| Title | : | Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0822310902 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780822310907 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 438 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1991 |
| Awards | : | James Russell Lowell Prize (1990) |
Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Reviews
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greg got me to read this. finished it in a laundromat in w.phila and stared into the swirling machine for an hour afterward just trying to cope.
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I agree with the reviewer who said: simply read the first essay ("Culture"; which is a slightly edited version of a famous paper published in 1984), and leave it at that. There are some marvelous insights on the problem of postmodernism and the spectacularization of contemporary capitalism; but also plenty of jargon, meandering, and (not to judge) also lots of engagement with arcane theoretical issues that are way beyond my present ken. The next several chapters look like case studies, and the long (100 page) conclusion can best be left for another decade.
This book was definitely worth the 2-3 days I spent with it -- and Jameson's critical approach to Postmodernism, and his insistence on the political implications of it -- are good to have nailed down. The topic, however, is much, much better dealt with (imo) by Sadie Plant's The Most Radical Gesture -- whose book is, from sentence to sentence, utterly flawless. -
Arguably the main problem with this book can be found in the subtitle. The concept 'late capitalism,' as developed by Ernest Mandel, refers to the postwar global economy; that is, the compromise of state regulated capital and social democracy. By the time Jameson wrote these essays, capitalism was already moving on to a later stage called 'neoliberalism.'
At the heart of this book, then, is a shotgun wedding between vivid, up-to-date aesthetic practices and an increasingly outmoded economic concept. A cautionary tale about the dangers of Marxism becoming a hypertrophied 'Theory.'
*
The thing about Jameson that can't be overstated is that he's a really, REALLY terrible writer.
Reading him I feel like I'm wading through a sewage plant. Occasionally there's an interesting idea here or there, but it's overwhelmed by sheer dreck.
Anyone who'd compare his style to Henry James has lost touch with reality (alas, Perry Anderson!).
As far as I can tell he's basically a Marxist George Steiner; his style is worse, his grasp of ideas somewhat deeper, but essentially they're both cultural curators. -
Absolutely essential book.
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Jameson's book is the
gold standard against which I rank similar studies (
Linda Hutcheon's
A Poetics of Postmodernism,
Jean-François Lyotard's
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge). It expands an article Jameson wrote that first appeared in
New Left Review in 1984. Here, along with an historic analysis of postmodernism, Jameson also discusses intellectual positions on the moment, as well as writing about specific texts, including
Claude Simon's
Conducting Bodies: A Novel, the video AlienNATION, the films
Something Wild and
Blue Velvet, and one of
Frank Gehry's houses.
