Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
CsImCdcnIIV
i11` `Ii1b!1
*x
VERSO
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First published by Verso 1998
Perry Anderson 1998
Al rights reserved
Reprinted 1998, 1v
T he moral rights of the author have been asserted
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LGnICnIs
orcword \II
i. rodromcs o
2. Crystallizaton iJ
o. Capturc ^/
^. AItcr-cIIccts /8
ndcx ioV
GICVGIU
Jhs cssay startcd whcn was askcd to ntroducc a ncw
collccton oI wrtngs by rcdrc ]amcson, The Cultural Turn.
n thc cvcnt, t bccamc too long Ior thc purposc. n publshng
t as a tcxt by tsclI, howcvcr, havc not wantcd to altcr ts
Iorm. tsbcstrcadn coniunctonwththc volumcthatnsprcd
t. Although havc ncvcr wrttcn about a body oI work that
dd not, n oncwayoranothcr, admrc, anclcmcntoIrcsstancc
was n thc past always an ngrcdcnt n thc mpulsc to do so.
ntcllcctual admraton s n any casc onc thng, poltcal sym-
pathy anothcr. Jhs short book trcs do somcthng clsc, whch
havc always Iound dIhcult. to cxprcss a scnsc oI thc achcvc-
mcnt oIa thnkcrwth whom, tmght bc sad, lackthc saIcty
oIsuIhccntdstancc. havc noassuranccthathavc succccdcd.
ut somc largcr dcbatc around ]amcson`s work n gcncral s
ovcrduc,andthsattcmptmayatlcasthclptocncouragct.
1hc ttlc oI thc tcxt has a two-Iold rcIcrcncc. Jhc prncpal
am oI thc cssay s to oIIcr a morc hstorcal account oI
orgns oIthc dca oIpostmodcrnty than s currcntlyavaila"-!
onc that trcs to sct ts dIIcrcnt sourccs morc prccscly n t
spatal, poltcal and ntcllcctual scttngs, and wth
attcnton to tcmporal scqucncc - also topcal Iocus - than has
bccomc customary. nly aganst thsbackground, myargumcnt
gocs, docs thc pccular stamp oI]amcson`s contrbuton cmcrgc
nIullrclcI. Asccondarypurposcstosuggcst, morctcntatvcly,
somc oI thc condtons that may havc rclcascd thc postmodcrn
- not as dca, but asphcnomcnon. n part, thcsc arc commcnts
that scck to rcvsc an carlcr attcmpt to skctch thc prcmscs oI
vii
FOREWORD
modcrnsm n thc prcvous fn de siecle, and n part thcy try
to cngagc wth thc lvcly contcmporary ltcraturc on thcsc
qucstons.
wouldlkctothankthchclpoIthcVsscnschaItskollcg,crln,
whcrc ths work was complctcd, and ts cxccptonal lbrarans,
andcxprcssmy dcbtsgcncrallytoJomNcrtcsandmystudcnts
nIosAngclcs.
Y111
=
====== |
IGUIGmCs
Lima - Madrid - London
'ostmodcrnsm` as tcrm and dca supposcs thc currcncy oI
'modcrnsm` . Contrary to convcntonal cxpcctaton, both wcrc
born n a dstant pcrphcry rathcr than at thc ccntrc oI thc
cultural systcm oI thc tmc. thcy comc not Irom [uropc or thc
\ntcd Statcs, but .+
PRODROMES
contcxt - asancpochal rathcr than acsthctc catcgory. nthc
hrst volumc oI hs Study of History, also publshcd n 19J^,
Arnold Joynbcc argucd thatthc concurrcncc oItwo powcrIul
Iorccs, ndustralsm and ^atonalsm, had shapcd thc rcccnt
hstory oI thc Vcst. Sncc thc last quartcr oI thc nnctccnth
ccntury, howcvcr, thcy had cntcrcd nto dcstructvc contradc-
tonwth cachothcr, asthc ntcrnatonal scalc oIndustry burst
thc bounds oInatonalty, yctthc contagon oInatonalsm tsclI
sprcad downwards nto cvcr smallcr and lcss vablc cthnic
communtcs. Jhc Crcat Var had sprung Irom thc conf|ct
bctwccnthcsc trcnds, makng tunmstakcably clcar that an agc
had opcncd n whch natonal powcr could no longcr bc sclI-
suIhccnt. t was thc duty oI hstorans to hnd a ncw horzon
appropratc to thc cpoch, whch could only bc Iound at thc
hghcr lcvcl oI cvlzatons, bcyond thc outworn catcgory oI
naton-statcs.'Jhs was thc task Joynbcc sct hmsclI n thc sx
volumcs oI hs Study publshcd - but stll ncomplctc - bcIorc
19J9.
ythctmchcrcsumcd publcaton hItccn ycarslatcr,Joyn-
bcc`s outlook had altcrcd. Jhc Sccond Vorld Var had vnd-
catcd hs orgnal nspraton - a dccp hostlty to natonalsm,
and guardcd suspcon oI ndustralsm. ccolonzaton, too,
hadconhrmcdJoynbcc`ssccptcalvcwoVcstcrnmpcralsm.
Jhc pcrodzaton hc had proposcd twcnty ycars carlcr now
took on clcarcr shapc n hs mnd. n hs cghth volumc,
publshcd n19^, Joynbcc dubbcd thc cpochrho1had opcncd
wth thc ranco-russan Var th 'post-modcrn ac' ut hs
dchnton oI t rcmancd csscntally:ccativc.`Wcstcrn com-
-
muntcs bccamc modcrn ` , hcwrotc, 'iustas soonas thcyh
succccdcd n producng a bourgcosc that was both me
cnough and compctcnt cnouh to bccomc thc p:e1omin
clcmcnt n soccty` . ` y contrast, n thc postmodcrn agc t
mddlc class was no longcr nthc saddlc. Joynbcc was lcss
dchntc about what Iollowcd. utccrtanlythc postmodcrn agc
wasmarkcdbytwodcvclopmcnts.thcrscoIanndustralworkng
class nthcVcst, andthc bd oIsucccssvcntcllgcntsasoutsdc
4 A Study of History, Vol 1, London 1934, pp. 12-15.
5 A Study of History, Vo!S, p. 338.
5
PRODROMES
rcasonandIrccdom partcdcompany napostmodcrnsocctyoI
blnd drIt and cmpty conIormty. Jhc crtc, n mldcr toncs,
borrowcdtto dcscrbcacontcmporaryhctonunablcto sustan
modcrnst tcnson wth a surroundng soccty whosc class
dvsons had bccomc ncrcasngly amorphous wth post-war
prospcrty.' A ycar latcr Marry Icvn, drawng on Joynbcc`s
usagc,gavcthcdcaoIpostmodcrnIormsamuchsharpcrtwst,
to dcpctancpgonc ltcraturc thathad rcnounccd thc strcnuous
ntcllcctual standards oI modcrnsm Ior a rclaxcd mddlc-brow
synthcss - thc sgn oI a ncw complcty bctwccn artst and
bourgcos, at a suspcct cross-roads bctwccn culturc and com-
mcrcc. Mcrc laythcbcgnnngsoI anuncquvocallypci oratvc
vcrsonoIthcpostmodcrn.
n thc sxtcs, t changcd as - stll largcly- advcnttous sgn
agan. MalI-way through thc dccadc thc crtc Icslc cdlcr,
tcmpcramcntalantthcssoIIcvn, addrcsscd aconIcrcnccspon-
sorcd by thc Congrcss oI Cultural rccdom, sct up by thc CA
Ior work on thc ntcllcctual Iront oI thc Cold Var. n ths
unlkclyscttng, hccclcbratcdthccmcrgcncc oIancwscnsblty
among thc youngcr gcncraton n Amcrca, who wcrc 'drop-
outs Iromhstory` - culturalmutantswhosc valucs oInoncha-
lancc and dsconncxon, hallucnogcns and cvl rghts, wcrc
hndng wclcomc cxprcsson n a Ircsh postmodcrn ltcraturc.
`'We are at the ending of what is called The Modern Age. Just as Antiquity was
followed by several centuries of Oriental ascendancy, which Westerners provincially
call the Dark Ages, so now The Modern Age is being succeeded by a postmodern
period': C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, New York 1959,
pp. 165-167.
0
Irving Howe, 'Mass Society and Post-Modern Fiction', Partisan Review, S
er
1959, pp. 420-436; reprinted in Decline of the New, New York 19
pp. 190-207, with a postscript. Howe's article, although it makes no referenc
Mills's work, is clearly dependent on it, especially White Collar: see in part "
his description of a 'mass society' that is 'half-welfare and half-garrison', in wh:
'coherent publics fall apart'.
` 'What was Modernism?', The Massachusetts Review, August 1960, pp. 609-630;
reprinted in Refractions, New York 1966, pp. 271-295, with a prefatory note.
'The New Mutants', Partisan Review, Summer 1965, pp. 505-525; reprinted in
Collected Papers, Vol 2, New York 1971, pp. 379-400. Howe, as might be
expected, complained about this text in a querulous survey, 'The New York
Intellectuals', Commentary, October 1968, p. 49; reprinted in The Decline of the
New, pp. 260-261.
13
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
Jhs,cdlcrlatcrcxplancd nPlayboy, wouldcrossclasscsand
mx gcnrcs, rcpudatng thc roncs and solcmntcsoImodcrn-
sm, notto spcakoItsdstnctonsbctwccnhghandlow,nan
unnhbtcd rcturn to thc scntmcntal and burlcsquc. y 1969
cdlcr`srcndtonoIthcpostmodcrncouldbcsccn,ntsclams
oI dcmotc cmancpaton and nstnctual rclcasc, as oIIcrng a
prudcntly dcpoltczcd ccho oI thc studcnt nsurgcncy oI thc
tmc, othcrwsc scarccly to bc attrbutcd wth ndIIcrcncc to
hstory.` A smlar rcIracton can bc dctcctcd n thc socology
oI Amta [tzon, latcr Iamous Ior hs prcachng oI moral
communty, whosc book The Active Society - dcdcatcd to hs
studcnts at Columba and crkclcy n thc ycar oI campus
rcbcllon- prcscntcd a 'post-modcrn` pcrod, datablcIrom thc
cnd oI thc war, n whch thc powcr oI bg busncss and
cstablshcd cltcs was dcclnng, and soccty could Ior thc hrst
tmc bccomc a dcmocracy that was 'mastcr oI tsclI`.' Jhc
nvcrsonoIthcargumcnt oIThe Sociological Imagination s all
butcomplctc.
ut I thc usagcs oI Mowc and Nlls wcrc rcvcrscd wth
dscplnary symmctry by cdlcr and [tzon, all wcrc stll
tcrmnologcal mprovsaton or happcnstancc. Sncc thc
modcrn - acsthctc or hstorcal - s always n prncplc what
mghtbc callcd aprcscnt-absolutc,t crcatcs a pccular dIhculty
Ior thc dchnton oIany pcrod bcyond t, that would convcrt t
to a rclatvc past. nths scnsc, thc makcshIt oIa smplc prchx
- dcnotng what comcs aItcr - s vrtually nhcrcnt n thc
conccpt tsclI, onc that could bc morc or lcss countcd on n
advancctorccurwhcrcvcra stray nccd Ior a markcr oItcmporal
dIIcrcncc mght bc Iclt. Rcsort oI ths knd to thc tcrm 'post
modcrn` has always bccn oI crcumstantal sgnhcancc. ut
thcorctcal dcvclopmcnt s anothcr mattcr. Jhc noton oI thc
postmodcrn dd not acqurc any wdcr dIIuson tll thc
scvcntcs.
'Cross the Border, Close the Gap' , Playboy, December 1 969, pp. 151, 230,
252-258; reprinted in Collected Papers, Vol 2, pp. 461-485.
LIVsIaIIIzaIIGn
Athens - Cairo - Las Vegas
Jhc rcal turnng-pont camc wththc appcarancc nIall19/2 at
nghamton oI a i ournal cxprcssly subttlcd aJournal of Post
modern Literature and Culture - thc rcvcw boundary 2. Jhc
lcgacy oI lson had rc-surIaccd. Jhc kcy-notc cssay nthc hrst
ssuc, by avd Antn, was cnttlcd. 'Nodcrnsm and ost-
Nodcrnsm. Approachng thc rcscnt n Amcrcan octry`.
Antn rakcd thc wholc canon runnng Irom [lot and Jatc
to Audcn and Iowcll, wth glancng hrc cvcn at ound, as
a surrcpttously provncal and rcgrcssvc tradton, whosc
mctrcal-moral propcnstcs had nothng to do wth gcnunc
ntcrnatonal modcrnsm - thc lnc oI Apollnarc, Narnctt,
Khlcbnkov, Iorca, ]zscI, ^cruda - whosc prncplc was dra-
matc collagc. n post-war Amcrca, twas thc lack Nountan
pocts, and abovc all Charlcs lson, who had rccovcrcd its
cncrgics.' Jhc vtalty oI thc postmodcrn prcscnt, aItcr
'A Conversation with William Spanos', boundary 2, Summer 1 990, pp. 1-3,
16-1 7. This interview, by Paul Bove - Spanos's successor as editor of the joural
is a fundamental document for a history of the idea of the postmodern. After
speaking of his arrest in protest against the bombing of Cambodia, Spanos
acknowledges that 'I didn't quite associate what I was doing as a citizen with my
literary, critical perspective. I don't want to say that they were absolutely dis
tinguished, but I wasn't self-conscious of the connections'.
16
CRYSTALLIZATI ON
an cxstcntalsm orgnally Sartrcan n sympathy, and thcn
ncrcasngly drawn to Mcdcggcr. Jhc rcsult was to nf|cct
lson`s obi cctvsm towards a Mcdcggcran mctaphyscs oI
cng,thatnduccoursc bccamc adomnantstrand nboundar
2. Jhc ntra-mundanc spacc oI thc postmodcrn was thcrcby -
so to spcak - lcIt vacant. t was soon, howcvcr, occupcd by a
latcral cntrant. Among carly contrbutors to thc i ournal was
hab Massan, a crtc who had publshcd hs hrst cssay on
postmodcrnsm iust bcIorc t was launchcd. An [gyptan by
brth- son oIanarstocratcgovcrnor bctwccn thc wars, Iamous
Ior rcprcsson oI a natonalst dcmonstraton aganst rtsh
tutclagc` - and cngnccr by tranng, Massan`s orgnal ntcrcst
hadlanna hgh modcrnsm parcd to an cxprcssvc mnmum.
whathccallcd a 'ltcraturc oIslcncc`, passng downIromKaIka
to cckctt. Vhcn hc advanccd thc noton oIpostmodcrnsm n
19/1, howcvcr, Massan subsumcd ths dcsccnt nto a much
wdcr spcctrum oI tcndcnccs that cthcr radcalzcd or rcIuscd
lcadng trats oI modcrnsm. a conhguraton that cxtcndcd to
thcvsualarts,musc,tcchnology, andscnsbltyatlargc.'
An cxtcnsvc cnumcraton oI trcnds and artsts Iollowcd,
Irom Nalcr to Tel Que!, Mppcs to Conccptualsm. Vthn a
hctcrogcncous rangc, howcvcr, a corc clustcr was dsccrnblc.
JhrccnamcsrccurrcdwthspccalIrcqucncy.]ohnCagc,Robcrt
Rauschcnbcrgand uckmnstcrullcr. All oIthcscwcrc assoc-
atcdwth lack Nountan Collcgc. Abscnt, onthc othcr hand,
3 In 1930 Ismael Sidky, backed by the Palace and the British, closed the Egyptian
parliament. Riots broke out across the country and were met with force. Casualties
were particularly heavy at El Mansura. 'By the day's end, six people lay dead in the
streets, four students in their teens. No one counted the wounded . . . I felt
'
loyalties torn between my father and his foes. Three years later, Mustafa el
became prime minister of Egypt. My father was forced to resign': Ihab Hassan,,
of Egypt. Scenes and Arguments of an Autobiography, Carbondale 198,
pp. 46-48: in more than one way, a suggestive memoir. For an anguished eye
witness account of the massacre, seen as an eleven-year-old from a balcony above
it, compare the very different memoir of the Egyptian feminist Latifa Zayyat: The
Search, London 1996, pp. 41-43. The background to these events is set out by
Jacques Berque, L'Egypte - Imperialisme et Revolution, Paris 1 967, pp. 452-460.
