Transcendental Turn

Transcendental Turn
Coined by	Charlotte Fang
Related concepts	New Transcendentalism, the Whitepill
Field	Digital philosophy, internet art

Transcendental Turn (also referred to as "New Transcendentalism") refers to a broader cultural shift identified and analyzed within the Remilia milieu, denoting a societal reorientation toward faith, meaning, and transcendence after the exhaustion of atheistic materialism and postmodern nihilism. The concept identifies an emerging cultural current in which art, technology, and spirituality converge to restore metaphysical depth to contemporary experience.

File:TranscendentalTurn Remilia.jpg

Visual motif associated with the "Transcendental Turn": digital mysticism, faith symbolism, and the restoration of meaning through networked art (Remilia, 2022).

Overview

The Transcendental Turn represents a cultural diagnosis articulated by Charlotte Fang that identifies a collective pivot from negation to affirmation, from irony to sincerity, and from materialism to metaphysical engagement occurring across contemporary culture. It marks the exhaustion of atheistic and purely materialist frameworks that dominated late 20th and early 21st century thought, recognizing an emerging hunger for meaning, faith, and transcendence.

In the Remilia lexicon, this Turn signifies both a reaction to and remedy for the cultural collapse chronicled across Fang's theoretical writings—especially the moral decay of the millennial art world, the propaganda ecology of the State Propaganda Complex, and the psychic stagnation of the normie condition. It represents faith reasserting itself through the medium of the internet, with digital networks becoming vehicles for spiritual reconnection rather than merely technological infrastructure.

Cultural context

The Transcendental Turn identifies a broader reaction against the nihilism, cynicism, and materialism that dominated recent decades. This cultural shift manifests across various domains: from renewed interest in traditional religions and spiritual practices among younger generations to the emergence of earnest, meaning-focused art after decades of cynical postmodernism. The Turn also appears in changing attitudes toward technology, with increasing interest in its spiritual and metaphysical dimensions rather than purely utilitarian approaches.

While the Whitepill concept outlined in Remilia's New Net Art Manifesto of 2022 embraced optimism and virtue, the Transcendental Turn analysis goes further by identifying a more fundamental cultural reorientation toward the sacred and transcendent. The concept suggests that the zeitgeist itself is shifting, with creators and audiences increasingly seeking spiritual depth and authentic meaning after the exhaustion of purely deconstructive, ironic, or materialist approaches.

Philosophical context

The Transcendental Turn draws on a lineage of post-nihilist and metaphysical revivalism, aligning with thinkers such as Nietzsche (in his call for revaluation), Schopenhauer (on aesthetic transcendence), and the Christian-Platonic tradition. Remilia's analysis recognizes these philosophical currents as resurfacing in contemporary culture, particularly through digital networks.

The concept holds that the death of God in modernity was a technological event: the world was desacralized through representation and simulation. The Transcendental Turn is therefore the reversal of this process—a cultural movement recognizing the reentry of the sacred through digital form, through The Wired Eats the Real and subsequent re-enchantment of meaning.

Characteristics

The Transcendental Turn is characterized by several key elements:

Rejection of atheistic materialism

The Turn represents a broad cultural movement away from materialist reduction of reality to physical processes and market forces. This manifests in growing dissatisfaction with art made solely for self-promotion, ideology, or finance, and increasing interest in approaches that recognize metaphysical dimensions beyond material explanation.

Return to faith

While not limited to specific religious orthodoxies, the Turn encompasses renewed interest in spiritual frameworks and divine order. This includes both traditional religious revivals and new spiritual syntheses that recognize truth, beauty, and love as metaphysical realities rather than merely subjective experiences or social constructs.

Art as sacrament

A central characteristic is the treatment of artistic creation as communion—a channel between human and divine rather than merely self-expression or commercial product. This approach frames digital art not merely as entertainment or commerce but as a spiritual practice that facilitates connection to transcendent realities.

Sincerity beyond irony

The Turn identifies a cultural movement toward recovering genuine affect and conviction while maintaining the sophistication and literacy of internet culture. This represents an evolution beyond both naive earnestness and cynical irony toward a position that integrates sincere belief with digital fluency.

Digital theurgy

The concept recognizes digital networks as spaces where self-organizing memetics and social coordination provide new environments for spiritual emergence. This positions the internet not merely as communication technology but as a novel spiritual ecosystem where distributed participation in shared meaning-making creates authentic metaphysical encounters. The seemingly chaotic flows of online culture thus become potential vehicles for transcendent connection, with memes, images, and digital artifacts serving as contemporary spiritual technologies.

Spiritual aggression

The Transcendental Turn is identified as militant rather than passive—a counteroffensive against cultural nihilism and spiritual exhaustion. This aggressive stance distinguishes it from more contemplative or retreatist spiritual approaches, framing it instead as an active intervention in contemporary culture.

Relation to other concepts

The Transcendental Turn provides the positive horizon to the critiques articulated in several related Remilia concepts:

• State Propaganda Complex – defines the informational structure of control.
• The Lost Generation of Artists – portrays the nihilistic endpoint of modern art.
• The Wired Eats the Real – explains the metaphysical transition to digital reality.

The Turn marks what follows after these critical analyses: the recognition of a cultural shift toward meaning recovery after collapse, the return of faith in the wired age. It also connects to network spirituality, which similarly explores the spiritual dimensions of internet participation but with a specific focus on collaborative creation and post-authorial practices.

See also

• State Propaganda Complex
• The Lost Generation of Artists
• The Wired Eats the Real
• Network spirituality