What Metamodernism is Not

There has been a lot of confusion about what exactly metamodernism is, so here is an FQA (Frequently Questioned Answers) to help you troubleshoot your understanding.

Metamodernism is not:

  1. A stage in the linear progress of philosophy, culture, or politics. If you believe in linear progress, you are probably a modernist.

  2. A return to modernism. The issues raised by postmodernism cannot be thwarted by being “modernist but self-aware” with the possible exception of art. (This is possible in art because being modern in a postmodern age takes on a new meaning, e.g. making cave paintings in 2019 does not have the same meaning that it does if you actually dwell in a cave.)

  3. The final answer to any question / a grand narrative. The tools of deconstruction still apply; there is always something outside of the existing discourse. See (2).

  4. Reconstructing what was deconstructed in postmodernism. If you think this, you probably think that deconstruction means something like “breaking things into their parts.” If you are confused about deconstruction, you might try reading this: https://www.iep.utm.edu/deconst/.

  5. Oscillating between postmodernism and modernism. This confusion probably comes from metamodern art that oscillates between irony and sincerity, but equating modernism with sincerity and postmodernism with irony is overly simplistic: Ulysses is a great modern novel, and The Bluest Eye is a great postmodern novel.

  6. Something that can be understood without understanding postmodernism. If you think that postmodernism is relativism or “cultural marxism” see (4).

  7. Something that is easy to separate from postmodernism. The metamodernist reply to a postmodernist critique is “yes, and...” In fact, metamodernists can be described as postmodernists.

  8. John Dewey's Pragmatism. (A post on this is coming soon.)