The Cultural Logical of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson, a response
Through this piece, Jameson suggests that “it is in the realm of architecture that the modifications of aesthetics are most dramatically visible...it was indeed from architectural debates that my own conception of postmodernism... initially began to emerge. ” I believe that he was right on seeing architecture at first as a tool to device postmodernism. This period is characterized by a worship of technology and the absence of proximity to revolution. This factors draw people closer to architecture as an art form, since it combines the aesthetic elements and the technology. Jameson also argues that the “aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods.” This concept is clearly shown through the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles by John Portman. This building aims to be the replacement or the equivalent of the city through its design. This is the idea behind the representation of the novel-seeming goods of the aesthetic production. Lastly, I believe that architecture is the most ‘productive’ art form, for that it serves the purpose of fulfilling aesthetic demands and a practical purpose of filling space where people can live in.
Throughout his writing, Jameson utilizes examples of art and architecture to provide physical examples for his theoretical characteristics for postmodernism. For example, he discusses Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes to reveal how pop art and photorealism fostered a new expressionism, flatness, and depthlessness, and highlighted even further through the use of the photographic negative. Hence, pop art represents our ideas and stereotypes of the past, which Jameson feels postmodernism has lost touch with, and instead is replaced with a simulacra of that history that is incomprehensible to the postmodern individual. He also explains that these cultural productions may exhibit some sort of feeling, but not necessarily emanating from the object itself. Jameson provides the unbearable silence breaks in John Cage’s music, the clipped sentence structure of Bob Perelman’s poem China, and Nam June Paik’s stacked TV screens portraying different varied images at once to reveal how the old aesthetic viewer would place value on each individual word, line, or image whereas the postmodern viewer finds it impossible to connect all of the meaning in between the spaces and silences and screens that consist of life. Rather, the feeling is free-floating in a sense that Jameson feels is “impersonal and dominated by a particular kind of euphoria.” Hence, fragmentation leads to new superimposed meanings that ultimately result in more depthless meaning, resulting aesthetic productions becoming merely commodity productions. This meaning that derives from negative space ultimately leads Jameson to a negative definition of postmodernism: “the incapacity of our minds, at least in at present, to map the great global multinational and decentered communicational network in which we find ourselves caught as individual subjects.” This fragmentation, however, is enhanced even further through technological innovation. He believes that culture is increasingly dominated by spatial logic, similar to the theories of Manuel Castells, and also demonstrated through John Barth’s “Click.” For example, in Barth’s hypertextuality of life, or the possibility to click on one link to another on the internet can lead to an endless multitude of meaning, connecting individuals on an international scale. This motion is similar to postmodern “schizophrenic writing”- or the breakdown of the signifying chain and interlocking signifiers to create an “utterance” or meaning that in generated not in a one-to-one relationship but through a series of movements. Thus, Jameson argues that our daily lives are dominated by categories of space rather than time because of the technological mediums that drastically shrink space horizontally and create a new sort of motion within this defined “unlimited” space.
Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism essay “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” was personally a confusing read for me considering our class discussion regarding commodities on Tuesday. One section that was particularly hard for me to understand was in his discussion of art work by Van Gogh and Andy Warhol, both pieces representing worker’s shoes. Jameson states that Van Gogh’s painting reflects a presentation of raw materials articulating “the world of agricultural misery, of stark rural poverty, and the whole rudimentary human world of backbreaking peasant toil.” He states that this is original artwork, meaning that it is not a manipulation of someone else’s work and has an essence of truth and emotional meaning. He then compares Van Gogh’s work to Andy Warhol’s “Diamond Dust Shoes” painting, a work that Jameson feels lacks immediacy of time and relevancy to modern life, in addition to being separated from the truth as it is commoditized. He says that Warhol’s painting is a work of fashion to be placed in glamour magazines, a fetish, if you will. He says the work is a painting of shoes hanging “like so many turnips.” Jameson’s interpretation of Warhol’s painting as being flat and lacking depth, is superficial. Jameson believes the work is incapable of revolutionary intent, thus superficially representing postmodern art. What confuses me is the idea of commodification. Is Warhol’s painting disregarded by Jameson because it can be related to the influences of advertising and reproductive technologies because it could be used in fashion or glamour magazine ads, or is it disregarded because it lacks an emission of emotion like Van Gogh’s “Peasant Shoes?”
In the writing of “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” Frederic Jameson relies heavily on examples of architecture and art to show a difference in postmodern and modernity. He is especially fond of architecture, as it was through this medium that his own conception of post modernism came to be. I found this reading to be rather difficult and confusing. There is, however, a link between this text and political movements of the late 20th century. Jameson says that “ the postmoderns have, in fact, been fascinated precisely by this whole “degraded” landscape of schlock and kitsch, of TV series and Reader's Digest culture, of advertising and motels, of the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film..” Anti-globalization movements such the ones that were active in the “Battle of Seattle” (riots) that took place in 1999. These groups are often made up of people who eschew the cultural norms in favor of a more base existence, and who would like to see the federal government changed or even dissolved. Jameson says that “American postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world..” In this way, the members of the revolutionary groups certainly would rally against the nature of postmodernism. It not only represents the culture that they detest, but also the government oversight that they organize against.