'POSTmoderiSM: a Paracritical Bibliography', New Literary History, Autumn
1 971, pp. 5-30; reprinted with some small alterations in The Postmodern Turn,
Ithaca 1987, pp. 25-45.
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
was lson. M s placc was, as t wcrc, occupcd by a Iourth
hgurc - Narshall NcIuhan. n ths combnaton, thc pvot was
clcarly Cagc. closc Ircnd oI Rauschcnbcrg and ullcr, and
warm admrcr oI NcIuhan. Cagc was also, oI coursc, thc
lcadng acsthctcan oI slcncc, hs composton 1/JJ' Iamously
cxcccdng thc gcsturc oI any wordlcss drama. Vhcn Massan
concludcd hssurvcy oIthcmotlcy ndccs oIpostmodcrnsm -
runnng Irom Spaccshp [arthtothc Clobal\llagc, Iacton and
happcnng,alcatoryrcductonandparodccxtravaganza,mpcr-
mancncc and ntcrmcda - and soughtto synthcszc thcm as so
many 'anarchcs oI thc sprt`, playIully subvcrtng thc alooI
vcrtcs oI modcrnsm, thc composcr was onc oI thcvcry Icw
artstswhocouldplausblybcassocatcdwthmostoIthcbll.
nsubscqucntcssays, Massan cnlstcd oucault`snoton oIan
cpstcmc brcak to suggcst comparablc shIts n sccncc and
phlosophy, n thc wakc oI Mcscnbcrg or ^ctzschc. n ths
vcn, hc argucdthatthcundcrlyng unty oIthcpostmodcrnlay
n 'thc play oI ndctcrmnacy andmmancncc`,whosc orgnat-
ng gcnusnthc artshad bccnNarccl uchamp. Jhclst oIhs
succcssors ncludcd Ashbcry, arth, arthclmc and ynchon n
ltcraturc, Rauschcnbcrg, Varhol, Jngucly n thc vsual arts.
y 198O, Massan had anncxcd vrtually a complctcrostcr oI
poststructuralst motIs nto an claboratc taxonomy oI thc
dIIcrcncc bctwccn postmodcrn and modcrn paradgms, and
cxpandcd hs Cotha oI practtoncrs yct Iurthcr.` ut a largcr
problcm rcmancd. spostmodcrnsm,hc askcd, 'onlyanartstc
tcndcncyoralso a socal phcnomcnon:` , and 'Iso, howarcthc
varous aspccts oIths phcnomcnon- psychologcal,phlosoph-
cal, cconomc,poltcal - i oncd or dsioncd:` . Jothcsc qucs-
tons, Massanrcturncdno cohcrcntanswcr,thoughmakngonc
sgnhcant obscrvaton. 'ostmodcrnsm, as a modc oI ltcrary
changc, could bc dstngushcd Irom thc oldcr avant-gardcs
' Cubsm, utursm, adasm, Surrcalsm ctc as wcll as Irom
modcrnsm`, hc wrotc. '^cthcr lympan and dctachcd lkcrhc
` Respectively: 'Culture, Indeterminacy and Immanence: Margins of the (Postmod
ern) Age', Humanities in Society, No 1, Winter 1978, pp. 51-85, and 'The Question
of Postmodernism', Bucknell Review, 1980, pp. 117-126; reprinted in The Post
modern Turn, pp. 46-83, and (revised as 'The Concept of Postmoderism' )
pp. 84-96.
1 8
'
I
CRYSTALLIZATI ON
lattcr norohcman and Iractous lkc thc Iormcr, postmodcrn-
sm suggcsts a dIIcrcnt knd oI accommodaton bctwccn art
an
d soccty` .'
Vhat knd: I thc dIIcrcncc was to bc cxplorcd, t would bc
dIhcult to avod poltcs. ut hcrc Massandrcw back. ' conIcss
to somc somc dstastc Ior dcologcal ragc 'thc worst arc now
Iull oI passonatc ntcnsty and lack all convcton and Ior thc
hcctorng oI rclgous and sccular dogmatsts. admt to a
ccrtan ambvalcncc towards poltcs, whch can ovcrcrowd our
rcsponscs to both art and lIc`. Mc was soon morc spcchc
about hs dslkcs, attackng Narxst crtcs Ior submsson to
'thc ron yokc oI dcology` n 'thcr conccalcd socal dctcrmn-
sm, collcctvst bas, dstrust oI acsthctc plcasurc`. rcIcrablc
by Iar, as a phlosophy Ior postmodcrnty, was 'thc bluII
tolcrancc and optatvc sprt oI Amcrcan pragmatsm`, abovc
all nthc cxpansvc, cclcbratory shapc oIVllam ]amcs, whosc
pluralsm oIIcrcd cthcal balm Ior currcnt anxctcs. As Ior
poltcs, thc old dstnctons had lost vrtually any mcanng.
Jcrms lkc 'lcIt and rght, basc and supcrstructurc, producton
andrcproducton,matcralsmanddcalsm`hadbccomc'ncarly
unscrvccablc,cxccpttopcrpctuatcprciudcc`-
Massan`s constructon oIthc postmodcrn, ponccrng though
many oI ts pcrccptons wcrc - hc was thc hrst to strctch t
across thc arts, and to notc wng-marks latcr wdcly acccptcd-
thus had a bult-nlmt. thcmovctothc socal was barrcd. Jhs
was surcly onc rcason why hc wthdrcw Irom thc hcld at thc
cnd oI thc cghtcs. ut thcrc was anothcr, ntcrnal to hs
account oI thc arts thcmsclvcs. Massan`s orgnal commtmcnt
was to cxaspcratcd Iorms oI classc modcrnsm - uchamp or.
cckctt. iust what c nis had prcsccntly tcrmcd
modcrnsm` n thc thrtcs. Vhcn hc startcd to cxplorc
cultural sccnc oI thc scvcntcs, Massan construcd t c
affectve ntensty and the multplcaton of lbdnal
]he role ofadvanced artsts- once poi az, Iutursm or
+
Russa, today Rothko, Cage or Cunnngham m Amerca - was
to blow up the obstacles to the unleashng of ths desre by
commttng theformsofestablshedrealtyto theflames.Artn
thssenselay beneath allnsurgentpoltcs. 'Aesthetcs has been
for the poltcal man I was ' and renan: not an alb, a
26
Derive a partir de Marx et Freud, Paris 1973, pp. 12-13, 1 6-18.
27
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNITY
comfortable retreat, but the fault and hssure todescend tothe
subsol of the poltcal scene, a vast grotto from whch ts
undersdecanbe seenupsde-downorturnednsde-out`.
Vth Economie Libidinale ' I97+ , Iyotard went a step
further. o crtque of Marx, by such naifs as Castorads or
audrllard,nthenameofapouscultofcreatvtyornostalgc
myth of symbolc exchange, was of any aval. ]o unmask 'the
desre named Marx`, a complete transcrpton was needed of
poltcalntolbdnaleconomy,thatwouldnotshrnkfromthe
truth that explotaton tself was typcally lved - even by the
early ndustral workers - as erotc enioyment. masochstc or
hystercal delectaton n the destructon of physcal health n
mnes and factores, or dsntegraton of personal dentty n
anonymous slums. Captal was desired by those t domnated,
then as now. Revolt aganst t came only whenthe pleasures t
yelded became 'untenable`, and there was an abrupt shft to
new outlets. ut these had nothng to do wth the tradtonal
sanctmonesoftheIeft.]ustastherewasnoalenatonnvolved
npopularnvestmentn captal, sondsnvestment'theresno
lbdnal dgnty, norlbdnallberty,nor lbdnal fraternty` -
i ustthequestfornewaffectveintenstes.'
]he largerbackgroundtoIyotard`stranstfrom arevoluton-
ary socalsm towards a nhlst hedonsm lay, of course, nthe
evoluton ofthe Ifth Republc tself. ]he Caullst consensus of
the early sxtes had convnced hm that the workng class was
now essentally ntegrated nto captalsm. ]he ferment of the
late sxtes gave hm hope that generaton rather than class -
youth across the world - mght be the harbnger of revolt. ]he
euphorc wave ofconsumersmthat washed over the country n
the early and md-seventes then led to 'wdespread theorza
tons of captalsm as a stream-lned machnery of desre. y
I976,however,the Socalst and Communst Iartcs had agreed
on a Common Irogramme, and looked ncreasngly lkely to
wn the next legslatve electons. ]he prospect of the ICI n
government for the hrst tme snce the onset of the Cold Var
sowed panc n respectable opnon, promptng a volent deo-
27 Derive a partir de Marx et Freud, p. 20.
28 Economie Libidinale, Paris 1974, pp. 136-138.
28
CRYSTALLIZATI ON
logcalcounter-offensve. ]he resultwasthe rocketngto prom
nence of the Nouveaux Philosophes, a group of former
soixante-huitard publcsts, patronzed by the meda and the
Ilysce.
Inthevcsstudes ofIyotard` s poltcaltrai ectory, there had
always been one constant. Socialisme ou Barbarie was vehe
mently ant-communst from the hrst, and whatever hs other
changes of mood or convcton, ths remaned an neradcable
element n hs outlook. In I97+ he conhded to startled friends
n Amerca that hs Iresdental choce was Cscard, snce
Mtterrand reled on Communstsupport. As the I978 electons
approached, wth the danger of actual ICI partcpaton n
government, he therefore could not but feel ambvalence
towards the Nouveaux Philosophes. n the one hand, their
furousattacksoncommunsmweresalutary, onthe other, they
were vsblya lght-weght cotere caught up na compromsng
embrace wth ofhcal power. Iyotard`s nterventon n the pre
electoral debates, the sardonc dalogue Instructions Pai'ennes
' I977 , accordngly both defended and derded them. It was
here that he hrst formulated the dea of meta-narratrves that
wastohguresopromnentlynThe Postmodern Condition, and
made ts realtargetcrystal-clear. ]ustone 'masternarratve`lay
at theorgnoftheterm. Marxsm. Iortunately, ts ascendancy
was now at last eroded by the nnumerable lttle tdngs from
the Culag. It was true that n the Vest there exsted a grand
narratve of captal too, but t was preferable to that of the
Iarty, snce t was 'godless` - 'captalsm has no respect for
any one story`, for 'ts narratve s about everything and
nothng`-
In the same year as ths poltcal manfesto, Iyotard set
an aesthetc canon. Les Transformateurs Duchamp prcscn
thecreatoroftheLarge Glass and Given asthe crtcal artst
the non-somorphc, of ncongruences and ncommensurabil
tes. Defendng once agan hs account ofthejouissance ofthe
earlyndustralproletaratntsgrndnglot,Iyotardcontended.
29 Instructions Pai'ennes, Paris 1 977, p. 55. Lyotard's frst use of the terms 'grand
narrative' and 'meta-narrative' identifes their referent without further ado as
Marxism: pp. 22-23.
29
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNITY
'If you descrbe the workers` fate exclusvely n terms of
alenaton, explotaton and poverty, you present them as vc
tms who only suffered passvely the whole process and who
only acquredclamsforlaterreparatons ' socalsm. You mss
the essental,whchsn`tthegrowthofthe forces ofproducton
at any prce, nor even the death of many workers, as Marx
often says wtha cyncsm adorned wthDarwnsm. You mss
the energy that later spread through the arts and scences, the
i ublation and the pan of dscoverng that you can hold out
'lve, work, thnk, be affected n a place where t had been
i udged senseless to do so. Indfferent to sense, hardness. ` It was
ths hardness, a 'mechancal ascetcsm` , ofwhch Duchamp`s
sexualengmastookareadng. ']he Glass sthe delay" ofthe
nude, Given ts advance. It`s too soon to see the woman layng
herself bare on the Glass, and t`s too late on the stage of the
Given. ]he performer s a complex transformer, a battery of
metamorphoss machnes. ]here sno art, becausethere are no
obi ects. ]here are only transformatons, redstrbutons of
energy.]heworldsamultplctyofapparatusesthattransform
untsofenergyntooneother. ` `
]hemmedate hnterland behnd The Postmodern Condition
was thus much more ntensely charged than the document
composed for the Qucbecos state tself. ]he 'report onknowl-
edge` leftthetwoquestons ofmost abdngconcerntoIyotard
suspended. Vhatwerethemplcatonsofpostmoderntyforart
and poltcs: Iyotard was quckly forced to reply to the hrst,
wherehefoundhmselfnanawkwardposton. Vhenhewrote
The Postmodern Condition hewasquteunawareofthedeploy-
ment ofthe term narchtecture, perhaps the onlyart onwhch
he had never wrtten,wth an aesthetc meanng antthetcal to
everythng that he valued. ]hs gnorance could not last long.
y I982 he was apprsed of ]encks`s constructon of the
postmodern, and ts wdespread recepton n orth Amerca.
ls reacton was acrd. Such postmodernsm was a surrep
ttous restoraton of a degraded realsm once patronzed by
azsm and Stalnsm andnowrecycledas acyncaleclectcsm
30 Les Transformateurs Duchamp, Paris 1977, pp. 23, 39-40.
30
CRYSTALLI ZATI ON
by
cont
emporary captal. everythng the avant-gardes had
fou
ghtaganst.`'
Vhat ths slackenng of aesthetc tenson promsed was not
iust the end of expermentaton, but a cancellaton of the
mpetus of modern art as such, whose drve had always come
from the gap between the concevable and the presentable, that
Kant dehned as the sublme as dstnct from the merely beaut-
ful. Vhat then could authentc postmodern art be: Ireempted
by a usage he execrated, Iyotard`s answer was lame. ]he
postmodern dd not come afterthe modern, but was a moton
ofnternalrenewalwthntfromthehrst- thatcurrentwhose
response to the shatterng of the real was the opposte of
nostalga for ts unty. rather a i ublant acceptance of the
freedom of nventon t released. ut ths was no luxurance.
]he avant-garde art Iyotard sngled out for approval a year
later was Mnmalsm - the sublme as prvaton. Vhat buoyed
theartmarket, bycontrast, wasthektsch celebrated by]encks.
'amalgamaton, ornamentaton, pastche- flatterng the taste"
ofapublcthatcanhavenotaste`.`'
IfIyotard` sproblemntheorzngapostmodernartlaynthe
turn of aesthetc trends awayfromthe drecton he had always
champoned - forcng hm to declare artstc postmodernty a
perennal prncple, rather than perodc category, n patent
contradcton of hs account of scenthc postmodernty as a
stage of cogntve development - hs dfhculty n constructng a
postmodern poltcs became n due course analogous. lere the
dscomhture came from the course of hstory tself. In The
Postmodern Condition Iyotard had announced the eclpse oI
all grand narratves. ]he one whose death he above all sougbl
tocertfywas, ofcourse, classcal socalsm. Insubsequentte
he would extend the lst of grand narratves that were
any hnt of narratve - f at the cost of unwttngly suggesting
the stylzaton of the postmodern otherwse most dslked. ut
34 'Appendice svelte a Ia question postmodere' ( 1982), in Tombeau de l'intellectuel
et autres papiers, Paris 1984, p. 80.
35 Moralites Postmodernes, Paris 1993, pp. 80-86.
36 'Billet pour un nouveau decor' ( 1985), in Le Postmoderne explique aux enfants,
pp. 131-134.
