Originally published at: https://robwatsonmedia.net/distraction-therapy-060-metamodern-dualism/
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Metamodernism is perhaps the most influential and wide-ranging way of thinking about post-postmodernism. The proponents of metamodernism include cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker. The dualism of “ironic sincerity,” “informed naivete” and “pragmatic idealism” have come into view as the metamodern presents us with an oscillation between paradigmatically modern and postmodern attitudes.
The feeling that modern and postmodern society lack as sense of the genuine expression of soul of humankind is played out in the search for meaning. The reduction of social relationships to either power or the flow of signifiers, is challenged by the reevaluation of the symbolic through concepts associated with depth psychology and an affirmation of the manifestation of the collective conscious as the human spirit.
This ‘neo-romanticism’ affirms that there are transcendent human experiences, and that people are driven, not by their goals, but the meanings that they encounter and are open to. We inhabit, what Raymond Williams calls a culture defined through a ‘structure of feeling’, which is expressed, as ever, through the creative arts – music, poetry, art, performance.
A desire for sens / A doubt about the sense of it all
Enthusiasm / Irony
Hope / Melancholy
Naivety / Knowingness
Empathy / Apathy
Unity / Plurality
Totality / Fragmentation
Purity / Ambiguity
Authenticity / Pastiche
Involved / Detached
Elitist / Democratic
Media
Music
Dirge – Death In Vegas, Satan’s Circus
Alpha (feat. Taprikk Sweezee) – Towa Tei, Sunny
Destiny (Dalek I Love You) – Dalek I, Compass / Kum’Pas
Makes You Fly – Dumbo Gets Mad, Things Are Random and Time Is Speeding Up
Lost In Thought – Jon Hopkins, Opalescent
Poems
Geoffrey Hill –
Keston Sutherland – Stress Position
Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Kubla Khan read by Benedict Cumberbatch