Jameson focuses on pastiche as a theme in postmodernism, specifically in film and literature. He also refers to this pastiche as a form of simulacrum. Describing the different areas in which postmodernism has manifested such as: historicity, novels, art work, film and architecture to name a few; Jameson implicitly asserts that postmodernism has a particular exclusivity in that it speaks its postmodernist message in terms which a modernist audience would best understand. Although postmodernism works to create its dialectical image, in the page which Jameson describes The Book of Daniel seems to be in terms of modernist literature, which causes his analysis to project a somewhat phantasmagoric notion. He does present the change and what is seen in the dialectical image, but in his comparative explanation's efforts to differentiate postmodernism from its predecessor (or as modernism's component)he seems unable to escape modernist thinking. (Note: Perhaps this is in his efforts to examine both, and maybe he is writing such that his description is purposely tailored to this effect. I have a very preliminary understanding, and this is my take. {ie: disclaimer}) Jameson does however, in his example of Bonaventure, describe postmodern architecture and what it actually does, rather than being a function of modernism. He captures the spatial quality that postmodernist works (literature, etc.) seem to encompass, stating that “I am more at a loss when it comes to conveying the thing itself.” Here lies two important observations: the vastness (physically, sensory and figuratively) of the postmodern and its object; as well as the postmodern object/artifact’s tendency to mean something and serve as a function rather than exist for its own sake. Question: By naming postmodernism in terms of the “logic of late capitalism”, does Jameson connect with Badiou by implying that postmodernism is fidelity to Globalization 3.0, or late capitalism?
I thought it was interesting that Jameson used architecture to talk about Postmodernism, especially since he said in the first paragraph that that the major characteristic of what is called “postmodernism” is that it focuses on “the end” of things. At first, I didn’t really see a building as representing “the end”, and even before I read any more I was already balking at the idea of architecture representing postmodernism. I kept thinking “A building is a thing. Why then is a skyscraper representing postmodernism?” Was it because nothing else could be built there? Or was it because it couldn’t go any higher? Then my thought was, why not tear it down and start all over again? Wouldn’t that give you a chance to continue? Then, when I finished reading the third paragraph, I saw Jameson’s explanation—that (modern?) architecture resembled postmodernism because it “destroyed the fabric of the traditional city”. That was an interesting way of looking at it, but it made sense. I mean, personally, I’d never looked at it that way—that a skyscraper destroys the picture of a traditional urban neighborhood. I mean, when I think of skyscrapers, I think of New York and really, I think that the skyscrapers make up the New York skyline. Maybe that’s just the way I grew up, but I don’t think that the skyscrapers and such symbols of capitalism “distort” the fabric of the city. Moving on, agreed that art is driven by commercialism and capitalism. Skyscrapers are just one example. Really, modern day art is pretty much all advertising, isn’t it? If advertising is our modern art and culture, then that would mean commercialism completely defines are culture. I think that’s a shame because it allows no real creativity. Everything must be done, not according to the artist’s standards, but to the companies’ standards.
Frederic Jameson’s essay “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” touches on many interesting points on the downfall of post-modernism. One of the most interesting of these points is how the evolution of art and media forms in recent years has contributed to a new mass culture society. He writes, “The postmodernisms have, in fact, been fascinated precisely by this whole ‘degraded’ landscape of schlock and kitsch, of TV series and Reader’s Digest culture, of advertising and motels, of the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film, of so-called paraliterature, with its airport paperback categories of the gothic and the romance, the murder mystery, and the science fiction or fantasy novel” (2). The idea of commoditization of culture is very relevant to this statement. It lends to the recognizing of a shift in how people consume in society. What Jameson seems to be interested in here, as well as post-modernists, is the idea of easily-consumable art and media cultures. Through celebration of technology, we can see how the rapid growth of technological advancements in recent years has made our society one that craves something new and wonderful almost all the time, and with quick pace. We are obsessed with the newest celebrity scandal, the newest pop idol, the newest micro-gadget from whatever software company, and we seem to expect all of them to happen right now. Advancements in technology make all of these examples and their cousins easier and easier and to access, and we get frustrated when we do not immediately see results because of glitches or fluctuations in their making. The “degraded landscape” then that Jameson describes could then be attributed to the idea of valuing quantity of quality, speed over. According to Jameson, “Theories of the postmodern…bear a strong resemblance to all those more ambitious sociological generalizations which, at much the same time, bring us the news of the arrival and inauguration of a whole new type of society, most famously baptized “post-industrial” society but often also designated consumer society, media society, information society, electronic society or high tech, and the like.” This describes exactly the points I have elaborated on above. The fact is we are no longer an industrial society. We’re now known as the information society or high-tech society. Because science can develop so quickly now, it affects our perception of what is acceptable in terms of how fast or how complex an item should be. Software companies, for example, are always trying to come up with the smallest music player, and for what? To keep the upper hand in the market? How does this benefit us, the consumers? Yet, we are continuously suckered in by their flashy ad campaigns into buying these gadgets, and not usually because we need them, but because everyone else has them. Whether we realize it or not, we desire to be in competition with each other as much as companies are, and it is the commoditization of culture through the celebration of technology that has allowed this competition to filter in to our society. This is what I believe Jameson has tried to address in his essay.