33
THE ORI GINS OF POSTMODERNI TY
when completed, he presented tas 'the unavowed dream the
postmodern world dreams about tself` - 'a postmodern fable` .
ut, henssts, 'thefablesrealstcbecause trecounts the story
of a force whch makes, unmakes and remakes realty`. Vhat
the fable depcts s a conllct between two energy processes.
' neleadstothedestructon ofallsystems, all bodes,lvngor
not,onourplanetandthe solarsystem. utwthn thsprocess
ofentropy, whchs nccessary and contnuous, another process
that s contngent and dscontnuous, at least for a long tme,
acts n a contrary sense by ncreasng dfferentaton of ts
systems. ]hs movement cannot halt the hrst 'unless t could
hnd a means to refuel the sun , but t can escape from
catastrophe by abandonng ts cosmc habtat`. ]he ultmate
motor of captalsm s thus not thrst for proht, or any human
desre. t s rather development as neguentropy. ' Development
s not an nventon of human bengs. luman bengs are an
nventonofdevelopment` .`
Vhysthsnota - quntessentallymodern - grandnarratve:
ecause, Iyotard mantans, t s a storywthouthstorcty or
hope. ]hefablespostmodern because 't has nohnaltyn any
horzon ofemancpaton`. luman bengs, aswtnessesofdevel
opment, may settherfaces aganst a process ofwhchthey are
vehcles. 'uteventhercrtquesofdevelopment, oftsnequal-
ty, ts rregularty, ts fatalty, ts nhumanty, are expressons
ofdevelopmentandcontrbutetot.` Unversalenergetcsleaves
no space for pathos - ostensbly. Yet Iyotard also freely
descrbes hs story as a 'tragedy of energy` whch 'lke Oedipus
Rex ends badly`, yet also 'lke Oedipus at Colonnus allows an
ultmateremsson` . `
]he ntellectual fraglty ofthslateconstructonhardlyneeds
emphass. othng n Iyotard`s orgnal account of meta
narratves conhned them to the dea of emancpaton - whch
was only one of the two modern dscourses of legtmaton he
sought to trace. ]he postmodern fable would stll be a grand
narratve, even were t exempt from the theme. ut n fact, of
course, t s not. Vhat else would escape to the stars be than
37 'Une fable postmoderne', in Moralites Postmodernes, pp. 86-87.
38 'Une fable postmodere', pp. 91-93, 87.
34
^
CRYSTALLI ZATI ON
emancpatonfromthe boundsofadyngearth:Morepontedly
stll, n the other - nterchangeable - regster of Iyotard`s
narratve, captalsm notorously speaks the language of eman
cpaton more contnually and conhdently than ever before.
Ilsewhere, Iyotard s forced to acknowledge ths. Indeed, he
admts. 'Imancpaton s no longer the task of ganng and
mposng lberty from the outsde` - rather t s 'an deal that
the system tselfendeavours to actualze n most ofthe areas t
covers, such as work, taxaton, marketplace, famly, sex, race,
school, culture, communcaton` . bstacles andresstances only
encourage t to become more open and complex, promotng
spontaneousundertakngs - and 'thatstangbleemancpaton` .
Ifthe i ob of the crtc s stll to denounce the shortcomngs of
the system, 'such crtques, whatever form they take, areneeded
by the system for dschargng the task of emancpaton more
effectvely`.`
]hepostmodern condton, announced as thedeathofgrand
narratve,thusendswthts all butmmortalresurrectonnthe
allegory of development. ]he logc ofths strange dcnouement
s nscrbed n Iyotard`s poltcal traiectory. Irom the seventes
onwards, so long as communsm exsted as an alternatve to
captalsm, the latter was a lesser evl - he could even sardon
cally celebrate t as, by contrast, a pleasurable order. nce the
Sovet bloc had dsntegrated, the hegemony of captal became
less palatable. Its deologcaltrumph appeared tovndcatei ust
the knd of legtmatng narratve whose obtuary Iyotard had
set outto wrte. Rather than confrontng thenewrealty on a
poltcal plane, hs soluton was a metaphyscal sublmaton of
t. Sutably proiected nto nter-galactc space, hs orgnal
energetcs could putcaptalsm nto perspectveasnomoreUa
aneddy ofa larger cosmc adventure. ]he btter-sweetcnnso:.
tonthsalteratonof scalemghtoffer aformer mltant s clca
]he 'postmodern fable` dd not spell any hnal reconclaton
wth captal. n the contrary, Iyotard now recovered accents
of opposton long muted n hs work. a denuncaton of
global nequalty and cultural lobotomy, and scorn for socal
democratc reformsm,recallng hs revolutonary past. ut the
39 'Mur, golfe, systeme' ( 1990) , in Moralites Postmodernes, pp. 67-68.
35
THE ORI GINS OF POSTMODERNI TY
only resstances tothe system that remaned were nward. the
reserve ofthe artst, the ndetermnacy ofchldhood, the slence
of thc soul. Cone was the 'i ublaton` of the ntal breakage
of representaton by the postmodern, an nvncble malase
now dehned the tone of the tme. ]he postmodern was
'melancholy` . '
Frankfurt - Munich
The Postmodern Condition was publshed | the autumn of
I979. Ixactly a year later, ]irgen labermas delvered hs
addressModernity - an Incomplete Project nIrankfurt, onthe
occason of hs award of the Adorno prze by the cty fathers.
]he lecture occupes a pecular place n the dscourse of
postmodernty. Its substance touches only to a lmted degree
on the postmodern, yet the effect was to hghlght t as a
henceforth standard referent. ]hs paradoxcal outcome was
largely, of course, due to labermas's standng n the Anglo-
Saxonworld aspremerIuropean phlosopherofthe age. utt
was also afunctonofthecrtcalstanceofhsnterventon.Ior
the hrst tme snce the take-offofthe dea ofpostmodernity n
the late seventes, t receved abrasve treatment. If the emerg
ence of anntellectual terrantypcallyrequres anegatvepole
for ts productve tenson, t was labermas who suppled t.
40 See, in particular, 'A l'insu' ( 1 988) , 'Ligne generale' ( 1991) , and 'Intime est Ia
terreur' ( 1993) , in Moralites Postmodernes; and 'Avant-propos: de l'humain'
( 1988) , in L'Inhumain, where Lyotard confesses: 'The inhumanity of the system
now in the process of consolidation, under the name of development (among
others), must not be confused with that, infnitely secret, of which the soul is
hostage. To believe, as I once did, that the frst kind of inhumanity can relay the
second, give it expression, is an error. The effect of the system is rather to consign
what escapes it to oblivion': p. 10. More recently, in 'La Mainmise', Lyotard
reiterates the 'fable of development', but changes register: here it 'anticipates a
contradiction' - for 'the process of development runs counter to the human
design of emancipation', although it claims to be at one with it. To the question
'Is there any instance within us that asks to be emancipated from this supposed
emancipation?' - Lyotard's answer is the 'residue' bequeathed by 'immemorial
childhood' to the 'gesture of witness' in the work of art: Un Trait d'Union, Paris
1993, p. 9.
41 Moralites Postmodernes, pp. 93-94.
36
I
CRYSTALLIZATI ON
lowever, a msunderstandng has tradtonally been attached
to hs text. Vdely read as a response to Iyotard' s work,
because of the proxmty of dates, n fact t was probably
wrttenngnoranceofthelatter.labermaswasreactngrather
to the \ence ennale exhbton of 198O, the show-case for
]encks`s verson of postmodernsm' - i ust what Iyotard, for
hs part, had been unaware of when producng hs own. An
ronc chasse-croise of deas stood at the orgn of these
exchanges.
labermas beganbyacknowledgngthatthesprt ofaesthetc
modernty, wthts new sense oftme as a present chargedwth
a herocfuture, bornnthe epoch of audelare and reachng a
clmax n Dada, had vsbly waned, the avant-gardes had aged.
]hedea ofpostmoderntyowedtspower tothsncontestable
change.Iromt, however,neo-conservatvetheorstslkeDanel
ell had drawna perverseconcluson. ]he antnoman logc of
modernst culture, they argued, had come to permeate the
texture of captalst socety, weakenng ts moral hbre and
undermnng ts work dscplne wth a cult of unrestraned
subiectvty, atthe very momentthat thsculture had ceased to
be a source of creatve art. ]he result threatened to be a
hedonstc melt-down of a once honourable socal order, that
couldonlybecheckedbyarevvalofrelgousfath - naworld
profaned,areturnofthesacred.
]hs, labermas observed, was to blameaesthetcmodernsm
forwhatwasalltooobvouslythecommercallogcofcaptalst
modernzatontself. 1he real aporas ofculturalmodernty lay
elsewhere. ]he Inlightenment proiect of modernty had two
strands. newasthe dfferentatonforthehrsttmeofscence,
moralty and art - no longer fused n a revealed relgon-
autonomous value-spheres, each governed by ts own norms
.
CRYSTALLI ZATI ON
delvered on'Modernand IostmodernArchtecture` nMunch
a year later. lere labermas engaged wth the real stronghold
ofpostmodernaesthetctheory, dsplaynganmpressveknowl
edge andpassonabouthssubiect. lestarted byobservng that
the modern movement n archtecture - the only unfyng style
snceneo-classcsm- sprang from the sprt ofthe avant-garde,
yet had succeeded n creatng a classc tradton true to the
nspraton of occdental ratonalsm. ]oday, t was under
wdespread attack for the monstrous urban blght of so many
post-war ctes. ut 's the real face of modern archtecture
revealed n these atroctes, or are they dstortons of ts true
sprt` :]o answer ths queston, twas necessary to look back
attheorgnsofthemovement.
Inthenneteenthcentury, the ndustralrevolutonhadposed
three unprecedented challenges to the art of archtecture. It
requred the desgn of new knds of buldngs - both cultural
'lbrares, schools, opera-houses and economc ' ralway
statons, department stores, warehouses, workers` housng , t
afforded new technques and materals 'ron, steel, concrete,
glass , andtmposed new socalmperatves 'marketpressures,
admnstratve plans , n a 'captalst moblzaton of all urban
lvng condtons`.` ]hese demands overwhelmed the archtec
ture ofthe tme, whch faled to produce any coherentresponse
tothem, dsntegratng nstead nto eclectc hstorcsm or grm
utlty. Reactng to ths falure n the early twenteth century,
the modern movement overcame the stylstc chaos and fact
tous symbolsm of late \ctoran archtecture, and set out to
transform the totalty ofthe bult envronment, from the most
monumental and expressve edhces to the smallest and
practcal.
CRYSTALLIZATI ON
De nis, and n what arts or scences, only dsconnected
nterests and crss-crossng opnons. ]he concdent nterven
tons ofIyotard andlabermasforthe hrsttmesealedthe held
wth the stamp of phlosophcal authorty. ut ther own
contrbutons were each strangelyndecsve. ]heorgnal back-
ground of both thnkers was Marxst, but t s strkng how
little of t they brought to ther accounts of postmodernty.
ether attempted any real hstorcal nterpretaton of the
postmodern, capable ofdetermnng tntme or space. Instead,
they offered more or less lloatng or vacant sgnhers as the
mark of ts appearance. the delegtmaton ofgrand narratves
' dateless for Iyotard, the colonzaton ofthe lfe-world 'when
was t not colonzed: for labermas. Iaradoxcally, a concept
bydehntontemporal lacksperodcweghtnether.
or sthe haze that envelops the term as socal development
dspelled by ts usage as aesthetc category. oth Iyotard and
labermas were deeply attached to the prncples of hgh
modernsm, but far from ths commtment enablng them to
brng postmodernsm nto sharper focus, t seems to have
occluded t. Recolng from unwelcome evdence of what t
mghtmean, Iyotard was reduced to denyng thatt was other
than an nner fold of the modernsm tself. labermas, more
wllng to engage wth the arts n vew, could acknowledge a
passage from the modern to the postmodern, but was scarcely
abletoexplant.etherventuredanyexploratonofpostmod
ern forms to compare wth the detaled dscussons oflassan
or]encks.]heneteffectwasa dscursvedsperson.ontheone
hand,phlosophcal overvew wthout sgnhcant aesthetc con-
tenr, ontheotheraesthetcnsghtwthoutcoherent theoretca
horzon.thcmatccrystallzatonhadoccurred - thepostmo
ern was now, as labermas put t, 'on the agenda` - withc
ntellectualntegraton.
]he held, however, dd dsplay another knd ofunty. t was
deologcally consstent. ]he dea ofthe postmodern, as t took
holdnthsconiuncture,wasnonewayoranotheranappanage
of the Rght. lassan, laudng play and ndetermnacy as hall
marks ofthe postmodern, made no secretofhs aversontothe
sensblty that was ther antthess. the ron yoke of the Ieft.
]encks celebrated the passng ofthe modernasthe lberaton of
45
THE ORI GINS OF POSTMODERNI TY
consumer choce, a quetus to plannng n a world where
panters could trade as freely and globally as bankers. Ior
Iyotard the very parameters of the new condton were set by
the dscredtng of socalsm as the last grand narrative -
ultmate verson ofan emancpaton that no longer held mean
ng. labermas, resstng allegance to the postmodern, from a
poston stll on the Ieft, nevertheless conceded the dea to the
Rght, construng t as a hgure of neo-conservatsm. Common
to allwassubscrptontotheprncples ofwhatIyotard - once
the most radcal - called lberal democracy, as the unsurpass
ablehorzonofthetme]herecouldbenothng butcaptalsm.
]hepostmodernwasasentenceonalternatvellusons.
46
LaOIuIC
Such was the stuaton when Iredrc ]ameson gave hs hrst
lecture on postmodernsm n the fall of I982. ]wo works had
establshed hm as the world`s leadng Marxst lterary crtc,
although he had already made the terms too restrctve. Marx
ism and Form ' I97I was an orgnal reconstructon, through
studes of Iukacs, loch, Adorno, eniamn and Sartre, of
vrtually the complete ntellectual canon of Vestern Marxsm
betweenHistory and Class Consciousness and the Critique of
Dialectical Reason, from the standpont of a contemporary
aesthetcs true to ts many-sded legacy. The Prison-House of
Language ' I972 offered a complementary account of the
lngustc model developed by Saussure and ts proi ectons n
Russan formalsm and Irench structuralsm, concludng wth
thesemotcs ofarthesandCremas.anadmrngbutstrngent
survey ofthe merts andlmts ofa synchronc tradtonthat set
tsfaceaganstthetemptatonsoftemporalty.
Sources
]ameson`sowncommtmentsasacrtcwerehrmanddistmctn0.
]hey are perhaps best captured by hs Afterword to Aesthetics
and Politics ' I976 , a volumecollectng the classc debatesthat
had ranged Iukacs, recht, loch, eniamn and Adorno
avanst each other. Ior ]ameson, wrtng i ust as notons of
postmodernsm werebegnnngto crculatenlteraturedepart
ments, what was atstake n these exchangeswas 'theaesthetc
conflct betweenrealsm and modernsm, whosenavgatonand
47
THE ORI GINS OF POSTMODERNITY
renegotaton sstll unavodableforustoday` . 'Ifeachretaned
ts truth, yet nether could any longer be accepted as such, the
emphass of]ameson`s accountfell, subtlybutumstakeably, on
the unregarded sde of the opposton. Vhle notng the
dehcences ofIukacs`s attempt to prolong tradtonal forms of
realsm nto the present, he ponted out that recht could not
betakensmplyas amodernstantdote,gvenhsownhostlty
to purely formal expermentaton. recht and eniamn had
ndeed looked towards arevolutonaryartcapableofappropr
atng modern technology to reach popular audences - whle
Adorno had more specously contended thatthe formal logc of
hgh modernsm tself, n ts very autonomy and abstracton,
was the only true refuge of poltcs. ut the post-war develop
mentofconsumercaptalsm hadstruckaway thepossbltyof
ether: the entertanmentsndustrymockngthe hopes ofrecht
or eniamn, whle an establshment culture mummhed the
exemplaofAdorno.
