1. Introduction: Why modernity theory?.- 2. Modernity and modernism: key themes.- 3. Reflexivity and the project of modernity.- 4. Experience and representation.- 5. The mediated world.- 6. Modernity and civilization.- 7. The nature of it all (modernist ontology).- 8. The meaning of it all (between apocalypse and the banal).- 9. Postscript.
John Jervis is research fellow in cultural studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. This book is the culmination of a series of historical and theoretical studies of modern western culture and civilization: Sensational Subjects (2015), Sympathetic Sentiments (2015), Uncanny Modernity (co-edited, Palgrave, 2008), Transgressing the Modern (2000), Exploring the Modern (1998).