Frederic Jameson''s General Arguments
Focus & Thesis: 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. ]
3. flatness, desubjectivization, simulacrum, lack of history (see The Deconstruction of Expression)
- from alienation in Modern society to depthlessness in postmodern society
4. Postmodern Styles: nostalgia film, parody and pastiche; hyperspace
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?
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