jameson

This week for class we had to read Fredric Jameson’s piece titled “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” The part of the essay that I found interesting was the section titled, “Postmodernism Cultural Dominant.” Here, Jameson is arguing that postmodernism is not a “style, but rather cultural dominant” (Jameson, 484). What he is trying to say here is that we look at things differently in this time period than modernists. This is a result of a “canonization and an academic institutionalization of the modern movement” (Jameson, 485).

This is a new generation that has its own ideas and now is seen in societies as the “norm.” Jameson says, “As for the postmodern revolt against all that, however, it must equally be stressed that its own offensive features….no longer scandalize anyone and are not only received with the greatest complacency but have themselves become institutionalized and are at one with the official culture of western society” (Jameson, 485). Our society has begun to accept these new ideas and have been embedded within our society that we do not even think about it any more.

He also relates the idea of postmodernism as cultural dominant through what we talked about earlier this year, systems. He talks about how theorists win and lose by saying, “What happens is that the more powerful the vision of some increasingly total system or logic, the more powerless the reader comes to feel” (Jameson, 486). What he is trying to say here is that his work gets thrown aside because people do not want to go against the norms of culture. He says that transformation of society is “perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself” (Jameson, 486).

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