Post-postmodernism

Post-postmodernism is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism.

Periodization

Most scholars would agree that modernism began in the late 19th century and continued on as the dominant cultural force in the intellectual circles of Western Culture well into the mid-twentieth century.^[1] Like all epochs, modernism encompasses many competing individual directions and is impossible to define as a discrete unity or totality. However, its chief general characteristics are often thought to include an emphasis on "radical aesthetics, technical experimentation, spatial or rhythmic, rather than chronological form, [and] self-conscious reflexiveness"^[2] as well as the search for authenticity in human relations, abstraction in art, and utopian striving. These characteristics are normally lacking in postmodernism or are treated as objects of irony.

Postmodernism

preceded by Modernism

Postmodernity Hypermodernity Hypermodernism (art) Post-anarchism Posthumanism Postmodernist anthropology Post-processual archaeology Postmodern architecture Postmodern art Postmodern Christianity Postmodern dance Postmodern feminism Postmodernist film Postmodern literature Post-Marxism Post-materialism Postmodern music Postmodern picture book Postmodern philosophy Postmodern psychology Postmodernism in political science Postpositivism Post-postmodernism Postmodernist school Postmodern social construction of nature Postmodern theatre Post-structuralism Criticism of postmodernism

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Postmodernism arose after World War II as a reaction to the perceived failings of modernism, whose radical artistic projects had come to be associated with totalitarianism^[3] or had been assimilated into mainstream culture. The basic features of what we now call postmodernism can be found as early as the 1940s, most notably in the work of Jorge Luis Borges.^[4] However, most scholars today would agree that postmodernism began to compete with modernism in the late 1950s and gained ascendancy over it in the 1960s.^[5] Since then, postmodernism has been a dominant, though not undisputed, force in art, literature, film, music, drama, architecture and philosophy. Salient features of postmodernism are normally thought to include the ironic play with styles, citations and narrative levels,^[6] a metaphysical skepticism or nihilism towards a “grand narrative” of Western culture,^[7] a preference for the virtual at the expense of the real (or more accurately, a fundamental questioning of what 'the real' constitutes) ^[8] and a “waning of affect”^[9] on the part of the subject, who is caught up in the free interplay of virtual, endlessly reproducible signs inducing a state of consciousness similar to schizophrenia.^[10]

Since the late 1990s there has been a small but growing feeling both in popular culture and in academia that postmodernism "has gone out of fashion."^[11]. However, there have been few formal attempts to define and name the epoch succeeding postmodernism, and none of the proposed designations has yet become part of mainstream usage.

Definitions

Consensus on what makes up an epoch can hardly be achieved while that epoch is still in its early stages. However, a common positive theme of current attempts to define post-postmodernism is that faith, trust, dialogue, performance and sincerity can work to transcend postmodern irony. The following definitions, which vary widely in depth, focus and scope, are listed in the chronological order of their appearance.

In 1995, the landscape architect and urban planner Tom Turner issued a book-length call for a post-postmodern turn in urban planning.^[12] 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.”^[13] 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.”^[14]

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.”^[15] 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.^[16]

As an example Epstein cites the work of the contemporary Russian poet Timur Kibirov.^[17]

The term post-millennialism was introduced in 2000 by the American cultural theorist Eric Gans^[18] to describe the epoch 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 utopianism and totalitarianism but unproductive in its resentment of capitalism and liberal democracy, which he sees as the long-term agents of global reconciliation. In contrast to postmodernism, post-millennialism is distinguished by the rejection of victimary thinking and a turn to “non-victimary dialogue”^[19] that will “diminish […] the amount of resentment in the world.”^[20] Gans has developed the notion of post-millennialism further in many of his internet Chronicles of Love and Resentment^[21] and the term is allied closely with his theory of Generative Anthropology and his scenic concept of history.^[22]

A systematic attempt to define post-postmodernism in aesthetic terms has been undertaken by the German-American Slavist Raoul Eshelman in his book Performatism, or the End of Postmodernism (Aurora, Colorado: Davies Group 2008, ISBN 978-1-888570-41-0).^[23] Eshelman, who coined the term “Performatism” in 2000,^[24] attempts to show that works in the new epoch are constructed in such a way as to bring about a unified, aesthetically mediated experience of transcendence. Performatism does this by creating closed works of art that force viewers to identify with simple, opaque characters or situations and to experience beauty, love, belief and transcendence under particular, artificial conditions. Eshelman applies this model to literature, film, architecture, philosophy and art. Examples of performatist works cited by Eshelman include Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, the film American Beauty, Sir Norman Foster’s renovation of the Berlin Reichstag, the philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion and Vanessa Beecroft’s performances.

