Postmodernism by Jameson -- Article Summary and Themes

Fredric Jameson

Postmodernism -- Article Summary

Postmodernism originated in the 1950's-60s. Instead of visions of the future, there is a sense of endings of various movements, specifically Modernism. The article will examine whether there is really a difference between Postmodernism and Modernism, which is characterized by stylistic innovation.

Postmodernism is especially evident in architecture. High modernism in architecture is characterized by the destruction of the traditional city/neighborhood scape by building new, different sculptural structures that are jarringly different from the surroundings. PM opposes this, and supports structures that are "populist".

All views of Postmodernism are similar in that the border between high culture and mass or commercial culture is disappearing. Whereas Modernist creators discuss mass culture or allude to it, Mostmodernists embrace and merge with commercial culture. Aesthetic production is now integrated into the consumer market, where constant aesthetic (and content/essence) innovation has become the norm.

All postmodern theories also present a stance on politics and the effects of multinational capitalism on society and state affairs. Jameson seeks to propose a periodization, a periodical description, of the postmodern era. Postmodernism should be regarded only as a dominant cultural movement and not an absolute existing state of affairs.

Postmodernism is distinct from other movements that oppose Modernism because the reasons for opposition are different - Postmodernists don't think Modernistsists are subversive and immoral as the Victorians did. In Postmodernity obscene, political extremist, and explicit material are received quite complacently. The Postmodern movement is a manifestation of American economic and political dominance over the world. In that sense at the very least, it differs from Modernism.

Characteristics of Postmodernism:

• Depthlessness, image culture, and the simulacrum - art draws on different periods and mixes them in a pastiche, without much intent or depth, similar to Plato's simulacrum in which there are copies of an original which is only hypothetical
• A weakening of historicity and emergence of new temporality - increasingly we move from the synchronic to the diachronic (I think the other way around), and from a time-based experience to a space-based one.
• New technology and a new global economical system

In contemporary theory, an accepted theme is the "death" of the subject, that is, decentering of the individual. This is due either to the notion of the progressive breakup of organizational bureaucracy and the nuclear family or to the thought that individualism has always been a mere illusion. In Modernism individual style depends on the centricity of the subject. This is refuted in PM. This signals the end of individualism and the sense of unique self. With these end individual emotions, and instead, there are available collective emotions floating around unembodied.

With the loss of individualism, the pastiche (a blend of many sources) emerges. With modernism came an explosion of styles, linguistic and artistic, which fought against the norm so well that the norm was canceled, leaving a neutrally heterogeneous mass of ideas and styles. Similarly, in politics, countries are run by economic leaders in a free-for-all rather than an organized system of heads of state. This is pastiche, and pastiche has replaced parody. While the motives of parody were to deride and criticize, pastiche is a genuine meshing of styles, a natural process, and a result of the times that is not self-aware. This is exemplified in architecture where styles from different eras are utilized together. 

Currently, inspiration is increasingly being drawn from eras largely forgotten. This bringing of the past into the present prepares a future in which diachronicity is no longer relevant, and where temporalities merge in an orgiastic simulacrum. This process, however, is not ignorant or indifferent. Instead, different periods are called upon in a deliberate attempt at overstimulation. This stems from nostalgia.

*not sure I agree- ppl aren’t well educated and yet have access to manufacture and create and influence culture, and they use different influences in ignorance.

Modernism has seen a proliferation of unique styles and the preference of quality over quantity. The multitude of styles causes fragmentation so that social norms are no longer definable. The contradiction of this by postmodernism results in bland, impersonal language whose roots are untraceable. Culture is global. Thus when new creators attempt to draw upon the past they cannot because historicality is irrelevant with so much fragmentation ongoing.

Schizophrenia (symbolically rather than medically), according to Lacan, is when the continuity between signifiers that construct our language breaks down. The signifier no longer points to the correct signified and confusion ensues. All this happens in the schizophrenic brain. Through this view of illness we can reach the characteristics of the workings of the healthy mind:

Schizophrenics' temporal organization is damaged. Similarly, postmodern literature is disjointed and from all sorts of different sources. Postmodern theory has to do with finding differences rather than unifying them. Even though there are many different detached and unrelated details contained in the same work, the job of the postmodern viewer is to take them all in at once.

In precapitalist times, Burke and Kant identified the sublime as something that threatens human life and as something that lies at the edge of human consciousness. That something was divinity or nature, but in postmodern times there are different fears from nature or god. The fears now lie in technology, and in dystopian scenarios that are frequently imagined in which technology turns against us.

According to Marxism, technological development is driven by money. Ernest Mandel says that money was the motivation that brought about three "quantum leaps" of the different kinds of engines since the industrial revolution. Jameson identifies three stages in capitalism: market capitalism, the monopoly stage, and multinational capital. Mandel says this latest form of capitalism is well explained by Marxist theory because money has driven business to new extreme global lengths. This is congruent with Jameson's identification of three historical/cultural periods of realism, modernism, and postmodernism. In each of these times, Jameson says, the sublime is differently represented. It was once fast-moving vehicles and now it's the computer, and there is a movement from explosive to implosive, extroverted to contained, from production to reproduction. This results in art that mimics. However, postmodern works sometimes shed light or reveal the inner workings of the reproductive process and this is characteristic of postmodernism – meta-reflectiveness and awareness of self-reflexive processes.

However, it is not technology itself that is sublime but that which it represents, which is multinational capitalism. It is a huge intricate network of power and this is fascinating and beyond our grasp. This is illustrated in cyberpunk where multinational information companies fight each other for information at a level of complexity that is beyond human comprehension.

So, this has been a historical rather than merely stylistic concept of postmodernism. Some view postmodernism as one style among many and others as "the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism" (I guess he is of the latter school). Jameson is disdainful about people who are super enthusiastic about PM aesthetics and rave about the fantastic properties of new technology. Judgments of morality or immorality should not be ascribed to postmodernism.

Themes

• Nihilism
• The end of Modernism
• PM may be confused with M
• Merging of high and mass culture

Style and devices

• So many digressions and () and tangents

Keywords

• PM
• Architecture
• Reification (the conversion of abstract concepts or people into things; depersonalization)