Black Meta Mode
The Black Metamodernist Guide to Survival
0. Context
Give thanks to our fallen leaders. Give hope to the next generation. A recent review of my writing prompted me to share this iniatory text into my understanding of a Black Metamodernism. This review also serves to contextualise Black Metamodernism within the wider metamodern project.
As such it is the defintive introduction to Black Metamodernism, and it also answers some frequently asked questions. For the remainder of my reports I’d like to direct you to the three papers I have recently published on Black Metamodernism. These are long reads designed to offer new diunital perspectives on the world.
The First Paper is titled “Metamodern Individualism Anonymous: Diunital Cognition, Emotional Intelligence, and Narrative Archaeological Therapy for the Hypermodern Neo-Narcissist“. In it I outline the 50 year history and relevance of metamodernism in relation to our current “hyper-“modern times. We also address western individualism, stating the individual is only indivisible from their environment. Along the way we introduce Black Economist Vernon J Dixon and his observation of diunital, both-and, cognition I’m Black communities.
The second paper is titled “Metamodern Existentialism: Moving Beyond Nihilism with Hauntological Discovery“. We begin by showing the flaw at the heart of nihilistic existentialism. We then move to reconcile several antagonistic false dichotomies at the foundations of western philosphy. Then using this new metamodern tools we apply them to cosmology using Octavia Butler’s Earthseed as a case study.
The third paper is titled: “The Third Cradle: Decolonising AI and Rehumanising Black Thought”. In it we describe and trace the roots and fruits of the major differences between pre-colonial Africa, known as the southern cradle, and the western, northern cradle, and their mindsets. We define the relevance of this and the frame a line of abundance and scarcity environments and mind sets. We also outline the limitations and potentials for technology to balance the conceptual incarceration that says the west is best.
1. Grounding
A wise man once said ‘there is always peace’. A truth, unfortunately, said in response to shouts of protesters speaking other truths to power. His words, almost rightfully so, fell on ears deafened by the words of the converging crowds facing a Police kettling.
‘No Justice — No Peace’
Easily misread as a binary threat: either there is justice or you will have no peace. There is though an other truth to the chants of this collective of individual middle class activists.
For them there is both no justice and so no peace. For them. A subtle change in perspective rendering the crowds angry chants into a plea, and not only a warning. So while the passerby was correct, there is always peace, without at least a felt sense of justice, peace can be hard to find.
2. The Black Metamodernist’s Manifesto
1) Black Metamodernism is a way of life. Its a social, cultural, and political movement, with a diunital, both-and, system of logic. Increasing the field of options in our minds.
2) This movement takes action towards a structure of feeling that is the integration of cognitive dissonance. Creating the capacity for more complex emotions
3) This process is the aim. Progress is the increase in the extent of this process. Measured in four dimensions. As the process progresses the capacity for holing multiple perspective at once is increased.
4) Collaboration between groups/individuals/ systems with different and/or opposing world- views is facilitated by this new capacity.
5) Atomised individuals find the ability to work collectively for common goals whilst retaining their individuality and avoiding groupthink.
6) Critical mass is reached as cultures shift (initiated by artists and scholars) and begin to impact economics and politics. Creating a new middle class.
7) Black Metamodernism is applied to the foundations of western and colonial logic, including but not limited to existentialism, nihilism, theology, metaphysics and physics
8) The goal of Black Metamodernism is continual Black Liberation. Based on the principle that black people won’t truly be free until everybody else is too
3. Black Metamodernism
Both the new Black and the new Metamodernism
Black Metamodernism is a socio-political movement that uses a system of logic and a structure of feeling to facilitate multi-perspective solution-making. The system of logic is diunital cognition, first described by Vernon J Dixon in a 1970’s paper titled ‘The Diunital Approach to Black Economics’.
Up until now Metamodernists have loosely defined Metamodernism as a ‘system of logic’ and a ‘structure of feeling’ that arises from ‘oscillating’ beyond polarities such as modernity and postmodernity. Metamodernists also talk about both-and thinking, sometimes associating it with the system of logic mentioned. Neither the system of logic, or both-and thinking has been associated with diunital thinking until now.
