Jameson Periodizing The 60s

Periodizing the 60s Author(s): Fredric Jameson Reviewed work(s): Source: Social Text, No.
9/10, The 60's without Apology (Spring - Summer, 1984), pp. 178-209 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466541 . Accessed: 10/01/2013 09:57
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PERIODIZING THE 60s

FREDRIC JAMESON
of theglories of the60s or abjectpublic Nostalgic commemoration
range of varied responses and creativeinnovationsis then possible, but limits. structural always withinthatsituation's Yet a whole rangeof rather different theoretical objectionswill also 178
failures andmissed are ofthedecade'smany confession opportunities whichcannot be avoidedbysomemiddle its two errors threads paththat The following sketch theposition that starts from wayin between. History is necessity, thatthe 60s had to happenthe way it did, and thatits and failures were inextricably marked intertwined, by the opportunities and openings of constraints ofa determinate historical situation, objective whichI thuswishto offer a tentative and provisional model. ofthe60s,however, isnecessarily To speakofthe"situation" tothink with in termsof historical and to work of models historical periods areat thepresent which moment unfashionable, periodization theoretically factthattheveterans to say the least.Leave aside the existential of the from decade,who haveseen so manythings changedramatically yearto think morehistorically theclassification thantheir predecessors; by year, forus as itwas fortheRussians of has becomeas meaningful generations the late 19thcentury, who sorted character to typesout withreference decades.Andintellectuals of a certain it normal to specific age now find their current narrative by wayof an historical justify positions ("thenthe limits of Althusserianism etc.).Now,thisis notthe beganto be evident," a theoretical inthewriting ofperiodization ofhistory, placefor justification thatcultural some massive but to thosewho think implies periodization within itmayquickly and homogeneity or identity a given kinship period, be replied a of whatis thatit is surely certain onlyagainst conception the dominant or that value of the full historically hegemonic exceptionalWilliams whatRaymond callsthe"residual" or "emergent"-can be assesnotas some sed. Here,inanycase,the"period"in question is understood and uniform shared or wayof thinking and acting, but omnipresent style rather as thesharing of a common to whicha whole situation, objective
THE60s PERIODIZING
if the critiqueof narrative: bear on the selectivenessof such a historical these involve the periodizationquestions the possibilitiesof diachrony, problems of synchrony and in particular of the relationship to be betweenthevarious"levels" of historical established changesingledout for attention. Indeed, the present narrativewill claim to say something about the 60s by way of briefsketchesof but fourof those meaningful levels: the history of philosophy, revolutionarypolitical theory and and economic cycles (and thisin a context practice,culturalproduction, to the UnitedStates,Franceand the thirdworld.) Such limitedessentially selectiveness seems not merelyto give equal historical weightto base and but also to raise the specterof a practiceof superstructure indifferently, in which thepoeticproduchomologies-the kindof analogicalparallelism tion of Wallace Stevensis somehow "the same" as the politicalpracticeof Che Guevara- which have been thoughtabusive at least as farback as Spengler. There is of course no reason why specializedand elite phenomena, trends of poetry, cannotrevealhistorical and tendencies such as thewriting in their even isolation and as vividly as "real life"--orperhaps morevisibly, In semiautonomywhich approximatesa laboratorysituation. any case, and those thereis a fundamental difference between the presentnarrative which sought"expressive"unification of an older organichistory through analogies and homologies between widely distinctlevels of social life. between the formson such various Where the latterproposed identities levels, what will be argued here is a series of significant homologiesbetween the breaks in those formsand theirdevelopment.What is at stake thenis not some proposition about the organicunityof the 60s on all its a hypothesis and dynamics of thefundaabout therhythm levels,but rather in levels develop accordingto mentalsituation which those verydifferent theirown internal laws. or narraAt thatpoint,what looked like a weakness in thishistorical in altive procedureturnsout to be an unexpected strength, particularly the of the of strands narrafor some sort of "verification" lowing separate in thearea of culture tive.One sometimes and cultural hisfeels--especially numberof narrative of toriesand critiques-thatan infinite interpretations the the are limited of ingenuity practitioners history only by possible, of thenew theory of hiswhose claimto originality depends on thenovelty the market. It to find to is more then, torytheybring reassuring, regularities or the (e.g., the cognitive, hypothetically proposed forone fieldof activity or and the "confirmed" aesthetic, dramatically surprisingly revolutionary) in a widelydifferent and seemof justsuch regularities by the reappearance as will with in the unrelated be the case the economic field, ingly present context. At any rate,it will alreadyhave become clear thatnothing like a his179
180 0 FREDRIC JAMESON
of the60s in thetraditional, narrative sensewillbe offered here.But tory incrisis historical is justas surely as itsdistant thelincousin, representation earnovel, and for muchthesamereasons. The mostintelligent "solution" inabandoning to sucha crisis does notconsist as altogether, historiography an impossible aimandan ideological allatonce,butrather-asin category themodernist aesthetic itself-in itstraditional on reorganizing procedures a different in this level.Althusser's seemsthewisest situation: as proposal narrative old-fashioned or "realistic" becameproblematic, historiography thehistorian hervocation-notanylonger shouldreformulate to produce somevividrepresentation ofHistory butrather to "as itreally happened," theconcept ofhistory. Suchwillat leastbe thegamble of thefolproduce lowing pages.
1. THIRD WORLD BEGINNINGS
inJanuary-March internal 1957, as withits highpoint,the Battleof Algiers, in 1962)--all of these signalthe convulsivebirthof diplomaticresolution what will come in timeto be known as the 60s:
It does notseemparticularly to mark thebeginnings ofwhat controversial willcometo be calledthe60s in thethird with world thegreat movement in British It can be argued of decolonization that and French Africa. the mostcharacteristic first of a properly world60s are all later expressions incountercultural whether than areunderstood and this, they terms-drugs in new left terms of a student and a massantiwar rock--or thepolitical movement. a first to third-worldworld 60s owedmuch Indeed, politically, ism in terms of politicocultural Maoism, and, models,as in a symbolic in resistance to warsaimedprecisely at stemfound itsmission moreover, in thethird in this forces world.(Elsewhere mingthenew revolutionary thetwofirst in whichthe BeldenFields that worldnations work, suggests mostpowerful student massmovements States and emerged-theUnited becausethesewere privileged political spacesprecisely France--became in colonial thetwocountries theFrench new left involved wars, although The one significant exafter the of resolution theAlgerian conflict.) appears all in this the most to is first world many ception ways important political movement of all--thenew blackpolitics and thecivilrights movement, whichmust be dated, not from theSupreme Court decision of 1954,but in Greensboro, in rather from thefirst sit-ins North of Carolina, February this be argued that ofdecolonizawas also a movement 1960.Yetitmight andmutual influences between andinanycase theconstant tion, exchange theAmerican blackmovements andthevarious ones African andCaribbean are continuous and incalculable this throughout period. The independenceof Ghana (1957), the agony of the Congo inJanuary of France's was murdered theindependence 1961), (Lumumba sub-Saharan theGaullist referendum of1959,finally the colonies following mark ourschema herewith its Revolution Algerian (which plausibly might
PERIODIZING THE60s 0 181

Not so very long ago, the earth numbered two thousand million inhabitants:five hundred million men and one thousand five hundred million natives. The former had the Word; the others merelyhad use of it.... Sartre,"Preface" to The Wretched of the Earth
The 60s was, then,the period in which all these "natives"became human as well as externally: thoseinnercolonized of the beings,and thisinternally first world- "minorities," and women- fullyas much as its marginals, externalsubjects and official"natives." The process can and has been describedin a numberof ways,each one of which impliesa certain"vision of History"and a certain readingof the 60s proper:it uniquelythematized can be seen as a decisive and global chapterin Croce's conception of historyas the historyof human freedom;as a more classicallyHegelian of subject peoples; as some process of the coming to self-consciousness or more Marcusean,new leftconceptionof the emergence post-Lukicsean of new "subjects of history"of a nonclass type (blacks, students,third world peoples); or as some poststructuralist,Foucaultean notion (significantly anticipated by Sartre in the passage just quoted) of the to speak in a new collectivevoice, neverbeforeheard conquest of theright on theworld stage-and of theconcomitant dismissal of theintermediaries who hithertoclaimed to talk in your (liberals,firstworld intellectuals) name; not forgettingthe more properly political rhetoric of selfdetermination or independence,or the more psychologicaland cultural rhetoric of new collective"identities." It is, however,important to situatethe emergenceof these new collective"identities" in thehistorical or "subjectsof history" which situation made thatemergencepossible,and in particular to relatethe emergenceof these new social and politicalcategories(the colonized, race, marginality, gender and the like) to somethinglike a crisis in the more universal seemed to subsume all the varieties of social recategorythathad hitherto the classical of social to class. This is be undersistance, namely conception in not in some intellectual but rather an institutional sense: stood, however, it would be idealisticto suppose thatdeficiencies in the abstractidea of social class, and in particular in the Marxianconception of class struggle, can have been responsible forthe emergence of what seem to be new nonclass forces.Whatcan be noted,rather, a is crisisin theinstitutions through which a real class politicshad however imperfectly been able to express In thisrespect,the mergerof the AFL and the CIO in 1955 can be itself. seen as a fundamental forthe unleashing of the "conditionof possibility" new social and politicaldynamicsof the 60s: thatmerger, a triumph of the the secured of Communists from the American McCarthyism, expulsion labor movement, consolidated the new antipolitical"social contract" between American businessand the American labor unions,and createda situationin which the privilegesof a white male labor force take precedence over the demands of black and women workersand otherminorities. These last have therefore no place in the classical institutions of an