]heresultwasapresentnwhch' bothalternatvesofrealsm
andmodernsmseemntolerabletous: realsmbecausetsforms
revveanolderexperence ofaknd oflfethatsno longerwth
usnthealreadydecayedfutureofconsumersocety,modernsm
because ts contradctons have n practce proved more acute
than those of realsm`. Irecsely here, t mght be thought, lay
an openng for postmodernsm as the art of the age. Vhat s
strkng nretrospect,however, s not somuchthatthsresolu
ton s avoded. It s consdered and reiected. 'An aesthetc of
noveltytoday- alreadyenthroned asthedomnantcrtcal and
formaldeology- mustseekdesperatelytorenewtselfby ever
more rapd rotatons of ts own axs, modernsm seekng to
become postmodernsm wthout ceasng to be modern. ` ]he
sgns of such nvoluton were the return of hguratve art, as a
representaton of mages rather than thngs n photo-realsm,
andthe revval ofntrguenhcton,wtha pastche ofclasscal
narratves. ]ameson`s concluson was a calculated dehance of
ths logc, turnngts terms aganst tself. 'Incrcumstances lke
1 'Reflections in Conclusion' to Ernst Bloch et al., Aesthetic and Politics, London
1977, p. 196; reprinted as 'Reflections on the Brecht-Lukacs Debate', in The
Ideologies ofTheor, Val l , Minneapolis 1988, p. 133.
48
CAPTURE
these, there s some queston whether the ultmate renewal of
modernsm, the hnal dalectcal subversonofthe now automa-
tzedconventonsofanaesthetc ofperpetualrevoluton, mght
notsimplybe. . . realsmtself| ` . Sncetheestrangng technques
of modernsm had degenerated nto standardzed conventons
of cultural consumpton, t was ther 'habt of fragmentaton`
'
that now itself needed to be estranged n some freshly totalzng
art. ]he debates ofthe nter-war perod thus had a paradoxcal
lessonforthepresent. 'Inan unexpecteddcnouement,tmaybe
Iukacs - wrong ashe mghthave been n the I9JOs - who has
theprovsonallastwordforustoday` . ]hecontradctorylegacy
ofthose years leaves contemporares wth a precse but mpon-
. '
derable task. 'Itcannot ofcoursetellus whatourconcepton of
realism oughtto be, yet its study makes t mpossble for usnot
tofeeltheoblgatontorenventone` .
]ameson`s ntal glmpse of postmodernsm thus tended to
see t as the sgn of a knd of nner delquescence wthn
modernsm, the remedy for whch lay n a new realsm, yet to
be magined. ]he tensons wthn ths poston found further,
and stll more ponted expresson nthe programmatc essayhe
oublished on ']he Ideology of the ]ext` at vrtually the same
time. Ior ths crtcal nterventon opens wth the words: 'All
thestrawsnthewnd seem to conhrm the wde-spread feelng
that modern tmes are now over" and that some fundamental
dvde, some basc coupure orqualtatve leap, nowseparates us
decsvely from what used to be the new world of the early
twentieth century, of trumphant modernsm` . Among the
phenomenathattesthedto 'some rrevocable dstancefrom the
mmedate ast` - alongsde the role of computers, of *
F11
rc
of dctente, and others - was 'postmodernsm n literature
art`. All such shfts, ]ameson remarked, tended to
deologies of change, usually apologetc n cast, where a
capable of connecting the current 'greattransformaton` to
long-range destny of our soco-econonc system` was needed.`
2 Aesthetics and Politics, pp. 21 1-213; The Ideologies of Theor, Vol 2, Minnea
polis 1988, pp. 1 45-147.
3 'The Ideology of the Text', Salmagundi, No 31-32, Fall 1975-Winter 1 976,
pp. 204-205; revised version, The Ideologies of Theory, Vol 1 , pp. 17-1 8.
49
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
nesuch deology, ofpartcular nterest andnlluence, was the
currentdeaoftextualty.
]akngarthes` sstudy ofalzac`s novella Sarrasine asexem
plary ofthe newstyle oflterary analyss - arthes hmself asa
'fever-chart` ofsuccessventellectualfashons - ]amesonargued
that t could be read as a knd of replay of the realsm
modernsm controversy. ]ransformed by arthes nto an oppo
ston betweenthe legbleandthe scrptble, the dualityencour
aged censorous i udgements of realst narratves, whose
moralsm functoned ascompensatonfor an nabltyto stuate
formal dfferences n a dachronc hstory, wthout deologcal
prase or blame. ]he best antdote to such evaluatons was to
'hstorcze the bnary opposton, by addng a thrd term` . Ior
'everythng changes, the moment we envsage a before" to
realsm tself` - medaeval tales, renassance novellas, whch
reveal the pecular modernty of nneteenth century forms
themselves, asa unque and unrepeatable vehcle ofthe cultural
revoluton needed toadapthuman bengs to thenewcondtons
of ndustral exstence. !n ths sense, 'realsm and modernsm
must be seen as spechc and determnate hstorcal expressons
of the type of soco-economc structures to whch they corre-
spond, namely classcal captalsm andconsumercaptalsm. ` !f
ths was not the place for a full Marxst account of that
sequence, 't certanly s the moment to square accounts wth
the ideology of modernsm whch has given ts ttle to the
presentessay`.
]he sgnhcance of ths passage was to le n ts revtston.
]ameson`s supple andngenouscrtque ofarthes nevertheless
left a detectable lacuna between ts ntal premse and such a
concluson. Ior ']he !deology of the ]ext` had started by
regsterng a fundamental dvde between the present and the
tme of modernsm, now dIared 'over`. !f that ntuton was
rght, how could one ofthe symptoms ofths change, thedea
oftextualty, be lttle morethan andeologyofwhatpreceded
t: !t was ths logcal gap that, when he revsed the essay for
book publcaton twelve years later, ]ameson moved to close.
lere, retrospectvely, can be located wth great precson the
4 'The Ideology of the Text', Salmagundi, No 31-32, pp. 234, 242.
50
_j
CAPTURE
thr
eshold to be crossed for a turn to the postmodern. Deleting
the passa
g
e above, henow wrote. ']he attemptto unsettle this
seemingly
ineradicable dualism by addine a third term, in the
form of some classical " - or pre-capitalist - narrative proved
to have only partial success, modtfyrng arthes` s working
cate
g
o
ries but not his fundamentaI historical scheme. Let us
the
refore attempt to displace this last in a dIIerent way, b
y
introducing a third term as it were at the other end of its
temporal spectrum. ]he concept of postmodernism in fact
incorporatesal|the features ofthearthesianaesthetic` .`
Jhis was the view that, tantalizingly close, still remained| ust
out of reach in the late seventies. ther texts of the period
hesitate at the same ford. Vhat enabled jameson to make the
passage with such brio at the Vhitney - delivering a complete
theory
,
virtually at a stroke - a tew years later: Some of the
sources of the change in direction were later to be noted by
jameson himself; others reman a matter for conj ecture. ]he
hrst and most important lay n his own initial sense of the
noveltyofpost-warcapitalism.]heveryhrstpagesofMarxism
and Form stressed the sunderingof all continuity with rhe past
by the newmodes oforganization ofcaptal. ']herealty with
which the Marxist criticism of the 1>0` s had to deal was that
oIa simplerIuropeand America, whichnolongerexist. Sucha
world had more in common with the life-forms of earlier
centuries than it does with our own'
.
Jhe receding of class
condict wthi n the metropolis, while violence was proiected
without,thc enormous weightefadvertisingandmedia Iantasy
in suppressing the realities of division and exploitation, the
dsconnexion of private and pub!ic existence - all this
created a society withoutprecedent. '!npsychologicalterms,
may say that as a service economy wc are henceforth so
removed from the realiues nI production and work that
inhabit a dream world of artihcial stimuli and televised experi-
ence:neverinanyprevious cvilzation havethegreatmetaphys
-
ical preoccupations, the fundamenral questions of being and of
themeaningoflife,seemedsoutterlyremoteandoointless` .
T/e|deologiesofT/eor,Val l , p. 66. Written in the late eighties.
MarxismandIorm,Princeton 1971, pp. xii-xiii.
51
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNITY
lere, rght from the start, can beseen the orgns ofthemes
that were to hgure so largely n ]ameson`s later work on
postmodernsm. ]wo nlluences, byhs own account, helped to
developthem,enablnghm to stageeachtoqutenew effect n
the eghtes. ne was the publcaton of Irnest Mandel`s Late
Capitalism, whch oflered the hrst systematc theory of the
hstory of captal to appear snce the war, provdngthe bass-
emprcal and conceptual - for understandng the present as a
qualtatvelynew conhguraton n the traiectoryofths mode of
producton. ]ameson was to express hs debt to ths path
breakng work on many occasons. A second - lesser, though
stll sgnhcant - stmulus came from audrllard`s wrtng on
the role ofthe smulacrumn thecultural magnary ofcontem
porary captalsm.' ]h\as a lne of thnkng ]ameson had
antcpated, but audrllard` s tme n San Degowhen ]ameson
was teachng there certanly had an mpact on hm. ]he
dfference, ofcourse,sthatbythsdate audrllard - orgnally
close to the Stuatonsts - vehemently dsmssed the Marxst
legacythatMandelsetour`todevelop.
Anotherkndofcatalystcanprobablybetracedto]ameson`s
departure for Yale at the end of the seventes. Ior ths, of
course, wastheunverstywhoseArt andArchtecture buldng,
desgned by Iaul Rudolph, doublng as dean of the school of
archtecture, had been sngled out by\enturas an eptome of
the null brutalsm nto whch the Modern Movement had
declned, and where \entur, Scully and Moore all taught
themselves. ]ameson thus found hmself n the vortex ofarch
tectural conllcts between the modern and the postmodern. !n
good-humouredlyrecordngthatthswastheartthatawakened
For Jameson's acknowledgement of these sources, see 'Marxism and Postmodern
ism', in The Cultural Turn - Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998,
London-New York 1998, pp. 34-35. Baudrillard presents a special case for any
genealogy of the postmodern. For although his ideas certainly contributed to its
crystallization, and his style can be regarded as paradigmatic of its form, he himself
has never theorized postmodernism, and his single extended pronouncement on it is
a virulent repudiation: see 'The Anorexic Ruins', in D. Kamper and C. Wulf (eds),
Looking Back at the End of the World, New York 1989, pp. 41-42. This is a
thinker whose temper, for better or worse, is incapable of assent to any notion with
collective acceptation.
52
I'
1
CAPTURE
hm from 'dogmatc slumbers`,]ameson nodoubtrefers toths
settng. !t mght be better to say that t released hm for the
vsual. Up to the eghtes, ]ameson had concentrated hs atten
ton all butexclusvely on lterature. ]he turntoa theory ofthe
postmodern was, at the same stroke, to be an arrestng shftto
the
range
of arts - nearly the full range - beyond t. ]hs
nvolvedno drftofpoltcalmoorngs. !nthemmedatecaseof
the bult envronment, he had a sgnhcant resource to hand
wthn the legacy of Vestern Marxsm n the work of lenr
Iefebvre - another guest n Calforna. ]ameson was perhaps
the hrst outsde Irance to make good use of Iefebvre`s corpus
ofsuggestvedeas ontheurbanandspatal dmensons ofpost
warcaptalsm, as he was laterqucktoregsterthe formdable
archtectural wrtng of the\enetancrtc Manfredo ]afur, a
Marxstofmore Adornan stamp.
Inally there was perhaps the drect provocaton posed by
Iyotard hmself. Vhen an Inglshtranslaton ofLa Condition
Postmoderne was at length ready n I 982, ]ameson was asked
to wrte an ntroducton to t. Iyotard`s assault on meta
narratvesmghthavebeenamed spechcally at hm. Ioriust a
year before he had publshed a maior work of lterary theory,
The Political Unconscious, whose central argument was the
most eloquent and express clam for Marxsm as a grand
narratve ever made. 'nly Marxsm can gve us an adequate
sense ofthe essental mystery ofthe culturalpast`, hewrote - a
'mystery |that] can only be reenacted fthe human adventure s
one`. nly thus could such long-dead ssues as a trbal tran
shumance, a theologcal controversy, clashes n the polis, duels
n nneteenth century parlaments, come alve agan. ']hesc
matters can recover ther urgency for us only fthey are rct
wthn the unty of a sngle great collectve story, only
however dsgusedandsymbolcaform,theyareseen as shan
a sngle fundamental theme - for Marxsm, the collectvc
struggle towrest arealm ofIreedomfrom arealm ofecessty,
only f they are grasped as vtal epsodes n a sngle vast
unhnshed plot`.VhenIyotardlaunched hs attack, no Marx-
sthadeveractuallypresentedMarxsmasnessenceanarratve
f
AFTER- EFFECTS
toit.]hati stosay,asocialforcewithitsownsenseofcollective
identity, characteristic moral codes and cultural habitus. !f we
wanted a single visual clip of this world, it was a scene where
men stillworehats. ]heUnited States had its versionin the old
moneyoftheIasternestablishment.
Schumpeter always argued that capitalism, as an intrinsically
amoral economic system driven by the pursuit of proht, dissol
ventofallbarrierstomarketcalculation, dependedcritically on
pre-capitalist - in essence nobiliary - values and manners to
holdittogetheras social andpoliticalorder.utthisaristocratic
'under-girding`, as he put it, was typically reinforced by a
secondary structure of support, in bourgeois milieux conhdent
of the moral dignity oftheir own calling. subi ectively closer to
portraits by Mann than Ilaubert. !n the epoch ofthe Marshall
Ilan and the genesis of the Iuropean Community, this world
livedon.!nthepoliticalrealm,substantialhgureslikeAdenauer,
e Casperi, Monnet embodied thispersistence- theirpolitical
relationshiptoChurchilloreCaulle,grandeesfromaseigneur
ialpast, asifanafter-imageofan originalcompactthatsocially
was no longer valid. ut, as itturned out, thetwo braces inthe
older structure were more interdependent than they once had
seemed.
Iorwithinthe span ofanothertwenty years, the bourgeoisie
too - inanystrictsense,asaclasspossessedofself-consciousness
and morale - was all but extinct. lere and there, pockets ofa
traditional bourgeois setting can still be found in provincial
cities of Iurope, and perhaps in certain regions of orth
America, typicallypreserved byreligious piety. family networks
in the Veneto or asque lands, conservative notables in thc
ordelais, parts of the Cerman Mittelstand, and s on. ut
and large, the bourgeoisie as audelaire or Marx, !bscn
Rimbaud, Crosz or recht - or even Sartre or `lara -
it, L a thing of the past. m place of that solid amphitheatre
an aquarium oflloating, evanescentforms - the proi ectors and
managers, auditors andi anitors, administratorsand speculators
ofcontemporary capital. functions ofa monetary universe that
knowsnosocialhxitiesorstable identities.
ot that inter-generational mobility has greatly increased, if
atall,intherichersocietiesofthepost-warworld. ]heseremain
85
THE ORI GI NS OF POS TMODERNI TY
asobi ectvely strathed asever. uttheculturalandpsycholog-
cal markers of poston have become steadly more eroded
amongthosewhoenioywealthorpower.AgnellorVallenberg
now evoke a dstant past, n a tme whose typcal masks are
Mlken or Cates. Irom the seventes onwards, the leadng
personnel of the maior states was moultng too - xon,
]anaka, Crax were among the new plumes. More wdely, n
the publc sphere democratzaton of manners and dsnhbton
of mores advanced together. Ior long, socologsts had debated
the embourgeoisement ofthe workng-class nthe Vest- never
a very happy term fot the processes at ssue. y the nnetes,
however, the more strkng phenomenon was a general encan
aillement ofthepossessng classes - ast were. starletprncesses
and sleazeball presdents, beds for rentn the ofhcal resdence
and brbes for kller ads, dsneyhcaton ofprotocols and taran-
tnzaton of practces, the avd corteges of the nocturnal
underpass or the gubernatoral troop. !n scenes lke these les
muchofthesocalbackdropofthepostmodern.