In popular culture, the movement that is loosely called “New Sincerity” displays salient features of post-postmodernism in its opposition to postmodern irony and in its attempt to promote good feeling. One of its most notable proponents is the radio talk-show host Jesse Thorn, who issued a brief “Manifesto for the New Sincerity” on his blog in 2006.^[25] He states we should “think of [the New Sincerity] as irony and sincerity combined like Voltron, to form a new movement of astonishing power.” As an example Thorn goes on to cite the late motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, whose persona is “preposterous” but whose stunts “boggle the mind” and “can’t be taken ironically.” Thorn often promotes “The New Sincerity” on his radio program, The Sound of Young America, which is broadcast on American public radio and is available as podcasts on the show's homepage.^[26]

In 2006 the British scholar Alan Kirby formulated an entirely pessimistic socio-cultural assessment of post-postmodernism that he calls “pseudo-modernism.”^[27] Kirby associates pseudo-modernism with the triteness and shallowness resulting from the instantaneous, direct, and superficial participation in culture made possible by the internet, mobile phones, interactive television and similar means: “In pseudo-modernism one phones, clicks, presses, surfs, chooses, moves, downloads.”^[27]

Pseudo-modernism’s “typical intellectual states” are furthermore described as being “ignorance, fanaticism and anxiety” and it is said to produce a “trance-like state” in those participating in it. The net result of this media-induced shallowness and instantaneous participation in trivial events is a “silent autism” superseding “the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism.“ Kirby sees no aesthetically valuable works coming out of “pseudo-modernism.” As examples of its triteness he cites reality TV, interactive news programs, “the drivel found […] on some Wikipedia pages,” docu-soaps, and the essayistic cinema of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock.^[27] In a book published in September 2009 titled Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure our Culture Kirby developed further and nuanced his views on culture and textuality in the aftermath of postmodernism.

In 2010 the cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker introduced the term metamodernism ^[28] as an intervention in the post-postmodernism debate. In their article 'Notes on metamodernism' they assert that the 2000s are characterized by the emergence of a sensibility that oscillates between, and must be situated beyond, modern positions and postmodern strategies. As examples of the metamodern sensibility Vermeulen and van den Akker cite the 'informed naivety', 'pragmatic idealism' and 'moderate fanaticism' of the various cultural responses to, among others, climate change, the financial crisis, and (geo)political instability.

Aesthetically, metamodernism is examplified by practices as varied as the architecture of BIG and Herzog and de Meuron, the cinema of Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson, the artworks of Peter Doig, Olafur Eliasson, Ragnar Kjartansson, Šejla Kamerić and Paula Doepfner, and the writings of Haruki Murakami, Roberto Bolano and Jonathan Franzen, as they are each typified by a continuous oscillation, a constant repositioning between attitudes and mindsets that are evocative of the modern and of the postmodern but are ultimately suggestive of another sensibility that is neither of them; one that negotiates between a yearning for universal truths and relativism, between a desire for sense and a doubt about the sense of it all, between hope and melancholy, sincerity and irony, knowingness and naivety, construction and deconstruction.

The prefix 'meta' here refers not to some reflective stance or repeated rumination, but to Plato's metaxy, which intends a movement between opposite poles as well as beyond. ^[29]

Related topics

• Dogme 95
• Integral Movement
• Maximalism
• Metamodernism
• Neo-minimalism
• New Puritans
• New Sincerity
• Radical Orthodoxy
• Remodernism
• Stuckism
• New Urbanism
• Altermodern
• The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond

