Hi Brendan, Good job! I don’t agree with every aspect of the analysis but appreciate the effort made to find the pattern that connects and the clarity of exposition is luminous. Hats off. That said, I confess to feeling a little neglected and overlooked. As you know I’ve written about these matters at length (albeit before reading Storm’s book) and while you don’t have to agree with me, given that you start with books published in this period, some kind of passing engagement with the book, Dispatches from a Time Between Worlds: Crisis and Emergence in Metamodernity which deals with metamodernism in several chapters, and with Metamodernism and the Perception of Context preface in particular would have been, let’s say, collegiate. No doubt I should reflect on my needy and plaintive reflection, which won’t make it any less needy and plaintive, but it remains real while still being lightly and somewhat ironically held. In that context, the most authentic response I can offer is to say that I was both impressed and disappointed by the synthesis. The issue is not just a hungry ego seeking validation. I disagree about Hanzi for reasons I outline at length, and I give my own non-trivial summary of what I think metamodernism entails. The references to Latin American liberation theology and Yoruba art are also, I believe, indispensable elements in the history of metamodernism. I wonder if and how they can be incorporated into your model. I imagine they can, but the role of metamodernism in resisting hypermodernism also feels central to me, and the fact they shift the register well away from europatriarchial ratiocination is no small thing. I am also far from sure the metamodern cultural theorists would agree with your synthesis, partly because they tend to reject the idea that metamodernism is in the psyche and prefer to locate it in the cultural artefacts. That might be a bigger deal than it first appears. Anyway, plenty to talk about when time allows. Qualms aside, I see and appreciate the quality of the work and the contribution to the field is significant. Well done. 🙏
Thanks very much for this. I can see why you’d feel the Dispatches volume is a disturbing lacuna. I should make clear: this (video) essay was not an attempt to be an exhaustive consideration of metamodernism. First of all, it represents just a few pages I culled from a very large book I’m writing, which I modified for the present purpose—and that purpose was rather narrow. Specifically, I wanted to address head-on those voices who see no connection whatsoever between the cultural studies metamodernism and the sort of metamodernism you and I primarily engage with (the broader metamodern ecosystem that includes the integral-adjacent, Hanzi, Bjorkman, Lene type and other Liminal thinkers).
The passage I took from my book and modified for this essay represents just a brief summary of the cultural codes, which appears as an overview in Part I (a few pages for each code), after which, in Part II, each code then gets its own c. 70-page treatment (hence it being a long book!). In short, the material here does not come close to a complete treatment, and wasn’t intended to be. When I write the full description of the metamodern code, you can bet I’ll draw heavily on the Dispatches anthology, its intro, and your work, which is all excellent (as well as others not included in this essay, like Dember’s, Abramson’s, Okediji’s, et al.).
This essay, though, had a target audience: the cultural studies metamodern theorists who can’t conceive that metamodernism is anything more than a new rubric for analyzing art. I was seeing more and more of that sort of thing, and more folks adopting that perspective/giving up on more robust framings of metamodernism, and that concerned me. So I modified some pages I wrote, slapped a video together, and put it out to make the point. If it at least gives some academics a moment’s pause about totally dismissing all the other discourse about metamodernism, then it was a success.
I chose the four books mainly to represent the different strands of metamodernism as I see them: cultural studies folks, Storm’s philosophical paradigm, and then the integrally-informed Perspectiva/Metamoderna stuff (Lene’s work I’d be inclined to lump with the latter strand, but she’s become vocally adamant it’s to be kept apart). The cultural studies folks will warily admit Storm (to a point), but the other stuff is anathema, which I find ridiculous. The same weird dichotomy was drawn during the whole Snowden blowup. This piece was created with the sole aim of trying to show why not cognizing the other stuff as metamodern is indeed absurd, and tries to weave the connecting thread between them.
Given the material and the audience, leaning on the Dispatches book, even the intro, didn’t make sense. It’d basically be written off as “that integral stuff,” while not specifically strengthening the connecting thread I was trying to weave. (Again, absurd, but the sad truth.)
I hope that explains that. I think your work is excellent, and the anthology very important. Of course, I reference it (and you) in Episode 7 (and your face, at least, makes an appearance in this video essay, Episode 8). 😉 No snubs intended.
