Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Note on Texts and Citations
Opening
0.1-Into the Abyss: Postmodernism Unraveling
0.2-Overview of the Work

Part I. Metarealism
1-How the Real World Became a Fable, or The Realities of Social Construction
1.1-Realism as Scientism
1.2-Varieties of Mind-Dependence
1.3-When Realism Becomes Antirealism and the Reverse
1.4-Apocalyptic Realism and the Human Sciences, or Real as Socially Constructed
1.5-Metarealism: Modes of the Real
1.6-Conclusion: Modes of Reality; Modes of Existence

Part II. Process Social Ontology
2-Concepts in Disintegration & Strategies for Demolition
2.1-The End of Religion
2.2-The End of Art
2.3-Strategies for Demolition
2.3.1-Immanent Critique
2.3.2-Relativizing Critique
2.3.3-Ethical Critique
2.4-Family-Resemblance, Polythetic Concepts, and Other Category Errors
2.5-Conclusion: Legitimation Crisis
3-Process Social Ontology
3.1-A World in Motion
3.2-Natural Kinds
3.3-Process Social Kinds: A First Pass
3.4-Conclusion: Beyond Anti-Essentialism
4-Social Kinds
4.1-Homeostatic Property-Cluster Kinds
4.2-A Process-Cluster Account of Social Kinds
4.2.1-Socially Constructed
4.2.2-Dynamic Clusters of Powers
4.2.3-Causal Processes that Anchor Clusters
4.3-Deconstructing and Reconstructing Social Kinds
4.4-Conclusion: Changing the Social World

Part III. Hylosemiotics
5-Hylosemiotics: The Discourse of Things
5.1-Beyond the Linguistic Turn
5.2-A Minimal Metaontology
5.3-The Meanings of Meaning
5.4-The Lion’s Roar: A Brief Excursion on the Possibilities of Translation
5.5-A Hylosemiotics of Sign-Aspects
5.6-The Mind Turned Inside Out
5.7-Conclusion: A Light in the Abyss

Part IV. Knowledge and Value
6-Zetetic Knowledge
6.1-Doubting Doubt
6.2-Knowledge without Certainty
6.3-Zetetic Abduction and Prediction: Inference Beyond Pattern Recognition
6.4-Conclusion: From Skeptical Dogmatism to Emancipatory Zeteticism
7-The Revaluation of Values
7.1-The Values of Postmodernism
7.2-The Value of Value-Free Social Science
7.3-Illusions of Fact and Value: Overcoming the Is-Ought Distinction
7.4-The Human Sciences as a Way of Life
7.5-Revolutionary Happiness: Critical Virtue Ethics
7.6-Conclusion
8-Conclusion: Becoming Metamodern
Notes
Index
 

About the Author

Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm is chair and professor of religion and chair of science and technology studies at Williams College. He is the author of The Invention of Religion in Japan and The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences, both also published by the University of Chicago Press.
 

Reviews

"Storm has produced an ambitious, truly thought-provoking and innovative project, to be sure. . . . Storm always writes as clearly as possible given the undeniably complex subject matter; nowhere will readers find the sort of purposefully obscure prose for which philosophers such as Derrida were famous for."
*History of Religions*

"This reviewer was particularly fascinated by Josephson-Storm's description of the reading of the book as a kind of therapeutic activity for the disintegrated postmodern philosopher. This is a valuable book for those engaged in research about postmodern critiques of theory. . . . Highly recommended."
*Choice*

"[Metamodernism] book is awfully good, and you should read it. . . . this book has a ton to offer anyone who’s interested in the future of how we think."
*American Literary History Online*

"The times they are indeed a-changin’, to reiterate Bob Dylan’s revolutionary lyric. Theory now, which [Metamodernism] admirably represent[s], is overripe with normativity questions that require explicit treatment."
*Journal of the American Academy of Religion*

"I hope this book is widely read and taken seriously, because it offers a future for human sciences scholars that most of us have not been able to imagine for ourselves. It is highly recommended."
*Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review*

"Well-written and with sympathy for the reader . . . sensitive to critique concerning race, class, gender, and privilege in academia, taking seriously the aims of such criticism all the while holding them to strict academic scrutiny. . . . Metamodernism is a daring attempt to counter ethical nihilism and epistemological paralysis troubling academic research and cultural institutions. For students, scholars, or activists versed in postmodernism or social justice seeking to consider the ethical, moral, and methodological questions raised by their projects, Storm’s study offers an exciting point of departure."
*Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft*

