Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (Paperback)

by Fredric Jameson (Author, Series Editor), Stanley Fish (Series Editor) "The last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by senses..." (more)
Key Phrases: full postmodernism, commodity lust, corps conducteurs, New Historicism, United States, Van Gogh (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The word postmodernism, for better or worse, has entered everyday discourse. Applied everywhere, it as acquired an authority to describe a variety of concerns—culture, critiques of culture, architecture, video, music, the penchant for economic forecasts and marketing research, new therapies, museum installations and film festivals, religious revivals and cults—and seems to offer an assurance that it identifies something. But what?
In his most broadly engaging work, Fredric Jameson argues that postmodernism is the cultural response to the latest systemic change in world capitalism. He seeks here to crystallize a definition of this term that has taken on so many meanings it has virtually lost all historical significance. Departing from his now classic essay, "Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" (included here), he presents a wide-ranging discussion of the cultural landscape—both "high" and "low"—of postmodernity. Subsequent chapters evaluate the political fortunes of the new term and survey postmodern developments in a range of different fields, from market ideology to architecture, from painting and installment art to contemporary "punk" film, from video art and high literature to deconstruction.
Finally, Jameson reevaluates the concept of postmodernism in light of postmodern critiques of totalization and historical narratives, from the notion of "decadence" to the dynamics of small groups, from religious fundamentalism to high-tech science fiction, while touching on the nature of contemporary cultural critique and the possibilities of "cultural mapping" in the present "multinational" world system. This insightful and provocative book will be fundamentally important to all future discussions of postmodernism.

From the Back Cover
“Fredric Jameson, internationally recognized as a literary theorist and as America’s most notable Marxist intellectual, has established a leading place in discussions of postmodernism. Jameson brings to the subject an immense range of reference both to artworks and to theoretical discussions; a strong hypothesis linking cultural changes to changes in the place of culture within the whole structure of life produced by a new phase of economic history (multinational capitalism); and a severely scholarly wish to analyze and understand, rather than praise or blame, the object of his study.”—Jonathan Arac

Product Details

• Paperback: 461 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press (February 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822310902
• ISBN-13: 978-0822310907
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #65,885 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

130 of 137 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Book, For Those Who Can Read It, November 2, 1997

By A Customer

"Postmodernism" is one of those words many of us have heard somewhere, but something we know little about, which includes myself. But since I have read Jameson's book, among a few others on this notoriously confusing topic, let me at least tell you what I think about the book. To begin with, this is not a book for those who are new to the subject. This has to do not just with the extremely complicated nature of postmodernism as a topic, but Jameson's style of writing itself, which produces sentences that at times can run more than half a page, if not more. Reading Jameson's work can be something like climbing Everest with a jeep on your back, as a friend of mine recently commented. It is difficult to imagine an intellectual (perhaps with the exception of the psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan) in the past thirty years who is more difficult to understand than Jameson.

Yet, those who are able to endure Jameson's arrogant, intricate writing style will easily see why his book on postmodernism is one of the best written on the subject. Jameson begins his work with an intricate reading of a painting by Van Gogh and contrasts it to Warhol's "Diamond Dust Shoes," the former as the symptom of a typical "modernist" work and the latter as a prime example of a "postmodernist" one. His main argument in the important opening title essay and throughout the book is that around the late sixties to the early seventies, cultural representation and production has experienced significant changes and that these changes must be accounted by even more significant changes in history itself, history being understood here with the Marxian notion of "the mode of production" or, to put it crudely, the socio-economic system. I will not go into the details of this argument, which are too complex to discuss here; but what is amazing about Jameson's work is the sheer depth of his intellectual capabilities, which offers detailed analyses of architecture, video, economics, film, literature, and so forth into all corners of culture, within the context of our recent history, followed by his daunting, one-hundred page conclusion on a number issues to consider in future studies of the postmodern. Even if you do not agree with Jameson's argument, much less his Marxist critical approach, you will no doubt be amazed by Jameson's seemingly endless cultural inventory. If you are a follower of Marxist theory or cultural theory in general, you will be equally impressed with the ambition of Jameson's intention, which is nothing less than to present a totalizing historical perspective on postmodernism and postmodernity. Anyone interested in postmodernism or Marxism must read this indispensable text. The only problem is if you can.

