Chapter 2, Masters, Mistresses, Slaves and the Antinomies of Modernity Summary and Analysis

Chapter 2 argues that the idea of race has been left out of the idea of modernity. In fact, racial slavery is a key part of the history of western civilization. And so Gilroy analyzes the master andslave relationship that many black theorists see as foundational to both their criticisms and affirmations of the modern world. The modernist ideas of the black Atlantic organized in the idea of the complicity of racialized reasoning and the terror of white supremacy. The modern theorists who think about modernity often focus on the cognitive and technological bases of social life in the post-war world. Postmodernism is introduced to emphasize the catastrophic break of modernity from previous periods. Gilroy thinks that much of modernism was foreshadowed because defenders of modernity...