Post-Postmodernism
Encyclopedia
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
.
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. 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" 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
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 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
. 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. 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, a metaphysical skepticism or nihilism
towards a “grand narrative” of Western culture, a preference for the virtual at the expense of the real (or more accurately, a fundamental questioning of what 'the real' constitutes) and a “waning of affect” 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.
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.". 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.
. 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. 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.” 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.”
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
.” 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
-":
As an example Epstein cites the work of the contemporary Russian poet Timur Kibirov.
The term post-millennialism was introduced in 2000 by the American cultural theorist Eric Gans
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” that will “diminish […] the amount of resentment in the world.” Gans has developed the notion of post-millennialism further in many of his internet Chronicles of Love and Resentment and the term is allied closely with his theory of Generative Anthropology
and his scenic concept of history.
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). Eshelman, who coined the term “Performatism” in 2000, 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. 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.
In 2006 the British scholar Alan Kirby
formulated an entirely pessimistic socio-cultural assessment of post-postmodernism that he calls “pseudo-modernism.” 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.”
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
. 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
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.
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
.
Periodization
Most scholars would agree that modernismModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
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. 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" 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
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
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 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
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
. 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. 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, a metaphysical skepticism or nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
towards a “grand narrative” of Western culture, a preference for the virtual at the expense of the real (or more accurately, a fundamental questioning of what 'the real' constitutes) and a “waning of affect” 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.
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.". 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 ironyIrony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
. 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
Tom Turner
Tom Turner is an English Landscape architect, Garden designer and Garden historian teaching at the University of Greenwich in London. He is the author of books and articles on landscape and gardens and is the editor of the Garden History Reference Encyclopedia CD and the online Gardens...
issued a book-length call for a post-postmodern turn in urban planning. 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.” 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
Christopher Alexander
Christopher Wolfgang Alexander is a registered architect noted for his theories about design, and for more than 200 building projects in California, Japan, Mexico and around the world...
, gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies...
and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
’s concept of archetypes. Regarding terminology, Turner urges us to “embrace post-Postmodernism – and pray for a better name.”
In his 1999 book on Russian postmodernism
Russian postmodernism
Russian postmodernism refers to the cultural, artistic, and philosophical condition in Russia since the downfall of the Soviet Union and dialectical materialism...
the Russian-American Slavist Mikhail Epstein
Mikhail Epstein
Mikhail Naumovich Epstein is an American literary theorist and critical thinker. He is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia...
suggested that postmodernism “is […] part of a much larger historical formation,” which he calls “postmodernity
Postmodernity
Postmodernity is generally used to describe the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity...
.” 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
Trans
Trans is a Latin noun or prefix, meaning "across", "beyond" or "on the opposite side".Trans may refer to:- Science and technology :* Cis-trans isomerism, in chemistry, a form of stereoisomerism...
-":
As an example Epstein cites the work of the contemporary Russian poet Timur Kibirov.
The term post-millennialism was introduced in 2000 by the American cultural theorist Eric Gans
Eric Gans
Eric Lawrence Gans is an American literary scholar, philosopher of language, and cultural anthropologist. Since 1969, he has taught 19th century literature, critical theory, and film in the UCLA Department of French and Francophone studies.Gans invented a new science of human culture and origins...
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
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
. 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” that will “diminish […] the amount of resentment in the world.” Gans has developed the notion of post-millennialism further in many of his internet Chronicles of Love and Resentment and the term is allied closely with his theory of Generative Anthropology
Generative Anthropology
Generative anthropology is a field of study based on the theory that the origin of human language was a singular event and that the history of human culture is a genetic or "generative" development stemming from the development of language....
and his scenic concept of history.
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). Eshelman, who coined the term “Performatism” in 2000, 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
Yann Martel
Yann Martel is a Canadian author best known for the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi.-Early life:Martel was born in Salamanca, Spain where his father was posted as a diplomat for the Canadian government. He was raised in Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and Canada...
’s novel Life of Pi
Life of Pi
Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age...