Jameson's thought is complex, and this is reflected in his sentences and paragraphs, which are frequently difficult to read. However, if you have the time, it is worth rereading sentences and determining how this clause is related to that parenthetical statement--almost invariably, once you have worked out Jameson's meaning, you admire the way he has chosen to express his thought. A real mental exercise.
Acquired c. 1995
Concordia University Bookstore, Montreal, Quebec -
বহুদিন ধরে ছুটা নিবন্ধ পড়তে পড়তে, অনেক দিন পর একটা সম্পূর্ন প্রবন্ধের বই শেষ করা।চমৎকার বই। একজন সত্যিকারের একাডেমিশিয়ান যা বোঝায়, জেমসন তাই! একটা পিওর ক্রিটিক পান করার অভিজ্ঞতা। ফ্রাসোঁয়া লিওতার এর হ্যাংওভার কাটছে। ভালো ব্যাপারটা।
ক্যাপিটালিস্ট দর্শনকে যেমন সংহত রূপ দিয়েছিলেন - জন মেনার্ড কিনস বা কমিউনিজমকে মার্ক্স- এঙ্গেলস, পোষ্টমডার্নিজমের ক্ষেত্রে আমরা জানি, এরকম কোন কুতুব তাতে নেই। বরং যাদের নাম উচ্চারিত হয়, ফ্রাসোঁয়া লিওতার, ফুকো, দেরীদা, বদ্রিয়াঁ এরা সবাই পোষ্টমডার্ন সময়ের একেক লক্ষনের ব্যাখ্যাকার মাত্র। বাট, তার কোন সুনির্দিষ্ট, সংহত ভাষ্য নেই।সুতরাং পক্ষও নাই।
কিন্তু, Let me clear – জেমসনের কাছে পোষ্টমডার্ন টার্মটি কোন পদ্ধতির নয়। যেমন: সকল গ্রান্ড ন্যারেটিভ, মেটান্যারেটিভ কে বর্জন করা বা সব কিছুকে বিচ্ছিন্ন ভাবে বিচার করা। কোন লক্ষন প্রকাশেরও নয়। কেন না দেখতে পাচ্ছি, পোষ্টমডার্ন শব্দটি গত দেড়শ বছর একেক সময়ে এককে অর্থে ব্যবহৃত হচ্ছে। ১৮৭০ সালেই সবচেয়ে পুরোনো। যখন জন চ্যাপম্যান নি��� ইম্প্রেশনিস্ট ক্লোদ মনে আর রেনোয়ার ছবি দেখে এই টার্ম টি ব্যবহার করেছিলেন। বোধকরি, তার কাছে মনে হয়েছিলো তারা “আধুনিক” ইম্প্রেশনিজমকে অতিক্রম করে এগিয়ে গেছে। ৪৭ এ ব্যবহার করেছিল টয়েনবি, খুব বাজে ছিলো সেটা। ১৯৬৪ সালে লেসলি ফিডলার, যেখানে এলিট রুচিকে প্রত্যাখান করার আচরনের মধ্যে তিনি এই টার্ম টি খুঁজে পেয়েছিলেন। তিনি ভেবেছিলেন তৎকালীন সময়ের হিপ্পি , ফ্লাওয়ার চিলড্রেন আর ব্ল্যাক এক্টিভিস্ট দের নতুন একটিভিজম আর নন্দনতত্ত্বের কথা। লিও স্টাইনবার্গও ব্যবহার করেছিলেন প্রায় একই অর্থে। এমনকি ৭১ এও দেখতে পাচ্ছি, রডলফ পেনভিটস পোষ্টমডার্ন টার্ম টি ব্যবহার করছেন, ইউরোপিয়ান এনলাইটমেন্ট থেকে ফ্রি হওয়া মানুষের কথায়। এইগুলোর সাথে এখনকার পোষ্ট মডার্ন এর ধারণা, লক্ষন ও ভাষ্যের সম্পর্ক ক্ষীন। জেমসনের কাছে পোষ্টমডার্নিজম এক ধরনের পর্যায়কালের ধারণা।
বোঝা যাচ্ছে, আর্নস্ট মান্ডলের যে “কোন্ড্রাটিভ সাইকলস” এবং এর ভিত্তিতে ইতিহাসের যে পর্যায়কালকে বিভক্তিকরণ, জেমসন সেই তাত্ত্বিক কাজকে এজাম্পশন ধরে এগিয়েছেন। সুতরাং জেমসন জানাচ্ছেন – মডার্নিটির স্তরে কালচার একধরনের স্বায়ত্ব অর্জন করেছিলো। ফলে মডার্নিটি ক্যাপিটাল প্রসঙ্গে এক ধরনের বিষয়ী দূরত্ব রাখতে পারত। কিন্তু এই “লেট ক্যাপিটালিজম” এর পর্যায়ে এসে, সংস্কৃতি উৎপাদন, সংস্কৃতি বিপনন, বাজার নিয়ন্ত্রণ, তার সাথে সাথে নিজে নিয়ন্ত্রিত হওয়া এবং সব মিলিয়ে ইন্ডিভিজুয়ালের “নিজস্বতা” প্রমান করার যে উন্মাদনা তা আসলে কালচারকে ক্যাপিটালের সাথে একীভূতকরণ করে। জেমসন ভাস্কর্য, স্থাপত্য, টেলিভিশন, ভিডিও, চলচ্চিত্র অনেক কিছুর উদাহরন দিয়েছেন। এর মধ্যে বলা যেতে পারে, ভিডিও দর্শনের কথা। টেলিভিশন দর্শনে স্মৃতির কোন ভূমিকা নেই। অথচ, টেক্সট যে ইমেজ উৎপাদন করে তার বেসিস স্মৃতি। অথচ টেলিভিশনের ভিডিও যেহেতু অর্থ উৎপাদন করে, তাই তা একটি “টেক্সট”। এর অবচেতনে ভূমিকা কি তা বলতে আমরা মুখোমুখি হচ্ছি একটা তাত্ত্বিক সংকটের দিকে।
