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Brent Cooper is a geopolitical sociologist, avant-guardian of metamodern thought and savage constructive-critic of his peers and opponents alike. His transdisciplinary approach draws focus to paradoxical knowledge-power dynamics and dysfunctional elite-mass relations, with particular attention to systemic conspiracy, globalisation and culture wars. He is on Medium and YouTube.

Metamodernism After the Honeymoon

Brent Cooper, Integration, and the Question of Power

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Over the past decade, metamodernism has emerged as a hopeful answer to a widespread sense of cultural exhaustion. If modernism believed too confidently in progress, and postmodernism dismantled belief without replacing it, metamodernism promises something different: a way to rebuild meaning without denying complexity, contradiction, or historical trauma.

At its best, metamodernism says: we know better now, but we still have to act.

Yet as the discourse has grown, so have tensions about what metamodernism actually is—and what it is for. Is it a cultural sensibility? A developmental framework? A political project? A spiritual orientation? Or merely a new vocabulary for old habits?

Brent Cooper's work enters this space not as a rejection of metamodernism, but as a confrontation with its unfinished business. His central claim is simple and uncomfortable: metamodernism cannot remain neutral, abstract, or managerial in a world defined by structural injustice and planetary crisis. If it does, it becomes part of the problem it claims to solve.

What Metamodernism Got Right

To understand Cooper's intervention, it helps to start with what he shares with other metamodernists.

Across its major schools—often loosely grouped as Dutch (cultural-aesthetic), Nordic (developmental-political), and Integral-adjacent—metamodernism agrees on several core insights:

• Postmodern critique exposed real problems but failed to build viable alternatives
• Reality is complex, multi-layered, and full of paradox
• “Both/and” thinking is superior to rigid binaries
• Meaning, coherence, and shared narratives must be reconstructed, not abandoned
• The future cannot be solved by regression to modern certainty or ironic detachment

Cooper fully endorses this diagnosis. His work is deeply invested in abstraction, synthesis, systems thinking, and integrative reasoning. In that sense, he belongs squarely inside the metamodern project.

The disagreement begins not with the diagnosis—but with what comes next.

Where the Trouble Starts: Abstraction Without Accountability

Much of contemporary metamodern discourse, Cooper argues, stalls at a dangerous threshold. It becomes very good at talking about complexity while remaining evasive about power.

Cultural metamodernism often limits itself to describing a “structure of feeling”—how art, media, and subjectivity oscillate between sincerity and irony. Developmental metamodernism emphasizes psychological growth, prosocial norms, and enlightened governance. Integral theory adds sophisticated maps of consciousness and stage development.

All of this can be useful. But Cooper insists that something crucial is missing.

When abstraction is not tethered to history, institutions, and material consequences, it begins to float. When integration is pursued without political commitment, it becomes a form of avoidance. And when synthesis replaces conflict rather than confronting it, injustice gets quietly rebranded as “immaturity” or “misalignment.”

This is what Cooper calls fliminality: spaces that sound radical and integrative, but function conservatively by refusing to take sides where sides are unavoidable.

The Question Metamodernism Can't Dodge

Cooper repeatedly returns to a single test question:

Who benefits from this synthesis—and who pays for it?

A metamodernism that cannot answer this question, he argues, is not neutral. It is complicit.

This is where his work diverges sharply from many peers. Cooper insists that metamodernism must grapple directly with:

• Capitalism as a structural system, not a background condition
• Colonialism, racism, and imperial power as historical facts, not cultural “traumas”
• Institutions, funding structures, and epistemic gatekeeping
• The difference between reconciliation and restitution

Without this, integration becomes a kind of ethical laundering—absorbing critique without allowing it to change outcomes.

Why History Matters More Than Stages

Nowhere is this clearer than in Cooper's critique of Integral theory and its influence on metamodern spaces.

Ken Wilber's Integral framework offers powerful tools: multi-perspectival analysis, developmental awareness, and the reminder that partial truths must be integrated rather than absolutized. Cooper does not dismiss these contributions.

But he draws a hard line at how developmental hierarchies are used.

When political disagreement is framed as a matter of “earlier” versus “later” stages, power disappears from view. Structural violence becomes a misunderstanding. Resistance becomes immaturity. And historical oppression is quietly reframed as a lag in consciousness.

Cooper argues that this is not a minor flaw but a fundamental distortion. History does not unfold as a smooth spiral. It unfolds through struggle, exploitation, revolt, and uneven development. To ignore this is not enlightenment—it is erasure.

Black Metamodernism and the Recovery of Lost Lineages

One of Cooper's most important contributions is his insistence that metamodernism did not originate in Europe or elite theory circles alone.

Long before the term existed, Black radical thinkers, anti-colonial movements, and abolitionist traditions were already practicing metamodern logic: holding contradiction, integrating care and critique, imagining futures beyond existing systems while confronting violence head-on.

What Cooper calls Black Metamodernism is not an identity category or cultural niche. It is a historical correction.

By foregrounding Afro-futurism, Black sociology, and decolonial thought, Cooper challenges the implicit assumption that metamodernism is something newly “discovered” by Western theorists. Instead, he shows how these traditions were marginalized precisely because they were politically threatening, not philosophically underdeveloped.

Abstraction as a Moral Practice

At the heart of Cooper's work is a defense of abstraction—not as escape, but as responsibility.

For him, abstraction is not about floating above reality. It is about seeing systems clearly enough to intervene in them. Done well, abstraction connects the personal, the institutional, and the planetary. Done poorly, it becomes a shield against accountability.

This is why Cooper refuses a “post-political” metamodernism. In a world of ecological collapse, genocide, and extreme inequality, refusing to take a position is itself a position.

Metamodernism Grows Up

Cooper's stance is often uncomfortable, and intentionally so. He does not present himself as the final authority or a finished synthesis. He openly acknowledges uncertainty, exhaustion, and the risks of overreach.

But his challenge is clear: if metamodernism cannot confront power, it will be remembered as a beautiful failure.

To mature, metamodernism must move beyond sensibility and self-mapping into institutional courage. It must accept that synthesis is not a vibe, but a burden. And it must recognize that integration without justice is not wisdom—it is delay.

In that sense, Cooper does not stand against metamodernism. He stands at the place where it must decide what it is willing to become.