The Metamodernism
By Ludmila Batista de Novaes
In Brazil, Philadelpho Menezes and Jayro Luna used the term Metamodernismo since 1986. Philadelpho Menezes published the book A Crise do Passado: Modernidade, Vanguarda, Metamodernidade (The Crisis of the Past: Modernity, Vanguard, Metamodernidade - 1994) and Luna Jayro some papers published in 1986: "Meta Metamoderno nisso aí", "Bibliotecas Metamodernas", "Da Metalinguagem ao Metamoderno" meeting after the book Participação e Forma (Participation and Form - 2001).
The term metamodernism was introduced in Europe as an intervention in the post-postmodernism debate by the cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in 2010. In their article `Notes on metamodernism` they assert that the 2000s are characterized by the return of typically modern positions without altogether forfeiting the postmodern mindsets of the 1990s and 1980s. But Luna and Jayro Philadelpho Menezes argue that Metamodernismo is a search for understanding contemporary through recycling techniques and strategies of the past, thus creating a historical paradigm and also formalist, since the technique should be recovered in a new context . 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.
Jayro Luna and Philadelpho Menezes Metamodernismo attach to a position arising from the contradiction and conflict between the theoretical concepts of Postmodernism and Neo-Baroque, something identified by several theorists in the context of Latin America, among which we can mention Lezama Lima, and Haroldo de Campos Irlemar Chiampi. Van den Akker and Vermeulen define metamodernism as a continuous oscillation, a constant repositioning between positions 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 on the one hand and an (a)political relativism on the other, between hope and doubt, sincerity and irony, knowingness and naivety, construction and deconstruction. They suggest that the metamodern attitude longs for another future, another metanarrative, whilst acknowledging that future or narrative might not exist, or materialize, or, if it does materialize, is inherently problematic.
As examples in current affairs Vermeulen and van den Akker cite the multiple responses (such as an `informed naivety`, `pragmatic idealism` and `moderate fanaticism`) to climate change, the financial crisis and geopolitical instability. In the arts, they cite the return oftranscendentalism, Romanticism, hope, sincerity, affect, narrativity, and the sublime. Moreover, Jayro Luna and Philadelpho Menezes as examples circumscribe the breaking of traditions, the ongoing construction of models, the recycling of theories and concepts as we see in astrophysics, in the behavioral sciences, the relationship between medicine and alternative medicine, in relation between science and religion. Artists and cultural practices they consider metamodern include the architecture of BIG and Herzog and de Meuron, the cinema of Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Gus van Sant and Wes Anderson, musicians such as Coco Rosie, Antony and the Johnsons, Georges Lentz and Devendra Banhart, the artworks of Peter Doig, Olafur Eliasson, Ragnar Kjartansson, Šejla Kameri&
263;, and Paula Doepfner, and the writings of Haruki Murakami, Roberto Bolano andJonathan Franzen.
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