I would like to begin this response by discussing Edward Munch’s painting, The Scream . Although the painting was done during the modernism era, I think it greatly contributed to the transition to the postmodernism era. The title of the painting suggests that society at this time were actively searching for something else. A different way of living and observing things. They were “screaming” out for a change in their way of life. I think the painting reflected the feelings a vast majority of the previous society. When Jameson refers to nostalgia films, the infamous film Pearl Harbor comes to my mind. I feel that it is an attempt to “appropriate” or reenact the past. It is was to keep people from repeating history. It is a type of pastiche of past American attitudes. Its purpose is to enlighten society to not make the same mistakes. Is this an accurate interpretation? Is this considered a post modern film? When reading the essay it is hard for me to differentiate between nostalgia and dramatization. I am not sure if one ensures the other, therefore I am forced to conclude that each are a small part of each other. I take it that this postmodernism space Jameson refers to is the lense in which we analyze situations and/or readings in. An example being the short excerpt out of “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” last class that consisting of a dialogue between two unidentified people. The way we interpreted the gender of the two people in the story depended on if we looked at the reading as a product of the present era or the past era. The different lenses greatly altered the gender of the two individuals. The mere fact that I live in the postmodernism era gives me the option to few past incidents in a different light.
“Every stance on postmodernism is a stance on the nature of multinational capitalism.”
Because postmodernism itself is derived from multinational capitalism. Without the kitsch and faux glamour of a society funded by advertising, there would be no lowbrow culture for the postmodernist to pastiche. Consumerism is the root of postmodernism, because consumerism has made us all cynical. As an entire society of cultural (possibly professional; most definitely terminal) cynics, it is unsurprising that postmodern has a distinct eschatological bent. When a society has lost a sense of hope and wonder, the only thing that is still entertaining is the end of it all. Jameson points out that class struggle is a joke to postmodernists. Postmodernism does not ignore class struggle, it just flips it on its ear. The entire concept of these grand ideas of existence, the “master narratives” of human history, is lampooned by postmodernism. “Criticism” isn’t something that happens at home anymore, it’s actually a profession. Philosophers have evolved (or devolved) into critics, their sole purpose to comment on the production of their society. This is, I feel, the height of the postindustrial society. But criticism, especially through critics like Jameson (a Marxist), has taken on a metacritical perspective, with entire schools of critical thought devoted to criticizing other schools of critical thought. Jameson is, however, correct in pointing out postmodernism as more of a cultural…situation than an actual avant-garde movement like modernism or realism or romanticism. He directs us to the fact that you cannot have avant-garde movements if nothing is taboo. Things that were unimaginable at the height of modernistic counterculture are generally accepted without the bat of an eyelash in postmodernism. Everything has been institutionalized, probably because corporations continue to push the envelope on what is acceptable to sell more products. But then again, that’s how we all became so cynical in the first place. We were taught history in elementary school, taught these Great Men narratives, then had it all torn down in high school and college. We exist now to tear down or review everything we know, to question everything. Jameson illustrates this point with Doctorow, and how his retellings of history question not just what we know about history, but how we perceive history. There is no such thing as the Truth anymore, just interpretations, filled with bias. Our whole educational system is (now) based around this idea. At the end of his argument, Jameson informs us that the ultimate purpose of postmodernism is to endow the individual with a sense of its place in the global system. This is what all the reinterpretations and reviews and re-examinations are about: taking the old, twisting and re-shaping it to form the new, to form the postmodern society. Everything is a parody or a reconstruction of what has come before, in a new (and exciting?) way.
