The late-modernism

Ivan Pozzoni

Giorgio Linguaglossa raises a crucial question about the concept of art: «How and where to orient the search for the new poetic language?». After the end of the modern era and of every modernist aesthetic ontology, decreed by Zygmunt Bauman and contemporary new sociology, every post-modernist meta-philosopher – like Jencks with architecture, Danto with art or Fukuyama with history – is tempted to impose the definitive sanction of death sentence on the object of his philosophy, without taking into theoretical consideration the lesson contained in La condition postmoderne and in the beautiful and unknown Le postmoderne expliqué aux enfants by Jean-François Lyotard: the core of post-modernism consists in the admission of the fall of every «métarécits», that is, the delegitimization of the metanarratives of modernity and of the conception and of «univers(o)ality». Hyper-modernism, aware of Lyotard’s distinction between the death of discourse and the death of meta-discourse, resuscitates art and buries Danto’s everything goes: against post-modernism rises the hyper-modernism of Virilio, Baudrillard and Lipovetsky; against post-modern rises the hyper-modern of Bauman (liquid society) and Beck (risk society) [post-modernity has always maintained a certain confusing vagueness between theory (post-modernism) or historical space (post-modern)]. Hyper-modernism, like every neo-avant-garde millennials (an Italian example is my neoN-avant-garde), abandons – as consolidated – the debate on anti-«univers(o)alism» and inserts itself in antagonistic continuity with modernism, unlike post-modernism, unleashing its Katjuša missiles in the direction of delegitimizing every form of «canon» and «Tradition», a slave to its neo-avant-garde vein. However, hyper-modernism is a movement of the krisis. Once the krisis is over, every avant-garde/neo-avant-garde, self-criticizing, commits artistic suicide, and, finally, late-modernism enters the field. What is late-modernism? First of all, it is, at the same time, theory and historical space: it surpasses post-modernism and hyper-modernism on the left by declaring the definitive end of ontology and the total detachment from modernism, natural or caricatural; it goes beyond post-modernity and hyper-modernity on the right, making official the transition from the modern era to the late modern era (as a historical repetition of the transition between the ancient era and the late ancient era).

The late-modernist artist

Giorgio Linguaglossa’s statement is false: «The answer we can give at the moment is that today, in 2025, we cannot undertake any hermeneutics of art following the End of poiesis, of what was once called «art» in the time of progressive history; today, in the time of historiality (that is, of non-progressive history), the end of «art» also brings with it the end of art criticism. And here the matter ends». Giorgio falls back into the post-modernism of Jameson (1) and Danto, inadvertently formalizing a utopia of dystopia, with a kitchen dystopian utopia. Art is not dead: every universal meta-narration on art is dead, that is, every literary hermeneutic (criticism) founded on the self-declaration of being an objective interpretation of art. The artist, gathered in bunds, kolektivne, aeriform, nomadic and resilient assemblies, having metabolised the error of modern philosophical historiography on the Aristotelian distinction between ποίησις and πρᾶξις, rejects the very notion of «poetry» or anti-«poetry» as a fantastic creation of a language-object and, in the name of a pragmatics conception of the language-object itself, relaunches the authentic interpretation of the artist against any subjective interpretation of the literary critic. Criticism is not dead: it has become a weak interpretation subject to the argumentative meta-criticism (Habermas) of the artist. The artist becomes agens (engaged poetry), from faber, organizes the language-object according to his ends, replaces hermeneutics with praxeology, appropriates the making of art (discourse), the saying of art (meta-discourse) and the counter-saying of art (mega-meta-discourse), acquiring the role of artist, critic and meta-critic (thermonuclear counter-reviews), against every attempt at a veramusement kitchen of art and against every ontology of lyrical/elegiac modernism. From the slide, to the transformation, finally to the open opposition (riots). Kitchen poetry, stuck in Danto, obstinate in attempting an ontological refoundation of a veramusement of the ποίησις that has emerged from the nucleus of art, remains in the phase of the slide between modernism and post-modernism, still unable to enter the late modern. Late-modernism is a dystopian praxis that annihilates every form of ontology and phenomenology of art, replacing aesthetic ontology and aesthetic phenomenology with an aesthetic socio/ethno/anthropology (anesthetic), KNSEAE, based on social «inter-action» (disavowal of the decay of the sender/message/recipient triad). Late modernist riot poetry does not «[…] take a fragment (in clearity) and throw it on the white wall of the canvas of nothingness […]»: it organizes a fragment (in clearity) and – like a battering ram – slams it on the white walls of the canvas of the Papal State. Mondadori Pope King, you’re under attack!

