Hi Sam. Thank you for engaging with my feedback!
I think the main reason I’m motivated to respond to your article is to emphasize the difference between metamodernism as construed by academics and cultural theorists from how it has been construed by activists for social transformation who call themselves “metamodernists.” (Such as the Hanzi authors, but not limited to them).
Regarding “descriptive” vs. “normative” as distinguishers: I understand the convenience of using those two terms and I have done it myself. It’s just that it’s only ONE of many dimensions along which the two construals differ, and I’ve witnessed folks from the Integral/Sensemaking/Hanzi/etc. community reducing the difference to simply that. Thereby suggesting that if you understand *their* notion of metamodernism, but take away the activist element and use it simply as a set of qualities to look for in existing social structures, you then understand cultural metamodernism. And I strongly disagree with that. That having been said, there is no one easy dichotomy that covers all the differences and is not itself overly black and white. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to use “cultural metamodernism” and “transformationalist metamodernism.” Someone might object to that language for valid reasons and if so I apologize in advance!
Regarding the tendency of theorists of cultural metamodernism to write about artworks and cultural products that they like much more than about ones that they see problems in: I absolutely agree with you that the litmus test for whether cultural metamodernism is the same kind of thing as postmodernism and modernism – a broad category that is useful for analytically understanding cultural trends – is whether it has the potential to output negative value judgements about things that it also categorizes as metamodern. I even say that, myself, in the Sideview article!
“A descriptive, epistemic theorization of metamodernism allows for exemplars not favored by the theorist. Put plainly, if ‘metamodernism’ is used to refer only to content you agree with and like, it’s probably not metamodernism.”
In the same article, I characterize the American “Alt-Right” movement as a phenomenon of metamodernism, while making it clear that I oppose their politics and their behavior.
In another article, written in 2016 before Donald Trump won the election, my thinking partner Linda Ceriello characterized Donald Trump’s appeal (not necessarily he, himself, nor his politics), as metamodern. https://whatismetamodern.com/politics/donald-trump-bernie-sanders-metamodernism/
Linda also writes on a more sophisticated level about the Alt Right as a metamodern phenomenon in her dissertation: https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/103873
And yet… It’s an entirely valid critique to point out that overwhelmingly, the writing about cultural metamodernism focuses on examples that are seen as “good” or “effective” and it’s not uncommon for there to be a celebratory or cheerleading tone. (In research that treats broader cultural trends, such as developments in religion, or in scholarly literary criticism, the tone is more likely to be neutral rather than celebratory, but, still, there is not much that is clearly negative in judgement.)
I will offer this excuse: Since the notion of metamodernism is still being established, people who write about it are interested in making clear that it really is a thing. This is a lot easier to do with examples that the researcher can show as being compelling, effective or successful artworks. Especially in my own work on whatismetamodern.com which is geared more to popular culture fans than to scholars, I’m motivated to provide readers with material that they can get excited about. I think if you had access to the journals where scholarly treatments of literary fiction are found, you’ll see more complex investigation that is more about exposing how metamodern cultural products *work* than in cheerleading for them. And yet it’s probably true that there aren’t many offering a downright negative estimation of the works that they are treating.
Nevertheless, I would argue that there is no lack of potential to identify metamodern qualities in “bad” cultural products. I’ve read “positive” metamodern theorizations of artworks that I personally do not like, and yet agree belong under the umbrella metamodern. And just the other night I watched a streaming movie I Care a Lot, that I think failed because of unconvincing tone shifts that were clearly shooting for something I would call metamodern. I just didn’t happen to like it or think they pulled it off. I could easily imagine writing a negative review of that film that invokes the notion of metamodernism to try to explain what they may have been shooting for, and why shooting for that target set up the film to fail.
I can imagine several ways the notion of metamodernism might be employed in negative criticism of a cultural product:
1) It’s making metamodern “moves” that obscure an important contradiction or missing piece in the subject matter.
2) It shoots for a metamodern “move” but doesn’t pull it off effectively, yielding a disorienting or self-undermining or contrived-seeming result. (I often feel this way about derivative indie-folk or worse, commercial jingles that are derivative of indie-folk).
3) Its treatment of the subject fails because it’s overly modernist or postmodern, in a way that falls flat given today’s aesthetic sensibilities/expectations. It needed to be more metamodern.
I guess you have to take my word for it, but I don’t think any theorist of cultural metamodernism would deny the potential for that kind of criticism. I just think that in practice, they haven’t chosen to do it often, because, with limited time and limited opportunities to publish, they prioritize writing about things they are excited about. I absolutely hope that this will not continue to be exclusively the case.