যে কোন সময়ের ইতিহাস ও সংস্কৃতিতে একাধিক তত্ত্বের ছোট বড় স্রোত পাশাপাশি চলে, তার মধ্যে একটি প্রধান হয়ে উঠে। ফ্রেডারিক জেমসন ব্যবহার করছেন, ���Cultural dominat” কথাটি। সুতরাং “ কালচারাল ডমিনেন্ট” এর সূত্র ধরে পোষ্টমডার্নিজমের উদ্ভব আর বিকাশ যদি চিহ্নিত করতে যাই , তাহলে ক্যাপিটাল ও কালচার���র ক্যাপিটালের দাস হওয়ার প্রসঙ্গ চলে আসবে। জেমসন মনে করছেন, পোষ্ট মডার্নিজম মডার্নিটির ক্ষয়িত হয়ে যাওয়া উপাদান আর লেট ক্যাপিটালিজমের কালচার কে বহন করে। এবং তা পন্যায়নের প্রতিরোধের শেষ পরিসরগুলো শেষ পর্যন্ত দখল করে নিচ্ছে। প্রতিরোধের শেষ পরিসরগুলো হলো, জেমসনের ভাষায় – তৃতীয় বিশ্ব, অবচেতন আর নন্দনতত্ত্ব।
তৃতীয় বিশ্বের কথা যখন এসেছেই, তখন বলতে চাই যে- পোষ্টমডার্নিজম নামের গালভরা নাম আমাদের সংকট আদৌ ব্যাখ্যা করতে পারে কিনা। অনেকে যখন বলে, এটা এই সময়ের চূড়ান্ত তত্ত্ব , তখন কি মনে হয় না – পোষ্ট মডার্নিজমও একটা “গ্র্যান্ড ন্যারেটিভ” হয়ে উঠছে? এটার মধ্যে কেমন জানি একটা কলোনিয়াল হ্যাংওভার দেখতে পাই। আর, সাহিত্য, সমাজবিজ্ঞান ও শিল্পে যে বিভিন্ন “ইজম” এর প্রচার ও আস্ফালন, এই প্রচার ও ছাপ্পার আড়ালে একটা প্রশ্ন অনুচ্চারিত থেকে যায় – একটা “ইজম” একটা “নাম” একটা রচনার সাথে কি যোগ করে? আদৌ কি তার উপভোগ্যতা বাড়ায়? একটা "লেভেল" সেই রচনার সময়, পটভূমিকা ও থিমকে শুধু চিহ্নিত করে দেয়? আর কিছু “বাদ” থেকে যায় না? বাদ থাকলে সেটা কতটুকু সফল? ইজম সম্পর্কে অনভিজ্ঞ পাঠক সাহিত্যটি পাঠ করার সময় কি প্রত্যাশা করবেন? নাকি করবেন না? জেমসন কালচার, আইডলজি, ভিডিও, আর্কিটেকচার, থিয়োরী নিয়ে অধ্যায় ভিত্তিক আলোচনা করলেও সাহিত্য নিয়ে নীরব। -
The more serious one takes post-modernism the less serious it ultimately becomes. This book takes it as seriously as any book on post-modernism and thus defeats itself on its own terms through its unintentional irony by its lack of self-awareness of the undiscoverable ideology without an ideology or in other words post-modernism.
The irrelevance of the admixture of existentialism with psychoanalysis and a sprinkling of Marxist thought with a dollop of the Frankfurt School gives the pretention of a coherent theory but only if one puts on their 1992 thinking cap and pretend by ignoring the reality of today that they are not just anachronisms from a by-gone age with the aid of hindsight. I don’t mind thinking the 1980s had reasonableness within it, but in the end, when one takes post-modernism seriously as a coherent philosophy its incoherence will always come to light and one sort of gets revolted by existentialist, Freudian tautologies, Marxist thought and the weirdness of the Frankfurt School. The existentialist, Freudians and Marxists aren’t post-modernist but they can definitely get sublated by post-modernist worshipers.
I’m glad this book reminded me of how good Henri Lefebvre’s three volume work Critique of Everyday Life really is. It’s a remarkable work and for the purpose of this review let me just highlight that the volumes were written 1947, 1961, and 1981 and start with a Marxist perspective and end with a post-modernist anti-humanist realization by realizing the observation of the quotidian is how we get out of the cultural logic of late capitalism. Lefebvre gets that we really aren’t capable of change if we can’t step out of the ideology that we are in even if that ideology is no ideology at all. The Frankfurt school alum mentioned frequently in this book and this author all seemed to be in need of a mythos of some kind even if that meant they knew that the narrative itself was a lie. That’s a dangerous place to be, because in the end, the Frankfurt school people would say that Nazis were a myth, and it was just not the right myth and they are here to give you the better myth as they wrap it in a shawl of postmodernism and their cultural consuming critique.
