Metamodernist + Manifesto
So I had something to say about Modernism and Post-modernism the last few days:
There are a lot of currents of Post-modernism I find persuasive, and a lot of it (Derrida, for one) that I find too easily made into a cartoon. And thanks now to the comment stream (thank you, Paul!), here’s something interestingish from the department of manifestos du jour:
Metamodernist
Manifesto
1.
We recognise oscillation to be the natural order of the world.
2.
We must liberate ourselves from the inertia resulting from a century of modernist ideological naivety and the cynical insincerity of its antonymous bastard child.
3.
Movement shall henceforth be enabled by way of an oscillation between positions, with diametrically opposed ideas operating like the pulsating polarities of some colossal electric machine, propelling the world into action.
4.
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.
5.
All things are caught up 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.
6.
The present is a symptom of the twin birth of immediacy and obsolescence. 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.
7.
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. Erroneousness breeds sense.
8.
We propose a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage. Thus, metamodernism shall be defined as the mercurial condition that lies between, beyond and in pursuit of a plurality of disparate and fragmentary positions. We must go forth and oscillate.
*Based upon the notion of metamodernism as conceived of by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in 'Notes on metamodernism' (Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Vol. 2, 2010)
Find more from Metamodernism (I really dislike the name) here:
posted by John Gallaher @ 11:37 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
For one:
“Movement shall henceforth be enabled by way of an oscillation between positions, with diametrically opposed ideas operating like the pulsating polarities of some colossal electric machine, propelling the world into action.”
+
“The present is a symptom of the twin birth of immediacy and obsolescence. 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.”
=
Well, Post-modernism in a nutshell, even with the undeconstucted binaries of “diametrically opposed ideas operating like the pulsating polarities” and the false dichotomy of “immediacy and obsolescence.”
But why quibble? I’m glad someone out there is attempting some version of a repopulated center, which is what everyone’s been doing 9ot trying to do) for a great long while now.
And before one throws out Post-modernism as simply “an antonymous bastard child” of Modernism, one should at least nod to what it’s meant for the various subject positions outside of the white-heterosexual-male voiceover. (If you can forget Lacan, which I heartily endorse.)
Huh. The original title of The Mad Song was The Pragmatic Romantic.
The postmodernism discussion of the past couple days here reminds of Eef Barzelay's tune 'The Girls Don't Care,' off of the Lose Big album (or cd, as it were).
I think you put up a youtube vid up of on NTSASI it awhile back, John.
In the industrial age, replete with the monumental power and trappings of mass media, almost anybody or any movement will inevitably end up being only one of seven billion other sounds in the echo chamber.
Yet occasionally some desperate HELLO does more than bounce off the old walls, makes it up out of our modern day canyon floor.
tpeterson
Apologies for that garbled mess the second paragraph is.
Translation: I think you have a video of the song up on your website/blog somewhere, John, or
I typed fast and submitted faster.
Word verification: ingus,
as in In Gus, I trust (Gus being Gustav Stickley, mover and shaker of the American Arts & Crafts movement).
tpeterson
Michael,
I'm glad you chanegd that title!
TP,
In honor of NTSASI, I'm going to have an all-day Clem Snide (and EB) soundtrack, as soon as this Talking Heads album is over.
Stop Making Sense, indeed!
Word verification: glory.
No, I am not making this up.
There you have it.
"All things are caught up within the irrevocable slide towards a state of maximum entropic dissemblance"
Things Will Fail
Physics and bacteria conspire
to deconstruct the solid,
even non-things still real,
still extant, become squalid,
ever more unsubstantial:
ideas and thoughts and understanding.
Time conveys the quantum
of entropic deterioration.
It makes bread hard and old meat smell.
It makes things die.
It makes things stale.
Only our loss of concentration
is the end to this demanding.
Then the bell rings and all stand up
for the anthem.
Copyright 2009 - Tall Grass & High Waves, Gary B. Fitzgerald
I know manifesto-ism tends to be self-important, but...
telling the universe how to move...??
"Movement shall henceforth..."
LOL
T. Brady,
Scarriet
TB,
I'm not sure why you're reading it that way. It seems to me that they mean artistic movement, not the movement of the spheres. But each to each's own.
I have my own disagreements with number three.
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