Modernity and Modernism

The development if modernity and modernism came about during different time periods. Modernity was based on an ideal of the liberal human subjects and is said to be as a self-knowing, unified, and autonomous entity with individual human rights and freedoms. (pg. 95).
It is also a term that refers to historical, cultural, political and also economic conditions related to enlightenment also known as an eighteenths century philosophical movement. This was a worldview beginning in the eighteenth century with prosperity and optimistic view of the future and all of its changes as well as the anxiety of social upheaval, technology, revolutionary change and the anxieties related to the upheaval.
Modernism on the other hand was a set of styles that merged in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth centuries. This was seen in literature, architecture, ant and in film. These changes generally were differences in times, materially making things different, exploring, and bettering the world and its technology using both equipment and structural elements. The difference between the two is significant, its is the beginning of change and anxiety of awaiting it and the actual jump into making the changes that help signify the future.
In Michael Foucault's theory of discourse was the concept of madness and the modern institutionalization of the idea of insanity. Foucault said that back in the Renaissance period of times madness was not considered a disease or an illness and the mad were not excluded from society the way the are today. They were not labeled, medicated, and tucked away but were rather integrated into the fabric of small villages. With the movement of people into urban centers and as the modern political state emerged madness became larger and also medicalized, pathologized and also seen as a polluting factor in society. Instead of allowing them to live in the norms of society they were removed and institutionalized. This was a huge change in modern times.
Foucault's theory of discourse relates to that whole change with madness and society because it did change over time. Certain concepts of the discourse of madness did not exist and were not spoken about or represented. According to Foucault in our text, madness is defined through varying discourses of medicine, law, education etc and gives us a certain kind of knowledge about it or in other words the sense of truth behind it all and the practices within institutions for dealing with these subjects that are paranoid schizophrenics, criminally insane or the psychiatric patient. Dealing with these people by giving medical treatment to those deemed insane. His discourse is related to the change in madness in modern times by the fact that these people were just people in society but because of the rise of modernism they now are labeled insane, put away, and medicated. This is a very broad array of discourses and shows that over time discourses and the values that underlie them change over time and allow us to look more critically at the discourses at work in our current and ever changing social context.