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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

Isn't "meta" the keyword of the 21st century? I remember reading articles about "meta modernism" being the thing we're in right now (after modernism, post modernism and post post modernism)- everywhere from art to culture to, as this article points out, advertising.

I'm waiting for a plane to take off right now and can't dig up articles, but maybe a more knowledgeable HN'er can fill in for me.

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"meta" in art and literature was more of a 20th century thing, even an early 20th thing (as you can see in the work of the Avant-gardes) and you can find a lot of earlier examples, at least in literature, maybe most notably through books that experimented with diegesis.

I think it's just coming back in fashion in ways that are both a lot more naive (in their content and their approach) and more sophisticated (in their forms and that of the subcultures that they use as a substrate) than what the 20th saw.

I have difficulty distinguishing between what has been described to me as "meta-modernity" and what older textbooks describe as "eclectic post-modernism", and between that and what Orwell described as "double-think", albeit with more positive overtones (plus-good, not plus-bad). I don't really think it's a separate phenomenon from post-modernity, more a natural emergent property of a post-modern culture, but I would add to that that I am not really knowledgeable in this area, just interested in contributing to the discussion and maybe getting some clarification & correction on my views.

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