Abstract:
Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, scholars in cultural theory and philosophy, published a paper in 2010 entitled: Notes on Metamodernism. Metamodernism aims to provide a new lens in which contemporary culture can be perceived. Both scholars have registered new sensibilities in the arts and cultures around the world. They have perceived a naive longing for utopias, an oscillation between irony and hope and the rise of a new form of sincerity and depth. This depth, described by Vermeulen as “depthiness”, tends to bend the facts to fit a program, to simulate, to be performative. By analysing a significant event that signalled metamodernism, the new network logic, this thesis will emphasise that the new depthiness is not so much an unconscious tendency or sincerity.