This structure of feeling Metamodernists talk about seems difficult to grasp. Some examples given are sincere irony and, less often, informed naivety. When asked exactly what sincere irony is clear, concise answers are fleeting, and artists such as Father John Misty are mentioned.
It is now clear to me that this structure of feeling, this sincere irony is simply the integration of cognitive dissonance. Relief from paradox resolution is the structure of feeling. Named a structure because of its complex, layering of emotions creating a form of intricate, multi-perspective ambivalent acceptance.
Diunital logic is both-and thinking. This is the metamodern system of logic that got lost in time. In his paper amongst other things Dixon talks about the definition of a Black ethnicity, as well as the reluctant acceptance of black as a race. He also talks about the false assumption that culture and economics are separate fields of study. His thought and that of W.D. Wright, who 20 years later picked up on and continued Dixon’s thoughts, feature heavily here.
The structure of feeling, which sincere irony points to, is germane to this metamodern system of logic. This both-and, diunital, cognition. The structure of feeling is the felt sense of integrating, and having integrated, cognitive dissonance. As such Black Metamodernism is for Black and non-Black peoples. Following along from diunital thinking I am both Black and White. In that I am embedded in and a proponent of both cultures.
Why ‘Black Metamodernism’?
Black Liberation has, largely, been exempt from most of the writing mostly because we are still stuck in dichotomous modes of thought. I am either racist or not and so to do something that amounts to or contributes to racism I must be racist and a bad person, because people are only good or bad, and racism is bad. This and other impacts of dichotomous logic leads to a ‘cultural silence’. The subject is ignored.
Black in this instance applies to the archetype of blackness and darkness that is beyond race and skin colour. It applies to the shadow of humanity. It also applies to the African diaspora, speaking to a way to alleviate the cognitive dissonance of the last 500 years.
It is this cognitive dissonance that produces the afro-surrealist outlook. An outlook that when combined with afro-futurism, and afro-pessimism recreates a vision of a multi- perspective present. At once revealing and redefining the past, future and present moment.
Black Metamodernism is the path to Black Liberation. Due to colourism and the diunital nature of intersectional identity Black Liberation means liberation for all. Travelling along dichotomous roots humanity, championed by western culture, has seen zero-sum games everywhere. In the same way that when you only have a hammer everything is a nail.
4. Modernity: A Black Metamodern Perspective
From the viewpoint of Black Metamodernism we say with sincere irony that there is no modernity, only modernisation, the process of modernising. To be modern does not mean to be fixed, or finished. For a thing to be modern from a static viewpoint the process of modernising must have stopped. Having stopped it can no longer be guaranteed as being modern. What is modern is the present state of the art.
At the same time there is this thing called modernity, which is referred to and understood from many perspectives in culture. Then there is also post-modernity, which took what were once modern principles and reflected them back on itself. So what could I mean by metamodernity?
Here we take meta to mean beyond. We, as Black Metamodernists, we go beyond the concept of modernity only as a fixed state or period of time that occurred only in one timespan, one culture. We take that meaning and continue on towards looking at modernity as an example of modernisation. A case study.
We define modernising as updating a part of society to present standards of understanding. We define modernisation as being the process of updating an entire society or culture. We define modernity as an example of modernisation.
At present, outside of Black Metamodern circles, the industrial Euro-American/ European/Western culture is most often referred to as modernity. Modernist art and academics refer loosely to this time and space. Exclusively. There had been a ‘cultural silence’ , as W. D. Wright calls it around the focused human cruelty that was the fuel of this period of modernisation. Not to mention the foundational ideology that argued in favour of such cruelty, or the extent that this foundationalism exists to date.
Post-modernity from a Black Metamodernism perspective did not come after modernity, the present moment. Post-modernity is simply modernity looking back on its own past self. As such until we are willing to go past the fixed dichotomous view of modernity we are all already engaged in the European modernity and postmodernity to an extent.