182@ FREDRIC JAMESON social class, older working-class politics.They will thusbe "liberated"from sense which Marxism in the chargedand ambivalent gives to thatword (in the contextof enclosure,forinstance):theyare separatedfromthe older and thus "released" to findnew modes of social and political institutions expression. as a small of theAmerican Communist The virtual Party disappearance another but significant societyin 1956 suggests politicalforcein American dimension to this general situation:the crisis of the Americanpartyis and by the "revounderMcCarthyism "overdetermined" by its repression camdeStalinization lution" in the Soviet bloc unleashedby Khrushchev's and specificequivalentsfor paign, which will have analogous but distinct In France,in particular, after thebrief motheEuropeanCommunist Parties. mentof a Communist "humanism," by philosophers developed essentially himself and the in the easterncountries, and with the fallof Khrushchev in 1964, an unparalleled situafailure of his variousexperiments definitive time since the Congressof for the first tion emergesin which, virtually to conceive of Tours in 1919, it becomes possible forradicalintellectuals work outside and independentof the French Communist revolutionary (The older attitudes-"we know all about it,we don't like it much, Party. but nothingis to be done politicallywithout the CP" - are classically in Les Commuin particular own politicaljournalism, expressedin Sartre's nisteset la paix.) Now Trotskyism gets a new lease on life,and the new formafollowedby a whole explosion of extraparliamentary Maoistforms, offer the tionsof all ideologicalcomplexions,theso-called"groupuscules," promiseof a new kind of politicsequally "liberated"fromthe traditional class categories. Two further key eventsneed to be noted here beforewe go on. For - a new Year I, the palpable many of us, indeed, the crucial detonator thatrevolutionwas not merelya historical demonstration concept and a museumpiece but real and achievable-was furnished by a people whose a sympathy had developed among NorthAmericans subjugation imperialist we could neverhave forotherthird worldpeoples and a sense of fraternity in their and intellectual 1, way.YetbyJanuary struggle, exceptin an abstract remainedsymbolically 1959, the Cuban Revolution ambiguous.It could be either theclassical of a different read as a third world revolution typefrom enforithad a revolutionary Leninist one or theMaoistexperience, strategy event which later. This also moreabout itsown, thefoco theory, great tirely 60s as a period of unexpectedpoliticalinnovaannounces the impending of oldersocial and conceptualschemes. thanas theconfirmation tionrather seems to make it clear thatformany Meanwhile,personaltestimony formanyof thoselateractivein the students-in particular whiteAmerican rolein new left-the assassination of President Kennedyplayeda significant in the itself and the state process, discrediting parliamentary delegitimizing passingof thetorchto seemingto markthedecisiveend of thewell-known
THE60s 0 183 PERIODIZING
a younger ofleadership, as wellas thedramatic defeat ofsome generation newspirit ofpublic Asfor thereality oftheappearance, it or civicidealism. inhindsight, sucha viewoftheKennedy does notmuchmatter that, presihis conservatism and antierroneous, considering dencymaybe wholly thegruesome andhisresponsiofthe"missile communism, crisis," gamble in the Vietnam itself. the for American More bility engagement significantly, of the the to of a 60s well legacy Kennedy regime development politics may have been the rhetoric of youthand of the "generation gap" whichhe himand dialectically butwhichoutlived itself as an exoffered exploited, the discontent of American form which students pressive through political and young itself. could articulate people Suchweresomeofthepreconditions or "conditions ofpossibility"in bothintraditional institutions and thearena class ofthe working political of the state for the social forces of 60s to "new" legitimation powerin there is which as did. to these new a forces, develop they Returning way their ultimate fatemarks theclose of the60s as well: theend of "thirdin theU.S. and Europe worldism" theChinese Thermidor, predates largely in and coincides withtheawareness of increasing institutional corruption the the of states of Africa and almost many newlyindependent complete theChilean militarization oftheLatin after American coup of 1973 regimes in the former coloniesare (the laterrevolutionary Portuguese triumphs henceforth felt to be "Marxist" rather than while Vietnam "third-worldist," vanishes from consciousness as completely after the ultimate American withdrawal as did Algeria from French consciousness after the American is certainly Evianaccords world a of1963).In thefirst ofthelate60s,there in theUnited return to a moreinternal as theantiwar movement politics, and May68 in France States YettheAmerican movement remains testify. in linked the Vietnam War as to its third world "occasion" itself, organically wellas to theMaoist which of the inspiration Progressive Labor-type groups as a whole will lose its emergefromSDS, such thatthe movement momentum as thewar windsdown and thedraft ceases. In France, the the in which the current left Socialist of (1972) "commonprogram" a newturn towards models finds itsorigins-marks Gramscian government which and a new kindof "Eurocommunist" owes little to third spirit very in the U.S. worldantecedents the blackmovement of any kind.Finally, entersintoa crisisat muchthesame time,as itsdominant ideologyto third cultural linked worldmodels an ideology nationalism, profoundly -is exhausted. to this kind The women's movement also owed something willknowan ofthird world butittoo,intheperiod 1972-1974, inspiration, distinctideological positions into relatively increasingarticulation lesbian socialist feminism, ("bourgeois" feminism). separatism,
For reasonsenumerated itseems plausibleto mark above, and others, the end of the 60s around 1972-74; the problemof thisgeneral"break" will be returnedto at the end of this sketch. For the momentwe must
historical Chinese manifestation). The paradoxical,or dialectical,combinationof decolonizationand neocolonialismcan perhaps best be grasped in economic termsby a re-
oftheoverall ourcharacterization ofthird world dynamic complete history if it is granted thatthis dynamic or duringthis period,particularly someprivileged ofinfluence on the "narrative line"entertains relationship ofa first world 60s (either direct intervention-wars of through unfolding liberation-orthrough theprestige modelsnational ofexoticpolitical theMaoist mostobviously, one-or finally, owingto someglobal dynamic whichbothworlds to in relatively shareand respond distinct ways). Thisis ofcourse themoment the"liberation" ofnew to observe that inthethird is as ambiguous forces world as this term tends tobe frequently as separation itis the from older, to putitmoresharply, (freedom systems); moment theobvious, wenthandin to recall that decolonization historically thegraceful, endof handwith andthat orviolent neo-colonialism, grudging an old-fashioned meant theend ofone kind ofdomiimperialism certainly and construction nation butevidently also theinvention ofa new kindlikethereplacement of theBritish something Empire by the symbolically, International Fund.Thisis, incidentally, fashMonetary whythecurrently is themostinfluential ionablerhetoric ofpowerand domination (Foucault butthebasicdisplacement of these from theeconomic to the rhetoricians, is already madein MaxWeber) is ultimately itis of political unsatisfactory: coursepolitically thevarious to "contest" forms of powerand important butthelatter cannot be understood reunless their functional domination, toeconomic arearticulated-that thepolitiis,until exploitation lationships cal is once againsubsumed theeconomic. beneath hand(On theother - it will in thehistoricizing of thepresent particularly perspective essay historical and social symptom that,in the obviouslybe a significant itnecessary to express their senseofthesituation and mid-60s, peoplefelt in a reified their ofpower, domination, praxis projected political language and antiauthoritarianism, and so forth: here,secondand third authority - with theirconceptions world developments of a "primacy of the under socialism-offer an interesting andcurious political" cross-lighting.) similar can be saidof theconceptions ofcollective Meanwhile, something of thepoststructuralist and in particular of theconquest of identity slogan oftheright to speakinyour own voice,for butto articuspeech, yourself: in yourown voice,is notnecessarily latenew demands, to satisfy them, and to speakis notnecessarily a Hegelian from the to achieve recognition Other and baleful sensethat the (or at leastthen onlyin themoresomber in a newwayand to invent Other now has to takeyou intoconsideration new methods withthat fordealing new presence In you haveachieved). the "materialist of this or characteristic rhetoric kernel" hindsight, ideological vision ina morefundamental ofthe60s maybe found reflection on the nature of cultural revolution itself and now of its local (now independent
PERIODIZING THE 60s 0 185
on thenature ofanother whosebeginning coincides flection with process we thegeneral have this as a This is for whole. beginnings period suggested in a process described the neutral but lanideological generally obviously in agriculture: theso-called Green "revolution" guageof a technological with its new chemical of to fertilizaRevolution, applications procedures itsintensified ofmechanization, and itspredictable celebration, strategies and wonder-working tionof progress destined to technology, supposedly freetheworldfrom finds its Green Revolution, (the hunger incidentally, inKhrushchev's disastrous secondworldequivalent lands"experi"virgin and is their Buttheseare farfromneutral achievements, ment). export - essentially - a benevolent and altruistic pioneered by the Kennedys In the 19thand early20thcentury, of the activity. capitalist penetration third worlddid not necessarily mean a capitalist transformation of the latter's traditional modesofproduction. werefor most left Rather, part they a more and structure. The intact, exploited 'merely' by political military enclave nature ofthese older with modes-incombination very agricultural theviolence of theoccupier and that theintroduction other of violence, a sort of that was beneficial the relation to money tributary --established TheGreen for a considerable Revoluoftime. metropolis imperialist period thispenetration and expansion intoa tioncarries of the"logicof capital" new stage. are of agriculture forms structures and precapitalist The oldervillage to be replaced now systematically agriculture by an industrial destroyed, of are fully as disastrous whoseeffects to, themoment as, and analogous in the emergence of capitalin whatwas to becomethe first enclosure arenowshattered, ofvillage societies The "organic" socialrelations world. to the whichmigrates landless an enormous "produced," preproletariat while of MexicoCitycan testify), urbanareas(as thetremendous growth the labor forms ofagricultural more replace new, wage-working proletarian, needsto "liberation" Suchambiguous kinds. or traditional oldercollective withwhichMarxand withall the dialectical ambivalence be described in theManifesto or the the dynamism of capitalitself Engelscelebrate of India. achieved historical occupation by theBritish progress inwhich allover 60s as a moment The conception ofthethird world werethrown kind off andshackles ofa classical theworld chains imperialist is an altogether ina stirring waveof "warsofnational liberation," mythical as much is generated Suchresistance bythenewpenetration simplification. withtheolder as itis by theultimate Revolution of theGreen impatience itself overdetermined the latter structures, by the historical imperialist former third worldentity, of another of thesupremacy namely spectacle inWorld in over the old initial victories its powers imperial sweeping Japan,
