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 Ananda 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

"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." -- D. C. Schindler * 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." -- Joseph Minich * 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." -- Derrick Peterson * Ad Fontes (symposium) *
"It's a long time since I've had such a vigorous-and rigorous-intellectual workout! 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
"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
"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
"In Metamodernism Josephson-Storm (Williams College) argues that the specialized academy has fragmented itself artificially into a multitude of disciplines, which has had the result of completely destroying the possibility of a singular pursuit of knowledge. This phenomenon, he contends, is the grist of many postmodernist critiques. But he is hopeful in that he attempts to pave a new way forward for theory-as the subtitle of the book suggests. Central to his approach is the development of process social ontology, an ontology that allows for development along with shifts and changes in social relations. This ontology allows for gradations of reality that correspond to the gradations of reality found in social phenomena. 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." * Choice *