That leads to giving us a Donald Trump. He is the ultimate post-modernist because he rejects all except for what he says is truth. Everything he doesn’t like or believes in even if it is a scientific fact is an alternative fact or fake news. For him, and the post-modernist described in this book there is no truth outside of us, or truth inside of us, there is only truth as they see fit and it is with their lens of postmodernism that everything can be understood with the story they want to tell. Postmodernism, the ideology without an ideology is the only real ideology for them. Fascist love it, and fascist take it one step further that only the identity that is without an identity is worthy of inclusion and consideration within their self selected privileged class. Hitler’s autobiography and Jordan Peterson’s babblings are not only anti-humanist as is Trump but they can be considered as post-modernist by taking advantage of the glitch in the matrix since our truths must be proscribed by us for ourselves and are relative and relational to our backgrounds and our foregrounds.
I would recommend Lyotard’s book (more of an essay) rather than this book, the book that labeled postmodernism for what it was, The Postmodern Condition, of course, Jameson mentions that book frequently, but he downplays it since it doesn’t align with his overall thesis. Lyotard will just state it as a fact that we live in a world without a narrative about the narrative, there is no central overriding authority that tells us what our values, truths, or what should be most deserving of our time and attention.
Jameson wants to believe that post-modernism has a firm foundation within itself when considered through its own lens. That leads to an incoherence that actually shows within this book. This book is not a painful book to read, but it is bolt out of the blue without reverberations to today that best remains in its own time period of 1992 with all of the hang-ups of the 1980s to keep its than readers fully distracted from more worthy considerations. -
I picked up this book because I've a module on postmodernist literature and I find postmodernism in itself fascinating. What I didn't expect is an incredibly dense collection of essays that 1/4 bored me to tears, 3/4 gave me a migraine while trying to decipher the text even with my understanding of the other theories, concepts, etc. referred here. Even so, it can be said that Jameson's arguments and ideas are interesting and compelling (it certainly does give one a solid perspective to look at postmodernism!) but the amount of time, patience and the constant rereading made it less enjoyable for me.
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Officially, half of my summer reading is completed. I'm not sure I know exactly what to say after this. I've got a much better understanding of some of the aspects of postmodernism, how Marxist analysis plays out over many different forms, what tensions exist between the two and weather they're relevant or not.
My favorite moment: Jameson pwns Paul De Man and most of deconstruction-post structuralism in one chapter, rendering it almost silly. But there is still much to be learned from this entire school of thought if not in context, then as Jameson informs us over the course of this text, through the formal issues at play in the development of deconstruction as it relates to our current(relatively past) political circumstances.
All of that said I still need to (re)read more Jameson to get a better handle on it. Like most theoretical texts it feels as though when the words are placed before the eye one's reaction is "yeah, totally." Or "exactly, this makes perfect sense!" And one day after having read the chapter(etc) the struggle becomes trying to recall exactly why it felt so important at the time of reading, having forgot all of the detailed particularities. -
Owing to the fact that I assigned this book to my graduate students, I can finally say that a) I finished it, b) I taught it, and c) I love/hate it. Jameson's effort to link Marxist analysis with postmodern critique is at points inspired, and some of his own source analyses (the films Something Wild and Blue Velvet, Frank Gehry's house, etc.) are excellent, but the "theory" section of the book (a look two theorists, with only DeMan being truly notable) that stretches from p. 178 to p. 280 is absolutely rotten and should be dropped from revised versions simply because no one has done anything to deserve that. But yes, this whopper is out of the way. I read the shit out of it, yo!
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This is a key book for those struggling to comprehend the verbal murk that constituted post modernist theory , which is a shame, because Fredrick Jameson cannot help but add his own murk to this occasionally useful overview of a directionless philosophical inclination. He certainly brings a lot of reading into his digressive discussions and reveals how much the idea of post modern strategy--Lyotard's notion that the Grand Narrative that unified all accounts of our history, purpose and collective sense of inevitable autonomy over the earth and those outside our culture has been shattered, eroded or made unpersuasive in a century that has known the horrors of 2 world wars and the overwhelming emergence of new technologies and the efforts of populations outside the margins of acceptable culture to claim their rights as humans , first and foremost--has usurped preceding and established ideas in areas of literature, architecture, movies, the arts, philosophy itself.
Jameson is a Marxist literary critic and it seems he has another goal in addition to discussing the why and the why-not? of a fluid philosophy that seems to undermine any sense of "fixed" areas of knowledge that might otherwise give a culture a sense of itself, an identity, ethos and larger purpose that makes the past acceptable, the future brimming with a promise yet to be fulfilled, an entrenched optimism that makes the present tolerable or, at least, a condition where apathy is the preferred stance; he is intent of maintaining the authority of Marxist methods of discerning the economic superstructure of capitalism and, as well, holding on to the progressive notion that properly executed critiques and political actions based on them will further us along to Marx 's and Engle's prophecy that after the revolution, after the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established and operating for an unspecified amount of time, the State will eventually, naturally wither away , as men and women have, it's assumed, been restored to their natural state before the foul distortion of capital fouled every thing up; that is, we will have become , to paraphrase a famous promise, fishers and farmers in the morning, poets, musicians and artists in the afternoons, scholars and philosophers at night.