War II. Eric Wolf'sindispensablePeasant Wars of the Twentieth Century underscores the relationship between possibilities of resistance, the distance ethos, and a certainconstitutive developmentof a revolutionary
from themoreabsolutely social and economiclogicof capital. demoralizing The finalambiguity withwhich we leave thistopic is the following: are in retreat all over the globe, can just as easily be conceptualizedas a period in which capital is in full dynamic and innovativeexpansion, of fresh equipped witha whole armature productiontechniquesand new It now remainsto be seen whether thisambiguity, "means of production." in the third of the agricultural and the fargreater developments specificity world, have any equivalentin the dynamicswithwhich the 60s unfoldin the advanced countriesthemselves. 2. THE POLITICS OF OTHERNESS If thehistory of philosophy is understoodnot as some sequence of timeless of yet somehow finite positionsin the eternal,but ratheras the history to conceptualizea historical in constant and social substanceitself attempts dialecticaltransformation, whose aporias and contradictions mark all of those successive philosophies as determinate failures, yet failuresfrom which we can read off of thenature of theobject on whichthey something themselves came to grief-thenitdoes not seem quiteso far-fetched to scan the more limitedtrajectory of thatnow highlyspecialized disciplinefor of the deeper rhythms of the "real" or "concrete" 60s itself. symptoms As faras the history of philosophyduringthatperiod is concerned, one of the more influential versions of its storyis told as follows: the gradual supercession of a hegemonic Sartreanexistentialism (with its essentially phenomenological perspectives) by what is oftenloosely called "structuralism,' namely,by a varietyof new theoretical attemptswhich share in common at least a single fundamental "experience"--the discoveryof the primacyof Languageor the Symbolic(an area in which and Sartrean existentialism remainrelatively conventional phenomenology The momentof highstructuralism or traditional). -whose mostinfluential monuments are seemingly notphilosophical at all,butcan be characterized, of alongside the new linguistics itself, as linguistic transformations and psychoanalysis and JacquesLacan anthropology by Claude Levi-Strauss - is however an inherently unstable one which has the respectively vocation of becoming a new type of universalmathesis,under pain of fad. The breakdownproductsof that vanishingas one more intellectual momentof high structuralism can then be seen on the one hand as the recutionto a kind of scientism, to sheer methodand analytical technique the and on of structuralist other,as the transformation (in semiotics); approachesinto active ideologies in which ethical,politicaland historical consequences are drawn from the hitherto more epistemological "structuralist" positions;thislast is of course the momentof what is now known as post-structuralism, names like associatedwithfamiliar generally
the60s,often as a period in which and first world imagined capital power
PERIODIZING THE60s 0 187
those of Foucault, That the paradigm, Deleuze, Derridaand so forth. in its is not local can be French references, merely although obviously of theclassical an analogous mutation Frankfurt Schoolvia judgedfrom in theworkofHabermas; or bythecurrent ofcommunication, problems whichhas a homein theworkof Richard revival of pragmatism Rorty, to it (Peirceafter all having "post-structuralist" feeling grownAmerican and outclassed Saussure). preceded largely of extinction andthegradual institution ofthephilosophical Thecrisis for our time was ofwhich Sartre classic thephilosopher's vocation, political can in some waysbe said to be aboutthesothesupreme embodiment, butalso the theindividual calleddeathof thesubject: ego or personality, thecogitobutalso theauteurofthegreat Subject, philosophical supreme as one ofthelast to see Sartre It is certainly possible philosophical system. of traditional (but then at least one philosophy greatsystembuilders or a must also be seenas an ideology existentialism dimension of classical in freedom and choice ofexistential of theheroic that pathos metaphysic: in of us Some more ofthe"absurd," thevoid,andthat particularlyCamus). in theearly Sartre elements dialectical also came to Marxism (he through more in his own avenue this to follow himself thenturning later, up Reason [1960]).Buton suchas theCritique Marxian work, ofDialectical underwent therichest work which of his balancethat practical component of was his theory his own as well as hands at other elaboration people's rewrite Master/Slave ofHegel's hisstunning relations, chapter, interpersonal I relate to modeinwhich concrete oftheLookas themost hisconception in alienation of withthem, thedimension my and struggle other subjects us in whicheach of by vainlyattempts, my "being-for-other-people," thebaleful and transform thetables to turn at theother, alienating looking will intoan objectformyequally alienating gaze. Sartre gaze of theOther of and a more toerect to try theory positive political go on,intheCritique, between the sterile on thisseemingly territory: struggle groupdynamics into the struggle transformed two people now becomingdialectically was however an anticipatory The betweengroupsthemselves. Critique be until not would and whoseimport significance work, finally recognized even have not indeed rich whose 68 and fully consequences May beyond, the that it to say,in thepresent been drawnto thisday.Suffice context, the to and reach its fails to terminus, complete projected Critique appointed the individual thatwas to have led from subjectof existential highway downat It breaks classes. social constituted all the to way fully experience usable and is ultimately of smallgroups, the pointof the constitution ofthe later moment a bands of small for (in guerrilla principally ideologies of the the and of significance this period'send): (at microgroups 60s)
will soon be clear. trajectory of the Look However,at the dawn of the 60s, the Sartrean paradigm between individualsubjects will also be for recognition and the struggle
in a very different for modelofpolitical appropriated dramatically struggle, influential Frantz Fanon'senormously vision(The Wretched of theEarth, where between and Colonized, theobjectiColonizer 1961)of thestruggle of as reversal the Look is rewritten the act ofredempfying apocalyptically in tiveviolence in ofSlaveagainst the moment fear and the Master, which, the hierarchical and of of Self and Center Other, positions anxiety death, in which are and the subservient consciousness reversed, Margin, forcibly intheface oftheColonized achieves collective andself-affirmation identity in abjectflight. of colonizers Whatis at once significant is the way in whichwhathad been a technical of solipsism, thenature of (the"problem" philosophical subject between individual or has the fallen into subjects "cogitos") relationships worldand becomean explosive and scandalous a piece political ideology: of theold-fashioned technical of existentialism philosophical system high and migrating outside into off departments breaking philosophy altogether, a morefrightening could of and terror. Fanon's landscape praxis great myth be read at the time,by thoseit appalledequallywell as by thoseit inretrospect, calltomindless violence: andin as an irresponsible energized, thelight ofFanon's clinical a with work was other, (he working psychiatrist ofcolonization andofthetorture and terror oftheAlgerian it victims war), can moreappropriately be readas a significant to a whole contribution revolution as the collectivereeducation (or even theoryof cultural collectivepsychoanalysis) of oppressed peoples or unrevolutionary the as a strategy for breaking workingclasses. Culturalrevolution immemorial habitsof subalternity and obediencewhichhave become internalized as a kindof secondnature in all thelaborious and exploited classesin human the is vaster to history-such problematic which, today, Gramsci and Wilhelm Reich,Fanonand Rudolf Bahro,can be seen as as richly as themoreofficial of Maoism. contributing practices
3. DIGRESSION ON MAOISM But with thisnew and fateful an awkwardbut unavoidableparreference, enthetical is in order:Maoism,richest of all thegreatnew ideoldigression thisesogies of the60s, willbe a shadowybut central presencethroughout
ated on theirown termswhen theyare thus radically disjoinedfromthe interests of statepower.Meanwhile, as I have suggested above, the practical of thepresentdebate is fully as much chosen and dictated symbolicterrain by the rightas by leftsurvivors:and the current propagandacampaign,
it cannot be neatly inserted at any say,yetowingto itsvery polyvalence norexhaustively confronted on itsown.One understands, ofcourse, point militants hereand abroad,fatigued must whyleft by Maoist dogmatisms, have heaveda collective of relief when theChinese turn sigh consigned "Maoism" itself to theashcan ofhistory. areoften liberTheories, however,
PERIODIZING THE 60s 0 189
in theworld, to Stalinize and discredit Maoism and theexperieverywhere - now rewritten revolution as yetanother ence of the Chinesecultural of andparcel makeno mistake aboutit,ispart Gulagto theEast-all ofthis, it wouldnotbe prudent to to trash the60s generally: thelarger attempt this terrain reconsideration andwithout abandon anyof rapidly thoughtful to the"other side." third-worldism Asfor themoreludicrous features ofWestern generalrevolutionaries version ofMarx's exotic or orientalist ofmodern ly-a kind them battle criesand cosservice and borrow from names, 1789)to their a as in in morecynical understood tumes"- theseare now widely light, of "In France, theColumbuses political remark: modernity Regis Debray's werediscovering China La Chinoise that Godard's following they thought in whenin fact werelanding California." in Paris, they is theunexpected and fascinating Mostparadoxical of all,however, itself: thenew Chinese to the and unpredictable Sino-Soviet split sequel and as the Soviet intent on rhetoric, bureaucracy revisionistic castigating content of will the class have the of curious effect evacuating "bourgeois," disand Thereis thenan inevitable theseslogans. terminological slippage willno longer to theterm thenewbinary "bourgeois" placement: opposite for the new and be "proletarian" butrather "revolutionary," qualifications in of or terms class this kind made of are no longer judgements political to in but rather terms of affiliation relationship personal party life--your and luxuries and dachas to middle-class managerial special privileges, we are own monthly incomes and other "salary," perks- Mao Tse-tung's As in American dollars. of a hundred the was told, something neighborhood with all formsof anticommunism, this rhetoriccan of course be of theend of of "bureaucracy," thematics by theanti-Marxist appropriated how for it But is to understand and social etc. class, important ideology and from at first tactical militants what to this western merely began emerge will to a which come shift was a wholenewpolitical rhetorical space, space which and into is the be articulated the "the political," slogan, personal by turns-the -in one ofthemoststunning and unforeseeable ofhistorical will triumphantly move at the end of the decade, women'smovement kind which is still a Yenan ofa newandunpredictable impregnable building at thepresent moment.