References

1. ^ Compare, for example:
   Childs, Peter (2008). Modernism. New York: Routledge. p. 18. ISBN 0415415446. http://books.google.com/books?id=-v8SXB4l7kcC. : "[modernism] is [...] primarily located in the years 1890-1930 [...]"
   Armstrong, Tim (2005). Modernism: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 24. ISBN 0745629830. http://books.google.com/books?id=3k_C-1NZ4YYC&dq=isbn=0745629830. : "[modernism] can be defined as a series of international artistic movements in the period 1900-40 [...]."
2. ^ Childs, Peter (2008). Modernism. New York: Routledge. p. 18. ISBN 0415415446. http://books.google.com/books?id=-v8SXB4l7kcC. 
3. ^ Cf. Groys, Boris: The Total Art of Stalinism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
4. ^ See Barth, John: “The Literature of Exhaustion.” The Atlantic Monthly, August 1967, pp. 29-34.
5. ^ Cf., for example, Huyssen, Andreas: After the Great Divide. Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986, p. 188.
6. ^ See Hutcheon, Linda: A Poetics of Postmodernism. History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988, pp. 3-21; McHale, Brian: Postmodern Fiction, London: Methuen, 1987.
7. ^ See Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press 1984
8. ^ See Baudrillard, Jean: “Simulacra and Simulations.” In: Jean Baudrillard. Selected Writings. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1988, pp. 166-184.
9. ^ Jameson, Fredric: Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press 1991, p. 16
10. ^ Jameson, Fredric: Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press 1991, pp. 26-27.
11. ^ Potter, Garry and Lopez, Jose (eds.): After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism. London: The Athlone Press 2001, p. 4.
12. ^ City as Landscape: A Post Post-modern View of Design and Planning, (Taylor & Francis: London 1995).
13. ^ City as Landscape: A Post Post-modern View of Design and Planning, (Taylor & Francis: London 1995), p. 9.
14. ^ City as Landscape: A Post Post-modern View of Design and Planning, (Taylor & Francis: London 1995), p. 10; see also a summary of the book at [1]
15. ^ Epstein, Mikhail; Genis, Alexander; Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka. Russian Postmodernism. New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture. Berghahn Books: New York, 1999, p. 467.
16. ^ http://www.focusing.org/apm_papers/epstein.html
17. ^ Epstein, Mikhail; Genis, Alexander; Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka. Russian Postmodernism. New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture. Berghahn Books: New York, 1999, pp. 457-460
18. ^ Gans, Eric (June 3, 2000). "The Post-Millennial Age". Anthropoetics (University of California, Los Angeles) 209. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw209.htm. Retrieved June 17, 2011. 
19. ^ Gans, Eric (March 31, 2001). "Victimary Thinking Forever?". Anthropoetics (University of California, Los Angeles) 230. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw230.htm. Retrieved June 17, 2011. 
20. ^ Gans, Eric (June 9, 2001). "Moral Heroism". Anthropoetics (University of California, Los Angeles) 237. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw237.htm. Retrieved June 17, 2011. 
21. ^ Gans, Eric. "Chronicles of Love and Resentment". Anthropoetics. University of California, Los Angeles. http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/Chronicles_home.cfm. Retrieved June 17, 2011. 
22. ^ For more on both see Gans, Eric: Originary Thinking: Elements of Generative Anthropology. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press 1993.
23. ^ Parts of the book are available in the internet journal Anthropoetics, see Anthropoetics Article List, UCLA
24. ^ Eshelman, Raoul (Fall 2000 / Winter 2001). "Moral Heroism". Anthropoetics (University of California, Los Angeles) 6 (2). http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0602/perform.htm. Retrieved June 17, 2011. 
25. ^ [2]
26. ^ [3]
27. ^ ^{a b c} Kirby, Alan (November/December 2006). "The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond". Philosophy Now (58). http://www.philosophynow.org/issue58/58kirby.htm. Retrieved June 17, 2011. 
28. ^ Vermeulen, Timotheus and Robin van den Akker. "Notes on metamodernism", Journal of Aesthetics and Culture" 2010.
29. ^ [4]

External links

• Essay by Alan Kirby on theories of post-postmodernism
• Essay by Mikhail Epstein on The Place of Postmodernism in Postmodernity
• Introduction to Digimodernism by Alan Kirby
• Post-postmodern novel by Patrick J. F. Quere
• notes on metamodernism