Summary
The ‘Top Ten Hallucinations of Modernity’ is a chapter of ‘Outgrowing Modernity’, the follow-up to ‘Hospicing Modernity’ by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective. It names ten assumptions that modern life treats as plain fact, among them that separation is real, that growth can be infinite, and that certainty and mastery are within reach.
The collective’s introduction says why they are hard to spot: “Modernity often presents itself as the natural order of things, making its assumptions feel inevitable and invisible.” The chapter is offered as a practice of noticing “how these habits of thought live within and around us”, not critique from a distance.
Rationale
‘Hallucination’ is blunter than ‘disposition’, but it names what we mean: assumptions that pass for reality. The chapter starts where Part 1 asks practitioners to, by turning “the inquiry back on ourselves”.