5.1. What is metamodernism?
In The Metamodernist Manifesto (2011), British artist Luke Turner and others proclaimed the end of postmodernism, articulating the need to go beyond the “inertia resulting from a century of modernist ideological naivety and the cynical insincerity of its antonymous bastard child.”[1] As the self-chosen successor of postmodernism, metamodernism advocates a kind of marriage between modernism and postmodernism, though not one of synthesis. It embraces the modernist striving toward some kind of ultimacy, whether it be in authenticity, beauty, truth, justice, happiness or other values, while acknowledging, in a rather postmodern fashion, that this striving is doomed to failure.
The conjunction of modernist enthusiasm and postmodern disillusionment is not one of synthesis, but has an oscillatory structure, like a pendulum swinging to-and-fro between two poles: “Movement shall henceforth be enabled by way of an oscillation between positions, with diametrically opposed ideas operating like the pulsating polarities of a colossal electric machine, propelling the world into action.”[2] In its oscillatory structure, metamodern scholars and artists “must embrace doubt, as well as hope and melancholy, sincerity and irony, affect and apathy, the personal and the political, and technology and techne.”[3] In most articulations of metamodernism, it refuses to reduce its oscillatory movement to one central dichotomy, but it remains clear that a very basic dichotomy remains present in all definitions: metamodernism oscillates between ambitious yet naïve modernism and disillusioned yet critical postmodernism. Still, it resists the naïveté of postulating the possibility of ever transcending these dichotomies, acknowledging “the limitations inherent to all movement and experience, and the futility of any attempt to transcend the boundaries set forth therein.”[4]
Furthermore, metamodernism is particularly known, when known at all, for its critique of the ironic disposition that is often considered to be characteristic of postmodernism.[5] Put briefly, postmodern irony cynically mocks a position by defending it in such a way that it becomes clearly incoherent, ill-founded or false, with deconstruction of that position as the desired outcome.[6] For example, in response to someone claiming that Christianity has always been about ‘loving thy neighbor’, a postmodern ironist would say something like: “Yeah, right, because that’s what the Thirty Years’ War was about: nothing but love for one’s neighbor…” Metamodern novelist David Foster Wallace acknowledges the deconstructive powers of such irony:
The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? “Sure.” Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it.[7]
After giving irony its due, Wallace continues to problematize its wholly negative outcome, its deadlock, its utter lack of a positive position: “The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, ‘then’ what do we do?”[8] Those suggesting positive action in other to restore or ameliorate what is unpleasant or wrong will look naïve in the eyes of ironists: “Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists.”[9] Thus, sincerity turns into a taboo; and ironism becomes tyrannical:
Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.[10]
From the untenability of ironism in its tyrannical negativity, Wallace envisions a post-ironic disposition, in which artists try to construct something positive, however naïve or sentimental it may seem, amidst the postmodern deadlock that results from deconstruction:
The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. […] The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal”. To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law.[11]
Thus, metamodernism aims to go beyond the ironic detachment in order to treat troubles and emotions with reverence and to endorse and instantiate principles with sincerity. Leaving the many intricacies of post-irony aside, this is what I consider to be the metamodern disposition: a pattern of responses to issues that are sometimes ironic, but no less often sincere, serious and earnest. In short, metamodern thinkers and artists oscillate between irony and seriousness.[12]
For the sake of exemplification, consider the movie The Bad Lieutenant, which Matthew Collins summarizes as follows:
The film contains what a Snakes on a Plane-style irony-fest should: hokey plot, bad acting, and deliciously over-the-top glorification of sex and drug use. But the film does much more than revel in its genre’s campy history—The Bad Lieutenant is gorgeously shot and contains pervasive, incisive commentary on everything from race relations to police corruption and the definition of finding success in America.[13]
This demonstrates how ironic motifs (“hokey plot, bad acting, and deliciously over-the-top glorification of sex and drug use”) can be balanced with a sincere attempt to attain beauty (“gorgeously shot”) and earnest engagement with personal and societal problems (“race relations”, “police corruption” and “finding success”).