In “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” author Frederic Jameson says that “the explosion of modern literature into a host of distinct private styles and mannerisms has been followed by a linguistic fragmentation of social life itself to the point where the norm itself is eclipsed”. I agree with this statement and believe the progression from stylistics to coding in the postmodern text is an apt term due to the technological advances in language and style used. While having eclipsed the norm, postmodernism has not set a new norm but instead embraced a gamut of linguistic diversity which does an excellent job of emulating the hectic, technology-based society in which we live. Furthermore it shadows the number of different social and political jargons coming into use and their subsequent blending and mixing into current language and culture. Jameson is talking about the move from modern stylists to postmodern coding but what I am left wondering is what comes after postmodern coding - and more importantly postmodernism in general? If we are in a postmodern era (not just limited to the area of texts, linguistics, and literature) such as Jameson explains then where do we move from here? The escape from the “once dominant ideas of the ruling class” to the “host of distinct private styles and mannerisms “ can easily be seen but it must be constantly changing especially in the chaotic era of postmodernism. While postmodernism can not easily be defined, it is an idea or movement that carries definite connotations including that we are in a time that is after the modern. But isn’t the term modern used to describe what is current in our present time? The directions we can move from postmodernism are limited and some perhaps unknown. Will we usher in the post-postmodern time that is a pastiche upon a pastiche?
In “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” Fredric Jameson analyzes several aspects of American culture and society. Jameson identifies and dissects alterations in art, film, literature, criticism, and architecture, comparing current forms to their recent predecessors. Generalizing these metamorphoses, Jameson identifies and justifies the existence of postmodernism.
An intriguing product of the adjustment in art from the modernist style to the postmodernist is the loss of the “subject.” Jameson argues that in postmodern culture, the individual self, epitomized by Munich’s The Scream, has been replaced as the usual subject by a broad generalization, a sort of “Everyman.” This change was wrought by the proliferation and idolization of technology, which stimulated globalization, as well as the amalgamation of nationalities into a unified, homogenous American identity.
Jameson also suggests that postmodernism outright denies the dominance of time over art. Instead of focusing on a single setting in the past, postmodern art sets itself in prescribed themes of the past. Images and symbols suggest a yester time without specifically identifying it. Instead, the general sense of “past-ness” dominates postmodern art. There is a sense of nostalgia, as if all postmodern work is reaching out for a lost concrete identity, futilely unsatisfied with its function as the imitator of perfected high-modernist styles.
What I found most puzzling in this essay was Jameson’s survey on the role of emotion in postmodern art. Although he concluded that postmodernism is exceptionally conducive to pastiche and simulacra, he tries to deny that these things are done without passion. Yet his language continually suggests that through this incessant repetition postmodernism has exhausted itself; that deflated, it has accepted its role as the sub-par emulator of its predecessors. For one, I cannot imagine that all innovation has come to full fruition and is now slowly decaying, that the future holds no new surprises. I also am not convinced that Jameson has faith in the passion of postmodern artists. He seems cynical in his analysis of late capitalism and postmodern culture.
Fredric Jameson, in his “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”, uses popular and classical art to illustrate his focus of postmodernism as a pastiche of itself. I found his citation of American Graffiti as the beginning of the nostalgia pastiche phenomenon to be of particular interest. George Lucas’ film, Jameson says, creates a longing among its viewers for the “lost reality of the Eisenhower era”, which America has put upon a pedestal to represent the height of our society and some sort of past glory - enforcing the idea of the ‘pre-lapsarian moment.’ Jameson thinks that this false nostalgia, however, is a negative aspect of postmodernism that prevents people from seeing the reality and “historicity” of the period, substituting a glorified and altered simulation, populated by Rod Howard and an aging Wolfman Jack instead. He compares this idea of glossing over the past to thinking that the Disney-Epcot version of China is the real thing. While I do agree with Jameson that the new generation of film stars (even when the essay was written) are a distinct and hollow group of animals when compared to the Steve McQueens and Henry Fondas of yore, I do not think that a longing for some long ago better time is a negative thing overall. While conflating historic events with our fairy tale world of history may be bad, having the fairy tale world in itself is not - it serves as an icon and something for Americans to look back to an identify with. I, for one, long for the American Graffiti days that I missed out on, along with the Cary Grant and Steve McQueen days. This in itself is a conflation of several distinct time periods, I suspect that I tend to take what I like from each and ignore the parts I don’t like. I am, therefore, a prime example of what Jameson is writing about. But I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing as long as a reasonable perspective is kept.
I found “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” by Fredrick Jameson brought up several questions for me. In his essay, I think, Jameson is saying that postmodernism is essentially the commodification of everything; including previously separate elements of culture and identity. If this is his argument, that capitalism has put a price on everything, then where does this end? I think that this is essentially impossible because some things have no monetary value and could not have a price. For example, yes things like art and architecture have been given a price but the feeling a person gets when viewing them has no quantitative monetary value. “What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods…” This situation of never ending production is another interesting problem. Society is never satisfied, they always want more and faster. But at a certain point it will be impossible to create something new and “novel”.
