The tower of Babel and the transmodernity: possible confluences

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to indicate some convergences between the context of meanings of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel in Gen 11, 1-9 and the philosophical concept of transmodernity. For this, a hermeneutics of the text of Genesis is applied, exploring its literary strategy marked by irony and its message of contesting the pretensions of standardization and centralization of Babel as a denial of the post-flood cosmic order marked by the imperatives of Genesis 9, 1: “Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth”. To understand the concept of transmodernity, two articles by the Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel are mobilized, who understand it as a decentralized postmodern critique, not referenced by modernity or by Europe, but built from the periphery of the world. Thus, interpreted from their references, the biblical account and the transmoderity find convergences through their appeals for plurality and diversity, as counterpoints to the totalitarian uniformity and centralization, characteristics both of Babel and of modernity.