Suspension of disbelief history confronted with the challenges of metamodernism

Abstract

Since the awareness of the overall global crisis expanded due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in the Ukraine at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, it seems that it is the right moment for the establishment of a new episteme - Metamodernism. Therefore, it might be rightly expected that, despite the proverbial disciplinary conservativism and inertia, history will not able to escape inclusion in its pervasive epistemic matrix. After a general overview of the genealogy, ontology, epistemology, methodology and axiology of the new "post-apocalyptic" philosophy of Metamodernism, creative impulses for the metamodernistic transformation of the historical science will be scrutinized. At the same time, a presumption will be questioned whether the embodiment concept might be the most efficient incentive for the redefinition of the epistemological status of the historical actor as well as for the transdisciplinary opening of history towards natural and biomedical sciences. In addition to this, the main epistemological propositions of the history of the body, history of emotions and sensory history - as historical subdisciplines most prompt to embrace the concept of embodiment - will be presented. As a conclusion, it will be argued that only due to the historical transcendence of the embodied historical actor, Metamodernism might achieve its proclaimed historical mission: "a rebirth of the human mind and spirit and a reintegration of the earlier forms of culture and civilisation".