Meanings
- uncountableA movement combining elements of modernism and postmodernism.
Metamodernism's genealogy and its earliest ideological underpinnings are contested. It is located by some as stemming from Frederic Jameson and his criticism of postmodern fragmentation and late capitalism (1984) […]
2018, William B. Parsons, Being Spiritual but Not Religious: Past, Present, Future(s), Routledge, →ISBN2 more examples
An ideal framework is the term metamodernism given to us by two Dutch philosophers, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, who argue that “postmodern is merely the 'catchphrase' for a multiplicity of contradictory tendencies, […]
2017, Andrew Shenton, Arvo Pärt's Resonant Texts: Choral and Organ Music 1956–2015, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 264Metamodernism is one of a variety of attempts to identify a perceptible shift in aesthetic practice and ethical outlook developing in the twenty-first century and it can be seen to be in dialogue with both modernism and postmodernism.
2018 October 3, Nick Bentley, “Trailing Postmodernism: David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Zadie Smith’s NW, and the Metamodern”, in English Studies, volume 99, number 7, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 723–743
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
From meta- + modernism, introduced in 2010 by Dutch cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
metamodernism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/metamodernism
“metamodernism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/metamodernism. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “metamodernism,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/metamodernism.
Source: metamodernism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.