Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson (b. 1934) is one of the foremost English-language Marxist literary and cultural critics writing today. Over the past three decades, he has published a wide range of works analyzing literary and cultural texts, while developing his own neo-Marxist theoretical perspectives. His books include Marxism and Form (1971), The Prison-House of Language (1972), The Political Consciousness (1981), Postmodernism or the Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (1992), and Brecht and Method (1998). For many years, he has been teaching literature at Duke University.
Jameson's analysis of postmodernism (you will find a synopsis below) synthesizes two articles: his original "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" (1983) and "Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of late Capitalism" (1984), the same title as his monumental book on the topic. In these works, Jameson expands his analysis to include popular culture, architecture, theory, and other texts, and thus can be seen as part of a movement toward cultural studies as a replacement for canonical literary studies. In the version included here, Jameson links current intellectual, social, and spatial disorientation to the technological reinvigoration of capitalism and globalization. He considers present arrangements with critical rationality and calls for a demystifying political aesthetic of "cognitive mapping" (Gray and McGuigan, 1997, pp. 176-77).
POSTMODERNISM AND CONSUMER SOCIETY
1. introduction
The concept of postmodernism has been much misunderstood. Resistance may come from the unfamiliarity of the wide range of work the term covers: the art of Andy Warhol; the music of John Cage and Terry Riley; ...
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...emergence of consumer or multinational capitalism. In many ways, its formal features express the deeper logic of this social system. We need only think of the way our sense of history has disappeared, of how our entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past. We live in a perpetual present. We might say that the media help us forget the past (pp. 204-05). I have discussed two features of postmodernism--the transformation of reality into images and the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents. In this way, then, postmodernism replicates or reproduces or reinforces the logic of consumer capitalism (p. 205).
Works Cited
James, Fredric. 1988. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." In Studies in Culture: An Introductory Reader, ed. Ann Gray and Jim McGuigan. London: Arnold, 1997, pp. 192-205.
Calder’s Thesis for this book follows the development of American consumer culture from its unorganized infancy around the 1890’s to about the 1940’s. There are several references to credit and debt outside this range as a reference to where we started and w...
Jameson, Frederick. "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" New Left Review. 146 (July-August 1984) Rpt in Storming the Reality Studio. Larry McCaffrey, ed. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1992.
There are many people who are driven by consumerism and many people who wish they can get in touch with that type of world. Consumers are often promoted to advertise more of the products that they are buying to get more people to buy more products. Hari Kunzru, author of “Raj, Bohemian,” creates a narrator who is obsessed with maintaining his individuality and free will in a world that is overcome with consumerism. Believes that the world takes away individuality when consumerism comes into play and how hard it is to maintain their true self. In her LA Times article “Teen Haulers Create a Fashion Force,” Andrea Chang writes about the phenomenon of teenage Youtube users who make videos that publicize their latest shopping binges. She expresses
Morley, D. 1996, ‘Postmodernism: the rough guide’, in J. Curran, D. Morley & V. Walkerdine (eds) Cultural Studies and Communication, Arnold, New York
The consumerist supermarket place and its postmodern surroundings promote an unrealistic expectation of how an individual should behave and he struggles to meet them. The postmodern society in which he lives instils in him the notion that a truth-system of correspondences can order the arbitrary nature of reality. Relativism
Postmodernism movement started in the 1960’s, carrying on until present. James Morley defined the postmodernism movement as “a rejection of the sovereign autonomous individual with an emphasis upon anarchic collective anonymous experience.” In other words, postmodernism rejects what has been established and makes emphasis on combined revolutionary experiences. Postmodernism can be said it is the "derivate" of modernism; it follows most of the same ideas than modernism but resist the very idea of boundaries. According to our lecture notes “Dominant culture uses perception against others to maintain authority.”
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
The book White Noise by Don DeLillo traces the protagonist-narrator Jack Gladney’s gradual and astounding progress in life as he tries to conform to the postmodern world to which he belongs while trying to retain his moral and ethical principles. The book discusses the postmodern and cultural explorations in an open and Western living system that incorporates within itself a consumeristically dominant culture vibrant with supermarket-grocery shopping, globalization, mass media dependency, and anticipation towards establishing a concrete, dynamic, and self-created individuality.
Manovich seems unconcerned with the idea of capitalism at the center of future technological developments. “If Fredric Jameson once referred to post-modernism as “the cultural logic of late capitalism,” we can perhaps call remix “the cultural logic of networked global capitalism.”(Manovich
Postmodernism is a vague term that can describe a variety of disciplines that include, architecture, art, music, film, fashion, literature…etc. (Klages). In the case of “Videotape”, postmodern literature would be the main focus or area of study. This type of literature emerged in the era that succeeded World War II and relies heavily on the use of techniques such as, fragmentation, the creation of paradoxes, and questionable protagonists. Furthermore, postmodern literature also exudes ambiguity and critical thinking where the focus is mainly on the reader and his/her experience of the work rather than the content and form. Building upon that, the selected passag...
If modernism and postmodernism are arguably two most distinguishing movements that dominated the 20th century Western art, they are certainly most exceptional styles that dominated the global architecture during this period. While modernism sought to capture the images and sensibilities of the age, going beyond simple representation of the present and involving the artist’s critical examination of the principles of art itself, postmodernism developed as a reaction against modernist formalism, seen as elitist. “Far more encompassing and accepting than the more rigid boundaries of modernist practice, postmodernism has offered something for everyone by accommodating wide range of styles, subjects, and formats” (Kleiner 810).
Sigmund Freud was the initiator of psychoanalysis. He altered the insight into the human mind and how it works. It spurred him into defining the unconscious and what was for him the powerhouse of personality – irrational motivation. The series examines profound queries surrounding the origins and techniques of contemporary consumerism, commodification, typical democracy and its consequences. It furthermore looks at the current manner we perceive ourselves, the outlooks to fashion and superficiality. Freud's findings in connection with the mind were methodically applied by corporate America and the U.S. government to raise their capital and authority. This technique also provided the impre...
Postmodernism first appeared around the 1980’s, following a hectic and messy period of time. The postmodernist theory that defines a new era describing the world as society is fragmenting, while authority is de-centering, and real truth does not exist; there are only representations of it. Believers of the postmodernist theory, believe that postmodernism is a mixture of present, past, and future, more specifically, the cultural and spatial elements of these different times (Lemert, 2010). The postmodern age is considered the information age, or even, the technological age. Both of these are evident through the changes that have occurred within the typical marriage and family. One of the main emphases of postmodernism is that no real truth exists, demonstrating the grand narrative. The grand narrative states that the “truth” is invented for the sole purpose of selling things. This is clearly shown, in a different manner, in marriages and families in today’s society. No real truth being in existence creates change in the typical marriage and family.
Stearns, Peter N. Consumerism in World History : The Global Transformation of Desire. Themes in World History. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006.
...“Some Common Themes and Ideas within the Field of Postmodern Thought: A handout for HIS 389,” last modified May 13,2013,