"Storm writes with verve and passion. His technical arguments are laid out with fluidity and clarity. Wide-ranging erudition is on display. The copious chapter notes make interesting reading in themselves. Metamodernism makes an important contribution for theorists of every stripe, and indeed for all who seek an antidote to postmodernism’s funhouse mirrors."
*Philosophy Now*

"Rather than exploring the genealogies of religious ideas (as in his two prior books), here [Storm] provides a serious and brilliant effort to chart a course between classical essentialism and postmodern skepticism—one simultaneously acknowledging both the limits of knowledge and the objective reality of the phenomena described by social theory. Since reading it, I find myself frequently drawing on its insights in a whole variety of different contexts—and you will too."
*Patheos*

"Metamodernism is a powerhouse intervention in theorizing in the human sciences. The ambition of the book, summarily, is to draw dialectically on postmodern critiques of philosophical assumptions about the world and how we know it and to forge a higher-order position that assimilates those negations into a new, richer system."
*Religious Studies Review (Symposium)*

"I experienced Metamodernism as a breath of fresh air blowing through a room filled with cobwebs, phantoms, and dusty furniture. It opens windows that let new light come in and give us a glimpse of distant horizons and possible new futures for the study of religion, the humanities, and even humanity as such."
*Religious Studies Review (Symposium)*

"Metamodernism is an epistemological tour de force."
*Ad Fontes*

"It is hard to know which is more astonishing, the ambition of the book or the seemingly infinite resources Storm effortlessly draws on to tackle the task he has set for himself. It is rare to find a scholar with such competence and internal freedom, able to bring long-held notions into the light, not necessarily just to expose hidden flaws but, more positively, to reconsider things in a fundamental way and to retain only what is genuinely worthwhile."
*Ad Fontes (Symposium)*

"In a world of endless academic compartmentalization, it is refreshing to encounter a monograph that actually says something big (indeed, several such things!). Still more impressive is that the book does not sacrifice the specific for the general. . . . The virtues of this book are many. To read it is an education in itself, and each of Storm’s general judgments strikes this particular reader as full of precisely the kind of wisdom, creativity, concreteness, and (most preciously) openness of soul that wins through magnanimous persuasion."
*Ad Fontes (symposium)*

"Not only is the book, in his own words, difficult to summarize, Storm has decided to take on a rather sizable chunk of current modern and postmodern theory, and the result is intricate, inspiring, infuriating, and absolutely worthwhile. . . . Storm has proven himself one of the best-read scholars working in the humanities today. Nor is he simply a capable scholar—he has something to say."
*Ad Fontes (symposium)*

"Metamodernism is a grand, spiralling work that rightly deserves the attention that it has been getting. Perhaps, with time, we will hold it among a handful of theoretical works that serve as touchpoints for scholars of a certain generation? Whatever the future of Metamodernism may be, this is Storm’s ambition – nothing less than a revolution in how we go about conducting our work in the human sciences."
*Religion & Theology*

"At the heart of Storm’s argument is his account of social kinds. Given the place from which we are responding, the implication of doing theology through the notion of social kinds as part of the broader research programme of the humanities seems to be of particular interest. . . . The movement of theology into the humanities in the wake of apartheid remains underdeveloped, and Storm’s theoretical intervention provides a basis from which to think through this."
*Religion & Theology*

"Metamodernism is an ambitious and far-reaching book. Storm seeks to integrate the humanities and the sciences into a synthetic system where constructivism and naturalism are given a stereophonic voice. In a theoretical tour de force, he charts a path forward to avoid the pitfalls, yet absorb the insights, of prominent theoretical and methodological strands that shaped the modern sciences and postmodern humanities. A challenging, intellectual manifesto, its depth of engagement in diverse subject areas is outstanding."
 
*American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Constructive-Reflective Studies*

“It’s a long time since I’ve had such a vigorous—and rigorous—intellectual work-out! Metamodernism is not only an astute diagnosis of the confusions and contradictions of contemporary thought; it also offers compelling alternatives. Ambitious, lucid, and erudite, this is a book that demands to be read and argued over.”
*Rita Felski, author of The Limits of Critique*

“Storm’s previous book, The Myth of Disenchantment, was an extraordinary reevaluation of our understanding of modernity, a path-breaking achievement. His new work promises an equally thought-provoking revisioning of the tasks of theoretical work in the humanities—a new way of going beyond modernity.”
*Simon Glendinning, author of The Idea of Continental Philosophy*