Excerpt

Modernity has been identified with progress and with the idea of progress.¹ The identification of progress as fact and idea conceal a two-fold problematic: the nature of time and the subject being characterized. If progress is its characteristic, the subject cannot in turn be said to be in fact progressing, and if it is not, it will be indiscernible from regression. This is not unrelated to modernity construing itself as distinct, distinguishing itself from the past while, at the same time, defining such distinction only in the possibility of (self-)cancellation, i.e., opening an unanticipated future. In this lies the impasse…