4. THE WITHERING AWAY OF PHILOSOPHY
of of (the GreatRevolution of 1848, who "anxiouslyconjure up the spirits
was The limit as well as thestrength of thestark Fanonianmodel of struggle thiscan be shown in of the colonial situation; set by the relative simplicity of all in the sequel to the "war of nationalindependence." two ways, first For with the Slave's symbolicand literalvictoryover the (now former) of a as well; therhetoric the "politicsof otherness"touchesitslimit Master,
JAMESON 190 0 FREDRIC has thennowhereelse to go but intoa kind conquest of collectiveidentity of secessionarylogic of which black culturalnationalism and (later on) are the mostdramatic lesbianseparatism examples(the dialecticof cultural and linguistic independence in Quebec province would be yet another instructive as the newly insofar one). But thisresultis also contradictory, account in the Critique)needs constituted group (we here pick up Sartre's as a group,to produce and perpetuate outsideenemiesto survive a sense of in the absence of the clear-cut collectivecohesion and identity. Ultimately, Manichaean situation of the older imperialistperiod, this hard-won will break up into collectiveself-definition of a first momentof resistance the smallerand more comfortable unitiesof face-to-face (of microgroups which the official politicalsects are only one example). The gradual waning of the Fanonian model can also be described from the perspective of what will shortlybecome its "structuralist" critique.On thisview,itis stilla model based on a conceptionof individual and collectiveones. It is thereby both anthroposubjects,albeitmythical in thesense in whichnothing and intervenes between morphic transparent, thegreatcollectiveadversaries, the Master and between the Slave,between the Colonizer and the Colonized. Yet even in Hegel, therewas always a thirdterm,namelymatter the raw materials on which the slave is itself, made to laborand to workout a long and anonymous the salvation through restof history. The "third different from term"of the60s is howeverrather this.It was as thoughthe protracted experiencesof the earlierpartof the decade gradually burnedintothemindsof theparticipants a specific lesson. In the UnitedStates, itwas theexperienceof theinterminable Vietnam War itself; in France, it was the astonishing and apparently invincible technocratic dynamism, and the seemingly unshakeable inertia and resistance to deStalinization of the French Communist Party; and it was the tremendous everywhere, expansion of the media apparatusand the cultureof consumerism. This lesson mightwell be describedas the withina hitherto and "transparent" politicalpraxis, discovery, antagonistic as the radically with of the opacityof the Institution itself transindividual, its own innerdynamicand laws, which are not those of individual human in theCritiqueas the actionor intention, which Sartre theorized something will and which take the definitive form,in competing "practico-inert," "structuralism,"of "structure" or "synchronic system," a realm of little of whichhumanconsciousnessis itself more impersonal logic in terms thanan "effect of structure." On thisreading, then,the new philosophicalturnwill be interpreted less in the idealistic of some discovery of a new scientific truth perspective and soof an essentially (the Symbolic)thanas the symptom protopolitical cial experience,the shock of some new, hard,unconceptualized, resistant cannotprocess and which thusgradobject which the older conceptuality of this ually generatesa whole new problematic.The conceptualization
PERIODIZING THE60s 0 191 new problematicin the coding of linguistics or information theorymay then be attributed and mesto the unexpected explosion of information about which more in the followsages of all kindsin the media revolution, it to remarkat thispoint thatthereis some historical ing section. Suffice the ThirdTechnological ironyin theway in which thismoment, essentially nuclear energy) Revolutionin the West (electronics, --in other words, a whole new stepin theconquestof nature by humanpraxis-is philosophically greeted and conceptuallyexpressed in a kind of thoughtofficially and concerned to thinkwhat transcends or designatedas "antihumanist" the Second Technoescapes humanconsciousnessand intention. Similarly, logical Revolutionof the late 19thcentury-an unparalleled quantumleap in human power over nature-was the momentof expressionof a whole in associatedwith "modernity" or withhighmodernism rangeof nihilisms culture. In thepresent of themid-to late context,theAlthusserian experiment 60s is the most revealingand suggestiveof the various "structuralisms," since it was the only one to be explicitly politicaland indeed to have very in effects and LatinAmerica.The storyof political wide-ranging Europe thrust is twocan be here:itsinitial told Althusserianism onlyschematically the Stalinist tradition fold,against designatedby (strategically unliquidated the code words "Hegel" and "expressive causality"in Althusser's own reinvent a and the of the eastern to texts), attempts against "transparency" Marxist the the alienation in Marx's humanismon basis of early theoryof is essentially a meditation That Althusserianism on the "instimanuscripts. tutional"and on the opacityof the "practico-inert" may be judged by the three successive formulations himselfin the of this object by Althusser d domiin dominance" or structure course of the 60s: thatof a "structure nante (in For Marx), thatof "structural causality"(in Reading Capital), and thatof "ideologicalstateapparatuses"(in the essay of thatname). Whatis less oftenremembered, but what should be perfectly obvious from any reFor is in the this new Marx, readingof originof problematic Maoismitself, in which the in Mao Tse-tung's and particularly essay "On Contradiction," overdetermined of various notionof a complex,already-given conjuncture kindsof antagonistic and non-antagonistic is mapped out. contradictions The modification which will emerge fromAlthusser's"process of theoretical can be production"as it works over its Maoist "raw materials" levels the and the of the of conveyedby problem slogan "semi-autonomy" of social life (a problem already invoked in our opening pages). This will involvea struggle formula on the one hand againstthe on two fronts: in which the "levels" are monismor "expressivecausality"of Stalinism, and into one another(changes in identified, conflated, brutally collapsed economic productionwill be "the same" as politicaland cultural changes), which finds and, on the other,againstbourgeois avant-garde philosophy, of organicconceptsof totality mostcongenial,but justsuch a denunciation
192 @ FREDRIC JAMESON celebrationof draws fromit the consequence of a post- or anti-Marxist of the various The notion of a semi-autonomy Nietzscheanheterogeneity. levels or instances,most notably of the political instance and of the in dynamicsof statepower,will have enormousresonance(outstandingly a way and to offer since it seems to reflect, the work of Nicos Poulantzas), since thewar, the enormousgrowthof thestatebureaucracy of theorizing, the "relative autonomy" of the state apparatus fromany classical and in the service of big business,as well as the very reductivefunctionality or public of politicalstruggle active new terrain presentedby government a semisector workers.The theorycould also be appealed to to justify a semi-autonomous sphere,as well,and especially autonomyin thecultural cultural politics, of a variety which ranges from Godard's films and here situationnisme to the "festival" of May 68 and theYippie movement which of so-called "terrorism" (not excluding,perhaps,even those forms at essentially aimed, not at any classicalseizure of statepower,but rather demonstrations, e.g., "forcingthe state to pedagogical or informational fascist reveal its fundamentally nature"). of the levels the attempt to open up a semi-autonomy Nonetheless, in the ultimate with one hand, while holding them all together unityof some "structural totality" (with its still classical Marxian ultimately in instanceof theeconomic),tendsunderitsown momentum, determining ithad itself to selfof totality thecentrifugal forceof thecritique elaborated, What of Hindessand Hirst). so in the trajectory destruct (mostdramatically semiof levels- henceforth, will emerge is not merelya heterogeneity autonomywill relax into autonomytoutcourt,and it will be conceivable that in the decenteredand "schizophrenic"world of late capitalismthe to one anotherat variousinstances may reallyhave no organicrelationship the idea will emergethatthe struggles all-but, more importantly, appropurelyeconomic priateto each of these levels (purelypoliticalstruggles, mayhave struggles) struggles, purely"theoretical" purelycultural struggles, no necessary relationship to one another either. With this ultimate "meltdown" of the Althusserian apparatus,we are in the (stillcontempoas local theorized and micropolitics-variously world of microgroups rary) the however different or molecular politics, but clearly characterized, class and party of old-fashioned various conceptionsare, as a repudiation kind,and mostobviouslyepitomizedby the chalpoliticsof a "totalizing" and conlenge of the women's movementwhose unique new strategies discredit cerns cut across (or in some cases undermineand altogether) formsof "public" or "official"politicalaction, many classical inherited of "theory"itself as an essenthe electoralkind.The repudiation including in femiFrench of "power through masculineenterprise knowledge" tially be taken as the final the work of Luce Irigaray) nism(see in particular may of momentin thisparticular away philosophy." "withering a way of Althusserianism, Yet thereis anotherway to read thedestiny
PERIODIZING THE60s 0 193 the transition which will form to our subsequentdiscussionof the transformationof the cultural spherein the 60s; and thisinvolvesthe significance of the slogan of "theory"itself as it comes to replace the older term"phithisperiod.The "discovery"of the Symbolic, thedelosophy" throughout of itslinguistic-related thematics (as, e.g., in thenotionof undervelopment the constandingas an essentially synchronic process, which influences of relatively ahistorical such as the Althusserian one struction "structures," described above), is now to be correlatedwith a modification of the texts, practice of the symbolic,of language itselfin the "structuralist" henceforth as "theory," characterized rather thanwork in a particular traditional discipline. Two featuresof this evolution, or mutation,must be is a consequence of the crisisin,or thedisappearance stressed.The first of, the classicalcanon of philosophical which necessarily results from writings the contestation of philosophyas a disciplineand an institution. Hencethe new "philosophical" text will no longer draw its significance forth, froman insertion intothe issues and debatesof the philosophical tradition, whichmeansthatitsbasic "intertextual" references become random, an ad hoc constellation which formsand dissolveson the occasion of each new text. The new text must necessarilybe a commentary on other texts a that on of texts be to inter(indeed, dependence body glossed,rewritten, connected in freshways, will now intensify if anything), those texts, yet drawnfrom themostwildlydistant lidisciplines (anthropology, psychiatry, will in be selected a seemingly faterature, historyof science), arbitrary shion: Mumford side by side with AntoninArtaud,Kant with Sade, preSocratic philosophy,PresidentSchreber,a novel of Maurice Blanchot, Owen Lattimore on Mongolia,and a host of obscure Latinmedicaltreatises The vocationof what was formerly fromthe 18thcentury. "philosophy"is and displaced:since thereis no longera tradition of therebyrestructured philosophicalproblemsin termsof which new positionsand new statementscan meaningfully be proposed,such worksnow tend towardswhat can be called metaphilosophy--the a work of coordinating verydifferent seriesof pregiven, of signifiers, codes or systems of proalreadyconstituted discourseof the ducinga discoursefashionedout of the alreadyfashioned constellation of ad hoc reference works. "Philosophy" therebybecomes radicallyoccasional; one would want to call it disposable theory,the one next season, productionof a metabook,to be replaced by a different ratherthan the ambitionto express a proposition, a positionor a system with greater"truth"value. (The obvious analogy with the evolution of and cultural studiestoday,withthe crisisand disappearanceof the literary latter's own canon of greatbooks-the lastone havingbeen augmented to include the once recalcitrant "masterpieces"of highmodernism-will be takenforgrantedin our next section.) All of thiscan perhaps be graspedin a different the way by tracing effects of anothersignificant featureof contemporary theory, namelyits
