All he knows would fit on the back of Mein Kampf but only if he wrote in large crayon.
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He’s best advised to return to Berchtesgaden.
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But is Hanzi as inscrutable as My Big Toe?
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It’s not the centrism that kills an ideology, it’s the sense that there’s nothing particularly exciting about it.
“sincere irony”, “informed naivety”, “pragmatic romanticism”, “magical realism.”
Back in my college days we made up a bunch of these absurd contradictions to make fun of our philosophy teacher. Others included “truthful falsehoods,” “unambiguous vagueness,” and “enlightened ignorance.” Here we are years later and they’re cutting edge philosophy. I find the whole concept deeply, deeply shallow.
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“alternative facts”
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100% his fetish.
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Lot’s of great commentary here. I’d like to thank BB for not adding Freinacht’s books to their marketplace and thus preventing readers from questioning, challenging and perhaps not simply mistaking an editorial for an endorsement (despite the usual disclaimers). I haven’t read Freinacht so I can’t speak to his work specifically, and don’t want to tar all the “metamodernists” with the same brush, but some of the thinkers/writers associated with him, at least as the explainer video indicates, are deeply suspect imo (whatever that is worth). For example, Ken Wilber, the godfather of contemporary integral theory for all of his brilliant concepts (four quadrants! transcend and include! pre/trans fallacy! ugh) fell hard for at least two abusive cults and thanks to his publishing/teaching empire brought many people down with him.
Coming soon to a theater near you… the postmetamodernists!
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In its defense, magic(al) realism is a perfectly cromulent genre which considerably predates this meta-jibberjabber.
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well put!
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magical realism was a popular literary genre.
Magic that is set in a world that is recognizably our own-- though since many of the authors were Indian (e.g Rushdie), or Hispanic (e.g Garcia Marquez), perhaps the exoticism diminished the realism.
Okay, didn’t we just finish a century of “reinventing society” that resulted in the deaths of 100s of MILLIONS of people. I’m gonna suggest we could learn from those mistakes. Take a deep breath and stop listening to your ego. It is the monster in your house.
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Stephen Colbert’s lifestyle-brand parody, Covetton House uses slogans such as “Baroque Simplicity” and “Shabby Elegance”. I guess Colbert is a secret metamodernist.
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You’re not getting it. It’s deep because it can be expressed in emojis.
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Well, in this case, it’s apparently supposed to be about the Scandinavian societies and why and how they work pretty well, rather than Superior Blonde Nordic Races or similar bullshit. So maybe a small yay?
That said, as a Nordic person myself, this whole thing sounds extremely fishy, complete with Hanzi Freinacht being a character and not an actual, real person, plus the breathless fanboyism of the original article is both alarming and off-putting.
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In Wikipedia Emil Ejner Friis (either the left or right Hanzi) is presumably self-described as a theory artist. This comes of as a massive hoax perpetrated by a small bunch of bored white pseudo-academics responding to post- modernism, et al. Piltdown philosophy?
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As the co-editor of a site that is linked in the main article ( What Is Metamodern?), I just want to mention that those “Hanzi” authors grabbed up and repurposed the term “metamodernism” after it had already been in use to describe something much different. Basically what we and a lot of other folks are doing is looking at the shift in contemporary arts and popular culture that blend postmodern-style irony with a more earnest, hopeful element. So, for example, TV shows like BoJack Horseman, Community, Atlanta, Ramy, Black AF, Shameless, Fleabag, etc… That’s the kind of thing we (and many others in arts/culture journalism and academia) have been doing with “metamodernism” since at least 2010 — really different from what’s featured in the article. I definitely relate to the general concerns and reactions to “Hanzi-ism” expressed in the other comments here.
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Your definition sounds a whole lot less scary and, you know, Nazi.
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