Introduction: trans-modern scholarship

The last chapter made the case for unthinking in a trans-modern manner; here we implement this approach. But developing transmodern scholarship is fraught with knowledge difficulties. In effect, our take on anthropogenic climate change is a provocation to modernity's innate superiority complex. We are downgrading our modern world from ultimate historical climax to just another historical interlude. This changing macro-positionality means we are basically searching for a sort of ‘self-reflexivity’ at a societal level, moving towards a global ecological holism that Jacobs understood many years ago:

We tackle this transcending of modern sensibilities, as indicated by our title, by transferring the ‘anthropo’ in contemporary climate change from industrialisation, as specifically modern, to urbanisation, as generic focus: modern people are not the only humans to influence planetary climate change. The chapter consists of two arguments, the first developing and presenting a narrative for anthropogenic climate change, and the second making trans-modern interventions through consequent new chorological and chronological framings.

As described in the last chapter, at the heart of the modern mindset there is grand narrative combining a progress (development) chronology with a mosaic (states) chorography. This can be challenged in two ways, by eschewing grand narrative as legitimate reasoning or by constructing a contrary narrative. In practical terms we think the former is the risky option for radical social change at the macro level because it leaves a pedagogic vacuum. Thus we confront the modern narrative with an alternative narrative customised for humans’ role in planetary climate change. This combines a generic process – urban demand – with historical specifics in a story that importantly includes, but does not extoll, modernity.

The second part is equally contentious. In the chorological intervention we identify research themes for a relevant urban studies. There is a long tradition of critical urban scholarship that we do not engage with in this book.