SYMMETRICAL ASYMMETRY

Hi Everyone,
Welcome back to this virtual alcove.
It’s been a while between posts but posting comments merely for the sake of posting comments has never sat comfortably with me.
In starting, I want to express my heartfelt appreciation to all of you who have taken a punt on Everything That Stands. Your willingness to immerse yourselves in the world I’ve created has inspired me to continue, and I’m excited to share that the next instalment in the Baron Black trilogy, A Thousand Swords, is well underway and should be ready for publication by the end of this year.
Your support of this book project has also allowed me to make a substantial donation to the John Bradburne Society, supporting its invaluable work at the Care Centre at Mutemwa in Zimbabwe, a cause close to my heart.
Your feedback, whether shared publicly or personally, is crucial to me as a writer. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to leave a review on my website (Why does the bird sing?), Goodreads, and Amazon. Your honest thoughts and opinions not only assist potential readers in navigating the vast sea of literature out there, but also provide me with invaluable insights into your experience with Everything That Stands. Your reviews shape the conversation around the book and contribute to its ongoing journey in the literary landscape, as well as helping with the next writing project.
Many of you have asked for an explanation of the ‘metamodern impulse’ at the heart of the novel. While I am aware that a book’s interpretation transcends the intentions of the author, I believe discussing this impulse can shed light on its ideas.
Rooted in the cultural zeitgeist of our times, metamodernism seeks to ‘deconstruct’, reconstruct, and transcend the polarities of postmodernism and modernism, embracing both sincerity and irony, idealism and pragmatism. It is a critical style or episteme that acknowledges the complexities of our world while daring to envision new possibilities for the future.
Within the realm of the metamodern lies the emerging field of metamodern theopoetics — a re-exploration of the sacred in the liminal space of uncertainty and flux. In Everything That Stands, I attempt to reconceptualise the sacred through this lens. The brothers’ journey through the wasteland re-languages, re-enchants, and transcends traditional notions of the divine, inviting readers to re-imagine the sacred in a time between worlds.
At the heart of this exploration is the oxymoron ‘symmetrical asymmetry’ – as counterpoint to Blake’s notion of ‘fearful symmetry’ in his poem ‘The Tyger’ – a concept that encapsulates the paradoxical nature of the sacred and profane in the creator and creation. I found Sean Holt’s striking image ‘Sacri-religious’ (accompanying this post), a useful visual representation of this paradox. His portrayal of a truncated body with bloodied hands serves as a powerful contrast to Blakean symmetry.
In SBH’s image, we are confronted with the raw, unfiltered reality of existence – simultaneously interconnected and disconnected – a reality that defies neat categorisations, and which challenges our preconceived notions of the sacred.
Just as in life, where balance is found not in perfect symmetry but in the harmonious interplay of asymmetrical elements, so too is the sacred found in the dynamic tension between the immanent and the transcendent, the finite and the infinite. As de Mello’s bird sings, unbound by the constraints of convention, so too do we find beauty in the chaotic and contradictory ebb and flow of existence. It is a dance of light and shadow, of creation and destruction, of hope and despair – a provisional interplay that defies explanation yet beckons us into its liminal space.
For those who have yet to dive into the world of Everything That Stands, I extend a warm invitation to join the conversation. Our culture of debate (and debate about culture) thrives on diverse perspectives and voices, and your participation would be welcome.
To conclude, let us continue, together, to explore the mysteries of existence, to challenge the boundaries of our understanding, and to embrace the symmetrical asymmetry that defines our shared humanity.
With anticipation and my best wishes,
A jornada continua,
Jeremy H.
‘Metamodernism seeks to ‘deconstruct’, reconstruct, and transcend the polarities of postmodernism and modernism.’ The use of the word ‘deconstruct’ is a very negative and conscious activity of postmodernism. It is the philosophy behind the cancel culture. The cancel culture is a way to collapse the status quo whether it is good or bad. It comes from the Marxist theory to deconstruct so that a new society can be reconstructed from the ashes.
Rita, this is an oddly superficial response to the complexity and depth of the original post. Jeremy appears to be striving to understand how the sacred might be un/re/covered after the disenchantments of both modernity and postmodernity.
Yet, this is ignored in favor of a comment that reeks of the very worst of today’s polarized political discourse.
In what sense is deconstruction negative? I recently needed to deconstruct my coffee grinder in order to be able to understand both its ‘nature’ or ‘constitution’ and why it wasn’t grinding coffee beans. And in doing so, I was able to reconstruct it so it served its purpose. Perhaps if I was more technically minded and enterprising, this deconstruction may have helped to make a different version altogether; a better version of itself. Hardly a negative endeavour.
My understanding of textual deconstruction is no different really. But Is this deconstruction always used constructively? Of course not. Such purity surely does not represent humanity. We are all walking contradictions. Perhaps, this is part of what symmetrical asymmetry is getting at, though I can’t pretend to know exactly what Jeremy means by this concept.
To then ascribe causality to cancel culture is deeply naive and partisan. It seems clear as day, especially given the next, odd, connection – or perhaps conflation -with so-called Marxism (as if such a thing can be reified and essentialized), that CC is being critiqued as something the ‘woke left’ does. What about the long history of the ‘right’ banning books in the USA (and elsewhere), because it did not agree with the morality, values, or worldview? This occurs with books that represent the secular status quo. This is surely, by your own definition, cancel culture before the term was weaponized by the right?
I can’t help but wonder if some close reading and deconstruction of these easily wielded terms (cancel culture, postmodernism, deconstruction, Marxism) might help us to develop a more complex picture of them. To see that text and context are always interplayed.
I don’t know that metamodernism is the answer (and even if it is, I don’t know how we could ever know for sure), but I don’t see why it would be something for anyone – no matter their ideological position – to be fearful of. And perhaps this is the diagnosis. Cancel culture emanating from both left and right appears, in part, driven by (perhaps understandable) fear. Fear often seems driven by a desire for certainty (instead, perhaps, of faith and hope). And latching onto certainty leads us to dogmatism, essentializing, fundamentalism, closed mindedness and hate (or at least unhealthy division – tribalism). I see this on both the so-called left and the so-called right.
So, something that is at least searching for the in-between seems worthy of our attention. Offering superficial responses that close down genuine reflection may well be simply irresponsible.