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The Cultural Logical of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson, a response
Through this piece, Jameson suggests that “it is in the realm of architecture that the modifications of aesthetics are most dramatically visible...it was indeed from architectural debates that my own conception of postmodernism... initially began to emerge. ” I believe that he was right on seeing architecture at first as a tool to device postmodernism. This period is characterized by a worship of technology and the absence of proximity to revolution. This factors draw people closer to architecture as an art form, since it combines the aesthetic elements and the technology. Jameson also argues that the “aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods.” This concept is clearly shown through the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles by John Portman. This building aims to be the replacement or the equivalent of the city through its design. This is the idea behind the representation of the novel-seeming goods of the aesthetic production. Lastly, I believe that architecture is the most ‘productive’ art form, for that it serves the purpose of fulfilling aesthetic demands and a practical purpose of filling space where people can live in.
Throughout his writing, Jameson utilizes examples of art and architecture to provide physical examples for his theoretical characteristics for postmodernism. For example, he discusses Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes to reveal how pop art and photorealism fostered a new expressionism, flatness, and depthlessness, and highlighted even further through the use of the photographic negative. Hence, pop art represents our ideas and stereotypes of the past, which Jameson feels postmodernism has lost touch with, and instead is replaced with a simulacra of that history that is incomprehensible to the postmodern individual. He also explains that these cultural productions may exhibit some sort of feeling, but not necessarily emanating from the object itself. Jameson provides the unbearable silence breaks in John Cage’s music, the clipped sentence structure of Bob Perelman’s poem China, and Nam June Paik’s stacked TV screens portraying different varied images at once to reveal how the old aesthetic viewer would place value on each individual word, line, or image whereas the postmodern viewer finds it impossible to connect all of the meaning in between the spaces and silences and screens that consist of life. Rather, the feeling is free-floating in a sense that Jameson feels is “impersonal and dominated by a particular kind of euphoria.” Hence, fragmentation leads to new superimposed meanings that ultimately result in more depthless meaning, resulting aesthetic productions becoming merely commodity productions. This meaning that derives from negative space ultimately leads Jameson to a negative definition of postmodernism: “the incapacity of our minds, at least in at present, to map the great global multinational and decentered communicational network in which we find ourselves caught as individual subjects.”
This fragmentation, however, is enhanced even further through technological innovation. He believes that culture is increasingly dominated by spatial logic, similar to the theories of Manuel Castells, and also demonstrated through John Barth’s “Click.” For example, in Barth’s hypertextuality of life, or the possibility to click on one link to another on the internet can lead to an endless multitude of meaning, connecting individuals on an international scale. This motion is similar to postmodern “schizophrenic writing”- or the breakdown of the signifying chain and interlocking signifiers to create an “utterance” or meaning that in generated not in a one-to-one relationship but through a series of movements. Thus, Jameson argues that our daily lives are dominated by categories of space rather than time because of the technological mediums that drastically shrink space horizontally and create a new sort of motion within this defined “unlimited” space.
Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism essay “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” was personally a confusing read for me considering our class discussion regarding commodities on Tuesday. One section that was particularly hard for me to understand was in his discussion of art work by Van Gogh and Andy Warhol, both pieces representing worker’s shoes. Jameson states that Van Gogh’s painting reflects a presentation of raw materials articulating “the world of agricultural misery, of stark rural poverty, and the whole rudimentary human world of backbreaking peasant toil.” He states that this is original artwork, meaning that it is not a manipulation of someone else’s work and has an essence of truth and emotional meaning. He then compares Van Gogh’s work to Andy Warhol’s “Diamond Dust Shoes” painting, a work that Jameson feels lacks immediacy of time and relevancy to modern life, in addition to being separated from the truth as it is commoditized. He says that Warhol’s painting is a work of fashion to be placed in glamour magazines, a fetish, if you will. He says the work is a painting of shoes hanging “like so many turnips.” Jameson’s interpretation of Warhol’s painting as being flat and lacking depth, is superficial. Jameson believes the work is incapable of revolutionary intent, thus superficially representing postmodern art. What confuses me is the idea of commodification. Is Warhol’s painting disregarded by Jameson because it can be related to the influences of advertising and reproductive technologies because it could be used in fashion or glamour magazine ads, or is it disregarded because it lacks an emission of emotion like Van Gogh’s “Peasant Shoes?”
In the writing of “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” Frederic Jameson relies heavily on examples of architecture and art to show a difference in postmodern and modernity. He is especially fond of architecture, as it was through this medium that his own conception of post modernism came to be. I found this reading to be rather difficult and confusing. There is, however, a link between this text and political movements of the late 20th century. Jameson says that “ the postmoderns have, in fact, been fascinated precisely by this whole “degraded” landscape of schlock and kitsch, of TV series and Reader's Digest culture, of advertising and motels, of the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film..” Anti-globalization movements such the ones that were active in the “Battle of Seattle” (riots) that took place in 1999. These groups are often made up of people who eschew the cultural norms in favor of a more base existence, and who would like to see the federal government changed or even dissolved. Jameson says that “American postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world..” In this way, the members of the revolutionary groups certainly would rally against the nature of postmodernism. It not only represents the culture that they detest, but also the government oversight that they organize against.
