Metamodernism
The metamodern structure of feeling evokes an oscillation between a modern desire for sens and a postmodern doubt about the sense of it all, between a modern sincerity and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy and plurality and purity and corruption and naïveté and knowingness.
Under postmodernism, cyberspace served as the most prominent cultural example of the sublime. Today, however, the concept of opacity has emerged which negates the corrosive effect of web links, providing a way “out” of the otherwise never-ending link labyrinth. Moreover, this opacity provides us with a notion that negotiates between beauty and sublimity – the awesome.
Beauty and sublimity have long been discussed as a dichotomy of experiences and concepts. The beautiful strives for some sort of formal harmony, a pleasing coherence, albeit often with an aura of the ineffable. Beauty can be “framed,” literally or otherwise. Sublimity marks the impossibility of framing: sublimity is a signpost pointing to an abyss, a thunderstorm rolling over the Alps, the high-pitched whine of a shell shocked mind; sublimity blows out the speakers, overwhelms the levels, and fries the circuits.
"The Awesome, or the metamodern sublime"