As we’ll show dichotomous logic leads to dominant and supremacist ideologies. Ideologies that led to the African genocides. As we have seen diunital thinking can help us rebuild a new vision of modernity based on integral principles. Racism is clearly irrational. For a culture to be built on such a foundationalism is a house built on sand. As impressive as the house is what with all the train sets. Fortunately the story of western civilisation doesn’t actually begin with racist foundationalism human trafficking in Africa. It doesn’t even begin in Ancient Greece. It begins much further back.
But I digress. The important thing to remember that there is no such thing as modernity. And if there is what is modernity is now referred to as postmodernity, because apparently we are in postmodern times now. So from Black Metamodern perspective metamodernity means to go beyond the idea of a modernity fixed to a single time and space. In short. It’s about Western Europe post industrialisation and so much more before, after and elsewhere.
Currently postmodernity has become associated with crisis. The environmental crisis, the economic disparity crisis, the health crises, the cost of living crisis, the geo- political crisis, the culture war. So much writing has been done on the subject I don’t need add anymore anxiety. I will say that such energy has been placed on the urgency of the emergency that some see emergence as the only answer. Some of you may have heard it referred to as the meta-crisis. Going beyond crisis into opportunity. In essence, western modernity has applied its own dichotomous logic to itself.
“The crisis is: what does Western civilization offer the world, or what can it offer the world, after it has produced Hitler and the Nazis, the fascists, communists, totalitarians, gulags and death camps, horrendously destructive wars, and a civilization that has been extensively divested of its morality and spirituality” — W.D. Wright.
5. Dichotomous Dialectics: Working out the kinks
W. D Wright identifies four types of cognition that form the bedrock of the ‘foundationalism’ that has informed Western Modernity to date. These are vertical, domination-subordination, dualistic, and dialectical.
These forms of cognition are not inherently bad. They are both good and bad and so have many useful applications. I won’t list those now as that is not our concern here. Our concern here is Black Liberation actualised by the Black Metamodern Movement.
These four types of thought have become pathological in their use as I will now document:
Vertical cognition
This or that. Incompatibility, contradictions, paradox, cognitive dissonance and conflict are are not accepted and are resolved by removing one element. Leads to dichotomous, either-or, thinking (and genocide)
Dualistic/horizontal cognition
This segregated from that. Incompatibility and contradictions are accepted into one worldview and seprerated to avoid paradox, cognitive dissonance and conflict. Leads to parallel thinking (and segregation)
Domination-subordination cognition
This more than that, and that more than another. Social and cultural conflict is managed by assigning one element of dichotomous contradictions with a higher value than the other element. A third element of neutrality emerges. Paradox is avoided by fixing these value systems. Leads to hierarchical, less-than, prioritised thinking.
Dialectic cognition
This consumes that. The antagonism that is the acceptance of segregated, hierarchical, dichotomous contractions, and incompatibilities, in one worldview leads to ‘cultural silence’ and consumption/ assimilation as a form of conflict management. Forged along dichotomous, hierarchical, and segregate lines prioritised values assimilate less prioritised ones.
So there we have it. The basis of the foundationalism that built western modernity. It’s clear to see how it could lead to all sorts of trouble. It’s also clear to us now what the solution is:
Diunital, both-and, cognition
It’s a logic with the capacity for an infinite number of interacting dimensions, because interaction, cohabitation and interdependence are accepted. Leads to Black Liberation.
6. Light Supremacy: A Case Study
Now, we’ve all heard of ‘White Supremacy’. Simply mentioning that ‘White Supremacy’ was and is a thing can get you shut out of both ‘progressive’ and conservative circles quicker than the length of a viral Tik Tok video or IG reel.
I like to look at the roots to understand the fruits. When I look at the family tree of “White Supremacy” we can see that its ancient ancestor is a far more insidious phenomenon. I call it Light Supremacy. Before I talk about Light supremacy I want to talk briefly about White Supremacy.
