“The 6th Face of Modernity” – Postmillennial Romanian Poetry and Metamodernism: Supernatural Naturalism, or the Poetics of Provision

This paper critically examines the metamodernization of Romanian poetry in the broader historical context of its post-communist culture. Metamodernism will be swiftly defined as “the 6th face of modernity” (with a nod to M. Călinescu) and as a form of “supernatural naturalism” (inverting M.H. Abrams’ famous formulation). The article then analyses the metamodern stylization of the lyrical subject (the corporeal lyric of the anonymous) in a posthuman framework. As a cultural sub-commodity chain, contemporary Romanian poetry and its “poetics of provision” can only be understood, it will be argued, within the matrix of neoliberal capitalism which produces a myriad of situated subjectivities of postmillennial consociates where the metamodern logistics of affect typically percolates.