Towards transmodernism: transcendence, technospirituality, and technoculture

Abstract

This thesis argues that the pervasive merging of technocultural and sacred metaphors uncovers a longstanding Western tradition of inscribing the technologically new with the language of mysticism – a transcendental excess that underlies the logic of late capitalist notions of progress and evolution. By claiming that the transcendent moment has utterly saturated our technological desires, preserving an originary sense of the sacred at the inventive heart of science and technology, it sees this ‘technocultural transcendence’ as a model for thinking about an ironic return of grand narratives like metaphysics, truth, and the absolute, used wittingly to revitalise theory just as its last gasp has (perhaps prematurely) been proclaimed. The thesis therefore also seeks to theorise an emerging ‘transmodernity,’ or the post of postmodernism, through critical cultural readings of key transcendent myths in technoculture – Italian Futurism (art), cyberpunk (science fiction), cyberfeminism (film and performance art), and Integral theory (secular transformative spirituality). Each chapter offers examples of how the twinned concepts of transcendence and technology help create the conditions for the emergence of transmodernism, and works to provide potential examples of a resulting transmodern methodology in action. Throughout this thesis, the burgeoning desire for reconstructing what was once deconstructed, fragmented, and disavowed is examined, not to simply return past foci of theoretical enquiry to the margins or the marginalised to the centre, but to reveal the primary message of transmodernism – that both deconstruction and reconstruction hold equal significance on a continuum of understanding socio-cultural change. Fuelled by a growing sense of the interconnectivity that occurs with the multiplicity and diversity of information enabled by the internet, world wide web, and social networking channels, this thesis holds that its model of transmodernity represents interconnectivity laid bare. It is persistent renewal and eternal return, but with a witting nod to the process of culture’s perpetual becoming. It balances postmodernism’s dance of meaninglessness with the return of signification and purpose, reinserting the ‘Big Questions’ back into the fields of discourse – morality, ethics, truth, beauty, spirit – while remaining wary of their potential to generalise.