The silence treatment of Hiroshima today results in ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and further nuclear testing by the French. So we need to remember, anamnesis. Anamnesis is needed in order not to believe in any absolute ideal. We need to remember that the humanist ideal has been defeated. Instead of appealing to a grand narrative to force homogeneity on the world based on our particular ideal, which is the source of the politics of exclusion and its terror and pain, we need to go back to the original idea of modernity, the idea of critique.
Modernity starts off by questioning old values, a critique of tradition.
The postmodern claim is that having replaced the authority of myth, religion and morality, reason becomes a totality itself, losing its emancipatory character. In conducting a critique to learn the truth through reason, what is worthwhile to keep is neither the truth nor the reason but only the critique itself. For truth changes and reason is only a tool, but it is the continuous critique that keeps up with changes, diversities and complexities of the world. A constantly renewed critique of one's regional situations, or what is called genealogy, is our only hope to avoid the stereotype, intolerance and the politics of exclusion. This is the postmodern condition.