, the film American Beauty, Sir Norman Foster’s renovation of the Berlin Reichstag, the philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion
Jean-Luc Marion
Jean-Luc Marion is among the best-known living philosophers in France, former student of Jacques Derrida and one of the leading Catholic thinkers of modern times. Marion's take on the postmodern is informed by his expertise in patristic and mystical theology, phenomenology, and modern philosophy...
and Vanessa Beecroft
Vanessa Beecroft
Vanessa Beecroft is an Italian contemporary artist living in Los Angeles.-Artistic practice:Beecroft's work is a fusion of conceptual issues and aesthetic concerns, focusing on large-scale performance art, usually involving live female models...
’s performances.
In popular culture, the movement that is loosely called “New Sincerity
New Sincerity
New sincerity is a term that has been used in music, aesthetics, film criticism, poetry, literary criticism and philosophy, generally to describe art or concepts that run against prevailing modes of postmodernist irony or cynicism.-New sincerity in music:...
” 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
Jesse Thorn
Jesse Thorn is an American public radio show host/creator. He is the host and producer of the radio show and podcast The Sound of Young America, which is distributed by Public Radio International to 25 public terrestrial radio stations in 13 states and is also broadcast weekly on XM Radio's "XM...
, who issued a brief “Manifesto for the New Sincerity” on his blog in 2006. 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
Evel Knievel
Evel Knievel , born Robert Craig Knievel, was an American daredevil and entertainer. In his career he attempted over 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps between 1965 and 1980, and in 1974, a failed jump across Snake River Canyon in the Skycycle X-2, a steam-powered rocket...
, 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
The Sound of Young America
The Sound of Young America is a public radio program and podcast based in Los Angeles, California and distributed by Public Radio International...
, which is broadcast on American public radio and is available as podcasts on the show's homepage.
In 2006 the British scholar Alan Kirby
Alan Kirby (writer)
Alan Kirby is the author of The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond and of Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure Our Culture, a book-length study of the same subject. Along with Nicolas Bourriaud, Gilles Lipovetsky, Raoul Eshelman, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin...
formulated an entirely pessimistic socio-cultural assessment of post-postmodernism that he calls “pseudo-modernism.” 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.”
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
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...
or Morgan Spurlock
Morgan Spurlock
Morgan Valentine Spurlock is an American documentary filmmaker, humorist, television producer, screenwriter and journalist best known for the documentary film Super Size Me...
. 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
Metamodernism
Metamodernism is a term employed to situate and explain recent developments across current affairs, critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, cinema, music and literature which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism.- Definitions :...
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
Bjarke Ingels
Bjarke Ingels is a Danish architect. He heads the architectural practice Bjarke Ingels Group which he founded in 2006. In 2009 he co-founded the design consultancy KiBiSi...
and Herzog and de Meuron, the cinema of Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry
Michel Gondry is an Academy Award winning filmmaker, whose works include being a commercial director, music video director, and a screenwriter. He is noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scène. - Life and career :...
, Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is an American director, producer and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television...
and Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer of features, short films and commercials....
, the artworks of Peter Doig
Peter Doig
Peter Doig is a contemporary artist born in Scotland. In 2007, a painting of Doig's, entitled White Canoe, sold at Sotheby's for $11.3 million, then an auction record for a living European artist.-Early life:...
, Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. In 1995 he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research...
, Ragnar Kjartansson, Šejla Kamerić
Šejla Kamerić
Šejla Kamerić is a Bosnian artist. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, at the Department of Graphic Design. Between 1994 and 1997, she collaborated with the design group Trio, also of Sarajevo. Then she worked as art director for the advertising agency Fabrika until 2000. That...
and Paula Doepfner, and the writings of Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami
is a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and Jerusalem Prize among others.He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature...
, Roberto Bolano
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes , and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes...
and Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections , a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction...
, 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
Metaxy
Metaxy or metaxu is defined in Plato's Symposium via the character of the priestess Diotima as the "in-between" or "middle ground". Diotima, tutoring Socrates, uses the term to show how oral tradition can be perceived by different people in different ways...
, which intends a movement between opposite poles as well as beyond.
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