You know I’ve heard about people like me
But I never made the connection.
They walk one road to set them free
And find they’ve gone the wrong direction.
– Don McLean, Crossroads, 1971
Metamodernism is an emerging movement that hopes to synthesize both postmodernist, modernist and premodern (romantic, enlightenment) ideas while moving our civilization and culture forward in a positive way.
Metamodernism is the fight against the cultural effects that postmodern thought has had on our social interactions, artistic endeavours and thought processes.
This includes dissolving the alienation from society that many of us suffer from on a daily basis as a result of these postmodern values. Yes, it is true that many foundational institutions in our society still operate on modernist standards or using modernist methods (mostly financial or economic institutions that are yet to be affected by the creeping nihilism we intend to combat) but the cultural postmodernism and nihilism that is eating our minds alive shows no signs slowing down.
Literature that engages in sincere expression while being aware of its appearance from a postmodern perspective is considered metamodern. This particular movement within the arts is perhaps the truest manifestation of metamodernism to date. It was popularized in the 1990s by author David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith and Michael Chabon and is characterized by works that defy postmodern cynicism and irony, representing a return to past movements and trends such as Romanticism that placed an emphasis on honesty. Honesty from the author concerning their intentions and meaning, something that’s severely lacking in postmodern works.
Music has also been experiencing a “new sincerity” movement. Artists emerging in the late 90s and early 2000s such as Neutral Milk Hotel, Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom have been identified as members of this unintentional movement characterized by its stylistic return to conventions of artistic choices long forgotten found in visual presentation (album art and live performances) or instrumentation and vocal styles that would hardly sound out of place playing in the background of some Late Baroque statehouse 240 years ago. In addition, acts like Neutral Milk Hotel, Sufjan Stevens and many others relate to metamodernism in that they are so glaringly honest and without pretense they would appear ridiculous from the viewpoint of anyone invested in cynical, ironic art. They commentate on things the artist finds beautiful, true or worth loving in a climate full of flat, apathetic art.
The defining characteristic and most important aspect of the metamodern movement is the “as if” mindset. Metamodernism is not a rejection of postmodern moral relativism and cynicism but a progression from it. We have, as a result of postmodernism, been convinced that humanity is in decline (statistics tend to say otherwise, but that doesn’t matter when truth is a construct, as postmodern thought tends to teach). The metamodernist wants to live as if positive change and progress can be achieved for several reasons. Firstly, it can never hurt to have this belief and it could absolutely be helpful. Secondly, such a mindset staves off existential despair induced by postmodernity, an issue that many of us struggle with. If we collectively take up the attitude/belief that progress can be achieved, that the idea of progress exists, our society will benefit greatly. This is tied to the practice of favoring dialogue over dialectics. We do not all need to share the same idea of progress but if we are able to avoid reducing our goals to uniform, unyielding ideological messes, things will begin to move forward. Attorney and professor at the University of New Hampshire Seth Abramson writes: “In a postmodern scenario, nothing ever gets solved because the contending forces angrily oppose and caricature one another until (in fact) both are degraded and destroyed in number and in spirit.” Metamodernism wants to fight this both cultural and political occurrence by focusing on discussing the overlap between two opposing forces rather than falling into the practice of ridiculing each other to no avail other than the boosting of one’s ego.
Another essential aspect of metamodern thought is the return of hierarchies. Hierarchies are everywhere. An airplane is more physically complex than a car, a car is more physically complex than a bicycle, a bicycle is more physically complex than a skateboard. This is a hierarchy according to physical complexity, which almost no one would deny the validity of. Many moral and ethical relativists (I will refer to them as postmodernists both because moral relativism is a defining characteristic of the postmodern era and because the vast majority of moral relativists exhibit other characteristics of postmodernism) support the deconstruction of hierarchies that measure ethical validity. Postmodernists are unable to determine if love is preferable to hate or if peace is preferable to conflict. Metamodernism aims to bring ethical hierarchies back into play because of what they can do to solve the issues that arise from the flat moral landscape postmodernism has created but cannot solve. Moral deconstruction is a brick wall. It doesn’t move and nothing moves through it. With a resurgence in ethical hierarchies we can finally move past the roadblocks set by postmodernism that have prevented cultural, social, personal and political progress and done nothing but bog us down. These roadblocks include the postmodern position that no one position is more justified than the other which leads to apathy concerning progress or change of any kind. If your position isn’t better than any other that oppose yours, why is a position that you might achieve in the future better than the position you have now? With a return to hierarchies we can once again justify progress.
