This book takes an ethnographic approach to its topic by endeavoring to observe how social and disciplinary subjects shaped by modernity go on to constitute modern worlds. Specifically, it attempts to “explore modernity as a contradictory and checkered historical‐cultural entity and category as well as a contingent and contended process and condition” (1). Most of the subjects considered are intellectuals and academic disciplines (specifically history and anthropology), although the argument occasionally focuses on artists as well. The book particularly recognizes and analyzes the ambiguities, ambivalences, and contradictions generated within modernity not as mistakes or gaps like so many potholes to be fixed over time, but as constitutive of the modern landscape itself. This accepting acknowledgment, in turn, stands central to the book's endeavor to resist the teleological paradigms inherent in many modern metaphors regarding roads that must be traveled to move from what is backward to what is forward, from a superseded past to a promising future. Central to the volume—and its most original contribution—are various deliberations on the productions of time and space by various subjects. To be clear, by “time” the book means history and temporality whereas “space” suggests tradition and culture. It resists the naturalization of modern constructs such as secularized time and cultural traditions, and forces them under an analytic lens. Critical to these investigations is Saurabh Dube's appropriately insistent claim that these temporal and spatial regimes can exist in tandem and coevally, even when they are seemingly in contradiction.

中文翻译：

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一个最现代的学科：历史的学科以及民族主义者和其他现代学科的流行

本书通过尝试观察由现代性塑造的社会和学科主题如何构成现代世界，以人种学方法对其主题进行研究。具体而言，它试图“探索现代性，将其作为相互矛盾和相互制约的历史文化实体和类别，以及偶然性和竞争性的过程和条件”（1）。所考虑的大多数主题是知识分子和学术学科（特别是历史和人类学），尽管该论点偶尔也针对艺术家。该书特别承认并分析了现代性内产生的歧义，矛盾和矛盾，并不是错误或差距，就像随着时间的流逝要修复的坑洼一样，而是现代景观本身的组成部分。反过来，这种接受的确认是本书的核心内容。我们努力抵制许多现代隐喻中固有的目的论范式，这些隐喻涉及必须走的路，才能从倒退到前进，从被取代的过去走向有希望的未来。体积的核心及其最原始的贡献是各种主题对时间和空间生产的各种讨论。明确地说，书中的“时间”表示历史和时间，而“空间”表示传统和文化。它抵制了世俗化的时间和文化传统等现代结构的归化，并将其置于分析的视角下。对这些研究至关重要的是，索拉布·杜伯（Saurabh Dube）适当坚持的主张，即使这些时空体制看似矛盾，也可以串联和共存。