New Sincerity

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The New Sincerity is the name of several loosely related cultural or philosophical movements following postmodernism.

Claim to the name “New Sincerity" is wide ranging, and it may have been coined independently by several parties. It is generally agreed that the principal impetus towards the creation of these movements was the September 11th attacks, and the ensuing national outpouring of emotion, both of which seemed to run against the generally ironic grain of postmodernism. Rough ideas of New Sincerity began to circulate as early as 2002.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 New Sincerity and Performatism 2 The Sound of Young America 3 Poetry 4 See also 5 References

[edit] New Sincerity and Performatism

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The most notable grew out of the intermediary movement of Raoul Eshelman and, most notably, Judith Butler, among others, called "performatism." The New Sincerity takes the basic tenets of perfomatism (that, even when arising from intentionally constructed situations, happiness is experienced as such, not as a false and misleading outcome) and extends the tenets into a transformative way of experiencing life and understanding culture.

Privileging human connection and non-ironic expressions of sentiment and concern, instead of disconnection and lofty cynicism, the New Sincerity increasingly returns academic attention from the increasingly deadening emphasis on social construction and the deconstruction of the soul, in cultural studies, to previously-"suspect" topics, such as beauty and aspects of the emotional life.

Current scholarship includes Wendy Steiner's The Trouble with Beauty, Denis Donahue's On Beauty, Elaine Scarry's On Beauty and Being Just, and Bryn Gribben's 2005 Bodies that Shatter: Ekphrasis, Beauty, and the Victorian Body as Art, which plays upon Judith Butler's notion of citationality and the body, in order to consider beauty and intersubjectivity as outcomes of the body's performance of itself. Gribben is also, some claim, responsible for coining the term "the New Sincerity" in 2003 (though notable uses of the term predate this)^{[citation needed]}, and the term was taken up by avant-garde director and scholar Herbert Blau and designer/film auteur Brady Becker, who implements the tenets laid forth in Eshelman's seminal 2000 article on "performatism"^[1]in order to construct spaces in which both design and designer are experienced and felt. The New Sincerity is a cultural reemphasis on art as a harbinger for social change. It is a compromise between the tenets of modernism and postmodernism that returns an idea of progress, purpose and greater good. It brings an impetus of idealism, but with an inherent sense of healthy skepticism.

In addition, New Sincerity can be regarded as the compromise between commerce and humanity. In a modern landscape where commodification is inevitable, New Sincerity embraces an idea of self-commodification that plays into the function of new technology and modern mass media. This self-commodification can be linked most directly to the generation now, in their early 20s, about to enter the workforce. A generation dubbed as the most narcissistic in history has embraced its inevitable commodification, while understanding its role as such. In other words, a generation that has been cultivated in the modern mass media landscape is now a knowing, savvy product of its construction. Whereas, youth generations prior may have resented commercialization and consumerism, New Sincerity is more inclined to embrace "the establishment" on their own principled terms. In many ways, it marks the arrival of Warhollian consumser art concept into mainstream entrepreneurial thought. This being the case, New Sincerity as reflective in our mass media can be shown in the burgeoning popularity of shows and movies that embrace self-empowerment, and have protagonists that are flawed and conflicted, but still carry a strong moral center under surface. Many of these shows deal with such issues in a commercially glossed manner, and for the most part are hopeful and spiritually toned, while others carry more new age philosophy influenced by diverse religiosity. In a sense, New Sincerity as entertainment is a form of self-critical, self-reflexive, existential pop.

[edit] The Sound of Young America

"The New Sincerity," as espoused by Jesse Thorn of the public radio program The Sound of Young America since 2002, is a cultural movement defined by dicta including "Maximum Fun" and "Be More Awesome." This use of the term predates Gribben's coinage of the term in 2003 (almost 20 years before, it was attached to a set of rock bands, such as Wild Seeds and True Believers, largely based in Austin, Texas). It celebrates outsized celebration of joy, and rejects irony, and particularly ironic appreciation of cultural products.

Thorn summarized his version of the New Sincerity during the May 21st, 2005 Sound of Young America broadcast:

"My position is irony is dead (...) but at the same time, just to return to old-fashioned sincerity, and particularly the kind of sentimentality that that draws in with it...we don't need it. So that's why we've created the New Sincerity. A perfect example of the New Sincerity is Evel Knievel. There's no way to take Evel Knievel literally. It's impossible. The man has a leather jumpsuit and he drives a rocket car. The leather jumpsuit has red, white, and blue stars and stripes on it. It's absolutely preposterous. On the other hand, there's no way to appreciate Evel Knievel ironically. He's too awesome. He has--I don't know if we've mentioned this--a leather jumpsuit with the Stars and Stripes on it and a rocket-powered car. That's why we appreciate Evel Knievel with the New Sincerity."

[edit] Poetry

In 2005, poets Joseph Massey, Anthony Robinson and Andrew Mister began using the term to describe trends in contemporary poetry with which they identify. Their aesthetic is characterized largely by the rejection of contemporary post-Language irony.

[edit] See also

Post-Postmodernism

[edit] References