Recently my cousin Rodney mentioned that he was reading a book called The Listening Society, so I decided to do a little research about the movement the book is associated with: metamodernism. So what is it?
One way to understand metamodernism is that it is what comes after postmodernism (i.e,.post-postmodernism). But what is postmodernism? Well, that’s the thing that comes after modernism. So to understand metamodernism, we really need to understand modernism itself.
The Parade of Isms
Modernism is characterized by faith in the grand narrative of progress in science, technology, democracy, and capitalism (or, alternatively, communism).
Postmodernism is a reaction to, and a critique of, modernism. Postmodernism points out that progress in technology has the potential to destroy the environment; democracy is rigged against women and people of color; capitalism causes alienation; even our pronouns exclude people who don’t fit into traditionally defined gender categories.
Metamodernism is an attempt to rebuild some kind of meaning from the ashes of postmodernism. It is characterized by wariness of the grand narratives of the past, but is hopeful and sincere in trying to improve the world.
Here is a great youtube video that shows how elements of modernism, postmodernism, and metamodernism play out in television:
Why irony? Well, irony is a kind of negative, postmodern way of communicating. To be ironic is to say what you don’t mean, and to mean what you don’t say. Irony isn’t sincere, and doesn’t take anything seriously. So to transcend irony is to move beyond postmodernism into metamodernism.
“Tribal” Metamodernism
I should probably point out that my personal ideology can be characterized as metamodern. My history kind reflects the “parade of isms” I described above. Mormonism is a very modern religion. It is based on a grand narrative called the Plan of Salvation that promises that men can be like gods. It is, perhaps, the grandest of grand narratives.
Then I went out into the world, and like Bolt I learned that everything is a lie.
Essentially, I decided that my grand narrative was preventing me from seeing clearly, so it had to be abandoned in order for me to find my identity. Doing so inevitably left a huge void in my life.
This is the problem with the postmodern critique. It leaves a void, and as they say, nature abhors a vacuum. In other words, we need a narrative. But if we don’t want to repeat the problems of the past, the narrative needs to come in a different package.
For the me package is Tribalism, which is based on the idea that our brains are really only designed to engage with communities of limited size. Thus, each of us should try to build a primitive-style complex community as a buffer between us and the modern world. If our ambitions play out within the context of a sub-Dunbar community, it reduces the scope of our narrative from the grand to the personal.
I am not the first one to propose small groups as the solution to societies ills. There is a long list, from Ted Kaczynski to David Brooks. So I guess you could say that I am part of the metamodern faction that wants to rebuild the world (metaphorically speaking, in the sense that postmodernism destroyed it) one community at a time.
Metamodernism is inevitable. We can’t go around being ironic and hating on grand narratives forever. So we should just replace the grand narrative with a more limited, personal one and move on, right? Wrong.
Even though I consider myself a metamodern thinker, I know that my brand of metamodernism is hopeless on its own. Humans can’t help but have opinions on politics. There is a special place in our hearts for a grand narrative that can’t really be filled by a focus on sub-Dunbar groups.
On some level we all understand that we need to be associated with the biggest, baddest political force around or things will not go well for us. Consider what happened to the Native Americans after the arrival of European settlers. Even if smallpox hadn’t devastated native populations before the Europeans arrived in force, the natives never really had a chance. Their way of life was doomed as soon as they came in contact with a society that had vastly greater economic power than their own.
So in a way, it doesn’t matter if every individual inhabitant of pre-Columbian America was happier and more fulfilled in their tribal relationships than their more modern and alienated European counterparts. Greater economic coordination wins, and you can’t have greater economic coordination without a grand narrative.
So, to the extent that my version of metamodernism means giving up on grand narratives and focusing on your own tribe, it can never really exist on its own. I needs to be coupled with some kind of grand narrative that enables larger scale coordination and consensus.
“Woke” Metamodernism
I should also point out that my characterization of metamodernism as a replacement of the grand narrative is not the only one. When I first started reading about metamodernism I came across this Medium article:
It’s pretty abstract and hard to understand, so I don’t really recommend it unless you really want to dive deep. However, I will point out one quote that stuck out:
Bernie Sanders is a metamodern politician, or at least represents a metamodern political consciousness and movement
To me, Bernie Sanders seems more like an old school socialist. How is that metamodern? Here’s an explanation from another article by the same author that specifically talks about Bernie:
Metamodernism, a nascent thought movement, is about actually fixing problems, about transcending bullshit, about moving beyond the relativism and impotence of postmodernism.
Hmmm…doesn’t really say much other than they don’t like postmodern impotence. So here’s an even better explanation from another metamodern website:
Whereas postmodernism was characterised by deconstruction, irony, pastiche, relativism, nihilism, and the rejection of grand narratives (to caricature it somewhat), the discourse surrounding metamodernism engages with the resurgence of sincerity, hope, romanticism, affect, and the potential for grand narratives and universal truths, whilst not forfeiting all that we’ve learnt from postmodernism.
This definition captures some of the essential parts of the metamodern movement: sincerity, hope, etc. However, it is also essentially empty. It has the “potential for grand narrative,” but doesn’t endorse anything in particular.
Defining yourself as “not nihilist” is kind of like defining your religious beliefs as not atheist without saying what you think about God. Modernism had faith in specific things: science, technology, democracy, capitalism (or communism).
What does metamodernism have faith in? I guess the answer is a Bernie Sanders style social democracy (i.e., Finland). In other words, what I call the ‘woke narrative’ is allowed to be a grand narrative, it just has to take into account postmodernism criticisms of democracy, etc. It’s leftist millenials shouting that they have grown up and are ready to govern.
Based on the above, one could argue that metamodernism is for those on the left, only. In order to be metamodern you first have to be postmodern. And I am not sure there was ever really such a thing as postmodern conservative. This article argues that there is, namely:
What fundamentally characterizes postmodern conservatives is locating epistemic and moral authority in a given traditional identity.
These conservatives (starting with English thinkers opposed to the abstract rationalism of the French revolution) might reject “rationalism” but I wouldn’t really call them postmodern. If you have to be post-modern before you can be metamodern, you also need to be modern before you can be postmodern.
Modernism was initially a leftist phenomenon, and was opposed by conservatives. Postmodernism was the leftist reaction to old leftists. Metamodernism is the new left reacting to what used to be the new left.
Conservatism was always a stick in the mud. I wouldn’t be the first to point out that conservatives just follows leftists, but after a delay. It took a long time to work out the kinks in democracy and capitalism, but now they are sufficiently time-tested to be taken up by conservatives. Of course, by then the leftists had moved on to criticizing their old selves (i.e., postmodernism).
In other words, conservatives aren’t interested in criticizing old established things, they are interested in criticizing new hypothetical things. So they aren’t “post” anything. And since they aren’t “post” anything, they are certainly never “post-post” anything. Conservatives are hopeful and sincere, but since they were never nihilistic and ironic in the first place, they aren’t metamodern now.
So does that mean Tribal metamodernism isn’t really metamodern? Not necessarily. It could also mean that I’m not really conservative. Sure, I generally prefer small government, but I think we can all agree at this point that small government isn’t the main political priority of conservatives.
In any case, my version of Tribalism qualifies as metamodernism because 1) it is born out of consideration of postmodern critique and disillusionment, and 2) it is a positive theory based in the sincere belief that we can make the world better by doing something different than what we’re doing now.
