Ethnohistory of the School. Representations of Modernity

Abstract

This study analyses and discusses the historiographic construct “modernity” and the problem of its representations and their readings and interpretations. It examines the question based on two exemplifications, with the aid of iconographic sources, attributing to them the function of mimesis of the empirical culture of the school: a) the universal exhibitions (modernity as performance); b) the ambivalences of the modern (dialectical understanding of modernity). It concludes with an attempt at a synthetic closure of a hermeneutic character.

Keywords

• Modernity
• Ethnohistory
• Hermeneutics
• Universal exhibitions
• Dialectics tradition/Innovation
• Iconography