Only inasmuch to say that White Supremacy, the supremacy of whiteness, is a fiction. Neither whiteness nor blackness is supreme. Only nothing is supreme. What we are wrestling with isn’t the supposed supremacy of whiteness but the insecurity of whiteness.
White insecurity stems from the ideology of Light Supremacy. White Supremacy is insecurity masquerading as confidence. After all would a truly secure being wish ill treatment on another? Does true confidence lead to a desire for domination? No. True confidence allows for the vulnerability of others strength.
White insecurity comes from Light Supremacy. Light Supremacy is an ancient end result of dichotomous thinking. Light Supremacy is the idea that the Light is supreme over the dark. White insecurity comes from the subtle awareness that no human is white, literally or metaphorically. This leads to feelings of low relative self- worth, which when coupled with the rest of the outcomes of light supremacy becomes projected onto the other.
The source of light supremacy is fairly innocent. It’s a fear of the dark. Hardwired into humans for good reason. Evolutionarily speaking the dark meant predators, it meant danger, it means the unknown. The fear of what the night holds is only alleviated by the rising sun.
So it’s easy to see how humans came up with the idea that the darkness is evil and the light is good. What’s not so easy to see is how this has had such a disastrous impact on human culture. The aversion to the darkness causes an aversion to our true selves. Not the exterior, or the bits we know. We came to shun the darkness of our own inner world, our subconscious.
This eventually lead to us rejecting that which links us to our true nature and so nature in general. This is the origin of the split between humans and nature. Why we think man made is not natural, but a bees hive or a birds nest or a beavers damn is. So that’s environmentalism covered.
In seeing humanity, as supreme beings over the rest of nature we have done some wonderful things, but also some terrible things too. If we were talking about colonialism in India we might hear some one say what about the railroads. By focussing on the railroads, and technological progress, we display our separation from nature and our fellow human.
After all the deep dark of the heart-mind that fills my inner world is perhaps more similar to yours than we know. To turn away from that darkness leads to turning away from our own humanity. This original schism gives rise to -cides, and -isms and it leads to genocide because your ways spread darkness and mine spread light. None of this helps xenophobia, which essentially is the fear of the unknown. Nyctophobia, fear of the night/dark makes a lot of sense. A dark room holds a lot of unknowns.
Racism was inevitable in some ways, and to this end it’s no surprise colourism is a global phenomenon. Light Supremacy leads to an easy acceptance of harsh binary extremes. It’s the extremes that are dangerous, extremes such as supremacist thinking.
Arguments could be made that this lead to the cause of colonialist thinking. The splitting off from myself, from the infinite darkness within leads to an ever present feeling of lack that can never be filled. Scarcity thinking takes root in me and I need more.
When Light Supremacy, a tendency in all humanity, born of a sighted culture, is so pervasive it seems the calls of afro-pessimists aren’t nonsensical when they say we live in an anti-black world. It’s not just racial it’s beyond racial, beyond class, beyond sex. It’s existential.
When light supremacy reigns the only course of action is holistic and all inclusive Black Liberation. By any loving means necessary.
7. Black Metamodernism: The antidote
Black Metamodernism asserts itself as system of logic that gives rise to a structure of feeling. The system of logic is diunital, or both-and, thinking. The structure of feeling is the integration of cognitive difference.
Cognitive dissonance being the state of having inconsistent and/or opposed thoughts, feelings, perspectives, behaviours. It’s normally associated with a stress response. Integrating cognitive dissonance leads to a relaxed/rest response.
By using diunital thinking to integrate cognitive dissonance I thereby facilitate multi-perspective conversation and create a communal relax/rest/digest response. For example I may have a subconscious fear of the dark that pushes me away from knowing my self. With diunital, both-and thinking I would accept the dark is both good and bad. I would begin meet it with gratitude. Then I would look for the good in the dark.
Somewhere along the way I would understand that the dark is where all light comes from and goes to. I would then accept the darker parts of myself, leading to integration. Less stressed at night, less stressed about my shadow, less stressed in life. By moving out of a flight/fight/freeze response I can interact with myself and my community in a more peaceful way.
