Unwavering bands of light: What's post- the post?

I'm fond of talking, theorizing, about what comes after Postmodernism. Some see the whole PoMo thing as a paradigmatic example of exaggerated, pretentious intellectualism. I don't.

As a literary and cultural movement, it has given us useful language and a situational discourse to understand the underpinnings - the psyche - of our contemporary culture. More importantly, it's given voice to a multiplicity of perspectives that have traditionally fallen outside of academic discourse. It has sought to liberate marginalized groups by not only giving them a voice, but also by seeking to understand what it means to "be" ~someone~.

It essentially asks my favorite question: Why are you you? Its responses to this question have been various, and they typically suggest that the Postmodern identity is ideologically interpellated, socially constructed, subject to contextualized performative imperatives, unstable, under continual construction, without a core essence, open to continual possibility, and so on. I don't find this scary, or even existentially overwhelming, as some do. I actually find it hopeful. And important.

But what comes next? Historically, at least in America, cultural shifts - in literature, art, film, etc. - have coincided with wars. As many theorists have observed, cultural production is intrinsically linked to both economics and the widespread concerns of the masses. These things show up in the art. During periods of war, economics are affected as are our cultural concerns. The time is beyond ripe.

Appropriately the tone and focus of various academic discourses has been shifting: I've noticed a greater attention being paid to aesthetics. Postmodernism essentially did away with aesthetic concerns, noting that aesthetic taste is, on one hand, subjective (and thus socially constructed) and, on the other, without essence (like the PoMo subject). If anything, PoMo gave us the aesthetic of the abject: piss, shit, blood, vomit, that which is within me and I violently expel (read Kristeva, if you dare). I think we've gotten what we need from the abject and are ready for a new sense of aesthetics.

I think this also points towards the development of a new understanding of ontology, of being. I think that we'll see something that seems like a return to considerations of essentialized identity, but I think these considerations will be unfettered from religious associations, and, by and large, will be free from considerations of the permanence or infinite status of the soul. Rather, I think these considerations will, in some ways be extensions of pre-existing understandings of subjectivity - and will thus have an existential component. In other words, I think we may see considerations of the subject reconsider the possibility of a vestige of selfhood that isn't explained by the complex interrelationships of genetic preconditions, environmental factors, social constructions, and so on. I think we'll see a Post-Postmodern formation of subjectivity that considers both the complex interaction, and the process of putting together fragments of selfhood, as resulting in a ~something else~ that isn't necessarily reducible to the focus of previous considerations of subjectivity.

I'm seeing evidence of this shift a lot these days (but perhaps it is only the reflection of my own perspective). Consider the lyrics from the new Animal Collective album I recently mentioned:

Am I really all the things that are outside of me?

Would I complete myself without the things I like around?

Does the music that I make play on my awkward face?

Do you appreciate the subtleties of taste buds?

Or maybe Vonnegut - being, as always, ahead of his time - wrote it best when, after writing himself into Breakfast of Champions as both author and character, changed his perspective from this:

I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or about any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide.

to this (in the voice of the book's artist Rabo Karabekian):

"I now give you my word of honor," he went on, "that the picture your city owns shows everything about life which truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal - the 'I am' to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us - in a mouse, in a deer, in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery."

I'm still working this out, but I'm curious: What do you think, you unwavering band of light, you.