John Gallaher on the New2 Sincerity and the New Spirituality

In a two-part conversation (part two forthcoming) with Weston Cutter at Kenyon Review's blog, John Gallaher offers further elaboration on his ideas of The New2 Sincerity and The New Spirituality, which began in May with this post from his blog.

A bit from the intro, where Gallaher begins to lay out his ideas:

WC: My understanding of what you’ve written is that the new New Sincerity is sincerity fully aware of the ironies/absurdities(/bewilderments) it’s risking but is serious about it’s earnestness anyway. Is that somewhat near? (I don’t want to rehash the sincerity stuff too much, both because 1) you’ve written a ton about it already on the blog and 2) I’m hugely more interested in the spirituality thing.) If that’s somewhat close, how/where does New Spirituality, as you conceive of it, enter? What (I’m gulping with awkwardness and hesitation even as I type this) is New Spirituality in poetry, to you, or what’s it do or look like?

JG: OK, I’m back. Yes, I think this is a good working definition of what’s going on right now:

“the new New Sincerity is sincerity fully aware of the ironies/absurdities(/bewilderments)”

And doesn’t that look like Negative Capability? Call it 21st Century Negative Capability then.

I’ve been skeptical of the way a lot of critics were able to notice or say they were, a kind of authorial irony, when the work itself is playing it straight. But on the other hand, the one truly ironic movement in the lat 20 years, Flarf, did participate in something like that very thing. But what of the next generation?

This seems to be what the zeitgeist is saying right now: “We meant it as a goof but somewhere on the way we became believers.” Or something like that. That’s why I’ve conflated The New New Sincerity and The New Spirituality. I think it’s the same general tendency. The spirituality of the past, the methods of devotion, now look quaint and some people play with them ironically . . . but postmodernism, in its various hodge-podges, allows a new kind of spiritual devotion. I think Kazim Ali and G.C. Waldrep are two of the best examples. But also Fanny Howe, Jean Valentine, Donald Revell, and Dana Levin . . .

And later, he takes a more direct approach than he has in blog posts past:

The historic situation we’ve found ourselves in, post WWII, that we’ve come to call post-modernity, if it can be said to have a reigning philosophy, it’s one of very heavy skepticism of grand narratives. In my estimation, that skepticism has been directed mostly at utopian thinking, or progressive thinking. If modernity ended at Auschwitz, post-modernity began there.

I hope this doesn’t sound too circuitous. I’ll jump ahead. The new existential dilemma is the same as the old one: how not to despair. With grand narratives under scrutiny and looked at skeptically, how does one not fall into a black hole of negative philosophy? In the face of the contemporary, one does not need to revert to a sort of dandyism of playful deconstruction and existential irony. This has been the charge against a lot of the art produced over the past couple decades, and has been espoused by some philosophers. Rorty, I think? I’m bad at remembering names. The philosophers of ephemera are often read this way. And whether or not poets believed they were working in this economy, they were often also read that way. Language Poetry was read this way by many. New York School poetry was read this way. Certainly the elliptical poets (who were they anyway? Jorie Graham?) and the larger next generation (which includes a lot of poets roughly my age) were read this way.

So, I think the reaction of The New2 Sincerity / New Spirituality is more against that grand narrative, the narrative that one must go into skepticism. I’m 46, it’s impossible for me to escape my skepticism, but I’m young enough to step outside the ironic stance. And how one deals with those two reigning mindsets reveals a lot. That, and, of course, one’s attitudes on such other grand narratives as The Personal Resonant Story, as in Narrative / Story itself.

But the outcome of the existential dilemma need not be despair–that’s a self-focused, understandable, outcome, but not the only one available. One can become interested in the welfare of others. One can get more Zen-like. There are many options outside of the ones offered us by the big consumer product drop.

People often think of the post-modern situation in art as one of pastiche and quick transitions which undercut each other ideologically and tonally . . . the pairing of dictions in a grand smearing of the power-vertical into the communal-horizontal. Those might have been the main tracks of artistic exploration from the 60s through the 90s, with various levels of appropriation and sincerity . . . but it’s just as appropriate to think of post-modernism in art as the full-scale wearing of whatever tradition one is drawn to. So that Surrealism and New York School can coexist as readily as, say, the direct use of survivor narratives that C.D. Wright is using right now. The project book is still huge, for this very reason. Rather than a flurry of masks, one can wear a longer sequence of masks, of subjects.

Stay tuned for part two.