Black Metamodernism is not just for Black people. Following along from afro-surrealism we accept that blackness and whiteness do not apply to skin colour alone. They also applies to hierarchy and difference of all kinds.
Black Metamodernism reimagines the present from a multi-perspective point of view, and as such it accepts time as non-linear. Following afro-surrealism again we integrate both an afro pessimistic and an afro-futuristic outlook. Concerned not only with the past or the future, now we accept the ever changing culmination of both. Producing afro- infinitism
8. Is Metamodernism Black?: Hidden Histories
This both is and isn’t all about Black people. It’s both referring to something wider than race and at the heart of race itself. So let’s not be reactionary here. Especially in a dichotomous way.
We must use diunital logic. Both-and. We must integrate this cognitive dissonance. If that’s not possible then we take our time. If we don’t want to then this isn’t for us right now. Thats alright. It’ll be here for you when you are.
This is about using diunital logic to integrate cognitive dissonance. If we experience cognitive dissonance because we use the word black in conjunction with metamodernism saying it’s both for black people and for everyone then let’s resolve the paradox.
There’s already Nordic Metamodernism and Dutch Metamodernism. Now there’s Black Metamodernism. If the Nordic and Dutch schools are for everyone why not Black? If the Nordic and Dutch schools aren’t for everyone there’s even more reason for Black Metamodernism.
Plus the experience of Western European, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Indian diaspora aren’t the same as the Black community’s experiences. As a writer if I want my audience to relate I don’t go for generalisations I be very specific.
How exactly does it feel when I show up to a party with two ex girlfriends sat side by side, making small talk neither knowing who they were talking to? What was that night like for me? What was it like for them? Or our mutual friend the birthday woman? Answering these questions leads closer to the reality of the human condition more than starting with a generality and hoping it connects.
Most importantly none of those communities are at the heart and root of metamodernism. Black communities are. Let us honour our ancestors as we do with postmodernism and modernism as metamodernists. For more see Brent Cooper’s series on Missing Metamodernism
So don’t get caught up in the word black, it kind of cements how I got here. There’s so much more here offered in my words that it would be a crying/laughing shame to get caught up on it. Most importantly we must not take a dichotomous view of blackness, or even darkness for that matter. This is Black Metamodernism so we apply diunital thinking to blackness. This points to a route through
Know this is not identity metamodernism, not specifically. Any association with idpol is inaccurate in my eyes. Especially as Black Metamodernism is informed by Nordic Ideology (just as black culture is informed by, embedded in, and a proponent of white culture). With the processes of democratisation from the Nordic school and diunital logic from the Black school the pitfalls of idpol and postmodernity are avoided.
Besides just as all politics is intimately tied up with identity so it too is true of metamodernism. Especially when diunital, both-and, thinking is applied. The term identity politics strikes me as a form of Orwellian Doublespeak that hides how interwoven politics and identity are. I wouldn’t want to further repeat the same by siloing diunital philosophies.
Trying to separate politics from identity is like trying to separate culture from economics. It can be done, although not sustainably and it doesn’t lead to liberty. After all this dichotomous thinking is what we’ve been using so far. It isn’t metamodern per se as it forgoes diunital, both-and, logic.
I call it Black Metamodernism because it’s black in every sense, it’s been hidden away, in the dark shadows of academic history. The system of logic that produced the structure of feeling that is metamodernity was developed by a Black American referencing Black Americans (who identified as both Black and American) in a paper about black economics. A book titled ‘Black Intellectuals, Black Cognition and Black Aesthetic’ also states throughly how black Americans have engaged in diunital thought since the 1800’s.
Without this system of thought already embedded in the black community the structure of feeling that is integrated cognitive dissonance wouldn’t be present for the Dutch school to write about. So allow me to honour our ancestors.
