Jameson pre class fang

Frederic Jameson outlines an incredibly dense and varied set of ideas that go with postmodernism, though he notes that he writes about a “historic…not stylistic” postmodernism (428). Unlike previous theorists who have lauded and embraced postmodernism, Jameson sees it as a sign of the end: the end of affect, the end of modernity, and the end of a lot of things in society as a whole.

Jameson stresses the notion of an “end” that is tandem with postmodernism. All the of the postmodern art and cultural fixtures are now “seen as the final, extraordinary flowering of a high modernist impulse which is spent and exhausted with them,” (408) except for architecture which he argues is fixed into both the creative and business economy. The postmodern ethos is a sign of “anxiety and alienation” in society and he questions whether or not society will have a plan in place when postmodernism fails (414).

            The other potential pitfall in postmodernism is the “waning of affect” due to the “end of the bourgeois ego or monad no doubt bring[ing] with it the end of the psychopathologies of that ego as well…” (414). With postmodernism, the emotions exist but they are much more vague and amorphous than before partially due to the aura of postmodernism but also due to the “waning of the great high modernist thematics of time and temporality” (414). While postmodernism offers more platforms for expression than modernism and other rational thought, it has a sameness as discussed by Adorno and Horkheimer that is damaging to the emotional aspects of humanity.

Jameson was not the easiest to read but he restate some his views multiple times just using examples but I look forward to a class discussion that might not be the most depressing conversation we have.