Another example of metamodernism is the oeuvre of Guido van der Werve. In the short film Nummer Acht (“number eight”), for instance, a man walks on ice in front of an enormous ship, only a couple of meters away from the point that would effectuate his death. He does not stop, but he does not pace up either, thus manifesting an oscillation between ironic detachment and earnest engagement. As the description of the film alludes, “romantic melancholy meets physical absurdity of slapstick comedies”.[14] As viewers, we thus find ourselves unable to resolve whether the image is comical or earnest.
Other names that have been mentioned as part of the movement of Metamodernism include Roberto Bolaño, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, Haruki Murakami and Zadie Smith in the literary sphere; Ulf Aminde, Yael Bartana, Monica Bonvicini, Mariechen Danz, Annabel Daou, Paula Doepfner, Olafur Eliasson, Mona Hatoum, Andy Holden, Sejla Kameric, Ragnar Kjartansson, Kris Lemsalu, Issa Sant, David Thorpe, Angelika J. Trojnarski, Luke Turner and Nastja Säde Rönkkö in the fine arts; and Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Miranda July, and Charlie Kaufman in film. What binds these artists and thinkers together is the attempt to go beyond the ironic disposition, in order to express something sincere, earnest or otherwise emotionally engaging, without abandoning a degree of irony that allows for a detached and more objective perspective. In other words, they oscillate between a particular form of humor and earnestness.
This is why metamodernism is relevant here. It is a contemporary movement, calling for the oscillation between ironic detachment and earnest engagement. As we have seen in the discussion of the Frivolity Objection, there is a pressing need for earnestness amidst a humorous outlook on the Absurd. What is more, the post-ironic motif in the above-mentioned artists and thinkers really concretizes the way in which earnest engagement and humorous disengagement can be combined. With a basic understanding of metamodernism, we can now ask: what is Metamodern Absurdism?
[1] Luke Turner, “The Metamodernist Manifesto,” Metamodernism, 2011, http://www.metamodernism.org.
[2] Turner.
[3] Kim Levin, “How PoMo Can You Go ?,” ARTnews.Com (blog), October 15, 2012, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/how-pomo-can-you-go-2108/.
[4] Turner, “The Metamodernist Manifesto.”
[5] Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (Routledge, 2003).
[6] This definition inevitably falls short of the complexity of postmodern irony, but remains sufficiently thin to provide us with a general grasp of the irony that is critiqued by metamodern thinkers. Also, it ought to be borne in mind that this defense of Metamodern Absurdism is only preliminary and demands further inquiry in future research. Helene A. Shugart, “Postmodern Irony as Subversive Rhetorical Strategy,” Western Journal of Communication 63, no. 4 (December 1, 1999): 433–55, https://doi.org/10.1080/10570319909374653; Pye, “Comedy Theory and the Postmodern”; cf. Claire Colebrook, “Irony: The New Critical Idiom,” London & New York: Routledge, 2004.
[7] Stephen J. Burn, Conversations with David Foster Wallace (University Press of Mississippi, 2012), 48.
[8] Burn, 48.
[9] Burn, 48.
[10] (original emphasis) David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (Hachette UK, 2012), 66–69.
[11] (my italicization) David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 13, no. 2 (1993): 192–93.
[12] Lukas Hoffmann, Postirony: The Nonfictional Literature of David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers (transcript Verlag, 2016).
[13] Matthew Collins, “Post-Irony Is Real, And So What?,” The Georgetown Voice (blog), March 4, 2010, https://georgetownvoice.com/2010/03/04/post-irony-is-real-and-so-what/.
[14] Guido van der Werve, Nummer Acht, 2002, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3620758/.
This chapter is part of the book A Critique of Humoristic Absurdism. Support the writer by ordering the book.
Thom Hamer 