Jameson focuses on pastiche as a theme in postmodernism, specifically in film and literature. He also refers to this pastiche as a form of simulacrum. Describing the different areas in which postmodernism has manifested such as: historicity, novels, art work, film and architecture to name a few; Jameson implicitly asserts that postmodernism has a particular exclusivity in that it speaks its postmodernist message in terms which a modernist audience would best understand. Although postmodernism works to create its dialectical image, in the page which Jameson describes The Book of Daniel seems to be in terms of modernist literature, which causes his analysis to project a somewhat phantasmagoric notion. He does present the change and what is seen in the dialectical image, but in his comparative explanation's efforts to differentiate postmodernism from its predecessor (or as modernism's component)he seems unable to escape modernist thinking. (Note: Perhaps this is in his efforts to examine both, and maybe he is writing such that his description is purposely tailored to this effect. I have a very preliminary understanding, and this is my take. {ie: disclaimer})
Jameson does however, in his example of Bonaventure, describe postmodern architecture and what it actually does, rather than being a function of modernism. He captures the spatial quality that postmodernist works (literature, etc.) seem to encompass, stating that “I am more at a loss when it comes to conveying the thing itself.” Here lies two important observations: the vastness (physically, sensory and figuratively) of the postmodern and its object; as well as the postmodern object/artifact’s tendency to mean something and serve as a function rather than exist for its own sake.
Question: By naming postmodernism in terms of the “logic of late capitalism”, does Jameson connect with Badiou by implying that postmodernism is fidelity to Globalization 3.0, or late capitalism?
I thought it was interesting that Jameson used architecture to talk about Postmodernism, especially since he said in the first paragraph that that the major characteristic of what is called “postmodernism” is that it focuses on “the end” of things. At first, I didn’t really see a building as representing “the end”, and even before I read any more I was already balking at the idea of architecture representing postmodernism. I kept thinking “A building is a thing. Why then is a skyscraper representing postmodernism?” Was it because nothing else could be built there? Or was it because it couldn’t go any higher? Then my thought was, why not tear it down and start all over again? Wouldn’t that give you a chance to continue?
Then, when I finished reading the third paragraph, I saw Jameson’s explanation—that (modern?) architecture resembled postmodernism because it “destroyed the fabric of the traditional city”. That was an interesting way of looking at it, but it made sense. I mean, personally, I’d never looked at it that way—that a skyscraper destroys the picture of a traditional urban neighborhood. I mean, when I think of skyscrapers, I think of New York and really, I think that the skyscrapers make up the New York skyline. Maybe that’s just the way I grew up, but I don’t think that the skyscrapers and such symbols of capitalism “distort” the fabric of the city.
Moving on, agreed that art is driven by commercialism and capitalism. Skyscrapers are just one example. Really, modern day art is pretty much all advertising, isn’t it? If advertising is our modern art and culture, then that would mean commercialism completely defines are culture. I think that’s a shame because it allows no real creativity. Everything must be done, not according to the artist’s standards, but to the companies’ standards.
Frederic Jameson’s essay “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” touches on many interesting points on the downfall of post-modernism. One of the most interesting of these points is how the evolution of art and media forms in recent years has contributed to a new mass culture society. He writes, “The postmodernisms have, in fact, been fascinated precisely by this whole ‘degraded’ landscape of schlock and kitsch, of TV series and Reader’s Digest culture, of advertising and motels, of the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film, of so-called paraliterature, with its airport paperback categories of the gothic and the romance, the murder mystery, and the science fiction or fantasy novel” (2). The idea of commoditization of culture is very relevant to this statement. It lends to the recognizing of a shift in how people consume in society. What Jameson seems to be interested in here, as well as post-modernists, is the idea of easily-consumable art and media cultures. Through celebration of technology, we can see how the rapid growth of technological advancements in recent years has made our society one that craves something new and wonderful almost all the time, and with quick pace. We are obsessed with the newest celebrity scandal, the newest pop idol, the newest micro-gadget from whatever software company, and we seem to expect all of them to happen right now. Advancements in technology make all of these examples and their cousins easier and easier and to access, and we get frustrated when we do not immediately see results because of glitches or fluctuations in their making. The “degraded landscape” then that Jameson describes could then be attributed to the idea of valuing quantity of quality, speed over. According to Jameson, “Theories of the postmodern…bear a strong resemblance to all those more ambitious sociological generalizations which, at much the same time, bring us the news of the arrival and inauguration of a whole new type of society, most famously baptized “post-industrial” society but often also designated consumer society, media society, information society, electronic society or high tech, and the like.” This describes exactly the points I have elaborated on above. The fact is we are no longer an industrial society. We’re now known as the information society or high-tech society. Because science can develop so quickly now, it affects our perception of what is acceptable in terms of how fast or how complex an item should be. Software companies, for example, are always trying to come up with the smallest music player, and for what? To keep the upper hand in the market? How does this benefit us, the consumers? Yet, we are continuously suckered in by their flashy ad campaigns into buying these gadgets, and not usually because we need them, but because everyone else has them. Whether we realize it or not, we desire to be in competition with each other as much as companies are, and it is the commoditization of culture through the celebration of technology that has allowed this competition to filter in to our society. This is what I believe Jameson has tried to address in his essay.
