Ghosts: Postmodernity / Non-modernity / Extra-modernity

The notions of postmodernity, non-modernity, and extra-modernity have emerged in the transitional years of the 21st century as critical responses to the fundamental tenets of modernity. These conceptual frameworks challenge its reliance on universal truths, binary oppositions, and narratives of progress, and offer alternative approaches to understanding knowledge, culture, and representation in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world.

In his book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), Jean-François Lyotard described the epistemology of postmodern culture as the end of metanarratives (métarécits), the collapse of totalizing narratives based on universal truths. Lyotard praised information technologies for encouraging critical experimentation and contributing to the creation of a new digital narrative, perceived as a triumph of diversity and openness over uniformity and order. He therefore sees this transformation as a process that revitalizes the production of knowledge.

Although Lyotard links his conception of postmodernity to modernity, Bruno Latour rejects this relationship altogether. In his influential 1991 publication We Have Never Been Modern, Latour rhetorically asks: “To make place for the networks of sciences and technologies, do we really have to move heaven and earth? Yes, exactly, the Heavens and the Earth.” But his approach is not strictly anti-modern. The essence of non-modernity lies in the negation of the separation between nature and culture, and between exact knowledge and the exercise of power. By blurring these boundaries, Latour suggests the need to rethink the ways in which ideas are produced and represented in contemporary society.

In his work Metafísicas caníbales (2009), Eduardo Viveiros de Castro developed the concept of extra-modernity, which critiques both modernism and postmodernism by offering a new conceptual framework that overcomes their respective limitations. Modernism’s reliance on universal truths and binary oppositions, and postmodernism’s fragmented relativism, are both criticized by extra-modernity, which emphasizes pluralism and the coexistence of multiple ontologies. This vision is informed by indigenous perspectivism and advocates for ontological pluralism, recognizing the validity of diverse interpretations of the world. It challenges traditional modes of representation and promotes a decolonial ethos that aims to dismantle the hierarchies established in Western thought.

This text is part of Summoning the Ghosts of Modernity, an exhibition on view at the Medellín Museum of Modern Art from March 12 to June 15, 2025.