Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space and Metamodernism

Mateusz Naporowski

doi:10.18290/rkult26171.5

Published : 2026-03-30

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2026)

Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space and Metamodernism

Mateusz Naporowski

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9675-7507

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rkult26171.5

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space in relation to metamodernism. The article posits the compatibility of Bachelard’s thought with our present cultural moment and illustrates how the Bachelardian subject, through its communing with space, embodies the contemporary cultural paradigm that emphasizes oscillation, reconstruction, and negation of the negative. Due to the Bachelardian subject’s experience of space as simultaneously evoking (modernist) desire for sense and (postmodernist) senselessness, as atopos emphasizing effort in light of the inevitable failure, Bachelard’s space gets situated in the metamodern “between” category. Then, the oscillation between doubt and naivety, enacted by the subject communing with space and acquiring (self-)knowledge, shows that naivety is indispensable in an attempt to reconstruct being, while doubt can be productively repurposed. Furthermore, the navigation between affect and detachment evidences that the Bachelardian subject is affect-informed, open to contradictions, advocating for rediscovering authenticity in the spatial experience despite the detachment of the self occurring in the process. Instead, this ‘negative’ detachment figures as a productive force, opening the self up for future transformation.

Keywords:

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, metamodernism, oscillation, spatial experience

Details

References

Statistics

Authors

Download files

pdf

Citation rules

Naporowski, M. (2026). Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space and Metamodernism. Roczniki Kulturoznawcze, 17(1), 85–101. https://doi.org/10.18290/rkult26171.5

Altmetric indicators

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

References

Bachelard, Gaston. “Corrationalism and the Problematic.” Radical Philosophy, no. 173 (2012): 27–32. https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/corrationalism-and-the-problematic.

Bachelard, Gaston. Earth and Reveries of Repose. Translated by Mary McAllester Jones. Dallas: Dallas Institute Publications, 2011.

Bachelard, Gaston. Intuition of the Instant. Translated by Eileen Rizo-Patron. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2013.

Bachelard, Gaston. Introduction to The Poetics of Space, xv–xxxix. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge, 1992.

Bertens, Hans. The Idea of the Postmodern: A History. London: Routledge, 1995.

Casey, Edward S. “The Difference an Instant Makes: Bachelard’s Brilliant Breakthrough.” In Adventures in Phenomenology: Gaston Bachelard, edited by Eileen Rizo-Patron, Edward S. Casey, and John M. Wirth, 19–28. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2017.

Dahl, Matilda, Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, and Jenny Helin. “The Poetic Teaching Space: Gaston Bachelard and a Third Realm in Management Education.” Culture and Organization 28, no. 3–4 (2022): 362–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2021.2007917

Dumitrescu, Alexandra. “Interconnections in Blakean and Metamodern Space.” Double Dialogues 7 (2007). https://doubledialogues.com/article/interconnections-in-blakean-and-metamodern-space.

Dumitrescu, Alexandra. “What is Metamodernism and Why Bother? Meditations on Metamodernism as a Period Term and as a Mode.” Electronic Book Review, December 4, 2016. https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/what-is-metamodernism-and-why-bother-meditations-on-metamodernism-as-a-period-term-and-as-a-mode.

Edgar, Andrew. “Football and the Poetics of Space.” Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 9, no. 2 (2015): 153–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2015.1043179.

Eggers, Frank, and Sanna Pyykkö. “Intimacy, Detachment, and the (Post-)Postmodern Novel: Imagining Distance in Contemporary American Fiction.” American Literatures 2, no. 1 (2022): 4–18. https://doi.org/10.1163/26407679-02010002.

Ehrmann, Jacques. “Introduction to Gaston Bachelard.” MLN 81, no. 5 (1996): 572–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/2905937.

Furlani, Andre. Guy Davenport: Postmodern and After. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007.

Gibbons, Alison. “Metamodern Affect.” In Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth after Postmodernism, edited by Robin van den Akker, Alison Gibbons, and Timotheus Vermeulen, 83–86. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990.

Josephson Storm, Jason Ānanda. Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Kaplan, Edward K. “Gaston Bachelard’s Philosophy of Imagination: An Introduction.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 33, no. 1 (1972): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/210677.

Kleineberg, Michael. “Piaget as Metamodernist.” Metamodern Theory & Praxis 1, no. 1 (2024): 23–62.

Kotowicz, Zbigniew. Gaston Bachelard: A Philosophy of the Surreal. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.

Lane, Jeremy F. “Towards a Poetics of Consumerism: Gaston Bachelard’s ‘Material Imagination’ and Narratives of Post-War Modernisation.” French Cultural Studies 17, no. 1 (2006): 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957155806061317.

Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979.

Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Ground of the Image. Translated by Jeff Fort. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005.

Perraudin, Jean-François. “Bachelard’s ‘Non-Bergsonism’.” In Adventures in Phenomenology: Gaston Bachelard, edited by Eileen Rizo-Patron, Edward S. Casey, and John M. Wirth, 29–48. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2017.

Pruszinski, Jolyon G. R. “Interpreting Literary Ecologies and Extending Spheres of Concern: A Note on Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space for Eco-Theology.” Religions 12, no. 10 (2021): 891. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100891.

Rizo-Patron, Eileen. “Bachelard’s Hermeneutics: Between Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology.” In Adventures in Phenomenology: Gaston Bachelard, edited by Eileen Rizo-Patron, Edward S. Casey, and John M. Wirth, 107–26. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2017.

Shabanova, Yulia O. “Metamodernism Man in the Worldview Dimension of New Cultural Paradigm.” Anthropological Problems in the History of Philosophy 18 (2020): 121–31.

Stilgoe, John R. Foreword to the 1994 Edition. In The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard, translated by Maria Jolas, vii–x. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Toth, Josh. “Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the Rise of Historioplastic Metafiction.” In Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth after Postmodernism, 41–53. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.

Vermeulen, Timotheus, and Robin van den Akker. “Notes on Metamodernism.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 2, no. 1 (2010): Article 5677. https://doi.org/10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677.

Yousef, Tawfiq. “Modernism, Postmodernism, and Metamodernism: A Critique.” International Journal of Language and Literature 5, no. 1 (2017): 33–43.