1. three stages of capitalism//three stages
of cultural dominant // three cultural logic
2. the cultural logic of postmodernism--overall
commodification
capitalism
competitive capitalism
monopolist
multinational/post-industrial
cultural dominant
realism
modernism
postmodernism
cultural logic
Utopian
overall commodification
[post-industrial society as defined by Daniel Bell
a switch from goods - producing industry
to service economy;
pre-eminence of professional and technical
class;
theoretical knowledge, technology and
information as the major mode of commodity. ]
Background:
1. Jameson as a Marxist. -- "Always
historicize"; Insists on a "real sense of history" or cognitive mapping.
Some Marxist key concepts:
materialist determinism,
fetishism -- "the endowment of an object
of a body part with unusual degree of power or erotic allure, as in
the case of cultures that attribute magical powers or erotic allure
to idols or human effigies.
Karl Marx's commodity fetishism
-- the way that capitalist emphasis on the abstract value
of commodities conceals the underlying social relations of their
producers.
Psychoanalysis -- According
to Freud, sexual fascination with objects like shoes or garter
belts is rooted in a compromise made by the male child upon
discovering that the woman does not have a penis. Since
this raises the intolerable possibility that his own penis may
be lost, he partially refuses to accept what he has seen by
turning some other object into a substitute for the missing
organ (and simultaneously developing a strong aversion to the
female genitals). (The Columbia Dictionary 109).
reification -- the reduction of the value
of an object (a commodity, and, by extension, a human being such as
Marilyn Monroe) to exchange value and the domination of the human
world by the world of objects. The consumer in a commodity society
reifies the commodity and feel satisfied both materially and spiritually
by owning it .
2. Jameson's importance in his theory on Postmodernism,
and Postmodernism vs. Third-World national allegory.
3. Jameson's influence on Taiwan and mainland
China.
Questions: 1. Is postmodernism really in lack of critical distance from capitalist
ideologies? Or which kinds of postmodernism are not critical? 2. Are postmodern works separate from their living (social
and historical) context or how do they relate to it? 3. How do individual
subjects disappear in the postmodern age? Or do they really disappear?
If so, what comes instead?
