Yuk Hui's Essay on the Non-Modern in Afterall Journal 51

Yuk Hui's essay 'On the Persistence of the Non-modern' in Afterall Journal 51 (published April 11, 2021) argues for rearticulating the non-modern as a transformative power to resist modernity's technological unconsciousness. Hui critiques the linear narrative of pre-modern, modern, postmodern, and proposes adding 'apocalypse' to capture contemporary ecological crises, AI, and pandemics. He engages with Paul Valéry's 1919 lament on European spirit, Gilbert Simondon's progressivist optimism, and Friedrich Nietzsche's infinite horizon. Hui distinguishes modernity from modernism and modernization, drawing on Michel Foucault's episteme. He critiques Enrique Dussel's transmodern for neglecting technological consciousness, and Jean-François Lyotard's postmodern for centering it. Hui advocates for 'cosmotechnics'—multiple technics shaped by cosmologies—citing Joseph Needham's organicist Chinese thought and the unity of Dao and Qi. He references the 2014 exhibition 'Modernités plurielles' at Centre Pompidou, Arnold Toynbee's observation on Asian technology import, and Philippe Descola's multinaturalism. The essay calls for technodiversity to reopen world history beyond Western metaphysics.