STRUCTURE OF FEELING, INFORMED NAIVETY AND CONSTRUCTIVE PESSIMISM: METAMODERN ONTOLOGIES AND PERFORMATIVITY OF HOPE IN JEANETTE WINTERSON’S THE STONE GODS

Abstract

This paper examines Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods as a paradigmatic articulation of metamodern aesthetics, foregrounding its recursive temporal structure wherein historical repetition converges with the inexorability of planetary collapse. Through the theoretical lens of Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker’s concept of “oscillation,” the analysis reveals The Stone Gods formal and thematic navigation between modernist sincerity and postmodern irony. Winterson’s narrative resists reductive binaries of utopian optimism and dystopian fatalism, instead advancing a complex dialectic that encapsulates the affective ambivalences of the contemporary condition. By situating ecological catastrophe alongside the reemergence of human desire for authentic connection, The Stone Gods interrogates the ontological and ethical tensions engendered by technocratic excess. This paper thus argues that Winterson’s work constitutes a distinctive literary instantiation of the metamodern sensibility—one that reimagines futurity not through naïve idealism or cynical despair, but through a mode of affective reflexivity attuned to the contradictions of the Anthropocene.

This paper argues that The Stone Gods exemplifies the metamodern aesthetic through its portrayal of “informed naivety” in the characters of Billie Crusoe and Spike, whose recurring consciousnesses navigate the tension between postmodern disillusionment and a renewed commitment to idealism. Winterson’s novel serves as a site where postmodern cynicism is not merely subverted but transformed into a renewed and pragmatic mode of hopefulness. The narrative’s entanglement with speculative futurity, ecological crisis, and posthumanist thought underscores its ethical urgency and formal innovation. By collapsing the oppositional logic of utopian promise and dystopian despair, The Stone Gods transcends genre conventions, offering a reconfigured “structure of feeling” that speaks to the affective complexities and moral exigencies of the Anthropocene. In reconfiguring narrative form and affect, The Stone Gods transcends its status as mere literary artefact, emerging instead as a conceptual intervention that actively shapes and interrogates the evolving discourse of metamodern cultural production.