Ior what ths landscape means s that two condtons of
modernsm havevanshedutterly.]heresnolongeranyvestge
of an academcst establshment aganstwhch an advanced art
could pt tself. lstorcally, the conventons of academc art
were always closely ted, not only to the self-representatons of
ttled orupperclasses, butalso tothesensbltyandpretensons
of tradtonal mddle classes below them. Vth the passng of
the bourgeos world, ths aesthetc fol s mssng. ]he ttle and
ste ofthemostdelberatelylurdbrat-packshownrtansays
everythng. Sensation care of the Royal Academy. Smlarly,
modernsm tapped volent energes ofrevolt aganst the ofhcal
moralty of the tme - standards of represson and hypocrsy
notorously stgmatzed, wth reason, as spechcally bourgeos.
]he i ettsonng of any real pretence of upholdng these stan
dards, wdely vsble from the eghtes onwards, could not but
affectthe stuaton ofoppostonal art. once bourgeosmoralty
n thetradtonal senses over,tsasfan amplherssuddenly
cut off. Modernsm, nom ts earlest orgns n audelare or
Ilaubert onwards, vrtually dehned tself as 'ant-bourgeos` .
Iostmodernsm swhat occurs when, wthout any vctory, that
adversarysgone.
86
!
':
AFTER- EFFECTS
A second condton can be traced to the evoluton of tech
nology. Modernsmwasowered by theexctementofthegreat
cluster of new nventons that transformed urban lfe n the
early years ofthe century. the lner, the rado, the cnema, the
skyscraper, the automoble, the aeroplane, and by the abstract
concepton of dynamc machnofacture behnd them. ]hese
provded the mages and settngs for much ofthe most orgnal
art of the perod, and gave all of t an encompassng sense of
rapd change. ]he nter-war perod rehned and extended the
key technologes of the modernst take-off wth the arrval of
the llyng boat, the roadster, sound and colour on screen, the
autogyro, but dd not add sgnhcantly to ther lst. Clamour
and speed became, even more than before, the domnant notes
n the perceptual regster. !t was the experence of the Second
VorldVar that abruptlychanged ths whole Gestalt. Scenthc
progress now for the hrst tme assumed unmstakeably menac
ng shapes, as constant techncal mprovement unleashed ever
more powerful nstruments ofdestructon and death, termnat
ng n demonstratve nuclear explosons. Another and nhntely
vaster knd ofmachnery, far beyond the range ofdaly exper
ence,yetcastngabalefulshadowovert,had arrved.
After these glmpses of apocalypse, the post-war boom
changed the countenance of the mechancal n more close-at
hand and thorough-gong ways. Varproducton, above all - f
not only - nAmerca, hadconvertedtechnologcal nnovaton
nto a permanent prncple of ndustral output, moblzng
research budgets and desgn teams for mltary competton.
Vth peace-tme reconstructon and the long post-war boom,
mass producton of standardzed goods ntegrated the samc
dynamc. ]he result was an ndustral verson of Vebct
parabola of the sprtual. as the llow of the new became a
very contnuty a streamof the same, the charsma oftech
was transformed nto routne, and lost ts magnetc powers
art. !n part too ths banalzaton rellected the absence, amdsta
ceaseless plethora of mprovements, of any decsve cluster of
nventonscomparabletothoseoftheerabeforetheIrstVorld
Var. Ior a whole perod the exctement ofthe modern tactly
dwndled,wthoutmuch alteratonofts orgnal vsualheld.
]he development that changed everythng was televson.
87
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNITY
]hs was the hrst technologcal advance of world-hstorcal
moment n the post-war epoch. Vth t, a qualtatve iump n
the power of mass communcatons had arrved. Rado had
alreadyproved, nthenter-warandwar-tmeyears, a far more
potent nstrument of socal capture than prnt. not merely by
reason of ts lesser demands on educatonal qualhcaton, or
greater mmedacy of recepton, but above all because of ts
temporal reach. Round-the-clock broadcastng created poten
tallypermanentlsteners audenceswhosewakngandhearng
hours could atthelmtbe one. ]hseffectwas onlypossble, of
course, because of the dssocaton of the ear from the eye,
whch meant that so many actvtes - eatng, workng, travel-
lng, relaxng could be performed wth the rado n the
background. ]he capacty of televson to command the atten
ton ofts 'audences` s mmeasurably greater, becausethey are
not smply such. the eye s caught before the ear s cocked.
Vhat the new medum brought was a combnaton of
undreamt-of power. the contnuous avalablty of rado wth
an equvalent of the perceptual monopoly of prnt, whch
excludes other forms of attenton by the reader. ]he saturaton
ofthemagnarysofanotherorder.
Irst marketed n thehftes, televson dd not acqure mai or
salence tll the early sxtes. ut so long as ts screen was only
black-and-whte, the medum- whatever ts other advantages-
retaned a mark of nferorty, as f t were techncally stll a
laggard stepchld of the cnema. ]he true moment of ts
ascendancy dd not come untl the arrval of colour televson,
whch hrst became general n the Vest n the early seventes,
trggerng a crss n the hlm ndustry whose box-ofhce effects
are stllwth us. !ftheres any sngle technologcalwatershed of
the postmodern, t les here. !f we compare the settng t has
createdtothe openng ofthecentury, thedfference can beput
qute smply. nce, n i ublaton or alarm, modernsm was
sezedby magesofmachnery, now, postmodernsm was sway
toamachneryofmages.!nthemselves,thetelevsonsetorthe
computer termnal, wth whch t wll eventually merge, are
pecularly blank obi ects - nullzones ofthedomestc or bureau
cratcnteror that are not i ust napt as 'conductors ofpsychc
energy`, but tend to neutralze t. ]ameson has put ths wth
8 8
AFTER- EFFECTS
characterstc force. ']hese new machnes can be dstngushed
from the older futurst cons n two related ways. they are all
sources of reproducton rather than producton" andthey are
no longersculpturalsoldsn space. ]he housng ofa computer
scarcely embodes or manfests ts pecular energes nthe same
waythatawngshapeoraslantedsmokestackdo` .'
nthe other hand, mage-resstant themselves, the machnes
pour out a torrent of mages, wth whose volume no art can
compete. ]he decsve techncalenvronmentofthepostmodern
s consttuted by ths 'agara of vsual gabble` . Snce the
seventes, the spread of second-order devces and postonngs
n somuchaesthetcpractcescomprehensble onlyntermsof
ths prmary realty. ut the latter, of course, s not smply a
wave of mages, but also - and above all - of messages.
Marnett or ]atln could erect andeologyoutofthemechan
cal, but most of the machnes themselves sad lttle. ]he new
apparatuses, by contrast, are perpetual emoton machnes,
transmttng dscourses that are wall-to-wall deology, n the
strong sense of the term. ]he ntellectual atmosphere of post
modernsm, as doxaratherthan art, drawsmanyoftsmpulses
fromthepressure ofthssphere. Iorthepostmodernsthstoo.
anndexofcrtcalchangentherelatonshpbetweenadvanced
technologyandthepopularmagnary.
A thrdcoordnate ofthenew stuatonlay, ofcourse, nthe
poltcal changes of the tme. ]he onset ofthe Cold Var, after
I9+7, had frozen strategc boundares and chlled all nsurgent
hopes n Iurope. !n Amerca, the labour movement was neu-
tered and the lefthounded. Iost-war stablzatonwas followed
by the fastest perod of nternatonal growth n the hstory ot
captalsm. ]he Atlantc order of the hftes, proclamng the
of deology, seemed to consgn the poltcal world of
twentes and thrtes to a remote past. ]he wnd of
n whch the avant-gardes had once skmmed, was gone. 1ypi
I
AFTER- EFFECTS
to tradtonal deologes of the aesthetc n the narrow sense,
butalsoto thecontemporarycultureofthespectacleatlarge. !t
was also far more nternatonal - Amerca enioyng a bref
prorty, but no hegemony, as varants ofconceptual art arose
ndependently all over the world, from ]apan or Australa to
IasternIuropeor IatnAmerca. '`!nths sense, conceptualsm
could be consdered the lrst global avant-garde. the momentat
whch the hre-curtans ofmodern euro-amercan- artparted,
to reveal the stage of the postmodern. ut conceptualsm was
ths n another sense too. ]he formalst canvas was not i ust
dsplacedbyunclasshableobi ects, eludng the system ofthe hne
arts. Iantng tself was deposed as the acme of the vsual, and
volatlzed ntootherforms. Ahead lay theemergence ofnstal-
laton art. ]he pctoral s stll suspended n the after-shock of
thsupheaval.
]he break between the modern and postmodern thus not
only came earler n pantng or sculpture than n any other
medum, but was more drastc - a radcal dsturbance of the
nature of the arts themselves. !t s thus no surprse that t was
precsely ths area thatgave rsetothe mostvaultng theores of
the destny of the aesthetc. !n 1 983, the Cerman art hstoran
lans eltng publshed Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte?; a year
later, the Amercan phlosopher Arthur anto hs essay ']he
eath of Art`.'' ]he close convergence of ther themes has
foundfurther expressonn eltng`s enlarged second edtonof
hswork,Eine Revision nach zehn ]ahren ( 1995) , whchdrops
the queston-mark n the hrst edton, and anto`s After the
End of Art ( 1997) .
eltng`s orgnalthess took the form ofa double attack: on .
13 The best account of the origins and effects of the movement is Peter ||
'Global Conceptualism' (forthcoming) . For a critique of its upshot, see Benjaml
n
;
s
Buchloh's alternative version, 'Conceptual Art 1962-1969: from the Aesthetics of
Administration to the Critique of Institutions', October, No 55, Winter 1990;
pp. 105-143, which taxes conceptualism with a 'purging of image and skill, memory
and vision' that paradoxically contributed to a reinstatement of the very 'specular
regime' it sought to void. This argument is far from over.
14 Dan to's text formed the 'lead essay' in the symposium edited by Beryl Lang, The
Death of Art, New York 1984: pp. 5-35 - the remainder composed of responses to
it.
97
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
the regulatve 'deal notons of art` that had nformed pro
fessonal art hstory snce legel, but whose orgns went back
to Vasar, and on avant-gardeconceptons ofcontnuous 'pro-
gress` n modern art. ]hese two dscourses, he argued, had
always been dsioned, snce arthstorans wth the rarest of
exceptons- had never had much to say about the art of ther
tme, whle the avant-gardes tended to reiectthe artofthe past
en bloc anyway. ut both werehstorcal mysthcatons. ]here
was nether a untary essence nor an unfoldng logc n art,
whch not only assumed wdely dverse forms, but fulhlled
radcally dfferentfunctons, n the varous socetes and epochs
ofhumanhstory.
Inthe Vest,the domnance ofeasel pantng dated onlyfrom
the Renassance, and was now over. Amd the dsntegratonof
ts tradtonal genres, t was now legtmate to ask whether
Vestern art had not reached the knd of exhauston n whch
the classcal art-forms of Iast Asa were often on ther home
ground felt to have come to an end. At all events, t was clear
that no coherent 'hstory of art` - that s, ts Vestern varants,
snce a unversal hstory had never been on offer - was any
longer possble, only dscrete enqures nto partcular epsodes
ofthe past, andthattherecould be no suchthngas a constant
'work of art` as a sngular phenomenon, susceptble of a
unversally vald act of nterpretaton. In due course, eltng
proceeded to a volumnous llustraton of hs argument nBild
und Kult ( 1 990) , astudyofdevotonalrepresentatonsfromlate
Antquty to the end of the Mddle Ages, tracng 'a hstory of
themagebeforetheera ofart`.
Vhenhe came to revew hscasenthemd-nnetes, eltng
no longer had any doubt that art hstory as once understood
was hnshed. ls attenton now turned to the fate of art tself.
nce, art was understood as an mage of realty, ofwhch art
hstory furnshed the frame. In the contemporary epoch, how
ever, arthadescaped tsframe.]radtonaldehntons couldno
longer enclose t, as new forms and practces prolferated, not
merelytakngmass meda asther materals, butoftendelvered
by the electronc meda themselves or even by fashon, as
stylstc rvals ofwhat remaned of the beaux arts. ]he vsual
practces of ths postmodern scene had to be explored n the
98
AFTER- EFFECTS
same ethnographc sprtaspre-moderncons, wthoutcommt-
ment to any scence of the beautful appearance. In the nne
teenth century legel had declared the end of art, and at the
same stroke founded a new dscourse of art hstory. ]oday, for
eltng, we observe the end of a lnear art hstory, as art takes
leave of ts dehntons. ]he result s the opposte of a closure.
anunprecedentedandwelcomeopennessmarksthetme.
anto arrves at the same afhrmaton, by a slghtly - albet
pquantly - dfferent route. lere the 'end of art` s more
phlosophcally announced, as the collapse of all master
narratves thatlentthedsparateworksofthepastacumulatve
meanng. ut such nvocaton ofIyotard by no means sgnhes
smlarty of deducton. ]he narratve whose death anto
wshes to celebrate s Creenberg`s account of the dynamc of
modern pantng, movng by successve purges beyond hgura
ton, depth, mpastotosheerllatnessandcolour. Itsfuneralwas
Iop Art,whchn one varantor anotherunexpectedly restored
vrtually everythng Creenberg had declared spent. Ior anto,
Iop Art marked the entry of pantng nto a 'post-hstorcal`
lberty, nwhchanythng vsble could become a work ofart -
a moment of whch Varhol`s rllo ox could stand as the
epphany. Ior Iop Art was not smply a salutary 'adoraton of
the commonplace` , after the eltst metaphyscs of abstract
expressonsm 'wth ts suspectlnks to surrealsm . It was also
a demonstraton - here the connexon wth uchamp was
essental - that 'the aesthetc s not n fact an essental or
dehnngpropertyofart`.Sncetherewasnolongeranyprescrp
tve model ofart, a candy barcouldbeas acceptable a workoI
art, fsoproposed, asanyother. '`
]hs condton of 'perfect artstc freedom`, n whch
thng s permtted` , dd not, however, contradct legel`s
thetic but onthecontraryrealzedt. Ior'theendofart
n the comng to awareness of the true phlosophcal nature
art` - that s, art passes over nto phlosophy ' as legel sad t
15 After the End of Art, Princeton 1997, pp. 1 12, 1 85: 'A candy bar that is a work
of art need not be some especially good candy bar. It just has to be a candy bar
produced with the intention that it be art. One can still eat it since its edibility is
consistent with its being art'.
99
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
must atthe momentatwhch onlyanntellectual decsoncan
determnewhatsorsnotart.]hssanend-statewhchanto
explctly assocateswth that other legelanprospect, the end
ofhstory as such, as reworked by Koieve. !fthe latterhas not
necessarly yet been reached, the former gves us a happy
prevson of t. 'lowwonderful t would beto beleve that the
pluralstc art world of the hstorcal present s a harbnger of
poltcal thngs to come| `
rnatvely
as a welcome emancpaton from class conhnement or asa dre
contractonofnventve energes. Certanly,the phenomenon of
cultural coarsenng, whose ambgutes caught Cramsc`s atten-
ton, s on global dsplay. Mass toursm, the greatest of all
ndustresofthespectacle,canstandastsmonument,ntsawe
some mxture ofrelease anddespolment. utheretheanalogv
posests queston. InthetmeoftheReformaton,thevehclc
descent nto popular lfe was relgon. t was the protest
churches that assured the passage of post-medaeval cultur
a more democratc and secular world. ]oday, the vehcle s
market. Are banks and corporatons plausble canddates tOt
the samehstorcalrole:
It senoughto pursuethe comparsona lttle to seetslmts.
