Trouble in PostPostPost(?)Modern Paradise

A critique of metamodernism; Hegelian Living Spirit via Marx.

The development of new technologies and ways of working and living have freed us from the confines of the town, the city, and state in order to give us the feeling of community that we desire. Sociologist Brent Cooper, in “The Hypermodern Highway to Hell,” patiently tries to chart the course of our times using the two distinct categories of “hypermodernism” and “metamodernism” to describe two movements of the present moment. Hypermodernism supposedly doubles down on postmodernism, making us more and more alienated via dystopian tech visions, whilst metamodernism promises the reinvigorating of a sort of authenticity via artistic commentary on trends in this hypermodern space which supposedly promotes dystopianism.

The metamodernist turn of mapping out our emotional responses, in a search of a new authenticity, always seems to be on the verge of frenzy in response to the latest juxtaposition of contemporary elements is not solely the province of metamodernism itself. Critique of the techno-sphere and the Elon Musks who inhabit it, make this Amazon warehouse algorithm quite the easy target of critique.

Maybe calling Amazon a dystopian algorithm is the wrong direction of critique.

To be a Hegelian, where is the rational reaching towards freedom within the technodystopia of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos? It is precisely in the unteathering of us from the confines of our local shops and on Twitter, our local ideologies, that allow us to grasp our world via a term like hypermodernism or metamodernism in the first place.

The capitalist mode of production is the most freeing mode in human history while simultaneously creating ever-expanding ways of exploitation. The re-capturing of the function of human rationality was half-summed up by Katy Perry in instagram quite nicely when making fun/trying to sell tickets to illuminati conspiricists: it’s the algorithm that has us chained, not the illuminati.

The algorithm is both a mode of freedom and a chain. It forces a doubling down of yourself onto yourself, making you a sort of prisoner of your past consumer choices and preferences, while delivering you more of what you want.

Cooper, in The Hypermodern Highway to Hell cites “there is a ‘hypermodernist concern to secure hierarchy and determinacy,’” while describing Hegelian syntheses as an evolution “from pre-modernity, to modernity, to postmodernity (and beyond).” We can learn from Marx here to question this Idealist notion of history for something else: developments in capitalism.

Who are these hypermodernists? This is still just developments in technology in capitalism. We don’t need metamodernism or hypermodernism as concepts to describe the dual antagonism of capitalism’s developments as both giving freedom and creating new forms of exploitation, and in fact they take away from the fact that the alienation provided by capitalism is not always something to run away from, but in fact the guiding light of new freedoms which previous generations have not known. This is what living history entails.

The actual communities and class conflicts and struggles, as well as power relations born of the algorithm are not something to fully reject, but something to understand at the level of personal, interpersonal, and macro-historical antagonisms. We can not assign a name and then preach a sort of feeling-based 1960s rehash of authenticity in order to grasp the present moment. We must not be hysterics regarding new technology and see them as a Christian Devil.

A philosophical view which dislocates us is similar to the dislocation which is done by the technology itself. The reason for it is to bring us to a greater understanding of human freedom, or Absolute Self-Interest. Self-Interest which entails our personal dreams and us coming into confrontation and intercourse with the creations of others runs around and through us.

We must move past the 1960s-rejection of capitalism’s productive forces in favor of an 1860s style critique of capital. Charting the interests involved and speaking about class is how to do this. The other half of the Katy Perry’s critique left out, we are chained to the algorithm, but we are also chained to class. National class interests provide the basis for international socialism and the continuation of global capitalism locally. To find the human, we can find the forces which are affecting the human even before we talk about metamodernism’s subject, the human’s reflection on these forces.