That is to say, we will no longer have occupations, our labor, informing us who we are and destroying our potential of being much more.
The post modern inclination undermines the metaphorical structure and linguistic devices philosophies use to make their systems persuasive; Derrida and Baudrillard were smart men with much influence over the Left who had their own discourses that argued that every argument contains the seeds of it's own counter assertion. Jameson doesn't seem to want any of that and proceeds to write as densely as the thinkers he seeks to critique, often times stalling before coming to a major point he seemed to be traveling toward in order to indulge himself with clarifications about terms being used, ideas and artifacts that have been used as examples of opaque references . There is much the notion of the word-drunk in this volume, the idea that Jameson is thinking out loud and that the writing is a species of verbal stream of conscious wherein there is the assumption, an act of faith actually, that the longer the associative chain ,the more inclusive the argument the analysis becomes and that in this process there will come the connecting conceit that unifies what might have been mere intellectual drift into a bravura performance.
I can't shake the idea that Jameson is stalling here and is, honestly, out of his depth in his discussions that are not directly involved in parsing the creation and use of narrative forms as political tools in a problematic culture. There is value here, though, and I would suggest reading the opening essay, "Culture", where one gets the choicest ideas and insights has in this volume. For the rest, it is a reminder of just how bad a writer Fredric Jameson is. -
This was a doozy.
I went into it eager to discover the skeleton key for the cultural-philosophical phenomenon of postmodernism, and it's difficult to imagine a more robust and exhaustive 'vertical slice' of it than what is offered here by Jameson. His chapters on art, literature, film, photography, and pretty much everything leading up to the conclusion (with the exception of the slightly weak chapter on theory) is rich with references and analyses of a variety of key figures in the cultural industry, those who openly rebel against the baroque disjointedness of postmodernism, and those who steer its currents and determine its directions (if there were any to constitute in the first place, according to Jameson). The conclusion I am left with - abstracting from what I think is the more potent Marxist analysis of the situation as a reaffirmation and overdetermination of pre-Keynesian economic policies under the presumption of integration into an idealist conception of history - is that postmodernism is nothing more and nothing less than the inflation and 'lowering' of the high modernist cultural sphere still constrained and atomised by the forces of capital. The Joyces of yesteryear are the Pyncheons of today, now made more accessible through cheap electronics and mass media, rendering the artistic dimension more diverse and the inconsistencies of the capitalist ideological field, alongside with the constrictions it imposes upon the theoretical and political horizons in turn to be inconsistent and in a constant 'separated' tension that defuses any dialectical process through the scattering of the ideological coordinates themselves. Jameson leaves us with an overall positive message, and maintains a marxist criticism of the immutability of such concepts, nonetheless enabling a mode of flight away from it (in some ways echoing the accelerationist conception from the left-wing members of the CCRU), but I find the conclusion lacking in his attempts to reconcile Sartrean existentialism, interpolated by the limits of Marxist humanism in the face of a contemporaneity generating endless possibilities for affirmations of subject-positions (whether one likes, dislikes, agrees or disagrees with Laclau and Mouffe, these are legitimate political strategies in so far as we feel their forces manifest in left populism in the 2000s) inconsistent with the much more potent materialist line. The heralded death of meta-narratives is far from being so, and I consequently recommend this journey into these phenomena to any who are interested and willing. As a work of discourse, it is definitely interesting, but as a theoretical incision, it is a very standard position, supported by the sheer amount of labour that had gone into its making. -
essential for anyone who has an interest in late capitalism and why we are the way we are.
I did find this hard going though. Jameson's verbosity, sadly, doesn't seem to me to be an acting out of being intelligence. I do think the dude DOES think in that way. If you get through it though (disclaimer: I read fairly carefully, but skipped chapters on film, space, architecture and video) the insights are scintillating. It could, however, do with more jokes -- my favourite parts are when Jameson makes a humourous aside or irreverent comment. Certainly Eagleton is more funny, but I don't suppose we should judge a book's merit merely by that (the book got a smashing review from Eagleton anyway).
I suppose it's part of the book's greatness that I wonder why people often write as if some portions (on theory, on cultural studies, on ideology etc) have not been written. It's the book's merit I guess that it's hard to deal with all of its content comprehensively. I myself probably won't.... (in my project). But the 'anti-theory' brigade needs to read this -
I only read the first three essays, because it's an enormous book that only gets more specific in it's analysis, but I got what I came for, which was an analysis of postmodernism as both a cultural episteme AND an investigation of what we mean when we call something "postmodern".