Finally Black Liberation is one of the main aims of Black Metamodernism. Fortunately Black Liberation requires every human else to be liberated too. Black is both an ethnicity and a race and an inaccurate metaphor for skin colour. Black is both black and Western and African, both colonised and liberated, both present and yet invisible, both pivotal and marginalised. Both a signifier of the bottom of the western hierarchical stack, and a signifier for the unknown.
I’d encourage you to read some of the source material I’ve mentioned. It’s explained in a better way there. There’s a short paper, which is the origins of the term diunital and why black is also white, from 1970, titled The Diunital Approach to Black Economics. I also recommend every one to read Diunital Living by Jerry Katz. It’s a great primer.
9. Black metamodernism: The body work of balance
Black Metamodernism is a lived experience. It’s a felt sensation. It’s a well honed tool for survival during times of change and contradiction. It’s designed to see us through apocalypses. And this isn’t just a bag of talk. If you’re looking for a somatic, embodied, heart-centred practice. This is for you.
You can literally feel when you are stuck in a contradiction. A paradox. It produces a stress response purely as a result of mental load and emotional distress. Either-or, dichotomous, thinking makes this worse as it reduces the number of options available to us. Narrowing our vision of the future.
Diunital, both-and, thinking has been used by Black people to survive and thrive through generations of human trafficking, and enslavement. It also helped black people to thrive in a form of contradictory freedom that in feeling equates more to a prisoner of war, a human alien, a fugitive, a stranger in a strange land, an invisible person.
There is a bodily feeling that comes with diunital logic. Making peace with these contradictions of freedom and alienation. Integrating the cognitive dissonance of internalised racism. Resolving the paradoxes posed by modernity and post-modernity.
For the Black community diunital logic provided a deep spiritual stress relief. Allowing us to relax into joyous expressions of sorrow, heart break, and the desire for liberation that gave us what we now know as Black culture.
Diunital logic helped a people to be fully human again. To fully feel again. And to share that feeling with the world. It can do the same for you if you lean in to it. That is the way of The Black Metamodernist
10. The Black Metamodern Aesthetic
Art for survivals sake
Our subconscious is more powerful than we know. What it understands before our conscious mind shows up in our art. Art has the ability to widely influence culture. Our cultures shape the way we think. Shaping this process is the aim of Black Metamodernism.
The conscious knowing, the intellectual understanding, is only the first step. What comes next is to create a Black Metamodern Aesthetic to inform creatives. They will notice the ways in which they are already practicing Black Metamodernism and reapply themselves.
This Manifesto aims to adhere to this aesthetic. This is how we shape a generation. This is how we guide a culture. This is how we will change the world. Resistance is fertile
The following are all required in some way for something to apply to this Black Aesthetic:
For Black people by Black people
Art for survivals sake
Functional, collective and committed
Political, social, cultural and economic
Inseparable from black life
Origins in Black history (African, Bondage, and European)
Second World (Both 1st and 3rd)
Reconstruct Black Middle Classes
Black aesthetic critics
Intersectional: explains perspectives of conflicts
Avoids Black Nationalism
Only one of the following is required for this Black Aesthetic to be metamodern:
Diunital thinking
Logical differences and Logical opposites
Paradox resolution
Contradiction acceptance
Integrated Cognitive Dissonance
Going beyond western concept of modernity
The piece of work that most fulfils this aesthetic is from a talented young artist, based in South East London, named ‘Doom Cannon’. His debut project ‘Renaissance’ is the state of the art in Jazz and Black (Meta)modern Art. The Record beings with a track titled ‘Dark Ages’ and ends with ‘Black Liberation’
Bibliography
Vernon J Dixon 1970 “The Diunital Approach to Black Economics” https://https://www.jstor.org/stable/1815840
W. D. Wright 1997 “Black Intellectuals, Black Cognition, Black Aesthetic”
Jerry Katz “Diunital Living” https:// www.nonduality.com/DIUNITAL- LIVING.pdf
Brent Cooper “Missing Metamodernism” https://medium.com/the-abs-tract- organization/missing- metamodernism-5da6b0b35dde
