РЕАЛЬНІСТЬ ЯК ВИГАДКА? ПОНЯТТЯ “МЕТАМОДЕРНІЗМ” І “МЕТАМОДЕРН” В СУЧАСНОМУ КУЛЬТУРОЛОГІЧНОМУ І ЛІТЕРАТУРОЗНАВЧОМУ ДИСКУРСІ

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, postmodernism has depleted its cultural and aesthetic potential, and as most critics agree, it has become a phenomenon of the past. Among the conceptions aimed at comprehending the impact of the new media and digital technologies, together with the trend towards globalization, digimodernism, automoderrnism, altermodernism, performatism, and metamodernism can be listed as the most conspicuous ones. Proceeding from the fact that metamodernism is a theoretically developed and strongly institutionalized conceptualization of both current cultural change and 21st-century fi ction, this paper focuses on its cultural and literary strategies. Primarily, the study aims to analyze the fundamentals of metamodernism elaborated in the works by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker and in metamodernist web manifestoes. To achieve this goal, such notions as a “structure of feeling” and “new sincerity” that refl ect an emerging cultural sensibility, along with the principle of the metamodernist oscillation between modernist and postmodernist modes, are highlighted. The claim that the Metamodern era replaces Postmodernity is also under investigation. In addition, the paper explores the main features of metamodernism in the works by David Foster Wallace, one of the most famous and infl uential US writers of his generation, a talented novelist and essayist. Application of nonlinear, rhizomatic structures at the narrative level, modeling of the reality according to the principle “what if this is true?”, and a combination of the principles of “new sincerity” and post-irony in Wallace’s novel “Infi nite Jest” are considered. The paper concludes that metamodernism as a literary trend of the recent decades suggests new fi ctional patterns of aesthetic innovations, primarily in returning multiple facets of reality into a literary text. Key words: metamodernism, Metamodern, postmodernism, Postmodern, “new sincerity”, “structure of feeling”, Vermeulen and van den Akker, “Notes on Metamodernism”, David Wallace, “Infi nite Jest”.