Metamodernism, the Anthropocene, and the Resurgence of Historicity: Ben Lerner's 10:04 and "The Utopian Glimmer of Fiction". Issue 2 (15th March 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gibbons, Alison
• Is Part Of: Critique. Volume 62:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 137
• Page End: 151
• Publication Date: 2021-03-15
• Subjects: Fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Letterkunde; Engels; Electronic journals; 809.304
• DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2020.1784828
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0011-1619

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Postmodernism has been characterized by a reductive presentism that suppresses historicity and neglects the possibility of the future. If we have seen a shift from postmodernism to a different cultural logic and structure of feeling – as, indeed, many critics argue – it, therefore, follows that this may also entail a new dominant in temporal dynamics. In this article, I take Ben Lerner's 2014 novel 10:04 as a case study in literary metamodernism, though I also make reference to Adam Thirlwell's 2011 novella Kapow! and Ruth Ozeki's 2013 novel A Tale for the Time Being . Across these texts, and primarily in 10:04 as a quintessentially metamodernist fiction, I observe and explicate a metamodern temporality characterized, interconnectedly, by the aesthetics of heterochrony, sideshadowing, and the anticipation of retrospection. Whilst this temporal dynamic emerges from the precarity and volatility of experience in the twenty-first century, anthropocenic climate change has been and remains – I suggest – the greatest catalyst in producing this new temporal experience which resurrects historicity and resuscitates the future as a field of possibilities.