Hi Corrine, thank you for your post about art and metamodernism.

I may have heard you make the point that the individual oscillations
between modernism and post-modernism are not always predictable or
consistent.  "the pendulum swinging between 2, 3, 5, 10, innumerable poles"

From a psychological perspective, it would make sense that art would become
more mercurial during a global negotiation for social narrative.
Psychologically speaking, the absence of a grand narrative is disorienting
and demotivating.  It seems like the metamodern artists reflect the paradox
of needing to move but with nowhere in particular to be or go.

-Chance

On Sun, May 20, 2018 at 9:32 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> This is fascinating, Corinne. You artists are always a head of the curve
> in shaping culture 😊.
>
> Here is the bottom line from my ToK/UTUA vantage point.
>
> Modernist natural science was not up to the task of
> incorporating/accounting for human intersubjectivity and Cultural
> evolution. Thus, it was reductive and simplistic when it came to human
> behavior. And ultimately postmodern emerged. This emergence was supported
> by the fact that the Enlightenment (in part) gave us two horrible world
> wars. In the aftermath of them (actually beginning in the aftermath of the
> first), Western society "wakes up" and realizes that White Heteronormative
> Christian Men don't have all the answers and shouldn't have all the power.
> So, there is a great intellectual deconstruction and a tremendous civil
> rights push.
>
> Ultimately, however, there is a baby/bathwater problem. How do we separate
> the valuable knowledge from the bias and how do we correct our societal
> course in a just way? Complicated questions. But, postmodernism is (was?)
> intellectually unstable (vacuous?) because it is anti-foundationalist. That
> is what it gets wrong (it throws the truthful baby out with the WCM biased
> bathwater).
>
> The ToK System assimilates and integrates the key insights from a
> critical/deconstructionist theory. Cultures reflect systems of
> justification that are shaped by influence and interests of power brokers.
> This is the essence of Foucault and Derrida, critical theorists, feminists
> and so forth. And the insight that the human mind is, in part, constituted
> by culture. The question becomes how do you weave these insights together.
>
> The answer, ultimately, is via the correct view of human psychology. But,
> of course, no one had that. So, everyone throws up their hands and we watch
> the great deconstruction. That has run its course and now people are
> wondering, what actually is real?
>
> Best,
> G
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tree of knowledge system discussion [mailto:TOK-SOCIETY-L@
> listserv.jmu.edu] On Behalf Of Diop, Corinne Joan Martin - diopcj
> Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2018 8:47 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: metamodernism
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> We are grappling with this in art too!
>
> It is a few years old now (2010), but we still discuss the attached "Notes
> on Metamodernism" by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in
> Contemporary Art Theory class... It is a lot about art but even more so is
> about the metamodern world view.
>
> This is one of my favorite quotes from it-- it is good for when artists
> feel like giving up:
>
> I’m noticing a new approach to artmaking in recent museum and gallery
> shows. . . . It’s an attitude that says, I know that the art I’m creating
> may seem silly, even stupid, or that it might have been done before, but
> that doesn’t mean this isn’t serious. At once knowingly self- conscious
> about art, unafraid, and unashamed, these young artists not only see the
> distinction between earnestness and detachment as artificial; they grasp
> that they can be ironic and sincere at the same time, and they are making
> art from this compound-complex state of mind. (Jerry Saltz, ‘‘Sincerity and
> Irony Hug it Out’’, New Yorker Magazine, 27 May 2010)
>
> And...
>
> As Curtis Peters explains, according to Kant, ‘‘we may view human history
> as if mankind had a life narrative which describes its self-movement toward
> its full rational/social potential . . . to view history as if it were the
> story of mankind’s development’’.18 Indeed, Kant himself adopts the as-if
> terminology when he writes ‘‘[e]ach . . . people, as if following some
> guiding thread, go toward a natural but to each of them unknown goal’’.19
> That is to say, humankind, a people, are not really going toward a natural
> but unknown goal, but they pretend they do so that they progress morally as
> well as politically. Metamodernism moves for the sake of moving, attempts
> in spite of its inevitable failure; it seeks forever for a truth that it
> never expects to find. If you will forgive us for the banality of the
> metaphor for a moment, the metamodern thus willfully adopts a kind of
> donkey-and-carrot double-bind. Like a donkey it chases a carrot that it
> never manages to eat because the carrot is always just beyond its reach.
> But precisely because it never manages to eat the carrot, it never ends its