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I'm not going to lie Jameson verbally owns my ass.
Though I might not agree with his philosophy trying to argue with it is like trying to argue with The Architect in The Matrix.
You just ain't gonna win.
(Runs back to his vernacular based books as quick as he can.) -
Essential Reading. Jameson's discourse is profound and necessary to navigate the postmodern cultural landscape - Read it!
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Recently reread this book for class and it is just as amazing as ever. Though a little hard to follow at times, Jameson accurately and almost flawlessly describes the post-modern human condition.
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a healthy dose of cognitive mapping for a dislocated and decentred era
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Good riddance.
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Testo di grande densità, ricco di analisi chiare e puntuali. L’analisi spazia dalla letteratura alle arti figurative, dalla pittura all’architettura, sempre attenta alle radici economiche e alle conseguenze politiche di ogni mutamento individuato. L’attenzione alla condizione dell’essere umano nel paesaggio postmoderno, ai suoi stati d’animo, alla sua comprensione di ciò che lo circonda, parla di una forte preoccupazione umanistica. Le conclusioni “politiche” del saggio sono la necessaria traduzione in pratica dell’analisi.
Riporto qualche citazione per dare un’idea della struttura della riflessione di F. Jameson.
L’autore prende in considerazione le seguenti caratteristiche costitutive del postmoderno:
1. Una «nuova mancanza di profondità» (p. 17). Il postmoderno rifiuta, nella sua analisi e rappresentazione della realtà, cinque modelli di rapporto fra superficie e profondità (messi a punto e sviluppati nell’ambito del “moderno”): il rapporto fra interno ed esterno (e la lotta drammatica del primo per giungere all’espressione), il «modello dialettico di essenza ed apparenza (insieme a tutti i concetti di ideologia e falsa coscienza che tendono a presentarsi con esso)», il «modello freudiano di latente e manifesto, o di rimozione», il «modello esistenzialista di autenticità e inautenticità, le cui tematiche eroiche e tragiche sono strettamente imparentate all’altra grande opposizione di alienazione e riappropriazione», e infine l’opposizione semiotica fra significante e significato. «A sostituire questi diversi modelli di profondità è […] una concezione di pratiche, discorsi e giochi testuali» dove «la profondità è sostituita dalla superficie o da più superfici (in questo senso, ciò che spesso viene chiamato intertestualità non riguarda più la profondità)» (pp. 28-29).
2. Un «conseguente indebolimento della storicità, sia in relazione alla Storia pubblica che alle nuove forme della nostra temporalità privata», caratterizzata da una «struttura ‘schizofrenica’» (pp. 17-18).
2.1. «L’accostamento al presente attraverso il linguaggio artistico del simulacro, o il pastiche di un passato stereotipato, conferisce alla realtà presente e all’esposizione della storia odierna il fascino e la distanza di un lucente miraggio. Ma questa stessa maniera cattivante della nuova estetica è emersa come un elaborato sintomo del declino della nostra storicità, della nostra possibilità vissuta di esperire la storia in modo attivo» (pp. 44-45).
2.1. Nel postmoderno «la nostra vita quotidiana, la nostra esperienza psichica, i nostri linguaggi culturali sono dominati […] da categorie di spazio piuttosto che da categorie di tempo» (p. 34), e «siamo […] incapaci di unificare il passato e il futuro della nostra esperienza biografica o della nostra vita psichica». Ci troviamo così di fronte a «un’esperienza di Significanti puramente materiali o, in altre parole, di una serie di presenti puramente irrelati nel tempo» (p. 55). Ecco quindi che «lo spettatore postmoderno è chiamato a fare l’impossibile, cioè a guardare tutti gli schermi contemporaneamente, nella loro differenza radicale e indiscriminata» (p. 63).
3. Un «nuovo tipo di tonalità affettiva […] che può essere afferrata al meglio con un ritorno alle teorie del sublime del passato» (p. 18). Il sublime era «il balenare, nell’attonito stupore e tremore, di qualcosa che era così smisurato da annientare completamente la vita umana» e il suo oggetto aveva a che fare con «i limiti dell’immaginazione e l’incapacità della mente umana di rappresentarsi forze tanto smisurate» (p. 66). Ebbene, oggi di smisurato c’è soltanto «l’intero sistema mondiale dell’attuale capitalismo multinazionale» e nel tentativo di coglierlo la mente fantastica attorno all’immenso network di comunicazioni e computer, «rappresentazione sintetica e privilegiata per comprendere un network di potere e controllo ancor più difficile da cogliere» (p. 72). Questo conduce all’importanza della tecnologia e della sua rappresentazione per il postmoderno.
