MetaJess

Like all 'things' they are inherently empty... but when wielded skillfully can be pragmatically valuable.

Yes and we still have to continue to empty the emptiness which brings me to what’s unfinished about MM. Better we consider MM as ‘a time in between’ than as a category which can be ‘taxonomified’. We can only understand MM after the fact so this isn’t it and we’re not there yet.

Actually I'd venture that one big reason MM has caught the public imaginary the way it has is exactly due to TFT MM names and characterizes a sensibility that people have already felt and observed-- "something" that has shifted culturally. 1/2

Modernism HAD to be named/understood after the fact.Pomo was tagged &began to be understood DURING the fact, as epistemic context became a thing. That set the stage for MM's hyper-self-reflexivity, and we can no longer back out of knowing ourselves as/in our cultural context.2/2

If we also interpret modernist ideals as never totally coming to fruition and as much defined by their unintended consequences as by their achievements which set the stage for pomo but pomo can’t get beyond its performative contradictions than...1/2

Example: reality, which I’m calling actually, is both totally co-constructed and imbued with perennial forms however also bound in time and ahistoric. ‘Preserving the contradictions’ is also necessary for MM so it’s imaginary doesn’t become prematurely fragile e.g. in betweenness

You seem to speak of metamodernism as if it's something being generated and/or guided with intention. We (Linda and I and the cultural theorists who popularized the term) are using "metamodernism" to describe cultural patterns that we observe, that have arisen organically.

Can it not be Both/And ;)