Myths of Disenchantment
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You know the story: once upon a time, the world was full of magic, then the Enlightenment and Darwin banished superstition, and though there was much scientific progress, the world no longer had a sense of wonder and mystery — the world had become modern and disenchanted. A moment’s reflection on history and culture will poke holes in this story, but it continues to hold power as a belief (particularly for people in North America and Europe) about who we are and how we got to here and now. Every idea of Modernity as a social and historical concept relies on the idea of the disenchanted modern against the enchanted primitive. (My own book on modernism explores the idea of crisis , and certainly enchantment/disenchantment fits into that topic.) Arguments about disenchantment tend to be about its extent and its positive and/or negative effects. The idea of disenchantment holds appeal because it fits so easily alongside other ideas that structure stories of where we are going and where w