The Emergence of the Individual
All those cultural and ideological codes, grouped under the term “Modernity,” were related to an economic and political project. “The abstraction of the political state as such belong only to modern times [temps modernes], because the abstraction of private life belong only to modern times [temps modernes]”(Marx cited in Baudrillard p. 66). In the political realm, the abstraction of the state is one of the principal components of the political matrix of modernity. The individual (male, property owner, heterosexual, white European) is no longer subjected to an abstract traditional and divine will that exist a priori to him. Modernity endowed him with Rights, universal and natural ones, that assure representation, at least theoretically, in the political state.
This ideas in the political terrain were directly linked to those in the economic one. The distinction man-nature is stressed like never before. Nature is what surround us, is an outside in relation to our humanity. Man uses science and technology not only to alter nature, but also to exert control over it. Nature is a resource. This utilitarian view of nature became the underlying assumption of the economic systems of modernity. Both capitalism and socialism, share that instrumental reasoning. Development, industrialization, production and progress are the central economic concepts of both, making work a central and fundamental category for them. This does not means that there are not differences between them, but their similarities are too obvious not to be considered. It is very clear to notice how well this economic paradigm of modernity fits on the metanarrative of History, by the promises of progress and development.
The following are others of the Grand-Narrative of Modernity:
The Emergence of the Individual
The Grand-Narrative of History: Progress and Change
Science: The Light of Modern Knowledge