Metamodernism as a Reconstruction of the Disrupted Unity of Being

The study argues that Ukrainian metamodernism extends beyond an aesthetic and literary tendency, emerging as an ontological system aimed at restoring the integrity of being fractured by postmodern deconstruction, which, among other manifestations, has materialized in the dissolution of large-scale state systems and the global restructuring of the world, and further intensified by the experience of war. The problem addressed by the study is that existing metamodernist scholarship is predominantly descriptive, focusing on the aesthetic features of the movement, such as oscillation, hyper- self-reflexivity, and New Sincerity, without providing a comprehensive metaphysical grounding for the phenomenon. The aim of this study is to construct an ontological conception of metamodernism as a reconstructive cultural paradigm capable of demonstrating, through cosmological models, theoretical sources, and contemporary Ukrainian texts by Serhiy Zhadan and Yurii Izdryk, how the fragmentation of being generates an impulse toward the reassembly of the lyrical subject, artistic spatiotemporality, the historical mosaic, and sacred meaning into a new, dynamically sustained unity. Particular attention is paid to the fundamental distinction between metamodernism and previous cultural paradigms. Whereas Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and Postmodernism successively negated one another (following O. Shynkarenko’s typology as trust in the visible, trust in the invisible, and total skepticism), metamodernism asserts a simultaneous affirmation of the entire spectrum of reality, neither rejecting nor simply reproducing previous worldviews, but building upon them. The study seeks to show that metamodernism is the only literary movement that does not abolish the preceding paradigm, but rather preserves it in a state of productive interaction according to the logic of “both-and, and at the same time neither”. The analysis establishes that the classical ontological triad (heaven – earth – the beyond) is complicated by a fourth dimension = hyperreality, a simulacrum of peace against the backdrop of war, while the lyrical subject emerges as a meta-subject, mediating between the profane and the sacred, the frontline and the home front, the archaic and eternal, and the present. The study concludes that the metamodern paradigm provides a productive analytical framework for interpreting texts generated by an unstable and traumatizing reality, as it enables the hybridization of mythopoetic thinking with reflective contemporaneity without sacrificing the sincerity of artistic expression. The proposed model also opens up prospects for further testing on materials from other literatures shaped by prolonged historical ruptures, including those emerging from the Yugoslav Wars, Middle Eastern conflicts, and postcolonial contexts.