After reading Jameson’s essay, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” I was pretty confused by the piece. But something I was able to take away from it was the notion of intertextuality. Jameson says, “The producers of culture have nowhere to turn but to the past: the imitation of dead styles, speech through all the masks and voices stored up in the imaginary museum of a now global culture” (494). At this point in history it is not possible for ideas to be original because everything has already been said. Like Pierre Macherey explains, it may seem that something is original but the information and ideas are always drawn from previous knowledge or experience therefore it is impossible for information to overlap and repeat itself.
Jameson also touches on the subject of “the cult of the new” as discussed by Habermas. Jameson says, “What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of production fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to airplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover” (485). Everything that is created has to top the previous item and the speed at which this is occurring is rapid. I think an important part of the quote that relates to the paragraph above is the term “novel-seeming.” By this Jameson seems to be saying that the producers want the consumer to believe that they are getting something better and newer but it really is not all that difference, it is just played off to be that way. When thinking about “the cult of the new” I always think about children’s toys. I was watching the news and through results from a survey it was reported that the top items that are being asked for this year are the Iphone4 , the Ipad, and the Ipod Touch.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1095258n
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