I would like to reconsider modernism bearing in mind Homi Bhabha's statement that “[e]ach repetition of the sign of modernity is different, specific to its historical and cultural conditions of enunciation”. The context of the Great Depression constitutes a specific historical and cultural configuration that substantially reshapes modernist forms and modernist expression. The focus of my paper is American Popular Front intellectual Carey McWilliams’s writings on U.S. cultures. His critical work highlights the geopolitical dimension of modernism, suggesting that modernity did not foster the same kind of experience all around the United States: the crisis brought about by the Depression created an opportunity to show that when modernization failed, instances of unequal development emerged within U.S. society itself, which conventional modernist forms were unable to tell or represent. McWilliams worked with ethnic communities in California and the way he perceived difference in their cultures is quite similar to what many critics now term ‘countercultures of modernity’. My analysis will also draw significantly on Michael Denning’s notion of ‘social modernism’, which helps us furthermore to perceive in how far modernism should be reconceived as a discursive and historical field, a cultural phenomenon in broad terms.