Metamodernism as a discourse of a new anthropological myth

Abstract

The present paper concerns the discourse of metamodernism problem as a type of the anthropological myth. The anthropological myth is considered as a project for describing reality, which models a systematic consistent idea of a human being, reality, status of reality and develops ethic, aesthetic, axiological views of a subject. The article aims to determine the peculiarities of metamodernism as a fictional discourse of the anthropological myth on the basis of XXI century European novel analysis. The analysis is carried out with the use of the comparative method, contextual description methods, axiomatic method, discourse analysis method etc. The topicality of the undertaken research is determined by the appearance of a new fictional discourse in art at the beginning of the XXI century as well as a new aesthetic paradigm, not described yet. The texts of Western European novels written in the first two decades of the XXI century reveal authors’ consistent refusal of the principles traditionally viewed as post-modernist – novels featuring a simulated nature of reality, novels problematizing the relationships between the signifying and the signified, decentralizing the subject etc. The attempts to describe a particular cultural situation as an alternative to postmodernism have been taken since the 80’s of the XX century; metamodernism acts as one of such projects for describing the modern cultural situation. The paper analyzes the interpretation models referring to XXI century art on the basis Western European novels of XXI century. The author of the paper concludes that metamodernism as a fictional discourse of the new anthropological myth reflects a different idea of the reality. Metamodernism as a cultural project aims to “return” ontology, assume the availability of reality outside the cognizing subject’s consciousness, and surpass the iconic nature of reality. From the epistemological point of view, metamodernism offers cognition of the world and “Ego” via experience of “Another Ego”.