If you ask any of those who were described as symbols of modernity during the eighties about the meaning of literary modernity or a definition of it, you will not find an answer of cognitive value, whether he is a critic, poet or narrator. This is because modernity is not just a lexical word whose fibers can be twisted with simplified defining words, as much as it is an area of idiomatic controversy that reveals the awareness of its explainer, and therefore a large proportion of the intellectuals of that wave are unable to approach it because they did not bother to read a single article on the meaning of modernity, as much as They were concerned with the idea of fighting against all that is old under the banner of modernity. This explains the absence of any foundational theorizing effect of the meaning of modernity in the literature of that generation, compared to the level of media dust of the battle, despite modernity being one of the most important pillars of the cultural presence of that generation, while the question of modernity remains pending until this moment on reactions that do not meet the conditions for control. The concept and its implications.
The paradox is that the ideological conflict was at its most intense at the time between two groups that did not recognize and did not know the semantic concept of modernity, because the subject of modernity is located in an explosive reservoir related to identity, represented by language, literary heritage, religious sanctity, social values, and so on. Where the current of modernity drew or perhaps continued the idea of exposing the front of modernist challenges, in the sense that the concept circulating in the complex fields of knowledge moved from the use of literary knowledge to the employment of ideology. And in that rugged outpost, i.e. a region where opposites are leveled at the ideological level, it was necessary for both sides to entrench themselves, partisanship, and revive the culture of the pilgrims beyond the literary to the religious and social. And contentment with the simplest general definition of modernity represented in embracing everything that is creative and rational and rejecting everything that is follower and transmission.
Here, that is, in this critical detail of the meaning of modernity lies the biggest mistake of those known as modernists, as they dealt with modernity as a tool, or more precisely, as an ideology. Modernity is not an ideology as much as it is a process. This is the most important aspect of modernity as a historical concept. Accordingly, the trend that restricted it to a historical category and era was wasting the cumulative dimension of modernity. With an emphasis on scoring a point in favor of the 1980s movement, which adopted a new system of intellectual and aesthetic values during a defining moment in time, and vowed its text to localize and defend it. Rather, he was concerned with the morality of the scene, and with the caveat not to look at that period in a romantic way that violates the historical and epistemological approach.
There is a difference and a distance between the concept of modernity and the state of awareness of modernity, as emphasized by Habermas in his approach to Western modernity. In my opinion, modernity in Saudi Arabia was present – for example – among those who were known as pioneers, according to their temporal and spatial circumstances, but the awareness of modernity was not manifested in a conscious form except among the generation of the eighties, and among very few names. Evidence that the late poetic and critical productions of some symbols of the modernity of the eighties have come to bear a ancestral feature and have nothing to do with modernity. Rather, it contributes to the erosion of the literary reputation of modernists. Thus, it was an essential cause of the death of modernity. I also imagine that some of the names of the ninetieth generation were more aware of modernity and more contributed to deepening the modernist approach in the scene, without a theoretical polemic battle, given their certain knowledge of the idea of modernity becoming. The millennium generation came with more in view of the objective possibilities that helped it deepen the digging in the course of the modernist river.
During the 1980s, the title of modernist was a privilege. This privilege has been hanging on the chest of some people as victory medals in a major battle. It is a great illusion amplified by those who emptied the concept of its literary and cognitive loads and re-packed it with ideological meanings of heroic struggle, who did not approach the historical semantic concept of modernity, in favor of the lexical definition. They did not realize that the dictionary cannot contain this concept that is difficult to define, because modernity is too big to be a performative lexical term, and it is too strong to settle statically in a dictionary, given the extent of its essential dimensions. This explains the superficial answers of some of those who escaped demonization and set up statues of deification for themselves when faced with a more flat media question about the meaning of modernity. This is through approaches that are far from Baudelaire's vision, considering modernity as the intersection point between the eternal and the transient.
The lexical or personal approach to the modernity of the eighties closes all the corridors of the debate about modernity, compared to the socio-historical approach that puts that era on the table of study in an intermediate area to connect it to the previous eras, and foresee the horizons beyond. The spirit of the eighties is present in the form of literary and critical texts that can be disagreed upon. And disregarding all the allegations that accompanied that moment in time, including ideas, names and symbols. With the emphasis that the eighties are not the golden branch of the tree of the cultural scene in Saudi Arabia. And that the culture in Saudi Arabia did not and will not stop at the station of the eighties, because the culture that coagulates in an era of time is dying. This is not the reality of culture in Saudi Arabia, nor the state of modernity, as it is closely related to transformations, and this is what the cultural scene in Saudi Arabia promises, which is experiencing a moment of deep structural transformations of which culture and modernity in particular are one of the most important pillars.
Muhammad Al-Abbas
