Painting

Différance?

Clyfford Still PH-234 1948

“The metamodern mind believes in progress and sees the concept of ‘development’ as a way of enriching an otherwise one-dimensional analysis of change.” [5 things that make you metamodern by Hanzi Freinacht]

“The metamodern way of thinking is a reaction to the postmodern relativistic dogma that progress was an illusion and that all you can say is that things change, not that any kind of development takes place. It is not a return to modernistic uncritical praise of technological progress and belief that all development is good, but an attempt at redefining what appropriate progress entails, based on the postmodern critique, but without throwing out the hope that we can develop things for the better.” [5 things that make you metamodern by Hanzi Freinacht]

“If you’re allergic to the concepts of development and progress, and you honestly believe everything keeps getting worse, then you’re probably postmodern. If you get irritated every time someone points out the drawbacks and potential harms of new technological developments, then you’re probably a good ole’ modernist. However, if you understand that all development has pros and cons, but that progress is inevitable and in the long run ultimately is a good thing, that cultural progress goes along technological change, and that it is your own personal responsibility to see to it that we as humanity get the most out of it, then you’re well on your way to become metamodern.” [5 things that make you metamodern by Hanzi Freinacht]

“Ours is also an age in which increasingly speculative modes of thought are thriving, with philosophies such as Speculative Realism and Object Oriented Ontology, as well as movements like Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and the rise of extremist political factions (for better or worse, as in the case of the so-called ‘alt-Right’), empowered by network culture.” [Metamodernism: A Brief Introduction Luke Turner]

John Hoyland 17. 3. 69 1969

“However, metamodernism itself is not intended as a philosophy or an art movement, since it does not define or delineate a closed system of thought, or dictate any particular set of aesthetic values or methodologies. It is not a manifesto—although, as an artist myself, I couldn’t resist the temptation to imagine it as if it were, with my 2011 Metamodernist Manifesto an exercise in simultaneously defining and embodying the metamodern spirit; at once coherent and preposterous, earnest and somewhat self-defeating, yet ultimately hopeful and optimistic.” [Metamodernism: A Brief Introduction Luke Turner]

Peter Halley, Two Cells with Conduit, 1987

“Metamodernism does not, then, propose any kind of utopian vision, although it does describe the climate in which a yearning for utopias, despite their futile nature, has come to the fore. The metamodernism discourse is thus descriptive rather than prescriptive; an inclusive means of articulating the ongoing developments associated with a structure of feeling for which the vocabulary of postmodern critique is no longer sufficient, but whose future paths have yet to be constructed.”[Metamodernism: A Brief Introduction Luke Turner]

7 Comments

  • Martin Mugar

    how is metamodernism any different than neo liberalism.Sure you can have issues with it but in the end it is the underlying social structure post cold war.(Fukiyama) Not that it can’t self-destruct and we will revert to some neo-marxist system.But Halley and Lasker do look less postmodern than they claim to be and are an extension of modernism as I have stated about them elsewhere.https://martinmugar.blogspot.com/2019/06/wilma-fred-locked-out-yipes.html .BTW differance is a word invented by Derrida a postmodernist. I don’t recall the exact meaning but I think it has something to do with the defereall of meaning. In French difference means both different and to defer.Sort of how meaning keeps escaping us as we try to pin it down. His is a critique of Husserl who talk about here https://martinmugar.blogspot.com/2017/12/ideas-matter-1929-davos-debate-and.html as a modernist

  • Mark Stone

    More on the way, Martin! It’s a new world, and how you see that “newness” depends a great deal on whether or not you were raised by people living through an iPhone world.

  • anon

    The idea of metamodernism is interesting with a few caveats

    God is dead

    Art is dead

    As our species ignores the lessons of science and concurrent implications for common cause it stands to reason that politics too are dead

    The danger here becomes an assertion of hierarchy based purely on economics

    This is indeed what neoliberalism has sought to do

    And now that it’s in peril it’ll be interesting to see what emerges in the space left by elites to an impoverished mass

    Splitting hairs over difference won’t solve any problems as the clock continues to tick

    (‘difference’ differing from ‘differance’ btw)

  • Mark Stone

    Lisa, I don’t need this. I swear to God, I do not need this right now, okay? I’ve got a judge that’s just aching to throw me in jail. An idiot who wants to fight me for two hundred dollars. Slaughtered pigs. Giant loud whistles. I ain’t slept in five days. I got no money, a dress code problem, AND a little murder case which, in the balance, holds the lives of two innocent kids. Not to mention your [taps his foot] BIOLOGICAL CLOCK – my career, your life, our marriage, and let me see, what else can we pile on? Is there any more SHIT we can pile on to the top of the outcome of this case? Is it possible?

  • Mark Stone

    You like potato and I like potahto
    You like tomato and I like tomahto
    Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto
    Let’s call the whole thing off…

    the moment philosophy becomes politics…

  • anon

    ahahahahaha

    ‘consensus’

    with old orders everywhere in disarray it seems at this critical moment new ones will be slow in coming

    cutting to the quick

    thinking as if objects are subsumed by concepts gives categorically gives precedence to each and allows one to act as such or as if

    where there’s no understanding there can be no action

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