History and the “Pre”

Though coined in 1635, the word “modernity” trickled into the habits of English diction only toward the end of the nineteenth century. (See Figure 1.) “Modern” itself is a word of venerable antiquity. In its original meaning, it did not denote an era so much as the front edge of the advancing wave of time. In the faintly derisory usage typical of ancient and medieval texts, “modern” gestured to institutions or patterns that were newfangled or gaudy, to kings and queens, princes and popes, who were forgetful of what they owed to the past. The understanding of modernity that is statistically noticeable by 1900 was very different, and not only because the derision had faded. In its more recent meanings, “modernity” represents a new way of thinking about time. The threshold of modernity is not located in the space around us; it is instead a point that lies on a receding horizon. Everything visible on this side of the horizon partakes of modernity, with the exceptions and anomalies we now take (and often mistake) for the residue of earlier times. Invisible over the horizon is the “pre.”