Transmodernity Paradigm of M.L. Ghisi

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Discussion

Irena Ateljevic:

"The concept of transmodernity is a very complex thesis which Ghisi (1999, 2006, 2008) primarily explains as a new paradigm of the world which communicates certain underlying values that humans rely on to make their judgments and decisions in all areas of their activities — economy, politics and everyday life.

Ghisi begins his thesis with an overview of five levels of change, which he describes through an iceberg metaphor of human global (un)consciousness and (un)awareness. Like the submerged parts of an iceberg floating in the sea, Ghisi’s lower levels of societal change are the least visible to humanity.

  • So, the first level is at the darkest and coldest bottom where our global civilization finds itself today, at the edge of unsustainability and what Ghisi describes as the slow death and collective suicide of humanity.
  • The next higher level relates to the death of command, control and conquest patriarchal values which have turned the world into a competitive and territorial battleground.
  • Level three refers to the death of modernity as a dominant paradigm through which we see the world as an objective reality rooted in impartial truth.
  • Level four refers to the death of the industrial type of businesses and decline of the material economy,
  • while level five concerns the overall crisis of overly bureaucratic and pyramidal institutions.


While such critical deconstruction of Eurocentric thesis of modernity (based around key mantras of growth, progress and competition) is nothing new and has been very much part of the postmodern critical turn in social science and humanities since late 1980s, Ghisi continues to explain, a transmodern way of thinking is now emerging, as our hope for a desperately needed and newly reconstructed vision. It is claimed that the everything goes of the postmodernists needs to go silenced. Whether they like it or not, there are things that have to have value, there is meaning that must be preserved, otherwise we drown in the coarsest cynicism, an expression of deep disdain for life (Boff, 2009). After the endless postmodern (albeit necessary) deconstructions of modernity in which many intellectuals engaged for the last few decades have led us to eclectic relativity and fundamentalisms that in many ways has paralysed us to claim any possible way forward.


The postmodern rubble in which we have found ourselves is quite neatly captured by Rifkin (2005):

- If post-modernists razed the ideological walls of modernity and freed the prisoners, they left them with no particular place to go. We became existential nomads, wandering through a boundaryless world full of inchoate longings in a desperate search for something to be attached to and believe in. While the human spirit was freed up from old categories of thought, we are each forced to find our own paths in a chaotic and fragmented world that is even more dangerous than the all-encompassing one we left behind. (p. 5).

According to Ghisi then, the very concept of transmodern implies that the best of modernity is kept while at the same time we go beyond it. As such, it is not a linear projection which takes us from (pre)modernity via postmodernity to transmodernity; rather, it transcends modernity in that it takes us trans, i.e. through, modernity into another state of being, “from the edge of chaos into a new order of society” (Sardar, 2004, p. 2)."

(https://integral-review.org/issues/vol_9_no_2_ateljevic_visions_of_transmodernity.pdf)

More information

Ghisi, M. L. (1999). The transmodern hypothesis: Toward a dialogue of cultures. Futures, 31(910), 879-1016.

Ghisi, M. L. (2001). Au delà de la modernité, du patriarcat et du capitalisme: La société réenchantée. Paris, FR: L’Harmattan.

Ghisi, M. L. (2006). Transmodernity and transmodern tourism. Keynote at the 15th Nordic Symposium in Tourism and Hospitality Research: Visions of Modern Transmodern Tourism. 19th – 22nd of October, Savonlinna, Finland.

Ghisi, M. L. (2007). Beyond patriarchy and industry towards planetarist & sustainable tourism. Keynote at the 2nd International Critical Tourism Studies Conference. 20th - 23rd of June, Split, Croatia. Abstract available in C. Harris & M. van Hal (Eds.). Conference Proceedings: The Critical Turn in Tourism Studies: Promoting an Academy of Hope. Zagreb, HR: Institute for Tourism.

Ghisi, M. L. (2008). The knowledge society: A breakthrough towards genuine sustainability. Cochin, IN: Arunachala Press.