In contrast to cultural metamodernism, I would argue that transformationalist metamodernism, by definition, is championing changes that they feel will make for a better world. So they are subject to your critique in a way that cultural metamodernism fundamentally is not, even though there is a lot of room for cultural metamodernism researchers to “do better” at branching out into covering subjects that the writers are not enthusiastic about.
I want to address the question of whether Hanzi-style “metamodernism” can at least be understood as one example of cultural metamodernism, but first I want to address “oscillation.”
It has occurred to me in thinking about all of this that the notion of oscillation originally put forth by Vermeulen and van den Akker in 2010 had a more specific meaning than it has often come to be given. (I’ve been guilty of some such looseness myself).
So I would argue that the truest sense of oscillation is a dynamic happening in the interpretive experience of an object’s *audience*, not simply in the object itself. It’s not the object that switches back and forth between irony and earnestness, or between, say, unity and fracture. Rather it’s the nature of the object that elicits an oscillating interpretation in the viewer/reader, in a metamodern cultural product. So, for example, when you first encounter a Jonathan Richman performance, you’re likely to think “this music is so earnest that it is childish.” Then you think “he’s taking it so far that he must be mocking it.” Then you think “And yet he’s never breaking character, and if he *were* serious about it, it would indeed be touching. In fact, I *am* touched!” Then: “Oh, so he is simple and innocent. Maybe he’s sort of an idiot savant.” Then you notice actually how intricate his rhyme schemes are and how nuanced his understanding of human nature seems to be, so he's probably not simply an idiot savant. Then his refusal to break character begins to seem alienating, because he won’t let you take a break. Maybe the joke *is* on you, after all. Ah, but there is a palpable warm vibe shared by the audience. Etc… The art does not have distinct earnest and ironic pieces; rather the earnest reaction in the listener gives way to an ironic reaction, and vice-versa, repeatedly. Some variation of this dynamic is at play in much work that people have called metamodern.
Another kind of relationship present in metamodern works is one that I would prefer to call braiding. Here, you do have distinct components present within the object itself that have opposing qualities, and yet the components lean upon each other such that taking one away would cause the whole to unravel. So there are discernable polarized components, but they are in an important dynamic or constructive relationship with each other.
Finally you have simple juxtaposition, which I think is more weakly metamodern than braiding or oscillation, and often not really metamodern at all. Sometimes you’ll find a combination of traditional, modernist, and/or postmodern elements in a thing, but they’re not dynamically related, they’re simply co-present because that’s how life often is: things are complicated and have multiple elements in them. For example, if a museum has a floor that features modernist paintings and another floor that features postmodern paintings, I wouldn’t, on the basis of that reason alone, call it a “metamodern museum.”
I would argue that Hanzi-style metamodernism’s incorporation of both (pomo) multi-perspectivalism and (mod) hierarchical models of adult development is only on the stronger end of what I’ve called simple juxtaposition. I would not discount it entirely as a metamodern dynamic, but if I were trying to explain metamodernism to someone, I wouldn’t choose it as a clear and shining example. I think that ultimately, Gortz & Friis do recognize the internal validity of varying perspectives, but primarily only for the purpose of establishing their hierarchical approach, in which they assert that different perspectives can be ordered on the basis of cognitive complexity. They don’t really oscillate between multi-perspectivalism and hierarchical thinking; they move through multi-perpectivalism to arrive at hierarchical thinking, and they priviledge it. I think their main mission is not to encourage people to accept viewpoint diversity, but rather to encourage adult models of human (and societal) development to be a factor in the policy formation of government and other institutions. When they do return to focusing on mutli-perspectivalism, it’s mainly to humble people who cling to levels beneath the one that is supposed to be the highest (what they call “metamodernism”), suggesting that people don’t be dismissive of those “below” them because they themselves are at a level “below” others.
In any case, regardless of where you put this in the range between “weak juxtaposition” and “strong oscillation” my main point is that, in my view, the main *content* of Hanzi-style metamodernism is this interest in advanced adult development. Whereas the main content identified by theorists of cultural metamodernism is a sensibility or structure of feeling that oscillates between such polarities as earnestness/irony, unification/fragmentation, hope/resignation, desire/apathy, yearning/tragedy, etc… This is not simply an abstract theory but is the result of *observing* many examples in the arts and culture that seem to exhibit this tendency. The data preceded the theory and the data have a certain subjective aesthetic vibe, and models of advanced adult development don’t have that vibe to me.