I would like to begin this response by discussing Edward Munch’s painting, The Scream . Although the painting was done during the modernism era, I think it greatly contributed to the transition to the postmodernism era. The title of the painting suggests that society at this time were actively searching for something else. A different way of living and observing things. They were “screaming” out for a change in their way of life. I think the painting reflected the feelings a vast majority of the previous society.
When Jameson refers to nostalgia films, the infamous film Pearl Harbor comes to my mind. I feel that it is an attempt to “appropriate” or reenact the past. It is was to keep people from repeating history. It is a type of pastiche of past American attitudes. Its purpose is to enlighten society to not make the same mistakes. Is this an accurate interpretation? Is this considered a post modern film? When reading the essay it is hard for me to differentiate between nostalgia and dramatization. I am not sure if one ensures the other, therefore I am forced to conclude that each are a small part of each other.
I take it that this postmodernism space Jameson refers to is the lense in which we analyze situations and/or readings in. An example being the short excerpt out of “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” last class that consisting of a dialogue between two unidentified people. The way we interpreted the gender of the two people in the story depended on if we looked at the reading as a product of the present era or the past era. The different lenses greatly altered the gender of the two individuals. The mere fact that I live in the postmodernism era gives me the option to few past incidents in a different light.
“Every stance on postmodernism is a stance on the nature of multinational capitalism.”
Because postmodernism itself is derived from multinational capitalism. Without the kitsch and faux glamour of a society funded by advertising, there would be no lowbrow culture for the postmodernist to pastiche. Consumerism is the root of postmodernism, because consumerism has made us all cynical. As an entire society of cultural (possibly professional; most definitely terminal) cynics, it is unsurprising that postmodern has a distinct eschatological bent. When a society has lost a sense of hope and wonder, the only thing that is still entertaining is the end of it all.
Jameson points out that class struggle is a joke to postmodernists. Postmodernism does not ignore class struggle, it just flips it on its ear. The entire concept of these grand ideas of existence, the “master narratives” of human history, is lampooned by postmodernism. “Criticism” isn’t something that happens at home anymore, it’s actually a profession. Philosophers have evolved (or devolved) into critics, their sole purpose to comment on the production of their society. This is, I feel, the height of the postindustrial society. But criticism, especially through critics like Jameson (a Marxist), has taken on a metacritical perspective, with entire schools of critical thought devoted to criticizing other schools of critical thought.
Jameson is, however, correct in pointing out postmodernism as more of a cultural…situation than an actual avant-garde movement like modernism or realism or romanticism. He directs us to the fact that you cannot have avant-garde movements if nothing is taboo. Things that were unimaginable at the height of modernistic counterculture are generally accepted without the bat of an eyelash in postmodernism. Everything has been institutionalized, probably because corporations continue to push the envelope on what is acceptable to sell more products.
But then again, that’s how we all became so cynical in the first place. We were taught history in elementary school, taught these Great Men narratives, then had it all torn down in high school and college. We exist now to tear down or review everything we know, to question everything. Jameson illustrates this point with Doctorow, and how his retellings of history question not just what we know about history, but how we perceive history. There is no such thing as the Truth anymore, just interpretations, filled with bias. Our whole educational system is (now) based around this idea.
At the end of his argument, Jameson informs us that the ultimate purpose of postmodernism is to endow the individual with a sense of its place in the global system. This is what all the reinterpretations and reviews and re-examinations are about: taking the old, twisting and re-shaping it to form the new, to form the postmodern society. Everything is a parody or a reconstruction of what has come before, in a new (and exciting?) way.
