New Book by Greg Dember: Say Hello to Metamodernism!
We have some exciting news! Greg’s new book has been published!
Say Hello to Metamodernism!: Understanding Today’s Culture of Ironesty, Felt Experience and Empathic Reflexivity
This book is available on Amazon, in paperback and E-book format. Here is the link:
https://amzn.to/4eeuHLN
A note from Greg:
I wrote Say Hello to Metamodernism! because I wanted to offer readers a way to name and get their arms around the metamodern sensibility – this thing that has not only been theorized by scholars but is so relevant to our current aesthetic world. I hope you’ll grab a copy of the book and enjoy it!
(If you end up purchasing the book and like it, it would be helpful if you come back to Amazon and review it! A written review would be fantastic, but even giving it a bunch of stars helps it perform well in the algorithm.)
Like most of the articles on the What Is Metamodern? website, the book is written for both intellectually curious lay people and open-minded academics. If you subscribe to this newsletter, you probably have a pretty good idea about what metamodernism is, so I’ll spare you the standard spiel about the topic, and instead just share a few excerpts and endorsements:
Excerpt from Chapter 4, Film:
“In Wes Anderson films, children speak like adults and adults behave like children. Wes Anderson’s films often feature children, but these films are not for or even truly about children. They deploy the aesthetic I call meta-cute. The child-like, in a Wes Anderson film, is in a sense an expression of what it is actually like to be an adult, if adults wore our interior on the outside.”
Excerpt from Chapter 5, Music:
“…there is much more to [Childish Gambino’s album] Because the Internet than playful postmodern category-busting. It's also the story of a young man's honest, painful reckoning with the emptiness he finds in inherited wealth, internet trolling and youthful partying; an oscillatory consideration of the internet's potential to be both/neither soul-draining and world-forming; a Buddhist allegory; and more. In Because the Internet and in other work, Glover/Gambino expresses metamodern ironesty, braiding irony and earnestness. (For what it’s worth, he also name checks, in his songs, two metamodern artists from this chapter – Sufjan Stevens and the Ben Folds Five, plus Freaks and Geeks, a television show you’ll read about in the next chapter.)”
Endorsements:
"… Dember uncovers...that 'new thing' we can feel in movies, music, TV, and philosophy but haven't quite been able to name." – THOMAS FLIGHT (Youtube Influencer/Video Essayist)
"...this book, packed with original insights and thoughts, is a joy from beginning to end. A superb achievement." – TIMOTHEUS VERMEULEN, PhD, Professor of Media, Culture and Society at the University of Oslo, Co-editor of Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect and Depth After Postmodernism
"… By distilling potentially opaque concepts into accessible prose through examples spanning cult films like Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know and blockbuster musical acts like Billie Eilish, Dember offers a fun and fascinating primer for our cultural moment." – MAREN HAYNES MARCHESINI, PhD, Ethno-musicology, Director of Worship & Music at Hope Lutheran Church in Bozeman, Montana
"...a book that is as invested in providing a groundwork for thinking about cultural history, as it is committed to offering an ambitious defense of the intellectual and emotional worth of feeling things strongly." – ARIELLE BERNSTEIN, MFA, Senior Professorial Lecturer in Literature, American University
Stay tuned for more content updates!
Greg and Linda