39 Gramsci took much of his argument from Croce, but turned it more sharply in
favour of the Reformation. For his principal reflections, see Quaderni del Carcere,
Turin 1 977, Vol II, pp. 1 1 29-1 130, 1293-1294; Vol III, pp. 1 858-1 862.
113
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
]heReformatonwas nmanywaysasocallowerngofcultural
heghts prevously attaned. the lkes of Machavell or Mchel-
angelo, Montagne or Shakespeare, were not to be reproduced
agan. ut t was also, of course, a poltcal movement of
convulsve energy, unleashng wars and cvl wars, mgratons
andrevolutons,acrossthebetterpartofIurope. ]heIrotestant
dynamc was deologcal, drven by a set of belefs hercely
attached to ndvdual conscence, resstant to tradtonal
authorty, devoted to the lteral, hostle to the conc - an
outlookthatproduced tsownradcalthnkers, athrsttheolog-
cal, and then more openly and drectlypoltical. the declenson
fromMelanchthon or CalvntoVnstanleyor Iocke. lere, for
Cramsc, was the progressve role of the Reformaton that
pavedthewaytothe epoch oftheInlghtenmentandtheIrench
Revoluton. It was an nsurgency aganst the pre-modern deo-
logcalorderoftheunversalchurch.
]he culture ofthe postmodern s the nverse. Although great
poltcal changes have swept over the world n the past quarter
century, these have only rarely been the hard-fought outcome
of mass poltcal struggles. Iberal democracy has spread by
force of economc example, or pressure - Marx`s 'artllery of
commodtes` - not by moral upheaval or socal moblzaton,
and asthas doneso, ts substancehas tendedto dwndle, both
n ts homelands and ts new terrtores, asfallng rates ofvoter
partcpatonandmountngpopular apathy setn.]heZeitgeist
s not strred. t s the hour of democratc fatalsm. low could
tbeotherwse,whensocalnequaltyncreasespari passu wth
poltcal legalty, and cvc mpotencc hand n hand wth novel
suffrage: Vhat moves s only tne market - but ths at ever-
acceleratng speed, churnng habts, styles, communtes, popu-
latonsn tswake. oprstned enlghtenment les attheend
ofthsi ourney.Aplebeanbegnnnglacksautomatcconnexon
wth a phlosophcal endng. ]he movementofrelgous reform
began wth the breaking of mages, the arrval ofthe postmod-
ern has nstalled the rule of mages as never before. ]he con
once shattered by the dssenter`s blow s now enshrned n
plexglassasunversalex voto.
]he culture ofthespectacc !asgenerated, ofcourse,tsown
deology. ]hs s the doxa ofpostmodernsm that descendsfrom
1 14
AFTER- EFFECTS
the momentof Iyotard.Intellectually, t snotofmuchnterest.
anundemandngmedley ofnotons, whose upshotslttle more
than a slack-jawedconventonalsm. utsncethe crculaton of
deas n the socal body does not typcally depend on ther
coherence, but ther congruence wth materal nterests, the
nlluence of ths deology remans consderable - by no means
conhned to campus lfe alone, but pervasve n popular culture
at large. It sto ths complex that]erry Iagletonhas devoted a
scntllatng crtque n The Illusions of Postmodernism. At the
outset, Iagleton dstngushes clearly between the postmodern
understood as a development n the arts, and as a system of
idees reus, andexplansthathsconcern sexclusvelywththe
latter. le then consders one after another of the standard
tropes of an ant-essentalst, ant-foundatonalst rhetorc -
reiectons of any dea of human nature, conceptons of hstory
as random process, equatons of class wth race or gender,
renuncatons oftotaltyordentty, speculatons ofan undeter-
mned subiect - and, wth delcate precson, dsmantles each.
]here has rarely been so effectve and comprehensve a dssec-
tonofwhatmghtbecalled, sardoncally adaptng Cramscto
]ohnson,thecommonnonsenseoftheage.
ut Iagleton`s purpose s not i ust a sottisier. le would also
stuate the deology of postmodernsm hstorcally. Advanced
captalsm, he argues, requres two contradctory systems of
i usthcaton: a metaphysc of abdng mpersonal vertes - the
dscourse of soveregnty and law, contract and oblgaton - n
thepoltcalorder, and a casustc ofndvdual preferences for
the perpetually shftng fashons and grathcatons of'VJJiuJu1
ton n the economc order. Iostmodernsm gves
expressontothsdualsm,sncewhletsdsmssalofthe
subiectnfavouroftheerratc swarmngs ofdesrecollud
the amoral hedonsm ofthe market, ts denal of any
values or obi ectve truths undermnes the preva!ing
tons ofthestate.Vhat explans such ambvalence: lere IagIc
ton`saccounthestates. ls studybegnswththemostsustaincd
readng ofpostmodernsm asthe product ofpoltcal defeaton
the left ventured to date - a 'dehntve repulse`.' ut ths s
40 The Illusions ofPostmodernism, Oxford 1997, p. 1 .
1 1 5
THE ORI GI NS OF POS TMODERNI TY
presented as playful parable rather than actual reconstructon.
Ior wth characterstc sympathy, Iagleton suggests that post-
modernsmcannotbereducedto ths. twas alsothe emervence
ofhumlated mnortes onto the theoretcal stage, and a 'ver-
table revoluton`nthoughtaboutpower, desre,denttyandthe
body, wthoutwhose nspratonno radcalpoltcs s hencefor-
wardthnkable.'
]hedeologcal ambvalence ofthe postmodern thusmghtbe
lnked to a hstorcal contrast. schematcally - defeat of organ-
zed labour and student rebellon concludng n economc
accommodaton to the market, rse of the nsulted and niured
leadng to poltcalquestonngofmoralty and the state. Some
such parallelsm scertanlylatent nIagleton`saccount. utf
t s neverqute spelt out, the reason les n anequvocaton at
ts outset. n the lace of t, there would appear to be lttle
common measure between the two background developments
assgned to postmodernsm. the one drven home n a frontal
chapter that sets the scenefor the whole book, the other - ast
were - allusve compensaton for t n a couple ofparagraphs.
Ioltcalrealtywouldsuggestthat such aratowasgood sense.
ut t sts uneasly wth the noton of ambvalence, whch
mples a party of effect. Ierhaps aware of the dfhculty,
Iagleton momentarly retracts wth one hand whatheadvances
wth the other. ]he fable ofpoltcal defeat concludeswth the
'most bzarre possblty of all` , ashe asks. ' What if this defeat
never really happened in the frst place? Vhat f t were less a
matter of the left rsng up and beng forced back, than of a
steady dsntegraton, a gradual falure of nerve, a creepng
paralyss : ` . Verethatthecase, thenbalance between cause and
effect would be restored. ut, tempted though he s by ths
comfortngfancy, Iagletons too lucd tonsstont. ls book
ends as t begns, 'regretfully, on a more mnatory note` . not
equpose,butllusonsthe bottom-lne ofthepostmodern.'
]he dscursve complex that s the obiect of Iagleton`s
crtques, ashenotes,aphenomenonthatmaybetreatedapart
from theartstcforms ofpostmodernsm- deology asdstnct
` The Il usions of Postmodernism, p. 24.
Compare The Il usions ofPostmodernism, pp. 19, 1 34.
116
AFTER- EFFECTS
Irom culture, na tradtonal acceptance oIthese terms. ut, oI
course, n a wdersensethetwocannot besocleanly separated.
low, then, shouldtherrelatonshp beconceved:]hedoxa oI
the postmodern s dehned, as Iagleton n eIIect shows, by a
prmary aIhntywththecatechsms olh.markct.Vhatweare
lookng at, consequently. ui| tice the cuterpart oI the
'ctra` - as the domnant strand n postmodern culture - n the
deologcal held. It s strkng how lttle concernedjamesonhas
been wth t. ut I we ask ourselves where the antthetcal
moment oI 'ultra` theorys to beIound, the answer snotIarto
seek. It has oItenbeen observed that the postmodernarts have
beenshortoIthemanIestoesthatpunctuatedthehstoryoIthe
modern. ]hs can be overstated, as thc examples oIKosuth or
Koolhaas notedabovendcate. utIaesthetcprogrammescan
certanly stll beIound - albetnow more oItenndvdualthan
collectve,whathasundoubtedlybeenmssngsanyrevoluton-
ary vson oI the knd artculated by the hstorc avant-gardes.
Stuatonsm, whch Ioresaw so many aspects oIthe postmod-
ern,hashadnosequelswthnt.
]hetheoretcalnstancetheavant-gardeIormrepresentedhas
not, however, dsappeared. Rather, ts Iuncton has mgrated.
Iorwhatelses]ameson`stotalzaton oIpostmodernsmtselI:
Inthe epochoImodernsm, revolutonaryartgeneratedts own
descrptons oI the tme or ntmatons oI the Iuture, whle Ior
the most part ts practces were vewed sceptcally, or at best
selectvely, by poltcal or phlosophcal thnkers oI the leIt.
]rotsky`scoolness to Iutursm, Iukacs`s resstance to rechtan
Verfremdung, Adorno`s averson to surrealsm, were character-
stc oIthat coni uncture. Inthe perod oIpostmodernsm, t
-
has been a reversal oI roles. Radcal strands n the
reclamng or developng legaces oIthe avant-gardes,
been lackng. ut no doubt n part because oI the . .onci
coexstence oI the ctra-modern, oI whch there was no LD1.1L. l
equvalent, ths 'ultra-modernst` culture has notproduced
conhdent account oI the age, or sense oI ts general drecton.
]hat has been the achevement oI ]ameson`s theory oI the
postmodern. lere, vewed comparatvely, s where the crtcal
ambton and revolutonary elan oI the classcal avant-garde
have passed. In ths regster, ]ameson`s work can be read as a
117
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
snglecontnuous equvalentoIall thepassonatemeteorologes
oIthe past. ]hetotalzers nowexternal, butthatdsplacement
belongs to themomentoIhstorythatthetheorytselIexplans.
IostmodO:m ' clturaJtcic ++taljn not embat-
tled, but complacent beyond precedent. Resstance can only
startbystarngdownthsorderasts.
Scope
]heclasscalavant-gardes remaned Vestern, evenItheheter-
odox currents oImodernsm, oIwhchtheyIormed one stream,
repeatedly sought nspraton n the rental, the AIrcan, the
Amercan-Indan. ]he scope oI ]ameson`s work exceeds ths
occdental boundary. ut t can be asked whether, n dong so,
t nevertheless stll proiects an unduly homogeneous cultural
unverse atlarge, modelled ontheorthAmercan system atts
core. 'Modernsm` , wrtes Ieter Vollen, 's not beng succeeded
by a totalzng Vestern postmodernsm but by a hybrd new
aesthetc n whch new Iorms oI communcaton and dsplay
wll be constantly conIronted by new vernacular Iorms oI
nventon and expresson`, beyond the ' stllngly Iurocentrc
dscourse` oIthe latter-day modern and postmodern alke.'`]he
same knd oI obi ecton acqures more doctrnal Iorm n the
corpus oI 'postcolonal theory` . ]hs body oI crtcsm has
developedsnce themd-eghtes, largelyndrect reactontothe
nlluence oI deas oI postmodernsm n the metropoltan
countres, and n partcular to ]ameson`s own constructon oI
theheld.
]he gravamen oI the charge aganst hs theory s that t
gnores or suppresses practces n the perphery that not only
cannotbeaccommodatedwthnthe categores oIthepostmod
ern, but actvely reiect them. Ior these crtcs, postcolonal
culture s nherently more oppostonal, and Iar more poltcal
than the postmodernsm oI the centre. Challengng the over
weenng pretensons oI the metropols, t typcally has no
hestatonn appealng to ts own radcalIorms oIrepresenta
ton or realsm, proscrbed by postmodern conventons. ]he
Raiding the Icebox, pp. 205, 209.
18
AFTER- EFFECTS
champons ofthe postcolonal 'wsh once and lor all toname
and dsclam postmodernism as neo-mperalst` . Ior 'the con-
cept of postmodernty has been constructed n terms whch
more or less ntentonally wpe out the possblty of post-
colonal dentty` - that s, the need of the vctms ofVestern
mperalsm to acheve a sense of themselves 'uncontamnated
by unversalst or Iurocentrcconcepts and mages` . Ior ths,
whattheyrequre are notthe perncous categores ofa totalz-
ng Vestern Marxsm, but the dscrete genealoges of, say,
MchelIoucault.
Iostcolonaltheory has already attracted a seres ofpowerful
reionders,whchtwouldbeotose to repeathere.`]he noton
of the 'postcolonal` tself, as typcally used n ths lterature, s
soelastcthatt loses vrtually anycrtcaledge. ]emporally, ts
advocates nsst, postcolonal hstory s not conhned to the
perod snce ndependence of states that were once colones -
rather, t desgnates ther entre experence snce the moment of
colonzaton tself. Spatally, t s not restrcted to lands con-
quered by the Vest, but extends to those settled by t, so that
by a perverse logc even theUnted States, the summt of neo
mperalsmtself, becomes a postcolonalsocetyn quest ofts
breachless dentty.' ]hs nllaton of the concept, tendng to
deprve t ofany operatonal sgnhcance, no doubt owes much
to ts geo-poltcal orgns - whch le not where mght be
expected,n Asa orAfrca, butntheformerVhteDomnons.
ewZealand,Australa, Canada, andperhapssomethng tots
Simon During, 'Postmodernism or Postcolonialism? ', Landfall, Vol 39, No 3,
1985, pp. 369; 'Postmodernism or Postcolonialism Today', Textual Practice, Vol
l; -
No 1, 1987, p. 33. These two texts from New Zealand, each of which t
Jameson to task, contain the earliest and clearest statement of key themes in_
literature. For remarks on an 'underlying realist script' in postcolonial literature
Stephen Siemon: 'Modernism's Last Post', i Ian Adam and Helen Triffn (eds), Past
the Last Post, New York 1991, pp. 1-1 1, a contribution from Canada.
` See, in particular, Arif Dirlik, 'The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in
the Age of Global Capitalism', Critical Enquiry, Winter 1994, pp. 328-356; and
Aijaz Ahmad, 'The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality', Race and Class, Autumn
1 995, pp. 1-20.
See Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffths, Helen Triffn, The Empire Writes Back:
Theory and Practice in Colonial Literatures, London 1 989, p. 2: the authors write
from Australia.
119
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
ntellectualsourcestoo - thebanalzationofpower nIoucault`s
overstretching of the concept comes to mnd. At all events, a
concepton ofthe postcolonial as aqueous as ths can scarcely
affectitstarget.
A more reasonable construal of the term takes its prehx in
less cavaler fashon, to denote a hstorcal perod where decol-
onzaton has ndeed occurred, but neo-mperial domnaton
perssts no longer directly based on mltary force, but on
forms ofdeologcal consent that callfornewknds ofpoltcal
andculturalresistance.' ]hs verson oftheidea ofpostcoloni-
alism clearly rellects more of the realty of the contemporary
world, even fthe second sgnin the term stll misses part ofts
target, since such maior states as Chna- the specihc obiect of
ths reinterpretaton - or Iran were never colonized, and most
ofIatinAmercaceased to be sonearlytwocenturesago. ut
inits nsstence onthestrengthofmarketpenetratonofpopular
cultures outsde the core zone of advanced captalism, t goes
fartomeet- ratherthan contest - ]ameson`sdescrptonofthe
mpact of postmodernsm, ndeed, at the level of detal,
expressly conhrms t. So, too, the vtalty of mutant forms of
realism inthe arts oftheperphery - where, say, employmentof
magical motifs canbe seen asa typcal resortto 'weapons ofthe
weak` - and ther unsettling effect, to whichpostcolonalcrtcs
legtimately pont, does not contradct the conhguraton ofthe
centre. ]here after all postmodernism, especally on its citra
slope, always included certain realst appeals, and has had no
difhcultyinncorporatngsupernaturaltwststothem.
