What Is Metamodernism?

What is "metamodernism"? What does "going meta" mean when it comes to cultural analysis? Metamodernism names the cultural logic emerging after postmodernism: a stance that “goes meta” by recursively reflecting on—and then reconstructing beyond—postmodern critique. Rather than rejecting postmodern insights, it includes and transcends them, treating perspectives as nested layers that can be decentered, related, and “toggled” among, yielding greater complexity and a renewed (but non-absolutist) sense of direction and meaning. Across art, theory, politics, science, and even religion, this shows up as sincere-and-ironic, critical-and-constructive work that pursues “infinitesimal progress”: ongoing self-transcendence without a final telos. The result is a multi-perspectival “cultural logic of cultural logics” that synthesizes diverse formulations into a broader worldview organized by recursive self-reflection. 📖 The text of this video is taken from Chapter 1 of Brendan Graham Dempsey's 2023 book Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics, an introductory survey to the field of metamodern discourse that considers metamodern art, philosophy, and science with discussions of contributions by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, Hanzi Freinacht, Bobby Azarian, and others. 🎥 This video was narrated and edited by @axiom_descent. Their full "reflection" on this reflection can be found here:    • Reflections: GOING META: FUTURE AS RECURSION