4. I «rapporti profondi e costitutivi di tutto ciò con un’intera nuova tecnologia, che è essa stessa immagine di tutto un nuovo sistema economico mondiale» (p. 18). Rispetto alle macchine dei precedenti stadi del capitalismo, «la tecnologia di oggi non possiede più la stessa disponibilità ad essere rappresentata». È facile ricordare «l’eccitazione futurista e la celebrazione marinettiana della mitragliatrice e dell’automobile […], punti scultorei nodali d’energia, che rendono tangibile e raffigurabile l’energia motrice del primo momento della modernizzazione» (p. 70). Computer, televisori, reti di comunicazione sono ben più difficilmente rappresentabili ed evocano piuttosto i paesaggi inafferrabili cui si è accennato prima.
Concludono il saggio «alcune riflessioni sulla missione dell’arte politica nel disorientamento provocato dal nuovo spazio mondiale del tardo capitalismo multinazionale» (p. 18). Il disorientamento, causato dal muoversi nell’iperspazio postmoderno, che ci impone di «sviluppare nuovi organi, di espandere il nostro sensorio e il nostro corpo in nuove dimensioni finora inimmaginabili e forse, in ultima analisi, impossibili» (p. 75), impone la stesura di nuove mappe – mappe cognitive che permettano al singolo di comprendere questo spazio, di trovarvi un senso, di collocarvisi e di uscire quindi dallo smarrimento. «La nuova arte politica […] dovrà attenersi alla verità del postmoderno, vale a dire al suo oggetto fondamentale – lo spazio mondiale del capitalismo multinazionale – e contemporaneamente dovrà aprire una breccia su un nuovo modo finora inimmaginabile di rappresentarlo, in cui noi possiamo cominciare ad afferrare nuovamente il nostro porci come soggetti individuali e collettivi e a riguadagnare una capacità di agire e lottare, che al presente è neutralizzata dalla nostra confusione spaziale e sociale» (p. 103).
Per un’ideale prosecuzione di questa riflessione, “aggiornata” agli ultimi tragici eventi storici, mi pare interessante la lettura della Fine del postmoderno di R. Luperini:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
Quest’opera di Jameson è diventata il primo capitolo di una sua più ampia riflessione sulla cultura postmoderna:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9... -
Fredric Jameson may be the biggest name in American contemporary Marxist cultural theory, with a heavy catalogue of theoretical work. Jameson has a reputation in being a challenging author, and I did find his style of writing convoluted and complex at times. However, the core themes of what he proposes in this book are intriguing enough to warrant wading through the heavy prose and subject matter.
What Jameson tries to do in this book [which is based on a long essay he wrote in 1982] is to carve out the historical niche of the current cultural moment, by analyzing the ways in which contemporary culture has gone under major shifts. Through this effort, Jameson grounds postmodernism by treating it as a historically contingent phenomenon, emerging in a specific context, and open to be diagnosed and described: The emerging logic of late capitalism. This historically materialist approach is one that chips away a lot of the confusions around what postmodernism is and how it can be studied. His approach can be identified through this short paragraph from the book:The conception of Postmodernism outlined here is a historical rather than a merely stylistic one. I cannot stress too greatly the radical distinction between a view for which the postmodern is one (optional) style among many others available and one which seeks to grasp it as the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism: the two approaches in fact generate two very different ways of conceptualizing the phenomenon as a whole: on the one hand, moral judgments (about which it is indifferent whether they are positive or negative), and, on the other, a genuinely dialectical attempt to think our present of time in History.
Jameson borrows various categorization of capitalism’s modes of production and expansion from Marxist thinkers and superimposes the cultural implications on them. For him, the late capitalism is not the capitalism that is about to die, but capitalism as of late, in its expanded and accelerated state, having permeated every aspect of our lives. This expansion itself is something he presses on further in the book, touching on phenomena such as commodification of various forms of culture and art in late capitalism....what we have been calling postmodern (or multinational) space is not merely a cultural ideology or fantasy but has genuine historical (and socioeconomic) reality as a third great original expansion of capitalism around the globe (after the earlier expansions of the national market and the older imperialist system, which each had their own cultural specificity and generated new types of space appropriate to their dynamics).
Jameson goes on to extensively explore the characteristics of postmodernity and how these characteristics manifest in culture, by drawing various examples from postmodern works of art and literature and how they differ from high modernist and modernist works of art. A wealth of such works are mentioned, by the way, and gradually getting familiar with them while you read the book can greatly assist in understanding Jameson's points and interpretations.