Peter Song, recent graduate in English and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill

83 of 101 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, December 26, 2001

By	Mete Çomoðlu (Ankara, TURKEY) - See all my reviews

The term, Postmodernism refers to the cultural and ideological configuration that is taken to have replaced or be replacing Modernity. New movements in architecture and the arts as well as social theories indicate a change from modernity to postmodernity.
Frederic Jameson, an American Marxist social theorist and the author of the book, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, draws the attentions to the differences in culture between the modern and postmodern periods. In order to explain his arguments, Jameson is specially interested in the fields of architecture, art and other cultural forms. He places the heaviest emphasis on architecture. In his article, Jameson's basic argument is that postmodernism is a dominant cultural form and that is indicative of late capitalism.
Jameson's article begins with the comparison of Van Gogh's painting to Warhol's. Jameson contrasts Van Gogh's painting with Warhol's "Diamond Dust Shoes," He refers to the former as the symptom of a typical "modernist" work and the latter as a prime example of a "postmodernist" one. His main assertion here is that cultures and production has experienced important changes and these changes must be accounted by even more significant changes in history . He focuses on these changes on the individual level in postmodern society and his main concern was the cultural expressions and aesthetics that is associated with the different systems of production.
Jameson suggests that postmodernism is differed from other cultural forms by its emphasis on fragmentation. He specially emphasizes on the term, fragmentation. For Jameson, the fragmentation of the subject replaces the alienation of the subject which characterized modernism. Postmodernism always deals with surface, not substance. There is no center, rather everything tends to be decentralized in postmodernism. Postmodernist works are often characterized by a lack of depth. According to Jameson, individuals are no longer anomic and anxious, because there is nothing from which an individual could cut his or her ties. The liberation from the anxiety that characterized anomie may also mean a liberation from other kind of feeling as well. For him, this is not to say that the cultural products of the postmodernism are devoid of feelings, but rather such feelings are now free-floating and impersonal.
Jameson defines the late capitalist age as a distinct period, which focuses on commodification and the recycling of old images and commodities. Jameson provides an example of Warhol's work, (Diamonds Dust Shoes) as well as Warhol himself. Jameson refers to this cultural recycling as historicism (the random cannibalization of all styles of the past.) It is an increasing primacy of the 'neo'(new) and a world was transformed into sheer images of itself. the actual organic tie of history to past events is being lost.
All of these cultural forms in art and architecture are indicative of postmodernism, late capitalism, or what Jameson calls present-day multinational capitalism. Jameson claims that there has been a radical shift in our surrounding material world and the ways, in which it works. He refers to an architectural example, a postmodern building Symbolic of the multinational world space which people function in daily. Jameson suggests that the human subjects who occupy this new space have not kept pace with the evolution which produced it. There has been a mutation in the object, yet we do not possesses the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace. Therein lies the source of our fragmentation as individuals.
Jameson also suggests that this latest mutation in space, postmodern hyperspace, (he provides the Bonaventura hotel as an example) has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world. This is the symbol and analogue of our inability at present to map the great global multinational and decentered communicational network in which people find themselves caught as individual subjects. He continues, we now live in a world where our daily life, our experiences, our cultural languages are dominated by categories of space rather than by categories of time, which was dominant in past eras. For Jameson, late capitalism aspires to a total space and a vastness of scale.
Jameson's argument in this article is that postmodernism is a dominant cultural form, not simply a style, and Jameson considers this dominant cultural form (postmodernism) as a sign of late capitalism. In explaining postmodernism as a dominant cultural form, he is specially concerned with the field of architecture, art and other cultural forms. Yet, as far as I have seen in this article, Jameson seems to emphases much more on the field of art and architecture than on social and political aspects of postmodernism. For example, he does not explicitly give much attention or interest to social theories such as poststructuralism, which is highly associated with postmodernism. Secondly, although the term, "Late-Capitalism" implies multinational capitalism, media-capitalism, the modern world system and postindustrial society, in the article he only talks about multinational capitalism and he neither explicitly touches nor sufficiently explains the terms like; modern world system and postindustrial society.
I would also like to commend on Jameson's style of writing, in the article, he produces sentences that sometimes can run more than half a page, I think this makes the article a little bit harder to read. Nevertheless, Jameson's article is worth to read since it stands as one of the best written books on postmodernism, besides it also offers detailed analyses of postmodernism and late capitalist age.
In conclusion, by his article -The cultural logic of late capitalism"- Jameson tries to argue that all of the characteristics of contemporary art, architecture and cultural forms reflect the structure of late capitalism as well as contemporary society - (i.e. domination by multinational corporations, the decline of national sovereignty). Moreover he argues that postmodernity is a part of the cultural logic of late capitalism and this is what brings about cultural fragmentation. Although, in this article, social, political and other aspects of postmodernism have not been emphasized as much as art, architecture, and cultural aspects of postmodern age have been, this article clearly explains the connection and relation between postmodernism as dominant cultural form and late capitalist age.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for those lacking in vocabulary, August 18, 2007

By	Shawn G. Welch - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A thorough, yet occasionally vague study of postmodernism. Jameson's flowery, somewhat esoteric writing style should be wrestled with care, as your journey through this book will most likely be met with more dead ends and re-readings than an actual elucidation of the topic, as the words "Yeah, okay...but what does that mean?" will probably pop into your head from time to time. Of course, the author is a distunguished critic and writer, and the book reflects that. However, if your aim is to get a brief review or critique on what postmodern is, search elsewhere.