New Sincerity

English new sincerity Etymology Popularized in the 1990s by American author David Foster Wallace. Proper noun New Sincerity 1 en arts A partial return to modernism, going against prevailing modes of postmodernist irony or cynicism. en https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/11/sincerity-not-irony-is-our-ages-ethos/265466/ Sincerity, Not Irony, Is Our Age's Ethos The Atlantic 2012-11-20 Jonathan D. Fitzgerald [Christy Wampole] notes that the New Sincerity has been around since the 1980s, and is a response to "postmodern cynicism, detachment and meta-referentiality." She's right about that, and the examples she cites—David Foster Wallace, Wes Anderson, and Cat Power—are right too. But the New Sincerity failed, she tells us. https://web.archive.org/web/20260806232206/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/11/sincerity-not-irony-is-our-ages-ethos/265466/ 6 August 2026 See also en metamodernism