In “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” author Frederic Jameson says that “the explosion of modern literature into a host of distinct private styles and mannerisms has been followed by a linguistic fragmentation of social life itself to the point where the norm itself is eclipsed”. I agree with this statement and believe the progression from stylistics to coding in the postmodern text is an apt term due to the technological advances in language and style used. While having eclipsed the norm, postmodernism has not set a new norm but instead embraced a gamut of linguistic diversity which does an excellent job of emulating the hectic, technology-based society in which we live. Furthermore it shadows the number of different social and political jargons coming into use and their subsequent blending and mixing into current language and culture. Jameson is talking about the move from modern stylists to postmodern coding but what I am left wondering is what comes after postmodern coding - and more importantly postmodernism in general? If we are in a postmodern era (not just limited to the area of texts, linguistics, and literature) such as Jameson explains then where do we move from here? The escape from the “once dominant ideas of the ruling class” to the “host of distinct private styles and mannerisms “ can easily be seen but it must be constantly changing especially in the chaotic era of postmodernism. While postmodernism can not easily be defined, it is an idea or movement that carries definite connotations including that we are in a time that is after the modern. But isn’t the term modern used to describe what is current in our present time? The directions we can move from postmodernism are limited and some perhaps unknown. Will we usher in the post-postmodern time that is a pastiche upon a pastiche?
jesseca said
In “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” Fredric Jameson analyzes several aspects of American culture and society. Jameson identifies and dissects alterations in art, film, literature, criticism, and architecture, comparing current forms to their recent predecessors. Generalizing these metamorphoses, Jameson identifies and justifies the existence of postmodernism.
An intriguing product of the adjustment in art from the modernist style to the postmodernist is the loss of the “subject.” Jameson argues that in postmodern culture, the individual self, epitomized by Munich’s The Scream, has been replaced as the usual subject by a broad generalization, a sort of “Everyman.” This change was wrought by the proliferation and idolization of technology, which stimulated globalization, as well as the amalgamation of nationalities into a unified, homogenous American identity.
Jameson also suggests that postmodernism outright denies the dominance of time over art. Instead of focusing on a single setting in the past, postmodern art sets itself in prescribed themes of the past. Images and symbols suggest a yester time without specifically identifying it. Instead, the general sense of “past-ness” dominates postmodern art. There is a sense of nostalgia, as if all postmodern work is reaching out for a lost concrete identity, futilely unsatisfied with its function as the imitator of perfected high-modernist styles.
What I found most puzzling in this essay was Jameson’s survey on the role of emotion in postmodern art. Although he concluded that postmodernism is exceptionally conducive to pastiche and simulacra, he tries to deny that these things are done without passion. Yet his language continually suggests that through this incessant repetition postmodernism has exhausted itself; that deflated, it has accepted its role as the sub-par emulator of its predecessors. For one, I cannot imagine that all innovation has come to full fruition and is now slowly decaying, that the future holds no new surprises. I also am not convinced that Jameson has faith in the passion of postmodern artists. He seems cynical in his analysis of late capitalism and postmodern culture.
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Better late than never, right?
Fredric Jameson, in his “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”, uses popular and classical art to illustrate his focus of postmodernism as a pastiche of itself. I found his citation of American Graffiti as the beginning of the nostalgia pastiche phenomenon to be of particular interest. George Lucas’ film, Jameson says, creates a longing among its viewers for the “lost reality of the Eisenhower era”, which America has put upon a pedestal to represent the height of our society and some sort of past glory - enforcing the idea of the ‘pre-lapsarian moment.’ Jameson thinks that this false nostalgia, however, is a negative aspect of postmodernism that prevents people from seeing the reality and “historicity” of the period, substituting a glorified and altered simulation, populated by Rod Howard and an aging Wolfman Jack instead. He compares this idea of glossing over the past to thinking that the Disney-Epcot version of China is the real thing.
While I do agree with Jameson that the new generation of film stars (even when the essay was written) are a distinct and hollow group of animals when compared to the Steve McQueens and Henry Fondas of yore, I do not think that a longing for some long ago better time is a negative thing overall. While conflating historic events with our fairy tale world of history may be bad, having the fairy tale world in itself is not - it serves as an icon and something for Americans to look back to an identify with. I, for one, long for the American Graffiti days that I missed out on, along with the Cary Grant and Steve McQueen days. This in itself is a conflation of several distinct time periods, I suspect that I tend to take what I like from each and ignore the parts I don’t like. I am, therefore, a prime example of what Jameson is writing about. But I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing as long as a reasonable perspective is kept.
I found “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” by Fredrick Jameson brought up several questions for me. In his essay, I think, Jameson is saying that postmodernism is essentially the commodification of everything; including previously separate elements of culture and identity. If this is his argument, that capitalism has put a price on everything, then where does this end? I think that this is essentially impossible because some things have no monetary value and could not have a price. For example, yes things like art and architecture have been given a price but the feeling a person gets when viewing them has no quantitative monetary value.
“What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods…” This situation of never ending production is another interesting problem. Society is never satisfied, they always want more and faster. But at a certain point it will be impossible to create something new and “novel”.
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