''Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism'' is a 1991 book by
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Ruff Jameson (April 14, 1934 – September 22, 2024) was an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He was best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmode ...
, in which the author offers a critique of
modernism
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
and
postmodernism
Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...
from a
Marxist
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
perspective. The book began as a 1984 article in the ''
New Left Review
The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal, established in 1960, which analyses international politics, the global economy, social theory, and cultural topics from a leftist perspective.
History Background
As part of the emergin ...
''. It has been presented as his "most wide-ranging and accessible book".
Overview
Jameson defines
postmodernism
Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...
as the cultural system of a global, financialized stage of
capitalist society
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a n ...
. Jameson argues that postmodernism is characterized by a "crisis of historicity", a "waning of affect", and a prevalence of pastiche. He traces these characteristics of postmodernism across a variety of fields and media, including film, television, literature, economics, architecture, and philosophy. In one of his most prominent examples, he draws out the differences between modernism and postmodernism by comparing
Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artwork ...
's "Peasant Shoes" with
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (;''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''"Warhol" born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol ...
's "Diamond Dust Shoes". For Jameson, postmodernism, as a form of mass-culture driven by capitalism, pervades every aspect of our daily lives.
Background and analysis of postmodernism
In 1984, during his tenure as Professor of Literature and
History of Consciousness
History of Consciousness is the name of a department in the Humanities Division of the University of California, Santa Cruz with a 50+ year history of interdisciplinary research and student training in "established and emergent disciplines and fi ...
at the
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...
, Jameson published an article titled "Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" in the journal ''
New Left Review
The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal, established in 1960, which analyses international politics, the global economy, social theory, and cultural topics from a leftist perspective.
History Background
As part of the emergin ...
''. This controversial article, which Jameson later expanded into a book, was part of a series of analyses of postmodernism from the dialectical perspective Jameson had developed in his earlier work on narrative. Jameson viewed the postmodern "skepticism towards
metanarrative
In social theory, a metanarrative (also master narrative, or meta-narrative and grand narrative; or ) is an overarching narrative about smaller historical narratives, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a (a ...
s" as a "mode of experience" stemming from the conditions of intellectual labor imposed by the
late capitalist mode of production.
Postmodernists claimed that the complex differentiation between "spheres" or fields of life (such as the political, the social, the cultural, the commercial), and between distinct social classes and
role
A role (also rôle or social role) is a set of connected behaviors, rights, obligations, beliefs, and norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation. It is an
expected or free or continuously changing behavior and may have a given indi ...
s within each field, had been overcome by the
crisis of foundationalism and the consequent relativization of truth-claims. For example, in ''The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'' (1979), which helped establish the term "postmodernism",
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard (; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and p ...
described a shaken or failed
public trust
The concept of public trust relates back to the origins of democratic government and its seminal idea that within the public lies the true power and future of a society; therefore, whatever ''trust'' citizens place in its officials must be respe ...
in the promise of enlightenments, faiths, or governments, with their metanarratives of epistemic or historical
progress
Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the set of advancements in technology, science, and social organization effic ...
, leaving individuals to their own experiences. This was sometimes criticized as a metanarrative about the end of metanarratives and therefore considered ironic or
paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true or apparently true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictor ...
ical.
Jameson argued against postmodernists, asserting that these phenomena had or could have been understood successfully within a modernist framework; the postmodern failure to achieve this understanding implied an abrupt break in the dialectical refinement of thought. In his view, postmodernity's merging of all discourse into an undifferentiated whole was the result of the colonization of the cultural sphere, which had retained at least partial autonomy during the prior modernist era, by a newly organized
corporate capitalism
In social science and economics, corporate capitalism is a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical and bureaucratic corporations.
Overview
In the developed world, corporations dominate the marketplace, compri ...
. Following
Adorno and
Horkheimer's analysis of the
culture industry
The term culture industry () was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", o ...
, Jameson discussed this phenomenon in his critical discussion of architecture, film, narrative, and visual arts, as well as in his strictly philosophical work.
Two of Jameson's best-known claims from ''Postmodernism'' are that post-modernity is characterized by "
pastiche
A pastiche () is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, music, or architecture that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche pays homage to the work it imitates, rather than mocking ...
" and a "crisis in
historicity
Historicity is the historical actuality of persons and events, meaning the quality of being part of history instead of being a historical myth, legend, or fiction. The historicity of a claim about the past is its factual status. Historicity deno ...
". Jameson argues that parody (which implies a moral judgment or a comparison with societal norms) was replaced by pastiche (
collage
Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...
and other forms of juxtaposition without a normative grounding). Jameson recognizes that
modernism
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
frequently "quotes" from different cultures and historical periods, but he argues that
postmodern
Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...
cultural texts indiscriminately cannibalize these elements, erasing any sense of critical or historical distance and resulting in pure pastiche. Relatedly, Jameson argues that the postmodern era suffers from a crisis in historicity: "there no longer does seem to be any organic relationship between the American history we learn from schoolbooks and the lived experience of the current, multinational, high-rise,
stagflated city of the newspapers and of our own everyday life".
Jameson's analysis of postmodernism attempts to view it as historically grounded; he therefore explicitly rejects any moralistic opposition to postmodernity as a cultural phenomenon, and continued to insist upon a Hegelian immanent critique that would "think the cultural evolution of late capitalism dialectically, as catastrophe and progress all together". His refusal to simply dismiss postmodernism from the onset, however, was misinterpreted by some Marxist intellectuals as an implicit endorsement of postmodern views.
Table of contents
Contents:
#The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism: pp. 1–54.
#Theories of the Postmodern: 55–66.
#Surrealism Without the Unconscious: 67–96.
#Spatial Equivalents in the World System: 97–129.
#Reading and the Division of Labor: 131–153.
#Utopianism After the End of Utopia: 154–180.
#Immanence and Nominalism in Postmodern Theoretical Discourse: 181–259.
#Postmodernism and the Market: 260–278.
#Nostalgia for the Present: 279–296.
#Secondary Elaborations: 297–418.
ource
The Ource () is a long river in northeastern France, a right tributary of the river Seine. Its source is in the Haute-Marne department, 2 km south of Poinson-lès-Grancey. It flows generally northwest. It joins the Seine at Bar-sur-Seine ...
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See also
*
Late capitalism
The concept of late capitalism (in German: ''Spätkapitalismus''), also known as late-stage capitalism, was first used by the German social scientist Werner Sombart (1863–1941) in 1928, to describe the new capitalist order emerging at that tim ...
Notes
References
External links
''Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism'' parts of chapter one
1991 non-fiction books
Books about globalization
Books by Fredric Jameson
20th century in philosophy
Continental philosophy literature
Duke University Press books
English-language non-fiction books
Marxist books
Political philosophy literature
Works about postmodernism
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