194 0 FREDRIC JAMESON themein theso-calledcritiqueof representation. Traditional privileged philas a practiceof representation osophy will now be graspedin those terms, textor system in which thephilosophical to express (misguidedly) attempts or meaning(whichnow standas otherthanitself, namelytruth something the "signified"to the "signifier" of the system).If, however,the whole aesthetic of representation is metaphysical and ideological, then thisvocation,and it must philosophicaldiscoursecan no longerentertain the mere of another text to what is now conceived as an stand as addition all verbal-daily lifeis a text,clothing infinite chainof texts(not necessarily is a text,state power is a text,thatwhole externalworld, about which "meaning" or "truth"were once assertedand which is now contempas the illusionof reference is an or the "referent," tuouslycharacterized of texts of all Whence the indeterminate kinds). significance superposition when sounded in the of the currently fashionable slogan of "materialism," here means the dissolution area of philosophyand theory:materialism of in in the as any belief "meaning" or "signified"conceived ideas or confromtheirlinguistic expressions.However paracepts which are distinct doxical a "materialist" philosophymay be in this respect,a "materialist the veryfunction and operation theoryof language"will clearlytransform since it opens up a dynamicin which it is no longerideas, but of "theory," rathertexts,materialtexts,which struggle with one another.Theory so now greatly transcends defined, (and itwillhave become clearthattheterm what used to be called philosophy and itsspecializedcontent) conceives of itsvocation,not as the discovery of truth and the repudiation but of error, rather as a struggle about purelylinguistic as the attempt to formulations, verbal propositions formulate (material language)in such a way thatthey are unable to implyunwantedor ideologicalconsequences. Since thisaim an impossibleone to achieve,what emergesfromthe practice is evidently thehighpointof of theory-and thiswas mostdramatic and visibleduring itself in 1967-68-is a violentand obsessivereturn Althusserianism to ideoin new a the form of war logical critique perpetualguerrilla among the materialsignifiers With the transformation of textual formulations. of a we material touch a into on however, practice, development philosophy that cannot fullybe appreciateduntil it is replaced in the context of a this period, a context in which general mutationof culturethroughout will a be form come to as "theory" grasped specific(or semi-autonomous) of what mustbe called postmodernism generally. 5. THE ADVENTURES OF THE SIGN is one significant Postmodernism framework in which to describe what in the 60s, but a fulldiscussionof thishotlycontested happened to culture concept is not possible here. Such a discussion would want to cover, among other things, the following features: that well-known post-
THE60s 0 195 PERIODIZING structuralist theme, the "death" of the subject (includingthe creative the auteur of a cultureof or the "genius"); thenatureand function subject, thesimulacrum(an idea developed out of Plato by Deleuze and Baudrillard of a reproducible to convey some specificity object world,not of copies or a as but of of trompe-l'oeil marked such, proliferation copies reproductions witboutoriginals);the relation of thislastto media cultureor the "society of the spectacle" (Debord), undertwo heads: 1/the peculiarnew statusof the image, the "material" or what mightbetterbe called the "literal," which the oldersensoryrichness a materiality or literality from of signifier: the mediumhas been abstracted the as other side of the dialectical on (just the old individuality of the subjectand his/her "brushstrokes' relationship, have equally been effaced); and 2/ the emergence, in the work's of an aestheticof textuality or what is often described as temporality, the of schizophrenictime; eclipse, finally, all depth,especiallybistoricity with the itself, subsequentappearance of pasticheand nostalgiaart (what the French call la mode retro),and includingthe supercession of the in philosophy(the various accompanyingmodels of depth-interpretation as well as the Freudianconceptionof "repression," forms of hermeneutics, and latentlevels). of manifest What is generally of thiskind is the objected to in characterizations that all these features be observation of can locatedin empirical abundantly this or thatvarietyof high modernism;indeed, one of the difficulties in lies in its or to postmodernism specifying symbiotic parasitical relationship In effect, with the canonizationof a hitherto the latter. scandalous, ugly, bohemian high modernism offensive to the dissonant,amoral,anti-social, middle classes, its promotionto the very figure of high culturegenerally, its enshrinement in the academic institution, and perhapsmost important, as a creative of now emerges space forartists postmodernism way making those henceforth oppressed by hegemonicmodernist categoriesof irony, dense temporality, and particularly, aestheticand complexity, ambiguity, In some analogous way, it will be said, high utopian monumentality. itself modernism won itsautonomyfromthe preceding hegemonicrealism of classical or market (the symboliclanguage or mode of representation in that realismitselfunderwenta capitalism).But there is a difference it became naturalism mutation: and at once generated the significant formsof mass culture (the narrativeapparatus of the representational is an invention bestseller of naturalism and one of the most contemporary successful French of cultural stunningly exports). High modernismand mass culturethen develop in dialecticalopposition and interrelationship with one another.It is preciselythe waningof their opposition,and some new conflation of the forms of highand mass culture, which characterizes itself. postmodernism be musttherefore The historical of postmodernism finally specificity As statedabove, of cultureitself. of the social functionality arguedin terms
196 0 FREDRIC JAMESON itsovertpolitical whatever was oppositional and content, highmodernism, withina middle-class Victorian or philistine or gildedage culture. marginal in all therespects is equallyoffensive enumerated Although postmodernism it is no longerat all "oppositional"in of punk rockor pornography), (think theverydominant or hegemonicaesthetic thatsense; indeed,itconstitutes serves the latter'scommodity of consumersocietyitselfand significantly as a virtual ofnew forms and fashions. The argument laboratory production is thusbased as a periodizing fora conceptionof postmodernism category on the presuppositionthat,even if all the formalfeaturesenumerated the verysigniabove were alreadypresentin the older high modernism, ficanceof those features dominant, changeswhen theybecome a cultural witha precisesocioeconomic functionality. the terms At thispoint it may be well to shift (or the "code") of our to the seemingly one of a cultural"sphere,"a more traditional description Marcusein what is to mymindhis single conceptiondeveloped by Herbert Characterof most important text, the great essay on "The Affirmative Culture."(It should be added that the conception of a "public sphere" generally is a very contemporaryone in Germany in the works of of categories stands Habermasand of Negtand Kluge,wheresuch a system in interesting contrastto the code of "levels" or "instances" in French Marcusethererehearsesthe paradoxicaldialecticof the poststructuralism.) classical (German)aesthetic,which projects as play and "purposefulness withoutpurpose" a utopianrealmof beautyand culturebeyond the fallen empirical world of money and business activity,thereby winning a and negative critical value through itscapacityto condemn,by its powerful thetotality of whbat own veryexistence, is, whileat thesame timeforfeiting in what is, by virtueof its all abilityto social or political intervention constitutive or autonomyfromsocietyand history. disjunction The accounttherefore way withthe beginsto coincidein a suggestive levels developed in the problematicof autonomous or semi-autonomous preceding section. To historicizeMarcuse's dialectic, however, would thatin our timethisvery demand thatwe takeinto account the possibility the cultural level or of instance) sphere(or maybe in theprocess autonomy of modification; and also, that we develop the means to furnisha takeplace, as of the process wherebysuch modification might description well as of the prior process wherebyculturebecame "autonomous" or in the first "semi-autonomous" place. This requiresrecourseto yet another(unrelated) code, one analytic more generallyfamiliar to us today,since it involves the now classical structural (the concept of the sign, withits two components,the signifier vehicle or image- sound or printedword) and the signified material (the and a third mentalimage,meaning or "conceptual" content), componentthe externalobject of the sign, its referenceor "referent"-henceforth it as a ghostly residualaftereffect expelled fromthe unityand yethaunting
THE60s 0 197 PERIODIZING value of thisconceptionof thesignwill (illusionor ideology).The scientific be bracketedhere since we are concerned,on the one hand, to historicize it as a conceptualsymptom in the period, of developments it, to interpret and on the other, to "set it in motion,"to see whether changesin itsinner emblemor electrocardiogram structure can offer some adequate small-scale in the culturalsphere generally of changes and permutations throughout thisperiod. in Such changes are alreadysuggestedby the fateof the "referent" the "conditionsof possibility" of the new structural the concept of sign(a of the sign notormust however be noted: theorists significant ambiguity as designating a "real" object iouslyglide froma conceptionof reference a in which the Signithe and to outside unityof Signifier Signified position fied itself-or meaning,or the idea or the concept of a thing-becomes withthereferent and stigmatized somehow identified along withit;we will returnto this below). Saussure,at the dawn of the semioticrevolution, as thatof the two likedto describethe relationship of Signifier to Signified the In recto and verso, of a sheet of paper. what is then a logical sides, sequel, and a text which naturally enough becomes equally canonical, a map so rigto the point of imagining Borges will push "representation" it with its that becomes coterminous orous and referential object. The stage is thenset forthe structuralist emblempar excellence,the Moebius Strip, which succeeds in peelingitself offitsreferent and thusachieves altogether in the a free-floating closure and void, a kind of absolute self-referentiality fromwhich all remainingtraces of reference, or of any autocircularity have triumphantly been effaced. externality, To be even more eclectic about it, I will suggestthatthisprocess, internal to the Sign itself, explanatory seemingly requiresa supplementary that the of universal and fragmentation at more code, process of reification one withthelogic of capitalitself. taken its the on own Nonetheless, terms, inner convulsions of the Sign is a usefulinitialfigureof the process of which mustin some first transformation of culture moment(that generally, the "referent" describedby Marcuse)separateitself from theexisting social and historical in in is world itself, a the what of 60s, only subsequentstage here termed "postmodernism," to develop further into some new and self-referential heightened, free-floating, "autonomy." withits The problemnow turnsaround thisveryterm, "autonomy," the of modification, concept "semi-autonomy." paradoxical Althusserian The paradox is thatthe Sign,as an "autonomous" unity in itsown right, as a realmdivorcedfromthe referent, and can preservethatinitial autonomy, the unityand coherence demanded by it, only at the price of keepinga of its own outsideor alive, as the ghostlyreminder phantomof reference and an essential since allows it closure, self-definition this exterior, line. tormented dialectic Marcuse's own boundary expresses this in his realm of the autonomous curious oscillation whereby dramatically
JAMESON 198 0 FREDRIC beauty and cultureboth returnsupon some "real world" to judge and so radically fromthatreal negateit,at the same timethatit separatesitself world as to become a place of mere illusionand impotent"ideals," the etc. "infinite," The first momentin the adventures of the Sign is perplexing enough ifschematic, in themostcharacterillustration as to demandmoreconcrete, It might in the well be demonstrated themselves. isticcultural productions the French nouveau roman novels of Robbe-Grillet classical (in particular, himself),which establishedits new language in the early 1960s, using to "undermine"representation, variations of narrative segments systematic an appetite in sense this last and stimulating some confirming by teasing yet forit. As an American illustrationseems more appropriate, however, similar something may be seen in connectionwiththe finaland canonical in American of form highmodernism poetry, namelythe work of Wallace in the poet's death in 1956, Stevens,which becomes, the yearsfollowing in a and more quintessential institutionalized the universityas purer fulfillment of poetic languagethan the stillimpure(read: ideologicaland be numbered political)works of an Eliot or a Pound, and can therefore has "events" of the early 60s. As Frank Lentricchia among the literary the serviceability of Stevens'poetic shown, in Beyond theNew Criticism, production for this normativeand hegemonic role depends in large in thatwork,of poetic practiceand measureon the increasing conflation, poetic theory:
This endlesslyelaboratingpoem Displays the theoryof poetry As the life of poetry...
