Modernism, put simply, is an affirmation of this belief. It relies on an "expressivist" model of communication in which each person is a unique self--that is, in which each person contains an interior uniqueness that can be expressed, to a certain extent, through the act of communication with other unique selves. John Locke, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, put forward this model in his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," first published in 1689. "How comes it [the mind] to be furnished?" he asks, seeking the source of the mind's "materials of Reason and Knowledge" (1). Locke's questions reveal a preoccupation with the mind as a "white Paper, void of all Characters" and containing depth and an ability to internalize ideas and experiences in such a way as to transform the individual into a self unlike any other (1). If asked who the author of his famous essay was, Locke would no doubt have responded with "I was!", standing squarely on a belief in the creative agency of the individual and of the possibility for an author's unique possession of the ideas articulated in a particular text.
More recently, modernism has been described by John Durham Peters as the belief that "experience of pain, color, sweetness, or joy is uniquely our own and inaccessible to anyone else, as are our innermost thoughts and dreams" (64). He compares this untouchable inner space to a "treasure chest" containing the essence of the self, that often inexpressible quality of a person that makes him or her unique in the world and gives every individual the capacity for creative self-invention (64).
According to modernist thinking, signs, the means by which we convey the unique observations and experiences we've internalized to create our individual selves, have meaning only in their referential character. Words are distinct representations of an individual essence; consequently, the act of communication is an imperfect one. Words and other signs often fail or miscarry in their attempt to create shared meaning between two or more selves who, as a result of their inherent uniqueness, must remain to some extent unknowable to each other.
Locke, John. "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding." English 495 handout. Ed. Laura Mandell. Miami University: Fall 2002. 1 page.
Peters, John Durham. Speaking Into the Air. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
