A Vibe-Based Critique of the Substack Scene

Metamodernist Strategies for Meaning

I first encountered the word metamodernism while reading Thaddeus Thomas’ essay How Metamodernism Can Save Us All. Until then, I had never come across the term, but its promise caught my attention. It struck me as a potential alternative to two dominant forces shaping contemporary literature: the still-looming shadow of the traditional publishing world, and the newer aesthetic developing on Substack, often gathered under the label of neo-romanticism. The latter has been hailed by some as a new avant-garde, while others have claimed it functions more like a delayed revival—an avant-garde that looks backwards rather than forwards, a “retarded” avant-garde in the literal sense of retarded as “delayed” or “retrograde.” If neo-romanticism is mostly a historically retrograde re-enactment, then metamodernism, as a concept, might provide a fresher and more adequate description of contemporary artistic practice.

Yet what exactly is metamodernism? That is the question posed by Robin van den Akker and Timotheus Vermeulen in their now-canonical article on the subject. Thomas takes their definition as a starting point, but when I returned to their essay, I was struck less by clarity than by contradiction. Their account is riddled with inconsistencies: at times they define metamodernism as a pendulum-like oscillation between irony and sincerity, at other times as an “a-topic metaxis,” a condition of being here, there, and nowhere simultaneously. These are not the same thing. Oscillation presupposes a pendulum swing between two poles, while a-topic metaxis evokes simultaneity, collage, and placelessness. This conceptual tension lies at the heart of their essay, and it is this tension I want to explore.

My argument is this: metamodernism should not be understood primarily as oscillation, but as circulation. Oscillation (as in romanticism and neo-romanticism) implies a back-and-forth between stable binaries—serious and ironic, sincere and cynical, etc. But circulation better captures the way contemporary art and literature move across multiple registers, genres, and discourses without anchoring themselves in a single one.

The Contradictions of Metamodernism

Vermeulen and van den Akker’s essay defines metamodernism in two different, and ultimately incompatible ways. On the one hand, they describe it as oscillation, a swinging movement between poles that can never be fully reconciled. This oscillation is most often framed as the back-and-forth between irony and sincerity. The metamodern subject is neither purely ironic nor purely sincere, but constantly shifting between the two. The two poles are necessarily impossible to reconcilce. The authors themselves describe it as “pursuing a horizon that is forever receding.”

On the other hand, they introduce the notion of an a-topic metaxis. “Metaxis” derives from Greek and means “in-betweenness” or “simultaneity.” Something that exists in a metaxic condition is here and there at once. When prefixed by “a-topic,” the concept acquires an even stranger valence: it refers to a placeless simultaneity, a being-everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Metamodernism, in this formulation, is not oscillation but paradoxical simultaneity, an art that exists in a temporal or spatial non-place.

The problem is obvious. Oscillation is not the same as simultaneity. If one is oscillating, one is moving between two points, never inhabiting both at once. But if one is in an a-topic metaxis, one is inhabiting everywhere and nowhere at once. The former suggests a pendulum, the latter a collage or constellation. Vermeulen and van den Akker attempt to hold both definitions together, but in doing so they flatten their own insight.

The contradiction becomes even clearer when they associate metamodernism with neo-romanticism. They claim that contemporary art expresses itself primarily as a revival of Romantic modes, the oscillation between two impossible poles. The distinguishing trait of metamodern romanticism is it’s irony, motivated by “desire” rather than postmodern “apathy”.

But if this is true, then metamodernism is not so new after all: it is simply romanticism with a wink towards its postmodern cousin. Neo-romanticism does not fundamentally break from older binaries. More importantly, it does not look forward to anything new or challenge the modes of being in our current world, except through fantastical retreat to a world that once was. It has a desire to be meaninful and a rejection of apathy, but it functions in the similar modes to past texts and thus fails to be meaningful in an age when our fundamental relationship to text has changed.

If metamodernism is truly to capture something distinctive about our contemporary condition, it must move beyond oscillation and beyond mere revival. The concept of a-topic metaxis actually provides a more fertile starting point than the pendulum metaphor—but only if we take it seriously as an image of simultaneity and circulation rather than oscillation.

Oscillation vs. Circulation

Why does this distinction matter? Because oscillation, as a metaphor, limits metamodernism to a binary logic. It reduces contemporary art to a romantic back-and-forth between irony and sincerity, tragedy and comedy, past and present. This is neither interesting nore helpful to our current cultural moment. Our use of text today is not defined by or structured by binary swings. We are defined by multiplicity, by rhizomatic structures, and by the circulation of discourses across globalized digital networks. The webpage is essentially boundless, there’s never really any discernable starting or ending point. Every page leads into other pages. Digital technology is made such that one page always melds into another through some kind of hyperlink.

