Metamodernismul în teorie și în practică: pentru o conceptualizare a modernității singulare în câmpul literar românesc

Abstract

Metamodernism is a Eurocentric theoretical fiction, with no adherence to the social and cultural realities of post-communist Romania. This article provides a critique of the theory of metamodernism proposed by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker and used by Alex Ciorogar to describe the post-2010 Romanian poetry system. Even if the concept is inoperative for Romanian literature, it is a symptom of the overcoming of the postmodernist framework, felt by writers as anti-essentialist, light-hearted, and unconcerned with the problems of today’s society (climate crisis, immigrants, marginalized communities, economic inequalities between classes, etc.). What I notice in the footsteps of Jeffrey Nealon & Galin Tihanov is that the focus shifts from an autonomist “regime of relevance” to one that is socially, politically, and identity-building oriented. My analysis will propose a number of criticisms of the internal contradictions generated by the two Dutchmen’s theory: firstly, that the “Yo-yo effect” of metamodernism – a metaphor I coined to better understand the basic concept – does not fully explain the cultural landscape of the Romanian literary system. In addition, it is built on a sum of generalizations of modernism and postmodernism, which have not been unanimously accepted by the theorists. A second criticism of Vermeulen and van den Akker’s study is its Western-centric stance, which ignores the (semi-)peripheral specificity of cultures. If we absurdly accept the existence of metamodernism, it is only a combination of ideologies and styles of historical currents subsumable to modernity. Therefore, I will propose, following in the footsteps of Fredric Jameson and the Warwick Research Collective, the concept of singular modernity, and I argue why there cannot yet be a postmodernity in Eastern Europe. Discussing post-communist Romanian literature in terms of unfinished, combined, and unevenly developed modernity is much more productive because it takes into account both the material-social conditions of Romania and the cultural-artistic acquisitions thanks to the transfer of symbolic capital between central and (semi)peripheral systems.