The Metamodernist Manifesto
Metamodernist // Manifesto
We recognise oscillation to be the natural order of the world.
We must liberate ourselves from the inertia resulting from a century of modernist ideological naivety and the cynical insincerity of its antonymous bastard child.
Movement shall henceforth be enabled by way of an oscillation between positions, with diametrically opposed ideas operating like the pulsating polarities of a colossal electric machine, propelling the world into action.
We acknowledge the limitations inherent to all movement and experience, and the futility of any attempt to transcend the boundaries set forth therein. The essential incompleteness of a system should necessitate an adherence, not in order to achieve a given end or be slaves to its course, but rather perchance to glimpse by proxy some hidden exteriority. Existence is enriched if we set about our task as if those limits might be exceeded, for such action unfolds the world.
All things are caught within the irrevocable slide towards a state of maximum entropic dissemblance. Artistic creation is contingent upon the origination or revelation of difference therein. Affect at its zenith is the unmediated experience of difference in itself. It must be art’s role to explore the promise of its own paradoxical ambition by coaxing excess towards presence.
The present is a symptom of the twin birth of immediacy and obsolescence. Today, we are nostalgists as much as we are futurists. The new technology enables the simultaneous experience and enactment of events from a multiplicity of positions. Far from signalling its demise, these emergent networks facilitate the democratisation of history, illuminating the forking paths along which its grand narratives may navigate the here and now.
Just as science strives for poetic elegance, artists might assume a quest for truth. All information is grounds for knowledge, whether empirical or aphoristic, no matter its truth-value. We should embrace the scientific-poetic synthesis and informed naivety of a magical realism. Error breeds sense.
We propose a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage. Thus, metamodernism shall be defined as the mercurial condition between and beyond irony and sincerity, naivety and knowingness, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt, in pursuit of a plurality of disparate and elusive horizons. We must go forth and oscillate!
by , 2011 &//&&&&&&//&&&From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A metanarrative (: métarécit) in
and particularly in
is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (as yet unrealized) master idea.
The term was brought into prominence by
in 1979, with his claim that the postmodern was characterised precisely by a mistrust of the grand narratives (,
, ) that had formed an essential part of .
In : A Report on Knowledge (1979), Lyotard highlights the increasing skepticism of the
toward the
of metanarratives and their reliance on some form of "transcendent and universal truth":
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives[. ..] The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language[...] Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?
Lyotard and other
thinkers (like ) view this as a broadly positive development for a number of reasons. First, attempts to construct grand theories tend to unduly dismiss the naturally existing chaos and disorder of the universe, the power of the individual event. Second, as well as ignoring the heterogeneity or variety of human existence, metanarratives are created and reinforced by
and are therefore untrustworthy.[]
Lyotard proposed that metanarratives should give way to petits récits, or more modest and "localized" narratives, which can 'throw off' the grand narrative by bringing into focus the singular event. Borrowing from the works of
and his theory of the "models of discourse", Lyotard constructs his vision of a , grounded in the cohabitation of a whole range of diverse and always locally legitimated .
Postmodernists attempt to replace metanarratives by focusing on specific local contexts as well as on the diversity of human experience. They argue for the existence of a "multiplicity of theoretical standpoints" rather than for grand, all-encompassing theories.
According to John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, a metanarrative "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative
which orders and explains
and " – a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other "little stories" within
that assemble the "little stories" into a whole. Postmodern narratives will often deliberately disturb the formulaic expectations such cultural codes provide, pointing thereby to a possible revision of the social code.
and , a master narrative (or metanarrative) is a "transhistorical narrative that is deeply embedded in a particular culture." A master narrative is therefore a particular type of narrative, which is defined as a "coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that share a common rhetorical desire to resolve a conflict by establishing audience expectations according to the known trajectories of its literary and rhetorical form."
also maintains a website on master narratives.
It is unclear whether Lyotard is describing a global condition – skepticism towards metanarratives in postmodernity – or prescribing such skepticism – his critics pointing out the awkward fact for a descriptive viewpoint that clearly meta-narratives continue to play a major role in the current (postmodern) world.
Critics have also argued that, in so far as one of Lyotard's targets was Science, he was mistaken in thinking science relies on a grand narrative for social and epistemic validation, rather than upon the accumulation of many lesser narrative successes.
J. Childers/G. Hentzi eds., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (1995) p. 186
R. Appignanesi/C. Garratt, Postmodernism for Beginners (1995) pp. 102–3
Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children (1992) p. 29
Childers pp. 166–7
Lyotard, Jean-Fran?ois. ," 1979: xxiv–xxv.
G. Gutting ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (2007) p. 36
C. Nouvet et al eds., Minima Moralia (2007) pp. xii–iv
Nouvet, p. xvi
Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern: A History, Routledge, 1995, p124.
Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Differend (1988) p. 151-161
Michael A. Peters, Poststructuralism, Marxism, and Neoliberalism: Between Theory and Politics, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, p7.
Stephens, John and Robyn McCallum. (1998). Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children's Literature. .
J. W. Bertens/D. Fokkema, International Postmodernism (1997) p. 186
E. D. Ermath, Sequel to History (1992) p. 156
Halverson, Jeffry R., H.L. Goodall Jr. and Steven R. Corman. Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. p. 14
. Comops.org.
J. W. Bertens/D. Fokkema, International Postmodernism (1997) p. 94
. : A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ], reprint 1997. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi.
David Carr, Time, Narrative, and History (Indiana UP, 1986)
, Lyotard: Writing the Event (1988)
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