How Metamodernism Can Save Us All

Contemporary culture has met the wizard, and if postmodernism was the tin woodsman before, metamodernism is the woodsman after. From a literary perspective, much survives the change. We carry over metafiction, the blending of genres, intertextuality, and unreliable narrators, but we also revive modernism’s heart, its sense of hope. It gives us what Vermeulen and van den Akker call an “informed naivety,” allowing us to understand complexities and yet still believe in transformative power, authenticity, and the relevance of the spiritual search in an increasingly secular society. Modernism was cursed and turned to tin. Having transformed into postmodernism, it lost the ability to sincerely engage with the bigger questions of the human condition. Metamodernism stands before the wizard and learns that its missing heart was there all along.