demodernize

English

Etymology

de- +‎ modernize

Verb

demodernize (third-person singular simple present demodernizes, present participle demodernizing, simple past and past participle demodernized)

1. To remove modern elements or amenities from, to cause to revert to a pre-modern state.
   • 1916, The Wood-worker, page 37:

     He actually began to demodernize this splendid mill and install the ancient features of the old one he had left, and would have done it had not the authorities stopped him. He had his coat off and sleeves rolled up, ...

   • 1999, Doris Sommer, The Places of History: Regionalism Revisited in Latin America, Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 49:

     My argument implies the legacies of the early modern and colonial periods (modernity and coloniality) and joins forces with efforts to demodernize and decolonize scholarship as well as discourse in the public sphere that emerged ...

   • 2011, Gary Bridge, Sophie Watson, The New Blackwell Companion to the City, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN:

     The US and Israeli forces, for example, have long worked systematically to “demodernize” entire urban societies through the destruction of the life-support and infrastructure systems of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iraq since 1991 ...

   • 2013, Boris Groys, History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 75:

     To erase the Soviet dimension of the Russian identity would be a reactionary and futile attempt to demodernize Russia. And beyond that it is simply an impossible task. The naive anti-Communist iconoclasm of the 1990s failed, after all.