Chaotic resonance or magnetic resonance? Late modernism is atopic

The Kolektivne NSEA, gathered in Prezidium, analyzes and interprets the concept of dystopian resonance, used by the kitchen, riot and fragmentist currents of the opposition to the lyrical/elegiac Papal State. Why must a dystopian resonance necessarily imply a chaotic resonance (Morin and Maturana), without addressing the Rehabilitierung of contemporary pragmatism (Rorty and Putnam), and not translate into magnetic resonance? Let us clarify: it becomes necessary, in literature, with a careful series of definitions and re-definitions, not to confuse dystopian resonance (effect) with chaotic resonance (strategy): dystopian resonance is the effect of a dystopian sense that a resonance strategy causes on the reader. The chaotic resonance, with its trojan, with its voluntary alternation between emetic and hermetic, sibilant and tinnitus, runs the risk of activating, in the (fake) reader, a feeling of disorientation (dystop-utopian resonance). The magnetic resonance, catalyzing the attention of the (fake) reader, with a series of acts, praxeological, of dédoublement, of carnivalization, of остранение, of ironic anti-phrasticity, creates a field of «social interaction» suitable for building a relationship between artist and (fake) reader, λόγος, oriented towards the story, with maximum clarity and indirect (participant) observation, on the truth of the current social situation, intrinsically dystopian. Reality is dystopian: it becomes necessary to introduce a neutral praxia (ποίησις, in late modernity, has become πρᾶξις) – as Gedankenexperiment – capable, through a strategy of magnetic resonance, of mistreating and terrorizing the reader (fake), so as to influence the pursuit of an a-dystopian future. The use of a strategy of resonance, chaotic or magnetic, creates a λόγος, of disorientation or terrorism, between an artist and a reader (fake): the neo-ontological theoretical foundation of the refusal of the sender-message-recipient triad falls. The use of a resonance effect, implying an underlying «social interaction», leads to the antinomy with the affirmation of the refusal of the sender-message-recipient triad. Any effect/resonance strategy needs a sender, the artist, a recipient, the reader (fake) and a message (disorientation or terrorism). Late modernism resolves the theoretical antinomy of every new aesthetic ontology by redefining the triad sender-message-recipient, in a double sense (The «neon»-avant-garde contribution to the concretization of an original anti-«form-poetry»), using a strategy of terrorist magnetic resonance and rejecting every form of «poetry», and dystopian «poetry», replacing it with atopic praxeological «experiments». Late modernism is atopic.

BioNote

Ivan Pozzoni, an internationally acclaimed writer and poet, received prestigious awards like the Raduga, Montano, and Strega Prizes before halting his writing in 2018. Featured in the Atlas of Contemporary Italian Poets and Gradiva, his poetry has been translated into over 25 languages, including French, English, Spanish, and Chinese, among others. A proponent of internationalism, Pozzoni collaborates with literary magazines in over 100 countries, from Albania to South America. He played a key role in the NeoN-Avangardia movement, authoring the Antimanifesto, endorsed by luminaries like Zygmunt Bauman and Umberto Eco. Currently associated with Kolektivne NSEAE, Pozzoni remains a significant figure in global literary and artistic circles.