This book is highly interesting, stimulating and influential. If you are not familiar with Jameson and his work, it might surprise you just how many pieces of artistic and literary criticism you have encountered in the last two decades have been directly and indirectly influenced by his work. Particularly in tandem with Mark Fisher's books (and preferably read prior to picking up Fisher; Since Fisher applies Jameson's lens to later stages of capitalism's expansion and 21st century), it has so many interesting observations and vital theories to offer about our current state of living within postmodern culture. -
Fredric Jameson is not as terribly dense as some other writers and thinkers out there (don't know if that was a compliment or what...) I didn't seem to think that this book was as terribly hard to read as some other reviewers but I would say that potential readers definitely have to be in the right mood for the book. Some of the sections are more drawn out (ie. less fun to read) than they probably needed to be. However, elaboration and digression are common in these kinds of books where the author wants to be sure that they are being thorough (plus they love that stuff in the Academy).
I don't know why some people have such an aversion to skipping around as they read books. Some readers act like it's some ultimate sin against the organization of the narrative that the author has laid out. However, I have found that jumping around is the exact thing that this kind of book calls for. If you're not in the mood to read hundreds of pages about film then skip to the architecture chapter (or the one about art, or whatever you feel like reading).
As others have mentioned the first section is probably the best. The beginning has a nice flow and many fertile ideas whereas the rest of the book gets bogged down in information pretty fast and you have to dig more and more to find the same kind of consistent value (but the digging is usually worth it). -
на те вона і класична праця, щоб бути складною і строкатою. місцями видається, що ФД хотів увіпхнути в цей текст усе, хоча не варто забувати, що це радше збірка статей, аніж повноцінна книга, тож незрідка одна думка автора "б'є в пику" (за висловом Івана Франка) другу думку. безліч цікавих думок і термінів, якими ФД вправно жонглює (особливо фанатіючи від гі-деборівської "реїфікації", яку пояснює разів із п'ять). побіжно ФД розбирається з багатьма питаннями - навіть із тим, що радянські офіціанти подають погану їжу, але найбільша загадка українського перекладу в тому, що в ньому немає 439-ї сторінки (натомість є дві 437-мі) - перевірив усі доступні примірники, ніде її немає - яка така таємниця прихована на тій сторінці - тепер ніхто й ніколи не дізнається. але оскільки ніхто до цього не казав про те, що саме її бракує, то, певно, ніхто до неї й не дочитував - shame on you, Ukrainian readers!
p.s. щодо перекладу Петра Дениска - він гарний, хай трохи й потребує вправного редактора - але помітно, що перекладач дуже старався. -
Ugh. Jameson is influential for a reason -- he has some really important thoughts on 'postmodernism' and contemporary society -- but the interesting nuggets of these essays are buried within mounds of awful subclauses, of subclauses, within further subclauses, and relentless 'academese'...
I don't mind if books of 'theory' are hard going, in fact this is often a necessity, but in this case this often appears entirely unnecessary (possibly intentionally so?). Much of this book reads as if it was been written to a tight deadline, without Jameson giving himself time to read his work aloud to himself in order to edit and refine. There is an art to a good essay; Jameson certainly has the ideas, but I would say he lacks the structure or style necessary to properly convey these thoughts to the reader.
Like other reviewers have suggested, use the index to find the passages relevant to your interests/research rather than reading this from cover to cover... I'd recommend sticking to the first few chapters and the conclusion. -
Ensayo que se centra esencialmente en el posmodernismo en su ámbito cultural. Tal como dice el título, expone objetos y expresiones culturales y explica la lógica detrás de ellas, haciendo el contraste con la modernidad.
Si bien existe una crítica latente al posmodernismo durante todo el ensayo, no es su objeto principal. La forma que aborda el tema a través de análisis de obras arquitectónicas, plásticas y musicales, hace que sea lectura más pedagógica que otras del mismo estilo, como también una muestra de los sólidos conocimientos del autor. -
Like a lot of academic books, this is really more of a series of articles united by a subject (postmodernism) than a single treatise--and it is better read that way. Unless you are a glutton for punishment, like me. I enjoyed and learned the most from his introduction, his chapter on architecture and his chapter on theory.
That said, I see why many treat it as such an essential text. -
The essential book on the deconstruction of the cultural postmodernism theory. Relevant if you work with cultural studies, but not that useful if you're more interested in the creative domains or even in aesthetics.
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I'm gonna a rip Jameson a new asshole. Strikes me as one of them God paradoxa: Can one rip Jameson an asshole when, in fact, his is the biggest asshole one can find?