The final and perhaps essential facet of the metamodern movement is reconstruction. As I’ve already stated, deconstructionism is a dead end for which postmodernism offers no solution. The objective of reconstructionism is simple – to not only observe, describe and interact with what isn’t, but what is. The postmodernist has no answers for what is true, real or good. They don’t know. Postmodernism doused objectivity in gasoline, dropped a match on it and walked away without so much as a “hasta la vista, baby”. And so, from the postmodern perspective, we are now alone in the universe. Freed from truths and knowledge but trapped by the lack of a standard with which to judge anything by. Seth Abramson writes: “If postmodernism negated the possibility of personal, local, regional, national, or international metanarratives other than those that were/are strictly dialectical, metamodernism permits us to selectively, and with eyes wide open, return to such metanarratives when they help save us from ennui, anomie, despair, or moral and ethical sloth.” If we are able to return to discussions about the world around us from a constructive perspective, from the perspective of wanting to improve ourselves and the world around us, progress will be made – progress in every way.
Metamodernism is not a concrete set of beliefs but a collective way of approaching things. The same is true for postmodernism. There are no commandments to or tenets of postmodernism but there are many, many ideas and practices that can be individually identified as postmodern. Many of these ideas and practices are shared among the demographic known as “postmodernists”.
And so metamodernism stands in the rubble of all knowledge humanity had amassed over thousands of years of progress. The rubble created when postmodernism smashed our collective thought to bits in the name of intellectual emancipation. With this blank slate we will combine all human knowledge and begin to construct a new grand narrative, one subject to constant discussion and consideration. It will be honest and it will push itself forward by justifying itself, not attacking the thoughts and positions of others. Human thought is vulnerable and fallible and if we accept that we’re all in this together and fighting for the good of all people, we’ll get further than postmodernism could ever hope to.
Turner's post-postmodernism
In 1995, the landscape architect and urban planner Tom Turner issued a book- length call for a post-postmodern turn in urban planning.Turner criticizes the postmodern credo of “anything goes” and suggests that “the built environment professions are witnessing the gradual dawn of a post-Postmodernism that seeks to temper reason with faith.” In particular, Turner argues for the use of timeless organic and geometrical patterns in urban planning. As sources of such patterns he cites, among others, the Taoist-influenced work of the American architect Christopher Alexander, gestalt psychology and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s concept of archetypes. Regarding terminology, Turner urges us to “embrace post-Postmodernism – and pray for a better name."
Epstein's trans-postmodernism
In his 1999 book on Russian postmodernism the Russian-American Slavist Mikhail Epstein suggested that postmodernism “is […] part of a much larger historical formation,” which he calls “postmodernity.”Epstein believes that postmodernist aesthetics will eventually become entirely conventional and provide the foundation for a new, non-ironic kind of poetry, which he describes using the prefix "trans-":
In considering the names that might possibly be used to designate the new era following "postmodernism," one finds that the prefix "trans" stands out in a special way. The last third of the 20th century developed under the sign of "post," which signalled the demise of such concepts of modernity as "truth" and "objectivity," "soul" and "subjectivity," "utopia" and "ideality," "primary origin" and "originality," "sincerity" and "sentimentality." All of these concepts are now being reborn in the form of "trans-subjectivity," "trans-idealism," "trans-utopianism," "trans-originality," "trans-lyricism," "trans-sentimentality" etc.
As an example Epstein cites the work of the contemporary Russian poet Timur Kibirov.
Gans' post-millennialism
The term post-millennialism was introduced in 2000 by the American cultural theorist Eric Gans to describe the era after postmodernism in ethical and socio-political terms. Gans associates postmodernism closely with “victimary thinking,” which he defines as being based on a non-negotiable ethical opposition between perpetrators and victims arising out of the experience of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. In Gans’s view, the ethics of postmodernism is derived from identifying with the peripheral victim and disdaining the utopian center occupied by the perpetrator. Postmodernism in this sense is marked by a victimary politics that is productive in its opposition to modernist <