4 Comments
Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023Liked by Peter Clarke

Have you read All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity by Marshall Berman? I think you'd like it.

Metamodernism does seem closer to where we should be rather than post-modernism which is just an empty void of nonsense. I'm going to have to explore this a bit more.

I actually have been thinking about modernism quite a bit recently, ever since I started reading Berman. I think you'd like my piece "Maybe Modernity Has Only Just Begun" or my other archival investigation into the locomotive as a metaphor of modernity in the early 20th century.

https://novum.substack.com/p/real-modernity-has-only-just-started

Either way, subscribed... keep up the writing fren

Expand full comment

"Yet a movement needs something radical…right? Something that can be held up to the world so proponents can say: Look! This is our movement! This is the peak of modern humanity at this moment in time!"

I wonder how much of this kind of generational epitomizing depends on a post-mortem analysis of the culture. When the pendulum swings the other way, we might have a better idea of what came before and its uniqueness in relation to the next thing?

Expand full comment