
in a highly interconnected world by invoking the past as vital to understand-
ing how futures are created.
Conclusion
Te idea of modernity, once held as crucial to the progress of knowledge, is
now considered problematic. It is unable to address efectively the chaotic
nature of contemporary conditions (Hassan 2003, 237). By this is implied the
lack of a single model of temporal order that can give us a stable grasp on the
meaning of developmental futures in todays world. Modernity used to pro-
vide a type of linear model that treated development in terms of time-space
rationalization. But since the beginning of the twentieth century, diachronic
understanding of modernity has been continuously challenged by synchro-
nous actions of cultural resistance and counter-cultural movements. A conse-
quence of this challenge is to redirect our attention to the meaning of
polychronicity as modernity becomes globalized and reinterpreted by diferent
cultures in the world. From this viewpoint, it is not considered sufcient to
trace modernity as a linear movement of knowledge accumulation. Rather,
recognition of plural movements provides a new perspective that addresses the
notion of modernities as the interplay of diachronic, synchronic and desyn-
chronized actions. It can be surmised that understanding the polychronicity of
modernities may give us better insight into the apparent chaos of todays world
and possibly lead to new explanations of acceleration and deceleration occur-
ring in diferent or even within the same regions of the world. Tese explana-
tions may avoid the reductionism of time-space compression that only defates
distance. Instead, dealing with an emerging present of sameness and diference
as temporal multiplicity allows us to analyse simultaneously the parameters of
speed and the recursive conditions of cultural memory.
50 R. L. M. Lee / KronoScope 12:1 (2012) 31-51
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