Think about the metaphors Vermeulen and van den Akker themselves employ: place and non-place, horizon, receding distance. Ironically these are geographical metaphors, but they are not binary. They evoke the condition of the web, especially the effecting of flattening local cultures, which become absorbed into a planetary circulation of signs and commodities. The “placelessness” of metamodernism is not oscillation, but movement across non-places—airports, shopping malls, online platforms. Or even more accurate, metamodernism’s placelessness is the placelessness of the scroll - existing on a local page connected to an infinate network of other pages whose borders all blend together.

In this light, metamodernism should be understood not as the reconciliation of two poles, but as the circulation among multiple nodes. It is not the pendulum swing but the endless scroll, the shuffle playlist, the algorithmic feed. It is movement without final arrival, connection without closure.

Everything Everywhere All at Once as Metamodern Circulation

Kwan and Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once is, in many ways, the definitive metamodern film. Thomas interprets it as an oscillation between comedy and genuine emotional stakes. But I believe this misreads the film’s structure. What defines EEAAO is not oscillation but circulation.

The film tells the story of Evelyn Wang, a Chinese-American laundromat owner who discovers she must save the multiverse by connecting with countless versions of herself. The multiverse structure produces a series of “micro-narratives”, alternate universes in which Evelyn and her family take on different configurations. In one world she is a kung-fu master, in another a glamorous movie star embroiled in a Wong Kar-wai-style love sotry. In another she has hot dogs for fingers.

Despite this wild multiplicity, the film is held together by a single, repetitive topic: familial love. Every universe circles around Evelyn’s relationships—with her husband Waymond, and with her daughter Joy. These relationships are reconfigured in each micro-narrative, but their presence provides a through-line that makes the film comprehensible. Familial love, marital and maternal, is the superstructure that organizes the chaos.

This structure is not oscillation. Comedy and seriousness do not alternate as if on a pendulum. They occur simultaneously, or in rapid circulation. A scene of absurdist humor—Raccacoonie in the hibachi restaurant—coexists with heartfelt dialogue between mother and daughter. Wong Kar-wai-inspired melodrama rubs shoulders with action-movie pastiche. The film does not move between comedy and tragedy but through a roster of genres, cycling and recycling them.

In short, EEAAO embodies metamodernism as circulation. It is everywhere and nowhere at once. It anchors itself in a recognizable social reality—the struggles of an immigrant family under late capitalism and our alienation from relationships in a world of endless media possibility. Yet it simultaneously detaches from that reality through its absurdist multiverse. Its chaos is stabilized not by oscillation but by the circulation of a single, repeating topic to which it always, obsessively returns - familial love.

Metamodernism, then, should be redefined. The oscillation model offered by Vermeulen and van den Akker has been useful, but it ultimately misrepresents the dynamics of a certain type of contemporary art. Oscillation locks us into binaries; circulation opens us to multiplicity. To understand our cultural moment, we need the latter.

Why is metamodernism important?

The result of EEAO is an encyclopedic circulation of discourses about familial love. The film is realistic not in the sense that it faithfully depicts the social world, but in the sense that it presents the multiplicity of social discourses available in our time. Its realism lies in its discursive heterogeneity rather than mimesis. In short it represents discourse rather than a visual or psycho-social portrait of reality.

Whereas in real life we have little control over the way the algorithm spews media onto us, in metamodernist art we find ourselves immerged in a representation of freedom. It is the freedom to choose where to be grounded in the chaos of information era. It presents to us the totality of discourse around a subject, and then shows us where and how we should, or can land within it.

In that sense, metamodernism shows us how to correct the hypocrisies and contradictions of the information age. It offers both a description of our cultural moment and a tentative ethics for inhabiting it: to move endlessly, but to return deliberately, despite a world which is pressuring us to go deeper and deeper into its infinite spiral of content, media, and consumption. To circulate without dissolving, to be everywhere and nowhere, yet to choose where to stand.

The film ends on a question. Evelyn and Joy become masters of the multiverse, able to go anywhere and do anything. Oncde this happens, their relationship is reconciled and healed. Joy then poses the question: what should they do now? The next scene cuts to a shot of them together with their family in their apartment. The scene is paramount, it brings us back once again to the topic of familial love. To be able to do anything you want in the universe, be anything, go anywhere, and to choose simple time with loved ones. Ultimately the ethics of the film is one of groundedness and human connection in a world of chaos. That is how metamodernism can (maybe) save us all, or at least save good art.