A more substantal obi ection to ]ameson`s case for a global
domnance of the postmodern comes not from clams for the
postcolonial, but rather simply from the lack of full captalst
modernzation itself n so many areas of what was once the
]hird Vorld. In conditions where the mnmum conditons of
modernity - literacy, ndustry, moblity - are stll bascally
absent or only patchly present, how can postmodernty have
anymeanng: Itis alongwayfromDamondDustShoestothe
See Shaobo Xie, 'Rethinking the Problem of Postcolonialism', New Literary
History, Vol 28, No 1, Winter 1977 (Issue on 'Cultural Studies: China and The
West'), p. 9ff.
120
AFTER- EFFECTS
]aklamakanorIrrawaddy.]ameson`s argument, however, does
not depend on any contenton - obviously absurd - that
contemporary captalsm has created a homogeneous set of
socal circumstances round the world. Uneven development s
inherent in the system, whose 'abrupt new expanson` has
'equally unevenly` eclpsed older forms ofnequalty and mult
pled new ones 'we as yet understand less well`.' ]he real
queston s whether ths unevenness is too great to sustan any
commonculturallogc.
Iostmodernsm emerged as a cultural dominant n unprece-
dently rch captalst socetes wth very high average levels of
consumpton. ]ameson`s hrst reconnaissance lnked it directly
to these, and he has snce nsisted further on ts specihcally
Amercan orgns. Vould itnottherefore bereasonabletothnk
thatwherelevelsofconsumptonwerefarlower, andthe stage
of industral development much less advanced, a conhguration
closer to modernsm - as t once llourshed ntheVest- would
be more lkely to prevail ]his was a hypothess to which I, at
anyrate, was drawn.' Inthese condtions, mght onenotexpect
to hnd a pronounced dualsm of high and low forms, compar-
able to the Iuropean dvde between avant-garde and mass
culture, possbly with a still wider gulfbetween the two: ]he
Indancinemawouldappeartooffera casenpoint.thecontrast
between Satyait Ray`s hlms and the avalanche of song-and-
dance genresfromthe ombaystudios looking as stark as any
nthe developedworld. utthis, ofcourse, s anexamplefrom
a highlyprotected national market inthe sixtes. ]oday, global
communcationssystemsensureanncomparablygreaterdegree
ofculturalpenetration oftheformerSecond and ]hirdVorlds >
by the Irst. In these condtions, the nlluence of postmo
forms becomes inescapable - nthe archtecture of cities `
ShanghaiorKuala Iumpur, the art shows ofCaracasors-|m
novels andhlmsfromMoscowtouenosAres.
Inlluence, however, is not necessarly dominance. ]he pres-
ence of signhcant groups of artists, or clusters of buldngs,
whose references are clearly postmodern does not ensure any
Late Marxism, p. 249.
'Modernity and Revolution', A Zone of Engagement, pp. 40, 54.
121
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
local hegemony. !n the terms ]ameson hmself uses, after
Raymond Vllams, the postmodern could well be only 'emer
gent` - ratherthanthe modern beng 'resdual ` . ]hs, certanly,
s the vew of such a level-headed crtc as ]onathan Arac,
surveyng these ssues nthe countrywhere theyare more hotly
debated thanperhaps anywhere else today, the Ieople`s Repub
lc ofChna.`Vthnearlya bllon people stll onthe land, the
concluson s dfncult to contest. !t would be open to ]ameson
toreplythattheglobalhegemonyofthepostmoderns iustthat
- a net predomnance at world level, whch does not exclude a
subordnate role at the natonal level, n any gven case. low
ever that may be, there s another consderatonwhch must be
weghed n the scales. Iostmodern culture s not i ust a set of
aesthetc forms, t s also a technologcal package. ]elevson,
whch was so decsve n the passage to a new epoch, has no
modernst past. !t became the most powerful medum of all n
the postmodern perod tsclf. ut that power s far greater -
more absolutely dspoportonate to the mpact of all others
combned - n the!ormer ]hrd Vorld than t s n the Irst
tself.
]hs paradox must gve pause to anyover-quckdsmssal of
the dea that the damned of the earth too have entered the
kngdom of the spectacle. !t s unlkely to reman isolated. Ior
i ustahead les the mpact ofthenew technologes ofsmulaton
- or prestdgtaton - whose arrval s qute recent even n the
rch cultures.Venowhaveastrangelyaugustdoramaofthese,
n]ulanStallabrass`s remarkable Gargantua. lere, qute unex
pectedly, ]ameson`s call for a sequel to Adorno and lorkhe
mer` s ' Culture !ndustry` , to address subsequent forms of
manpulaton, has been fulnlled. o work snce that famous
analyss has so closely matched ts ambton, or represented
such a nttng successon, although here the countervalng
nfluence of eniamn tlts an Adornan proiect away from the
declaratvelysystematctowardsamorepointilliste phenomenal
plane. Stallabrass surveys dgtal photography, cyberspace
exchange and computer games - as well as a more famlar
50 'Postmodernism and Postmodernity in China: an Agenda for Inquiry', New
Literary History, Winter 1997, p. 144.
122
r
AFTER- EFFECTS
landscape of automobles, malls, grafnt, detrtus, televson
tself - asprenguratons of a future mass culturethat threatens
to supersede the spectacle tself, asknown htherto, by effacng
the boundares between the perceved and the enacted
altogether. Vth ths development, the new technques coniure
the possblty of a self-sealed unverse ofsmulaton capable of
velng - andsonsulatng - theorderofcaptalmorecompletely
than ever. A quet gravty of tone, and precson of detal,
characterzethsunseasonableargument.
ut ts logc s n one sgnncant respect at varance wth ts
framework. Stallabrasswllhavelttletruckwthanytalkofthe
postmodern, and holds to a radcal separatonofrch andpoor
zones oftheworld - whch, he suggests, ts one ofthecrucal
functons of mass culture to mask.`' ut a more plausble
deducton ponts the other way. ]he technologes he explores
are n both tmng and effect pre-emnently postmodern, f the
term has any meanng at all, and they wll surely not, as he
sometmes seem to assume, reman connned to the IrstVorld.
Computer games already have a thrvng market n the ]hrd.
lere too, as wth televson, the arrval of novel knds of
connexon and smulatonwlltend to unfy rather thandvde
the urban centres of the comng century, even across vast
dfferencesn average ncomes. Solong asthe system ofcaptal
prevals, each new advance n the ndustry of mages ncreases
the radus ofthe postmodern. !nthat sense, tcanbeargued,ts
globaldomnancesvrtuallyforeordaned.
]ameson`s own demonstraton proceeds at another level. for
hm, as always, the proof of the puddng s n the cultural
practces themselves. ]he salence of a postmodern that s no
longer occdental can be i udged from exemplary works of
perphery. ]he modernst format of Cde`s Counterfeiters, a.
ts moral resoluton, serve as benchmarks for ther startl
contemporarytransformatonn Idward Yang`sTerrorizer, and
ts relaton to the new wave nlms n ]awan that form, |.
]ameson`s vew, 'a lnked cycle more satsfyng for the vewer
than any natonal cnema ! know ' save perhaps the Irench
` Gargantua - Manufactured Mass Culture, London 1997, pp. 6-7, 1 0-1 1 , 75-77,
214, 230-231.
123
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNITY
productons of the 2Os and JOs ` . I n not dssmilar fashon,
recht`s concepton of Umfunktionierung becomes tselfunpre-
dctably retooled n the 'dgnhed hlarty` of Kdlat ]ahmk`s
Perfumed Nightmare, where the standard oppostons of cul-
tural natonalsm - Irst and ]hrd Vorlds, old and new - are
battered out of shape nto ramshackle compostes, as ngen-
ouslyservceableastheIlpnoi eepneytself.
Itwould be hardtothnk ofsympathes lessIurocentrcthan
these, or more congruent wth Vollen`s concerns. In fact, the
Zaros panters or geran muscans wth whom Raiding the
Icebox concludes, creatve devsers ofa 'para-tourst art` nsep-
arable from the effects of postmodern travel, teach the same
lesson. that 'the choce between an authentc natonalsm and a
homogenzng modernty wll become more and more out-
moded` . `` ]he hnal emphass n both crtcs s the same.
symptoms of sterlty and provncalsm n the metropols,
notatonsofmagnatverenewalntheperphery.]hepostmod-
ern may also sgnfyths. 'It sbecause nlate captalsm and n
ts world system even the center s margnalzed`, wrtes]ame-
son, that 'expressons of the margnally uneven and unevenly
developed issung from a recent experence of captalsm are
often morntense and powerful`, and 'above all more deeply
symptomatc and meanngfulthananythngthe enfeebledcenter
stllhndstselfabletosay` .`'
Politics
Uneven development. symptomatc meanng. ]hese areterms of
art whch brng us to a hnal crux n ]ameson`s work. At the
5
i
The Geopolitical Aesthetic - Cinema and Space in the World System, London
1992, pp. 120, 211.
5 3 Raiding the Icebox, pp. 197, 202-204.
54 The Geopolitical Aesthetic, p. 155. Jameson's comments on the vacuity of high
metropolitan forms in North America, and more widely in the First World, have
been consistently - on occasion, it might be argued, even unduly - sharp. See, as
examples, his interview in Lef Curve, No 12, 1988; 'Americans Abroad: Exogamy
and Letters in Late Capitalism', in Steven Bell et al. (eds), Critical Theory, Cultural
Politics and Latin American Narrative, Notre Dame 1991; introduction to South
Atlantic Quarterly special issue on postmodernism in Latin America, Summer 1993.
124
AFTER- EFFECTS
headofhs hrstmaiorbook,Marxism and Form, there reads an
epgraph from Mallarmc. 'Il n'existe d'ouvert c Ia recherche
mentale que deux voies, en tout, ou bifurque notre besoin, c
savoir, l'esthetique d'une part et aussi l'economie politique'.55
Reteratng tonce agan nPostmodernism asthevery emblem
of hs enterprse, ]ameson glossed the dctum as a 'percepton
shared by both dscplnes of the mmense dual movement ofa
plane ofform and a plane ofsubstance`` the hdden concord
of lielmslev and Marx. ]he sense n whch ]ameson`s oeuvre
can be seen as a culmnaton oftheVesternMarxst tradton
has been ndcated above. ]he long sut of that tradton was
always aesthetc, and ]ameson has played an extraordnary
hand wth t. ut underlyng the aesthetc enqurres ofths lne
of thnkers, of course, there was always a set of economc
categores derved from Capital that nformed ther focus and
drecton. ]he work of a Iukacs or Adorno s unthnkable
wthout ths constant, mmanent reference. At the same tme,
the tradton tself produced no sgnhcant development n the
neld of poltcal economy asMarx- or Iuxemburg or llferd-
ng- understoodt. leret reled on anntellectuallegacyt dd
not extend. An alternatve classcal tradton, that dd seek to
pursue Marxst economc analyss nto the era of the Creat
Depresson, was generally gnored. y the end of the Second
VorldVar,thslnetselfhadlapsed.
]huswhen, twenty years later- attheheght ofthepostwar
boom - ]ameson was startng towrte,the dvorce betweenthe
aesthetc and economc dmensons ofa culture of the left was
attswdest. lsownworktookupthegreataesthetctradton.
ut when the economc tradton revved at the start of
seventes,asworldcaptalsmbegantssldentoalong
wave, t s strkng how actvely and creatvely he
t. ]he decsve role of Irnest Mandel`s Late
stmulatng hs turn towards a theory of postmodernsm
already been noted. ]hs was nostraynlluence. In The Cultural
55 'Magie', Oeuvres, Paris 1945, p. 399. Jameson renders this as: 'Only two paths
stand open to mental research: aesthetics, and also political economy' (Postmodern
ism, p. 427), which omits the crucial 'where our need divides'.
56 Postmodernism, p. 265.
125
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
Turn, ]ameson hasnotably developed hs account oIthe post
modernthroughanorgnalappropratonoICovannArrgh` s
Long Twentieth Century, whosesynthessoIMarxand raudel
oIIers the most ambtous nterpretaton oI the overall hstory
oI captalsm attempted to date. lere the dynamc oIhnance
captal on the 'plane oI substance` releases a movement oI
Iragmentatononthe 'plane oIIorm` , traceableallthewayIrom
the hlmc prevew to postmodern collages oIthe commonplace.
Ineachcase,theeconomcreIerent Iunctons notas an external
support, butasannternal elementoIthe aesthetcconstructon
tselI. ]he hnal text n the same volume, ']he rck and the
alloon`,hnts at away Davd larvey`s Limits to Capital could
playanotdssmlarrole.`'
Mallarmc`stwo paths are thusreioned. utIthe obi ectve s
a contnuaton oIMarx`sproiectntoa postmodernworld, are
the aesthetc andeconomctheexclusvelnesoImarch:Vhere
does ths leave the poltcal: Its trace s not Iorgotten n the
motvatng dctum. Mallarmc speaks, aIter all, not oI econ
omcs, but oIpoltcal economy. ]hs canoncal term, however,
s less unequvocal than t seems. rgnally desgnatng the
classcalsystems oISmth, Rcardo andMalthus,twasprecsely
the obiectoIMarx`scrtque,butwhentheneo-classcaltheores
oIValras,]evonsandMengerbecameestablshedasorthodoxy,
wth the margnalst revoluton, Marx hmselI was assmlated
to the predecessors wth whom he had broken, as so many
Iossls oI the pre-hstory oI the dscplne - the crtque oI
poltcal economy becomng no more than ts dogmatc last
chapter. In reacton, later Marxsts would oIten clam the
tradtonasndeedtherown,n oppostonto theIormalsmoI
'pure` economcs codhed by the hers oI the neo-classcal
thnkers.utassuch,tremanedaresdualcategory - 'poltcal`
onlynsoIarastexceededthecalculusoIthemarket,towards
a socalreIerenceotherwseleItndetermnate. ]hs weak sense
wasneversuIhcenttodehneMarx`spartcularlegacy.
ut I the poetc adage leaves no ndependent space Ior the
poltcal, ths hgures promnently elsewhere, n the ttle oI
The Cultural Turn, pp. 136-144 ff. , 1 84-1 85 ff.
126
AFTER- EFFECTS
]ameson`s most systematc theoretcal work n the held of
lterature tself. The Political Unconscious opens wth the
words. ']hs book wll argue the prorty of the poltcal
nterpretaton of lterary texts. It conceves of the poltcal
perspectve not as some supplementary method, not as an
optonalauxlaryto other nterpretve methodscurrenttoday-
the psychoanalytc orthe myth-crtcal, the stylstc, the ethcal,
the structural - but as the absolute horzon of all readng, and
all nterpretaton`. ]ameson notes that ths poston wll seem
extreme. ut ts meanng s speltouta fewpages later,wththe
declaraton. ']here s nothngthat s not socal and hstorcal-
ndeed, everythng s n the last nstance" poltcal` . ` ]hs s
the comprehensve sense of the term that gves ts force to the
book`s ttle. Vthn the nterpretve strategy to whch t pro-
ceeds,however,theresanotherandlesserspaceofthepoltcal,
understood n a more restrctve sense. In ths mode ]ameson
arguesthatthere are 'three concentrc frameworkswhchmark
outthesenseofthesocalgroundofatext,throughthenotons,
hrst ofpoltcal hstory, n the narrow sense of punctual event
and chroncle-lke happenngs n tme, then of socety, n the
now already less dachronc and tmebound sense ofa consttu-
tve tensonand struggle between socal classes, and, ultmately,
ofhstorynow conceved n ts vastest sense ofthe sequence of
modes of producton and the successon and destny of the
varous human socal formatons, fromprehstorclfeto what-
everfarfuturehstoryhasnstoreforus` .
lere there saclearherarchy,runnng fromthefundamental
to the superhcal. economc socal poltcal. In the latter,
'hstorysreduced`- theverbndcateswhatslkelytofollow-
to 'the dachroncagtatonof theyear-to-year,thechronicle-h
annalsoftherseandfallofpoltcal regmes and socalfhi
and the passonate mmedacy of struggles between hstor
ndvduals`.' Vhat ths recalls, perhaps more than anythng
else, s raudel`s descrpton of l'histoire evenementielle n his
famousterofhstorcaltmes - thatevanescentfoamofepsodes
58 The Political Unconscious, pp. 1 7, 20.
59 The Political Unconscious, p. 75.
6U
The Political Unconscious, pp. 76-77.
