[zozbot234]

> Postmodernism in contrast often would have been interested in breaking down long held assumptions, and an inert opposition to grand narratives

I don't understand why postmodernism is described like this, when the typical presentation of postmodern ideas (even, and perhaps especially, in the primary sources) is literally phrased as a grand narrative, albeit one that points towards a forcefully stated skeptical outlook where even "complex meanings" are ultimately unknowable. Isn't the whole thing a little self-defeating at that point? There are more and less meaningful ways of "tearing down assumptions", and the postmodern approach just tends to come with a lot of theoretical baggage (much of it essentially tacked on from modernism itself) that ultimately weighs it down.

I'm not sure if metamodernism fixes this issue, but your description of it suggests it does not. Philosophical pragmatism ultimately seems to do a better job of shedding the "grand narrative" tendency, and that tradition is largely independent from postmodernism.

[it_does_follow]

> literally phrased as a grand narrative

Can you point me to one serious postmodern theorist that holds this view? There are many different views of the postmodern, but rejection of meta-narratives (academic speak for "grand narrative" here) is pretty much universally accepted.

[zozbot234]

It's a pretty standard criticism of Lyotard, with whom that description of post-modernism is perhaps most widely associated. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - which is a quite well-regarded source - has a very readable account of Lyotard's intellectual background https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lyotard/#InteBack which relates quite plainly that he was far from intellectually consistent in his rejection of metanarratives (or "narratives about narratives"). Rather, a number of contingent political shifts in his outlook on the French society of his time seem to have played a larger role in how he chose to frame his arguments.

Given how closely this description of post-modernism is associated with Lyotard, one can only surmise that other post-modern authors were, if anything, even less consistent with it.

[PaulHoule]

I would look at the methods of Jean Baudrillard, particularly his book Simulacra and Simulation which is a collection of parables each of which could be the plot of a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and each of which attacks the reality principle in one way or another.

These are all small micro-master narratives which each have a totalizing perspective and collectively reduce the ‘truth’ to the ‘truth that is out there’ in the intro sequence to the X Files.

Furthermore I would point to his book On Seduction which is is even more accelerationist than Simulacra in that he tells you exactly how to tear the roof down.