> chase, setting foot in moral realms the modern donkey (having eaten its
> carrot elsewhere) will never encounter, entering political domains the
> postmodern donkey (having abandoned the chase) will never come across.
>
> And...
>
> Ontologically, metamodernism oscillates between the modern and the
> postmodern. It oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern
> irony, between hope and melancholy, between na ̈ıvete ́ and knowingness,
> empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity
> and ambiguity. Indeed, by oscillating to and fro or back and forth, the
> metamodern negotiates between the modern and the postmodern. One should be
> careful not to think of this oscillation as a balance however; rather, it
> is a pendulum swinging between 2, 3, 5, 10, innumerable poles. Each time
> the metamodern enthusiasm swings toward fanaticism, gravity pulls it back
> toward irony; the moment its irony sways toward apathy, gravity pulls it
> back toward enthusiasm.
>
> Even older but still relevant (to art anyway) article is "Performatism, or
> the End of Postmodernism" by Raoul Eshelman in UCLA's Anthropoetics:
> Journal of Generative Anthropology https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__anthropoetics.ucla.edu_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=4ppKmyDpXBP_GZFSd-ynaSmWxWF2utDiWV35ZOVx1fk&s=PqROac6lXQedqLJIvySJdplgL6Jcp2t9shHvy_Ekym8&e=
> ap0602/perform/
>
> Again here are a few favorite tidbits:
>
> This closed, simple whole acquires a potency that can almost only be
> defined in theological terms. For with it is created a refuge in which all
> those things are brought together that postmodernism and poststructuralism
> thought definitively dissolved: the telos, the author, belief, love, dogma
> and much, much more.
>
> And in part 6: Performatism also has a political dimension. In his
> carefully honed essay For Common Things, Jedediah Purdy (2000, orig. 1999)
> argues against the postmodern attitude of ironic indifference and for the
> acceptance of individual political responsibility in a postideological age.
> But how is the individual to work towards a political goal in the absence
> of any clear ideological guidelines? Purdy exemplifies this dilemma using
> two seemingly disparate examples: that of the ruinous strip mining in his
> home state of West Virginia and that of the turn to democracy in Poland,
> the Czech Republic and Hungary. Destructive strip mining in West Virginia
> cannot, to paraphrase Purdy in my terms, be averted solely by imposing a
> strict governmental frame (a “carbon tax”) or by performing acts of
> individual resistance. Rather, both need to coincide in a typically
> circular fashion whose alpha and omega is a non-ironic, “attentive”
> subject...
>
>
> I will be interested to see if any of this resonates outside of art!!
>
> Corinne
>
>
>
>
>
> Corinne Diop
> Professor of Art
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.facebook.com_corinne.diop.studio_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=4ppKmyDpXBP_GZFSd-ynaSmWxWF2utDiWV35ZOVx1fk&s=udblGVWcMydOW4b2T9YYRjZn5yd6w054heeZfVAJ77Q&e=
>
> Photography Area Head
> http://www.jmu.edu/artandarthistory/programs/Photography.shtml
>
> School of Art, Design, and Art History
> MSC 7101/ 820 S. Main St
> James Madison University
> Harrisonburg, VA  22807
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>
>        *************
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> ________________________________________
> From: tree of knowledge system discussion [[log in to unmask]]
> on behalf of Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx
> Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2018 8:15 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: metamodernism
>
> Hi All,
>   Just checked out metamodernism on Wiki and the posted “Metamodern
> Manifesto<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.metamodernism.org_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=4ppKmyDpXBP_GZFSd-ynaSmWxWF2utDiWV35ZOVx1fk&s=Ib3mWjope1MExXAMahkVKzCBafg00z4-ZBLxx3IXxJc&e=>”. I consists of the incredibly
> new idea that we should think about ideas in terms of dialectics (poles)
> and fluctuating tensions between them. As if there were some sort of
> synthesis that could be achieved via a thesis in tension with an
> anti-thesis. If that is the depth of that movement, I am not surprised I
> have not heard of it.
>
>   I will say it here as I have implied in my writings. Postmodernism is
> the recognition that human knowledge systems, even scientific ones, are
> built in socio-historical contexts and ultimately function to serve
> interests relative to power and influence. Natural science modernism did
> not have a fully effective way of factoring out intersubjective/social
> construction forces for one simple reason. No one had the Justification
> Hypothesis formulation of language, self-consciousness, and Culture.
>
>   If you really want to move toward a post post-modern Grand
> Meta-Narrative, there is currently only one serious solution as far as I
> can see.
>
> Best,
> G
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