Finally, putting aside everything I just said, even if I accept that the body of ideas advocated by Gortz and Friis is in some part an *exemplar* of metamodernism, it’s not metamodernism *per se*. Goofy analogy, but let’s say you had a model of car called “The Blue” and all of those cars were always painted blue as part of the brand. Now compare the car, “The Blue” to actually the color blue, in general. The qualitative definition of the color blue includes some particular electromagnetic frequency range, the neurons it stimulates in animals’ brains, the subjective associations people have with that color, etc, across many kinds of thing that have the color blue. Whereas for this hypothetical model of car, the fact of them being colored blue is one detail that matters, but so do its engine characteristics, fuel efficiency, numbers of doors, and a bunch of other car-oriented aspects. To say that the actual color blue, and this model of car called The Blue are the same kind of thing would be non-sensical. Instead, you would say that the car is an example of things that are blue, that someone also chose to name “The Blue.”
So, at best, I think the body of ideas promoted by the Hanzi authors might be considered, as you suggested, an example of cultural metamodernism, but even if it is, it’s only *kind of* an example of cultural metamodernism.
Since I’ve already violated norms by writing such a long comment, I’m going to keep going and mention a few spots in your article where I feel you make observations that I would argue apply differently to cultural metamodernism than they do to transformational metamodernism.
• In your first footnote, you clarify that within the broader scope of cultural theory, modernism refers to the late 19th/early 20th Century movement in the arts, while explaining that for “metamodernists” modernism refers to something synonymous with enlightenment values. That may be the case for transformational metamodernism writers, but in cultural metamodernism, I’ve always assumed we were talking about the modernism that you think of as standard. In some of my own writing I make the distinction “modernism” (meaning, roughly, first half of twentieth century) and “modernity” (meaning the period we’re still in now that began with the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, etc…). I re-read Vermeulen and van den Akker’s first essay in which they introduced their notion of metamodernism, and it still reads to me as if they mean “modernism” in the standard way that you prefer using it. If you listen to the full version of my youtube conversation with Jonathan, you’ll hear me blab on about the difference between “modernity” and “modernism” for probably too long, precisely in order to clarify that it's modernism (the more recent and more bounded period), that I’m referring to when I talk about oscillations.
• “I appreciate the emphasis metamodernists have placed on things like complexity science, game theory and consensus process.” — None of those things are significant in discussions of cultural metamodernism.
• “The motif at the heart of metamodernism is that of oscillating between perspectives or attitudes. This refers primarily to an oscillation between modernist sincerity and postmodernist irony, but also takes on a broader sense captured by the notion of “both-and” reasoning, or the hopping between and simultaneous occupancy of multiple conflicting perspectives.” — As I have written earlier in my comments, this broader hopping between multiple conflicting perspectives is NOT what we’re talking about in cultural metamodernism.
• Your discussion of consensus seeking dialog. Cultural metamodernism places little emphasis on attempts at that project, and again, the oscillation does not refer to dialogs between opposing beliefs or positions, but between aesthetic and cultural sensibilities.
• “There is a peculiar sub-genre of metamodernist writing which consists mainly in making huge lists and charts of other metamodernists.” — I haven’t seen anything like this in cultural metamodernism research.
• “Making connections is easy — it is like chucking a load of body parts together in a heap; making disconnections is what is needed to actually get the monster twitching on the slab. Disconnection is where synthesis begins, but also where oscillation ends. The continuation of oscillation is just the failure of synthesis.” Cultural metamodernism is NOT about making connections between disparate things. And it’s not an attempt at synthesis. When Vermeulen and van den Akker defined their usage of “oscillation” they made clear that they were talking about a process in which the space-between is not flattened, not a landing in the middle, neither element negating the other, etc.
• “And indeed there is a tendency within metamodernism to do just this, sifting through history to retroactively identify various characters as proto-metamodernists.” I have not seen this within cultural metamodernism research?
• Your discussion of BoJack Horseman: there’s too much for me to treat it in this context, perhaps it would require a live conversation. There’s a lot I’d need you to clarify for me in what you’re saying. But you refer to “metamodernism’s emancipatory mythology” — I don’t know of something like that existing in cultural metamodernism research. And, I would say that an appreciation for the tragic dimension of BoJack Horseman is essential to a cultural metamodern understanding of the show.
• “If the oscillation between sincerity and irony present in contemporary culture testifies to a diminishment rather than an increase of agency then it should be critiqued, not celebrated” — In much of my own work, I claim that the oscillation between sincerity and irony (and oscillations between other Mod/PoMo polarities) serves to enhance and preserve agency and interiority, and that that is the primary motivation of metamodern cultural products.
I really appreciate you reading through all of this. I realize that I may not at all have convinced you of my position, but if nothing else, it’s been very helpful to me in clarifying my own thoughts about a lot of this which has come up before in other contexts and sure will come up again. Thank you for giving me impetus.