Hi Brendan, Good job! I don’t agree with every aspect of the analysis but appreciate the effort made to find the pattern that connects and the clarity of exposition is luminous. Hats off. That said, I confess to feeling a little neglected and overlooked. As you know I’ve written about these matters at length (albeit before reading Storm’s book) and while you don’t have to agree with me, given that you start with books published in this period, some kind of passing engagement with the book, Dispatches from a Time Between Worlds: Crisis and Emergence in Metamodernity which deals with metamodernism in several chapters, and with Metamodernism and the Perception of Context preface in particular would have been, let’s say, collegiate. No doubt I should reflect on my needy and plaintive reflection, which won’t make it any less needy and plaintive, but it remains real while still being lightly and somewhat ironically held. In that context, the most authentic response I can offer is to say that I was both impressed and disappointed by the synthesis. The issue is not just a hungry ego seeking validation. I disagree about Hanzi for reasons I outline at length, and I give my own non-trivial summary of what I think metamodernism entails. The references to Latin American liberation theology and Yoruba art are also, I believe, indispensable elements in the history of metamodernism. I wonder if and how they can be incorporated into your model. I imagine they can, but the role of metamodernism in resisting hypermodernism also feels central to me, and the fact they shift the register well away from europatriarchial ratiocination is no small thing. I am also far from sure the metamodern cultural theorists would agree with your synthesis, partly because they tend to reject the idea that metamodernism is in the psyche and prefer to locate it in the cultural artefacts. That might be a bigger deal than it first appears. Anyway, plenty to talk about when time allows. Qualms aside, I see and appreciate the quality of the work and the contribution to the field is significant. Well done. 🙏
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks very much for this. I can see why you’d feel the Dispatches volume is a disturbing lacuna. I should make clear: this (video) essay was not an attempt to be an exhaustive consideration of metamodernism. First of all, it represents just a few pages I culled from a very large book I’m writing, which I modified for the present purpose—and that purpose was rather narrow. Specifically, I wanted to address head-on those voices who see no connection whatsoever between the cultural studies metamodernism and the sort of metamodernism you and I primarily engage with (the broader metamodern ecosystem that includes the integral-adjacent, Hanzi, Bjorkman, Lene type and other Liminal thinkers).
The passage I took from my book and modified for this essay represents just a brief summary of the cultural codes, which appears as an overview in Part I (a few pages for each code), after which, in Part II, each code then gets its own c. 70-page treatment (hence it being a long book!). In short, the material here does not come close to a complete treatment, and wasn’t intended to be. When I write the full description of the metamodern code, you can bet I’ll draw heavily on the Dispatches anthology, its intro, and your work, which is all excellent (as well as others not included in this essay, like Dember’s, Abramson’s, Okediji’s, et al.).
This essay, though, had a target audience: the cultural studies metamodern theorists who can’t conceive that metamodernism is anything more than a new rubric for analyzing art. I was seeing more and more of that sort of thing, and more folks adopting that perspective/giving up on more robust framings of metamodernism, and that concerned me. So I modified some pages I wrote, slapped a video together, and put it out to make the point. If it at least gives some academics a moment’s pause about totally dismissing all the other discourse about metamodernism, then it was a success.
I chose the four books mainly to represent the different strands of metamodernism as I see them: cultural studies folks, Storm’s philosophical paradigm, and then the integrally-informed Perspectiva/Metamoderna stuff (Lene’s work I’d be inclined to lump with the latter strand, but she’s become vocally adamant it’s to be kept apart). The cultural studies folks will warily admit Storm (to a point), but the other stuff is anathema, which I find ridiculous. The same weird dichotomy was drawn during the whole Snowden blowup. This piece was created with the sole aim of trying to show why not cognizing the other stuff as metamodern is indeed absurd, and tries to weave the connecting thread between them.
Given the material and the audience, leaning on the Dispatches book, even the intro, didn’t make sense. It’d basically be written off as “that integral stuff,” while not specifically strengthening the connecting thread I was trying to weave. (Again, absurd, but the sad truth.)
I hope that explains that. I think your work is excellent, and the anthology very important. Of course, I reference it (and you) in Episode 7 (and your face, at least, makes an appearance in this video essay, Episode 8). 😉 No snubs intended.