of aestheticsand aesthetic "Stevens" is therefore a locus and fulfillment as as the latter's much exemplar and privilegedexegetical theoryfully the or aesthetic ideology in question being very much an object; theory of the "autonomy" of the cultural sphere in the sense affirmation developed above, a valorizationof the supreme power of the poetic offers it produces. Stevens'work,therefore, over the "reality" imagination in which the autonomizato observe an extraordinary situation laboratory tion of cultureas a process: a detailed examinationof his development forwhichwe have no space here)would show how some initial (something "set towards" or "attentionto" a kind of poetic pensde sauvage, the stereotypes, opens up a vastinnerworld in operationof greatpreconscious which littleby littlethe images of thingsand their"ideas" begin to be thisexperience themselves. Yetwhatdistinguishes substituted forthethings in all this,the operationof a in Stevensis the sense of a vast systematicity whole set of cosmic oppositions far too complex to be reduced to the schemataof "structuralist" binaryoppositions,yet akin to those in spirit, in theSymbolicOrderof themind,discoverable to and somehow pregiven
THE60s 0 199 PERIODIZING that is, of some the passive exploration of the "poetic imagination," in free the realmof "oband of association heightened impersonal power The examination would further show or culture." jectivespirit" "objective the strategic limitation of this process to landscape, the reductionof the ideas and imagesof things and finally to thoseirreto thenames forthings, ducibles which are place names,among which the exotic has a privileged function (Key West,Oklahoma,Yucatan,Java). Here the poetic "totality" to mimesis of theimperialor analogon of thetotality begins tracea ghostly in a similarly with thirdworld materials ist world systemitself, strategic, marginal yet essentialplace (much as Adorno showed how Schoenberg's imitation of the "total twelve-tone system produceda formal unconsciously of the of This unconscious "real" totality replication system" capital). very of the world systemin the mind is then what allows cultureto separate itself as a closed and self-sufficient reduplication, "system"in itsown right: and at the same time,floating above the real. It is because of thisessential lack of contentin Stevens' verse thathis poetryultimately comes to be with a vengeance, takingas its primalsubject matterthe auto-referential very operationof poetic productionitself.This is an impulse shared by in as has been shown mostdramatically mostof thegreathighmodernisms, in the the recent critiques of architectural of modernism, particular International whose greatmonumental themselves, style, objects constitute a protopolitical and utopianspirit of transformation, by projecting against a all around themand, as Venturi end up fallencityfabric has demonstrated, this and of themselves alone. also Now, necessarilydisplaying speaking accountsforwhatmustpuzzle any seriousreaderof Stevens'verse,namely the extraordinarycombination of verbal richness and experimental in it (the latter as well to hollownessor impoverishment being attributable the impersonalityof the poetic imagination in Stevens, and to the and epistemological stance of the subject in it, essentially contemplative over and againstthe staticobject world of his landscapes). The essential point here, however, is that this characteristic itself movementof the highmodernist by way of impulseneeds to justify be describedas whichcan generally an ideologicalsupplement an ideology, of a that of "existentialism" (the supreme fiction,the meaninglessness is the the This unredeemed etc.). imagination, by contingent object-world most uninteresting and banal dimensionof Stevens' work, yet it betrays treeroot in Nausea) thatfatal (e.g., Sartre's along withotherexistentialisms the seam or link which must be retainedin order for the contingent, be the to "outside world," meaninglessreferent, just present enough to be overcome withinthe language:nowhereis thisultimate dramatically point so clearlydeduced, over and over again,as in Stevens,in the eye of theangelsor the Sun itself-that lastresidual the blackbird, vanishing point of reference as distant as a dwarfstarupon the horizon,yetwhich cannot withoutthe whole vocation of poetryand the poetic disappearaltogether
forus imagination beingcalled back intoquestion.Stevensthusexemplifies thefundamental of the the of cultural the paradox "autonomy" sphere: sign can only become autonomous by remaining semi-autonomous and the realmof culturecan absolutizeitself over againstthe realworld onlyat the a final tenuoussense of thatexterior or external world of priceof retaining which it is the replication and the imaginary double. All of which can also be demonstrated by showing what happens when, in a second moment,the perfectly logicalconclusionis drawnthat the referent is itself a mythand does not exist,a second momenthitherto describedas postmodernism. Its trajectory can be seen as a movement from the older nouveau roman to thatof Sollersor of properly "schizophrenic" or fromthe primacy of Stevensto thatofJohnAshbery. This new writing, momentis a radicalbreak(whichcan be localizedaround 1967 forreasons to be givenlateron), but it is important to graspitas dialectical, thatis, as a in same from which the a certain to force, passage quantity quality reaching threshold now producesqualitatively distinct of excess, in itsprolongation effects and seems to generatea whole new system. That force has been describedas reification, but we can now also with to make some connections another begin figural languageused earlier: in a first itsreferent, "liberated"the Signfrom but this reification moment, is not a forceto be released withimpunity. Now, in a second moment,it the interior of the Sign itself continuesits work of dissolution, penetrating and liberating theSignifier theSignified, from or from This meaning proper. freed from play,no longerof a realmof signs,but of pureor literal signifiers the ballastof their theirformer now generates a new signifieds, meanings, kindof textuality in all thearts(and in philosophy as well,as we have seen above), and beginsto projectthe mirageof some ultimate languageof pure which is also frequently associatedwithschizophrenic discourse. signifiers - a language disorderin (Indeed, the Lacanian theoryof schizophrenia which syntactical time breaks down, and leaves a succession of empty absolute momentsof a perpetual present,behind itself-has Signifiers, offered one of the more influential explanations and ideological forpostmodernist textualpractice.) justifications in some detailby way of Allof whichwould have to be demonstrated a concreteanalysis of thepostmodernist experiencein all theartstoday:but the presentargument can be concluded by drawingthe consequences of or of theSimulacrum-for thissecond moment-the culture of theSignifier of some "autonomy"of the cultural the whole problematic spherewhich has concerned us here. For thatautonomousrealmis not itself spared by the intensified process by which the classical Sign is dissolved: if its of remaining "semiautonomydepended paradoxicallyon its possibility the last tenuous autonomous" (in an Althusserian sense) and of preserving linkwithsome ultimate referent (or,in Althusserian language,of preserving in the thenevidently the ultimate of "structural a totality"), unity properly
THE60s ? 201 PERIODIZING new cultural momentculturewill have ceased to be autonomous,and the realm of an autonomous play of signs becomes impossible,when that referent ultimate final to whichtheballoon of themindwas mooredis now determines a fallback cut. The break-up of the Sign in mid-air definitively the broken into a now absolutelyfragmented and anarchicsocial reality; now falling pieces of language(the pure Signifiers) again intothe world,as and so many more pieces of materialjunk among all the other rusting superannuated apparatuses and buildings that litter the commodity the "deliriousNew York" of a landscape and thatstrewthe "collage city," in fullcrisis. late capitalism postmodernist to a Marcuseanterminology, all of thiscan also be said But,returning in a different way: with the eclipse of cultureas an autonomous space or sphere, culture itself falls into the world, and the result is not its disappearancebut its prodigiousexpansion, to the point where culture withsocial lifein general:now all thelevelsbecome becomes coterminous and in the societyof the spectacle,the image,or the simu"acculturated," has at lengthbecome cultural, fromthe superstructures lacrum,everything If thisdevelopment down into the mechanisms of the infrastructure itself. then places acutelyon the agenda the neoGramscianproblem of a new cultural politicstoday-in a social systemin which the verystatusof both cultureand politics have been profoundly, and structurally functionally modified-it also rendersproblematic discussionof what used any further to be called "culture" proper,whose artifacts have become the random experiencesof dailylifeitself. 6. IN THE SIERRA MAESTRA Allof which willhave been little more thana lengthy excursionintoa very therein specialized(or "elite") area,unlessitcan be shown thatthedynamic of the laboratory visible, with somethingof the artificial simplification finds and distant situation, striking analogiesor homologiesin verydifferent areas of social practice. It is precisely this replicationof a common diachronicrhythm or "geneticcode" which we will now observe in the in thecourse of realities of revolutionary verydifferent practiceand theory the 60s in the thirdworld. From the beginning,the Cuban experience affirmed itselfas an model, to be radically originalone, as a new revolutionary distinguished frommore traditional forms of revolutionary Foco theory, indeed, practice. as it was associated with Che Guevara and theorizedin Regis Debray's influential asserteditself handbook,Revolutionin theRevolution?, (as the title of the book suggests) both against a more traditionalLeninist conception of partypracticeand against the experience of the Chinese revolutionin its first essentialstage of the conquest of power (what will later come to be designatedas "Maoism," China's own very different
