Frederic Jameson's Postmodernism

Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, most of its content was originally published as essays in various journals, has been reviewed many times since Duke University Press originally published it in 1991. So why did I choose to review this book? I chose to review this book, not to add anything to the books mostly glowing reviews, and the many scholarly articles written about it (JSTOR), I think that the contents of the book needs to continually be introduced and reintroduced to new generations and to a forgetful masses. I believe it contains thought processes that make it perfect for ours and essentially any, political, social, and economical moment. This work is worthwhile if only to help us consider another mode to navigate how to think about the definitions we are attempting to change or re-define. Who is actually influencing why we are necessitating change? I think that this work is an ode not only to the Marxist tradition but also to the understanding of how culture is influenced and used to cultivate what may be an artificial understanding, as influenced by the capitalist (hegemonic) superstructure, not only the definitions of eras or periods of art, such as Modernism and Postmodernism, but also what truly influences the constitution of a more organized, knowledgeable, and healthy society.

I think it is important to begin with his view about Postmodernism and what it means, Jameson wrote in the book’s Introduction, “I have not systematized a usage or to impose any conveniently coherent thumbnail meaning, for the concept is not merely contested, it is also internally conflicted and contradictory… for good or ill, we cannot use it” (Jameson, xxii). So that’s it no need to read any further, luckily, Jameson in the subsequent chapters tries to work out those contradictions and begins by first attempting to separate Modernism from Postmodernism. Jameson is suggesting that he has a problem with the ease in which scholars or the society uses labels as he calls it "periodization." Periodization is grouping art, culture, and historical events into eras or periods based upon similar thematics and influences for the basis of analysis. He does believe that there are definite distinctions in time as society progresses, he just not sure how to determine when an era begins and when a period ends. (In the conclusion he also admits that you could anachronistically ascribe postmodernism to works created centuries before the period’s distinction). He explains the distinctions between Modernism and Postmodernism, using a concept he calls “the waning of affect.”

            

He explains the waning affect by using what he calls “a canonical expression of the great modernist thematic of alienation, anomie, solitude, social fragmentation… a virtually programmatic emblem of what used to be called the age of anxiety,” (11) Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream as well as Vincent Van Gogh’s A Pair of Boots. Both works express not only in the artist, “a bourgeois monad,” their own internal emotional state, that elicits an emotional reaction from the viewer, the work also represents the conditions of the era in which it was created.

            

He juxtaposes Munch and Van Gogh’s work with that of the work of Andy Warhol. On a side note, Jameson may have some slight disdain for Warhol, I don’t think he does but I think it can be argued. He uses Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes and Marilyn as examples of postmodern art. In comparing A Pair of Boots with Diamond Dust Shoes he writes, “evidently [Diamond Dust Shoes] no longer speaks to us with any of the immediacy of Van Gogh’s footgear; indeed, I am tempted to say that it does not really speak to us at all” (8). I wonder how the hipsters feel about that Marilyn poster on their wall now? Jameson's feeling wane on Warhol’s work if he has any feeling for it at all. He argues, that Diamond Dust Shoes appears to not be a true photo but actually a negative of a picture of shoes, a pair of shoes captured at its moment of Warhol’s own personal commodification. As the film camera represents mechanical production. It is also the quintessential example of Roland Barthes’ concept of the death of the author/artist. He continues “there are some other significant differences between the high modernist and the postmodernist moment… the first and most evident is the emergence of a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense” (9). He then goes on to explain that the commodification of Marilyn Monroe, as an actress and celebrity she commodifies herself, then Andy Warhol reproducing her image, this is where the Marxism comes in, “symbolized the emergent primacy of mechanical reproduction” (15); mechanical reproduction being a prime mode for the capitalists/industrialists to perpetuate the labor of the proletariat. As a caveat Jameson does give Andy Warhol credit and does believe Warhol’s art does foreground Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism especially in the new stages of capitalist production.

Now everyone can own a reproduction of a Van Gogh (any of the masterpieces from any era or period in time can hang in our living rooms). That does not mean that society has shown a greater appreciation for the artist or their work. The reproduction hanging in our living room or above our beds does not attach us to our moment or era or the era in which it was produced; it attaches us to a superficiality that believes that we are lovers of the art because we can purchase a reproduction. The purchasing of social currency, a currency cultivated by the capitalist's propaganda machine, gives some social status to people who have a famous reproduction on the background wall of their Snapchat video or Instagram photo. Art nowadays has not attempted to illuminate the individual, even in this vain age, and how they are emotionally attached to society. In an age of #Selfies and Social Media where every individual who agrees to the Terms of Service of one of these entities of vanity exploitation are attempting to commodify themselves as an individual but in their actions are only admitting to mechanical reproduction. There is no invention of a new determinate style. I know it is easy to assume the “our generation was better than your generation role” as could be ignorantly surmised, somewhat, by this work, but if our art is being created based upon already established commodities (selling paintings of pictures of celebrities), then what keeps our homes and our very beings from transforming into capitalist consumer tools? (Too late) With postmodernism, the capitalists have now interjected their main tools of capitalism which is intense social and material propaganda into all of our interactions. Even our love of art.

I think that is something I liked about Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism the most, was how informed his criticism was and how I could apply that to our moment. I understand historicism somewhat but I also believe in causality so the past does inform the present. He goes from Culture to Architecture (which contains the starkest examples of postmodernism in his estimation), to the use of Space in photography; he notes “…the claim to be ‘art’ (rather than photographic journalism)… a claim that these newer pictures do not seem to have to defend or enounce” (180). You don’t have to agree with Jameson’s claims about art and maybe a modernist or a postmodernist similarly has to announce themselves in a Descartesean manner or maybe we should begin to think critically about the society in which we are thrust and how if what we like and what we call art has been influenced by capitalist elitism what else has?