JAMESON 202 0 FREDRIC in therevolution" or GreatProletarian will Cultural "revolution Revolution, not become visibleto theoutsideworlduntilthemomentin whichthefate has been sealed). of the Cuban strategy A reading thestrategy of Debray'stextshows thatfocostrategy, of the is conceived as a mobile guerrilla base or revolutionary yet third foyer, either the as distinct from traditional model of class term, something urban a proletariat risingagainst bourgeoisie or struggle(an essentially or a the of mass peasantmovementin the Chinese class) ruling experience little in either with a Fanonianstruggle has common for countryside (and The between Colonizer and or Colonized). recognition foco, guerrilla "in" nor "of" either operation,is conceptualizedas being neither country of course, it is positionedin the countryside, or city:geographically, yet that location is not the permanently "liberatedterritory" of the Yenan or of region,well beyond thereachof theenemyforcesof ChiangKai-shek theJapaneseoccupier.It is not indeed located in the cultivated area of the in thatthird at all, butrather or non-placewhichis thewilderpeasantfields but rather ness of theSierraMaestra, neither nor city, a whole new country elementin which the guerrilla band moves in perpetualdisplacement. This peculiarity of the way in which the spatialcoordinatesof the is conceived has thenimmediate Cuban strategy consequences fortheway in which the class elementsof the revolutionary movement are theorized. Neithercitynor country: the same the guerrillas token,paradoxically, by themselvesare grasped as being neitherworkersnor peasants (stillless, but rather new, forwhich the prerevoluintellectuals), entirely something has no new class tionary society revolutionary categories: subjects,forged in the guerrilla out of the social material of peasants, indifferently struggle workers now or those class intellectuals, city yet largelytranscending this will as moment of claim to transCuban categories(just theory largely cend the older revolutionary on class ideologies predicated categories, whetherthose of Trotskyist Maoistpopulismand peasantconworkerism, sciousness,or of Leninist vanguardintellectualism). Whatbecomes clear in a textlikeDebray's is thattheguerrillafocoin thestatic so mobileas to be beyondgeography sense-is in and of itself a the Its for come. to transformed, figure revolutionary society revolutionary militants are not simply"soldiers" to whose specializedrole and function one would then have to "add" supplementary roles in the revolutionary divisionof labor,such as politicalcommissars and the politicalvanguard both explicitly in themis abolished all partyitself, rejectedhere. Rather, such prerevolutionary divisions and categories. This conceptionof a newly emergentrevolutionary "space" - situated outside the "real" political, social and geographicalworld of countryand city,and of the historical social classes,yetat one and thesame timea figure or small-scale imageand of the revolutionary transformation of thatreal world-may prefiguration be designated as a properly world,"an utopianspace, a Hegelian"inverted
THE60s@ 203 PERIODIZING autonomous revolutionary sphere, in which the fallenreal world over and into a new socialistsociety. it is itself set transformed right against For all practicalpurposes, this powerfulmodel is exhausted,even of the before Che's own tragicdeath in Bolivia in 1967, with the failure in in not movements Peru and Venezuela 1966; guerrilla uncoincidentally, that failurewill be accompanied by somethinglike a disinvestment of and on libido fascination the of a first world its left, revolutionary part return (withsome leaveningof the newer Maoism) to theirown "current situation,"in the Americanantiwar movement and May 68. In Latin America,however, the radical strategywhich effectively replacesfoco theoryis that of the so-called urban guerrillamovement,pioneered in of Uruguayby theTupamaros:it will have become clear thatthisbreak-up theutopianspace of theolderguerrillafoco, thefallof politics back intothe of a verydifferent world in the form styleof politicalpracticeindeed-one thatseeks to dramatize features of statepower,rather than,as in traditional to build towards some ultimate encounterwith movements, revolutionary be here as of a structural interpreted something equivalentto the it--will finalstage of the sign as characterized above. Several qualifications must be made, however. For one thing,it is clear that this new form of political activity will be endowed, by association, with something of the tragic prestige of the Palestinian which comes intobeing in itscontemporary liberation form as movement, a resultof the Israeliseizureof the WestBank and the Gaza Stripin 1967, and which will thereafter become one of thedominant worldwidesymbols in the late of revolutionary 60s. thestruggle however, Equallyclearly, praxis of this desperate and victimized people cannot be made to bear for the excesses of this kind of strategy elsewhere in the responsibility in Latin whose universal results or withCointelworld, America, (whether in in the United West and States, or,belatedly, pro Germany Italy)have been to legitimize an intensification of the repressive of apparatus statepower. This objective coincidence between a misguidedassessmentof the social and politicalsituation on the partof leftmilitants (forthe most part studentsand intellectuals a to force eager revolutionary conjunctureby voluntaristic those acts) and a willingexploitation by the stateof precisely that what often called is must be "terrorism" provocations suggests loosely the object of complex and properly However dialectical a analysis. rightly left to dissociate itself from such chooses the (and responsible strategy Marxianoppositionto terrorism is an old and established thatgoes tradition itis important back to the 19thcentury), to remember that"terrorism," as a is also an of the and must therefore refused be right "concept," ideologeme in thatform. films of thelate60s and early70s, mass Alongwiththedisaster cultureitself makesclear that"terrorism"--the imageof the "terrorist"--is one of the privileged forms in which an ahistorical radical societyimagines social change; meanwhile,an inspectionof the content of the modern
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or adventurestoryalso makes it clear thatthe "otherness"of sothriller has begun to replaceolder imagesof criminal called terrorism as "insanity" in the construction an unexaminedand seemingly of "natural"motivation pseudoplots--yetanothersignof the ideologicalnatureof thisparticular is a collectiveobsession, a concept. Understoodin this way, "terrorism" symptomatic fantasy of the American political unconscious, which demands decoding and analysisin its own right. As for the thingitself, forall practicalpurposes it comes to an end withtheChileancoup in 1973 and thefallof virtually all theLatinAmerican The belated reemercountriesto various formsof military dictatorship. in WestGermany and in Italymust gence of thiskind of politicalactivity at leastin partbe attributed to thefascist surely pastof thesetwo countries, failure to liquidatethatpast after thewar,and to a violentmoralreto their vulsion againstit on the part of a segmentof the youthand intellectuals who grew up in the 60s. 7. RETURN OF THE "ULTIMATELY DETERMINING INSTANCE" The two "breaks" which have emergedin the precedingsection-one in of the generalarea around 1967, the otherin the immediate neighborhood will the for a more now serve as framework 1973 generalhypothesis withthesecond of about the periodization of the60s in general.Beginning in the general unrelated events a series of other,seemingly these, whole area of 1972-1974 suggeststhatthismomentis not merelya decisiveone radical or LatinAmerican on the relatively specializedlevel of thirdworld a far what called the in more definitive is 60s but the end of politics, signals the end and the In the of the draft first for world, example, global way. Vietnam(in 1973) spell the end of the forcesfrom withdrawal of American mass politics of the antiwarmovement(the crisisof the new leftitselfthebreak-up of SDS in 1969-would seem whichcan be largely dated from related to the other break mentioned,to which we will returnbelow), between the Communist while the signing of the Common Program Party and the new SocialistPartyin France (as well as the wider currencyof slogans associated with "Eurocommunism"at this time) would seem to associated marka strategic turnaway fromthe kindsof politicalactivities of withMay68 and itssequels. This is also themomentat which,as a result a different the Yom Kippurwar, the oil weapon emergesand administers and the dailylife kind of shock to the economies, the politicalstrategies, on the more general habits of the advanced countries.Concomitantly, cultural and ideological level, the intellectuals associated with the in the UnitedStates)beginto recoverfrom itself establishment (particularly the fright and defensiveposturewhich was theirsduringthe decade now
PERIODIZING THE60s @ 205 voices in a seriesof attackson 60s cultureand ending,and again findtheir 60s politicswhich, as was noted at the beginning, are not even yet at an end. One of the more influential documentswas Lionel Trilling's Sincerity and Authenticity (1972), an Arnoldiancall to reverse the tide of 60s countercultural "barbarism."(This will, of course, be followed by the influential in terms diagnosisof some 60s concept of "authenticity" equally inJuly of a "cultureof narcissism".) different 1973,some rather Meanwhile, "intellectuals," representingvarious concrete forms of political and economic power,will begin to rethink the failure in Vietnamin terms of a new global strategy for American and first world interests; their establishment of the Trilateral Commissionwill at least symbolically be a in the recoveryof momentum marker significant by what mustbe called "the rulingclasses." The emergenceof a widely accepted new popular concept and term at this same time, the notion of the "multinational is also anothersymptom, as theauthorsof Global corporation," signifying, Reach have suggested,the momentin which privatebusiness findsitself obliged to emergein public as a visible "subject of history"and a visible actor on the world stage- thinkof the role of ITT in Chile- when the Americangovernment, having been badly burned by the failureof the Vietnam is generally reluctant to undertake further ventures of intervention, thiskind. For all thesereasonsitseems appropriate to markthedefinitive end of the "60s" in thegeneralarea of 1972-1974. Butwe have omitted untilnow the decisiveelementin any argument or "punctuation" fora periodization of this kind,and this new kind of material will directour attention to a "level" or "instance"which has hitherto been absent the from significantly present discussion, namely the economic itself.For 1973-1974 is the momentof the onset of a worldwide economic crisis,whose dynamicis stillwith us today,and which put a decisive full stop to the economic characteristic of thepostwarperiodgenerally and expansionand prosperity of the 60s in particular. When we add to thisanotherkeyeconomic marker - the recessionin West Germany in 1966 and thatin the otheradvanced in particular in the UnitedStatesa yearor so later-we maywell countries, findourselvesin a betterpositionmore formally to conceptualize thereby thatsense of a secondarybreakaround1967-68 whichhas begunto surface on the philosophical, and politicallevels as theywere analyzedor cultural, "narrated"above. Such confirmation by the economic "level" itselfof periodizing of social lifeduring readingderivedfromother, sample levels or instances the 60s will now perhaps put us in a betterpositionto answer the two theoretical issues raised at the beginning of thisessay. The first had to do with the validityof Marxistanalysis for a period whose active political categoriesno longerseemed to be those of social class, and in which in a
JAMESON 206 0 FREDRIC more generalway traditional forms of Marxist and practiceseemed theory to have entered a "crisis." The second involved the problem of some distant realities of which such seemingly as "unifiedfieldtheory"in terms and mass third-world movements first-world culture indeed, (or peasant levels like philosophyand more abstractly, intellectual or superstructural and politicalpractice)might culturegenerally, and those of mass resistance be relatedin some coherentway. conceptually A pathbreakingsynthesis by Ernest Mandel, in his book Late answer to both thesequestionsat Capitalism, will suggesta hypothetical once. The book presents,among other things,an elaborate systemof businesscyclesundercapitalism, whose mostfamiliar unit,the 7-to-10 year alternation of boom, overproduction, recession and economic recovery, break in the 60s suggested adequatelyenough accounts forthe mid-point above. Mandel'saccountof theworldwidecrisisof 1974,however,drawson a farmore controversial to fifty conceptionof vastercycles of some thirty to yearperiodseach-cycles whichare thenobviouslymuchmore difficult as theytranscend or "phenomenologically" insofar perceiveexperientially the rhythmsand limits of the biological life of individuals. These waves" (named after the Soviet economistwho hypothesized "Kondratiev them)have accordingto Mandel been renewed fourtimessince the 18th and are characterized century, by quantum leaps in the technologyof which enable decisiveincreasesin the rateof profit production, generally, untilat lengththe advantagesof the new productionprocesseshave been comes to an end. The explored and exhausted and the cycle therewith latestof these Kondratiev cycles is thatmarkedby computertechnology, nuclear energy and the mechanization of agriculture(particularlyin and also primary which Mandel dates from1940 in foodstuffs materials), NorthAmericaand the postwarperiod in the otherimperialist countries: what is decisive in the present context is his notion that, with the worldwide recessionof 1973-74, the dynamicsof thislatest"long wave" are spent. The hypothesis is attractive, however,not onlybecause of itsabstract in confirming usefulness our periodization schemes,butalso because of the actual analysis of this latest wave of capitalistexpansion, and of the Marxian versionhe givesof a whole rangeof developments which properly have generallybeen thoughtto demonstrate the end of the "classical" theorized capitalism by Marxand to requirethisor thatpostMarxist theory of social mutation of consumersociety, (as in theories postindustrial society, and the like). We have already described the way in which neocolonialism is characterized by the radically new technology (the so-called Green in agriculture: new farming Revolution new machinery, methods,and new of chemical fertilizer with and types hybrid plantsand geneticexperiments
PERIODIZING THE60s @ 207 the like), with which capitalismtransforms its relationship to its colonies market to froman old-fashioned control penetration, destroying imperialist and creating a whole new wage-laborpool the older villagecommunities The militancy and lumpenproletariat. of the new social forcesis at one and the same timea resultof the "liberation"of peasantsfromtheir older selfa and movement of communities, self-defense, village generally sustaining in the stableryet more isolated areas of a given thirdworld originating whatis rightly form country, against perceivedas a farmorethoroughgoing and colonizationthan the older colonial armies. of penetration thatMandelwill It is now in terms of thisprocessof "mechanization" make the linkbetweentheneocolonialist world transformation of thethird different the 60s and the that of during seemingly very thingin emergence the first world, variouslytermedconsumersociety,postindustrial society, media society, and the like:
Far from representing a postindustrial society, late capitalism. . constitutes time in history. generalized universal industrialization forthe first Mechanization, standardization,overspecialization and parcellizationof labor, which in the past determined only the realm of commodity production in actual industry, now of late capitalism that penetrate into all sectors of social life. It is characteristic is step by step becoming just as industrialized as industry, the sphere of agriculture circulation[e.g., creditcards and the like] just as much as the sphere of production, and recreationjust as much as the organizationof work.
With this last, Mandel touches on what he elsewhere calls the mechanization of the superstructure, or in otherwords the penetration of what the cultureitself Frankfurt called the culture and School by industry, of themedia is onlya part.We maythusgeneralize of whichthegrowth his in in as follows: late the 60s description capitalism general(and particular) a process in which the lastsurviving internal and external constitute zones of precapitalism--the lastvestigesof noncommodified or traditional space within and outsidetheadvanced world-are now ultimately and penetrated colonized in theirturn.Late capitalismcan therefore be describedas the moment in which the last vestiges of Nature which survived on into classicalcapitalism are at length eliminated: worldand the namelythe third unconscious.The 60s willthenhave been themomentous transformational takes place on a global scale. period in which thissystemic restructuring Withsuch an account,our "unified fieldtheory"of the60s is giventhe discoveryof a singleprocess at workin first and third worlds,in global in a and consciousness and dialectical culture, economy process, properly in which "liberation"and domination are inextricably combined. We may now therefore characterization of the period as a whole. proceed to a final The simplest remains thewidely formulation yetmostuniversal surely thatin the 60s, fora time,everything shared feeling was possible: thatthis a global unliberation, period,in otherwords,was a momentof a universal forthisprocess is in thisrespect bindingof energies.Mao Tse-tung's figure
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most revealing:"Our nation," he cried, "is like an atom .... When this atom's nucleusis smashed,the thermal energyreleasedwill have reallytremendous power!" The imageevokes the emergenceof a genuinemass deand mocracyfromthe breakupof the older feudaland villagestructures, the therapeutic from in cultural dissolution of thehabitsof thosestructures revolutions: the releaseof molecularenergies, of fission, the yetthe effects of can be a properlyterrifying unbinding "materialsignifiers," spectacle; and we now know thatMao Tse-tung himself drew back from the ultimate of the he had set in motion,when, at the supreme process consequences momentof the CulturalRevolution, thatof the founding of the Shanghai of theparty and efCommune,he called a haltto the dissolution apparatus reversedthe directionof this collectiveexperiment as a whole fectively (withconsequences only too obvious at the present time).In thewest also, the greatexplosionsof the60s have led, in theworldwideeconomic crisis, to powerful of the social orderand a renewalof the repressive restorations power of the variousstateapparatuses. Yet the forcesthesemustnow confront, containand controlare new ones, on which the older methods do not necessarilywork. We have describedthe60s as a momentin whichtheenlargement of capitalism on a or unbinding of global scale simultaneously produced an immensefreeing a prodigiousreleaseof untheorized social energies, new forces:the ethnic forces of black and "minority"or thirdworld movementseverywhere, the developmentof new and militant bearers of "surplus regionalisms, consciousness" in the studentand women's movements, as well as in a hostof struggles of otherkinds.Such newlyreleasedforcesdo notonlynot seem to compute in the dichotomousclass model of traditional Marxism; they also seem to offera realm of freedomand voluntarist possibility of the economic infrastructure. Yet this beyond the classical constraints sense of freedom and possibility--which is forthe course of the 60s a moas well as (from thehindsight of the80s) a histormentarily objectivereality, ical illusion-may perhapsbestbe explainedin terms of thesuperstructural movementand play enabled by the transition fromone infrastructural or of to The were in imanother. 60s that sense an systemic stage capitalism mense and inflationary abancredit;a universal issuingof superstructural donmentof the referential an gold standard; extraordinary printing up of ever more devalued signifiers. With the end of the 60s, with the world economic crisis,all the old infrastructural billsthenslowlycome due once on a world scale, to more; and the 80s will be characterized by an effort, all those unbound social forceswhich gave the 60s their proletarianize in otherwords, into the farthest by an extensionof class struggle, energy, reachesof theglobe as well as themostminute of local insticonfigurations tutions(such as the university The unifying forcehere is the new system). vocationof a henceforth which may also be expected to global capitalism,
THE60s @ 209 PERIODIZING to the process. And this the unequal, fragmented, or local resistances unify and to the is finally also the solutionto the so-called "crisis" of Marxism its class the new social of forms of to analysis widelynoted inapplicability if "unus: "traditional" realities with which the 60s confronted Marxism, true" duringthisperiod of a proliferation of new subjectsof history, must when the true realities of exploitation, dreary necessarilybecome again and the resistance to it in the extraction of surplusvalue, proletarianization a class all reassert themselves new and of form on struggle, slowly in as seem the world of scale, they expanded currently process doing.

Jameson Periodizing The 60s

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Periodizing the 60s Author(s): Fredric Jameson Reviewed work(s): Source: Social Text, No.

PERIODIZING THE 60s

of theglories of the60s or abjectpublic Nostalgic commemoration

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the60s,often as a period in which and first world imagined capital power

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of of (the GreatRevolution of 1848, who "anxiouslyconjure up the spirits

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