127
THE ORI GI NS OF POS TMODERNI TY
and ncdents whch he comparedtothe surfonthewavesfrom
Afrca, breakng mmemorally onthe shores ofahaunderthe
fantlght ofthe stars. ]he formal smlartes betweenthe two
trpartte schemas, adiustng for the geographcal rather than
economc emphass of l'histoire immobile, are evdent enough.
Vhat they seem to share s a reserve towards the poltcal
conceved n a strongsense - that s, as anndependentdoman
ofacton,pregnantwthtsownconsequences.
In raudel`s case, ths retcence s coherent wth the whole
structureandprogramme ofhswork. Inthe caseofa Marxst,
tmghtbedoubtedwhetherthscouldbe so.]ameson,however,
has offered reasons why t mght be. In the most calculatedly
shockng ofhstexts,hesuggestsa naturalknshpbetweenone
of the most extreme versons of neo-lberalsm - the unversal
modellng of human behavour as utlty-maxmzaton by the
Chcago economst Cary ecker - and socalsm, n so far as
both do away wth the need for any poltcal thought. ']he
tradtonal complant about Marxsm that t lacks any autono-
mous poltcal retlecton`, he wrtes, 'tends to strke one as a
strength rather than aweakness` . IorMarxsmsnotapoltcal
phlosophy, and whle 'there certanly s a Marxstpractce of
poltcs, Marxst poltcal thnkng, when t s not practcal n
thatway, hasexclusvelyto dowththeeconomcorganzaton
of socety and how people cooperate to organze producton`.
]heneo-lberalbelefthatncaptalsmonlythemarketmatters
s thus a close cousn ofthe Marxstvewthat whatcountsfor
socalsm splannng.netherhaveanytmeforpoltcaldsqus-
tons n ther ownrght. 'Ve have much n commonwth the
neo-lberals,nfactvrtuallyeverythng - savetheessentals | ` .
ehndthe buoyantprovocatonoftheselneslesaconvcton
of prncple - t s no accdent Mallarmc`s formula reappears
iust here.` ut they also correspond to a sense of mmedate
61 Postmodernism, p. 265.
62 For Jameson's fullest meditation on Mallarmi"s dictum, and its effects for concep
tions of politics, see his interview in the Cairene journal A/if, 'On Contemporary
Marxist Theory', No 10, 1990, pp. 124-129, after a course taught in Egypt.
It should be said that Mallarme himself is not to be reduced to the dichotomy of
Magie. During the Mac-Mahon crisis of 1 876-77, when the constitution of the
Third Republic hung in the balance, he published an article in La Republique des
128
AFTER- EFFECTS
prorties. Returnng tohs trpartte scheme atthe end ofThe
Geopolitical Aesthetic, ]ameson remarks of]ahmk`s hlm that
what s nstructve about t s 'the way n whch here the
economcdmensonhas cometotakeprecedenceoverapoltcal
one whch s not left out or repressed, but whch s for the
moment assgned a subordnate poston and role` . Ior ths s a
general lesson of the tme. In the present coniuncture, ofpost-
modernty, 'our most urgent task wll be trelessly to denounce
the economc forms that have come for the moment to regn
supreme andunchallenged`- 'a rehcatonandcommodhcaton
Lettres declaring that 'nothing less than the sovereignty of the people' was at stake,
under the rubric of - indeed - La Politique. For the text, see P. S. Hambly, 'Un
article oublie de Stephane Mallarme', Revue d'Histoire Litteraire de Ia France,
January-February 1989, pp. 82-84. It was in this - intensely eventful - context that
he issued the famous ringing statement: 'The participation of a hitherto ignored
people in the political life of France is a social fact that will honour the whole of the
close of the nineteenth century. A parallel is found in artistic matters, the way being
prepared by an evolution which the public with rare prescience dubbed, from its
frst appearance, intransigent, which in political language means radical and
democratic' (in 'The Impressionists and EdouardManet', September 1 876). Two
decades later, it was the Panama crisis of 1 893 that set the stage for Mallarme's
retur to political commentary with the text that became Or, the frst of ' Grands
Faits Divers' collected in Divagations, of which Magie was the second in time, from
the same year. Both breathe an indomitable aversion to the fetishism of fnance, the
alchemy of speculation. Fumee le milliard, hors le temps d'y faire main basse: ou, le
manque d'eblouissement voire d'interet accuse qu'elire un dieu n'est pas pour le
confner a l'ombre des coffes de fer et des poches - La pierre nulle, qui reve !'or,
dite philosophale: mais elle annonce, dans Ia fnance, le futur credit, precedant le
capital ou le reduisant a l'humilite de monnaie! - see Oeuvres, pp. 398, 400. 'A
billion is smoke, beyond the time to get your hands on it: or, the lack of
bedazzlement even of interest indicates that a god is not elected to be confne
the shadow of iron coffers and pockets - The stone is null which dreams of
called philosophical: but it announces in fnance a future credit, preceding C
and reducing it to the humility o cash!] Topical thoughts indeed, that could
head Jameson's penultimate essay in The Cultural Turn.
When Mallarme came to write his series of articles 'Variations sur un Sujet' in L
Revue Blanche during 1 895, Dreyfus had been sentenced and the political clouds of
the Affair were gathering. By now his disillusion with the Opportunist parliamentary
regimes of the time was complete. ]aunes effondrements de banques aux squames
de pus et le candide camelot apport ant a Ia rue une reforme qui lui eel ate en Ia main,
ce repertoire - a defaut, le pietinement de Chambres otl le vent-coulis se distrait a
des crises ministerielles - compose, hors de leur drame propre a quai les humains
129
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
that havc bccomc sounvcrsalzcd asto sccm wcll-ngh natural
and organc cnttcs` . '` [vcn thc poltcs oI natonal lbcraton
tsclIcanonlybcnscrbcdnthslargcrbattlc.
]amcson`s thcorctcal programmc - wc mght call t, n
honour oIts cpgraph, amatcralstsymbolsm- hasthusbccn
Iormdablyconsstcnt. ts cohcrcncc can bcvcrhcda contrario
by thc onc sgnhcant abscncc n ts appropraton oI thc
Vcstcrn Narxst rcpcrtorc. or that tradton was not wthout
a suprcmcly poltcal momcnt. Antono Cramsc sthconcgrcat
namc substantally mssng Irom thc roll-call oI Marxism and
Form. n part, that s no doubt duc to thc sdclong poston oI
taly n ]amcson`s mposng usuIruct oI thc rcsourccs oI [uro-
pcan culturc as a wholc, whcrc rancc, Ccrmany and [ngland
arc thc lands oI rcIcrcncc. ut t s also that Cramsc`s work,
sont aveugles, le spectacle quotidien see Oeuvres, p. 414. [Yellow collapses of
banks with scales of pus and the candid hawker bringing to the street a reform that
bursts in his hand, this repertory - or failing that, the stalling of Assemblies where
wafts of air distract themselves with Ministerial crises - composes, beyond their
own drama to which humans are blind, the daily spectacle.] The text from which
this passage comes, La Cour ('pour s'aliener les partis'), is the most revealing of
Mallarme's interventions of that year - a remarkable example of the fusion of
'aristocratic' and 'proletarian' motifs in the avant-garde culture of the time. To
gauge the import of Mallarme's articles in La Revue Blanche, it is necessary to
remember their context. They appeared in the same issues of the journal, not just
with drawings by Toulouse, Vallotton or Bannard, but side by side with laudatory
articles on Bakunin, Herzen, Proudhon and Marx - a celebratory review by Charles
Andler on the publication of the Third Volume of Capital; not to speak of an
eleven-part serialization of the memoirs of the enrage General Rossignol, Hebertiste
commander in the suppression of the Vendee, honoured with a heroic representation
by Vuillard. See La Revue Blanche, 1 895, VIII, pp. 175-178, 289-299, 391-395,
450-454; IX, pp. 51-63, etc.; and for the frst note on Dreyfus, attacking his
'ingenious torturers on Devil's Island', see VIII, p. 408.
A careful study of Mallarme's political development has yet to be written. The
belated publication of a substantial section of Sartre's projected work on the poet,
dating from 1952, suggests what we have missed: see 'L'Engagement de Mallarme',
Obliques, No 18-19, 1979, now available as Mallarme - La Lucidite et sa Face
d'Ombre, Paris, 1986. The disappearance of the full manuscript must be accounted
a major loss. The fragment that survives makes it clear that this would in all
probability have been Sartre's true biographical chef d'oeuvre: richer in detail and
sharper in focus than his subsequent account of Flaubert.
63 The Geopolitical Aesthetic, p. 212.
130
AFTER- EFFECTS
the productof a Communst leader nprson, retlectng onthe
defeat of one revoluton and the ways to possble vctory of
another, does not ht the bfurcaton of the aesthetc and
economc. It was emnently poltcal, as a theory of the state
and cvl socety, and a strategy for ther qualtatve transfor
maton. ]hs body of thought s by-passed n]ameson`s extra
ordnaryresumptonofVesternMarxsm.
Vho can say thaths ntuton was wrong: ]he grandeur of
the Sardnan s stranded today, amd the mpasse of the
ntellectual tradton he represented, plan for all to see. ]he
current of hstory has passed elsewhere. If the legaces of
Irankfurt orIarsorudapestremanmore avalable, ts also
becausetheywereless poltcal- thats,subiectto the'contn
gences and reversals` pecular to l'histoire evenementielle as
]ameson has seen t. ]he purhcaton of Vestern Marxsm to
theaesthetc andeconomchas, asthngsstand,beenvndcated.
]he theory of postmodernsm as the cultural logc of late
captalsm s ts dazzlng ssue. Yet at the same tme, precsely
here the forcluson of the poltcal poses a paradox. ]ameson
construesthepostmodernasthatstagencaptalstdevelopment
when culture becomes n effect coextensvewth the economy.
Vhat s the approprate stance, then, of the crtc wthn ths
culture: ]ameson`s answer rests on a three-fold dstncton.
]here s taste, or opnon, that sa set ofsubiectve preferences
- n thems oInfIc nterest - for partcular works of art.
]hen there s analyss, or the ce study of 'the hstorcal
co of possblty of peforms` . Inally fhcrcs
aluaton, whch nvolves no aesthetc i udgements n the tra-
dsense, but rather seeks to 'nterrogate the qualty of
socal lfe by way of the text or ndvdual work of art,
hazard an assessment ofthe poltcal effects ofculturalurr
or movements wth less utltaransm and a greater s
pt
for the dynamcs of everyday lfe than 1he mprmaturs and
ndexesofearlertradtons`.`
]ameson, whle avowng some personal enthusasms as a
consumer of contemporary culture, sets no specal store by
64 Ibid.
65 Postmodernism, p. 298 f.
131
THE ORI GI NS OF POSTMODERNI TY
thcm. Jhc task oIhstorcal and Iormal analyss, onthc othcr
hand, has bccn thc maior part oI hs work as a thcorst and
crtc - most systcmatcally artculatcd n The Political Uncon
scious. Vhatthcn oI cvaluaton: Iwc look atPostmodernism,
what wchnd arc unIorgcttablc ctchngs oIthc qualty oIlIc n
ths hstorcal Iorm, wth 'ts ntcrnal quotcnt oImscry andthc
dctcrmnatc potcntalty oI bodly and sprtual transhguraton
t also aIIords, or conqucrs`.''utoIcalbraton oIthc 'poltcal
cIIccts oI cultural movcmcnts` , thcrc s sgnhcantly lcss. Jhc
^cw Socal Novcmcnts do hgurc, as a now standard topos, n
]amcson`s survcy oI thc postmodcrn, whcrc thcy arc vcwcd
wth sympathy, but also a wary cauton aganst nf|atcd clams
madc on thcr bchalI. ut thcr nvocaton swthout dctal or
dIIcrcntaton, pcrhaps bccauscthcyarcnotnthchrstnstancc
- as thcr namc mplcs - cultural movcmcnts stricto sensu at
all. A morc appostc casc s oIIcrcd by thc ant-nsttutonal
conccptualsm rcprcscntcd by artsts lkc Maackc, whosc strat-
cgy oI 'undcrmnng thc magc by way oI thc magc tsclI` s
capturcd graphcally, I brcf|y.' utths s a rclatvclysolatcd
rcIcrcncc,thatonlytcndstoundcrlncthcIactthatthcrcarcnot
manyothcrs.
uts notths,tmghtbcaskcd,aIarrcf|cctonoIthc actual
paucty oI oppostonal- or ndccd many postonal - cultural
movcmcnts n thc postmodcrn: Ccrtanly, thc cclpsc oIorgan-
zcd avant-gardcs, and thc dcclnc oI class poltcs that const-
tutcs ts wdcr hstorcal background, arc powcrIully rcgstcrcd
by ]amcson n thcsc samc pagcs. ut thcy sccm nsuIhccnt n
thcmsclvcs - Ior ncthcr arc absolutcs - to cxplan thc dstancc
bctwccn promsc and dclvcry. Mcrc somc dccpcr dIhcultymay
bc at work. ]amcson`s marragc oI acsthctcs and cconomcs
yclds a wondrous totalzaton oI postmodcrn culturc as a
wholc, whosc opcraton oI 'cogntvc mappng` acts - and ths
s ts ntcnton - as a placcholdcr oIdalcctcal rcsstancc to t.
uttspontoIlcvcragcncccssarlyrcmansnthatscnscoutsdc
thc systcm. nsdc t,]amcson was morc conccrncd to montor
than to adiudcatc. At ths lcvcl, hc has consstcntly warncd oI
66 Postmodernism, p. 302.
67 Postmodernism, p. 409.
132
l
.
l
I_
AFTER- EFFECTS
thc dangcrsoItoocasydcnuncatonoIspcchcIormsortrcnds,
asptIallsoIa stcrlcmoralsm. Jhat dd not mcan, nthcothcr
drccton, any conccssons to populsm, Ior whch ]amcson has
ncvcrhad much nclnaton. Jhcrc, hsrcbukcto cultural studcs
can bc takcn as a gcncral motto. 'Jhc standardzaton oI
consumpton s lkc a sound barrcr whch conIronts thc
cuphora oIpopulsm as a Iact oIlIc and a physcal law at thc
uppcr rcachcs oIthcsystcm` . '
Stll, t rcmans truc that Postmodernism contans no sus-
tancd attackonanyspcchcbodyoIworkormovcmcntwthn
thc culturc t dcpcts, n thc convcntonal scnsc oI thc tcrm. n
part, ths s no doubt a qucston oI psychc cconomy - ths sort
oI thng has anyway ncvcr much attractcd ]amcson`s cncrgcs,
Irom cach accordngtothcrtcmpcramcnt. utthatthcrc s also
a thcorctcal ssuc at stakc can bc sccn, pcrhaps, Irom a
sgnhcant tcnson - vcry unusual n ths wrtcr - n]amcson`s
handlng oI a thcmc oI ccntral mportancc to hs thought.
namcly, utopan longng. Jhc oscllaton, pontcd out by ctcr
[ittin,is this.69 Cn thc onc hand.hc has insistcd itis onc ol
hs most darng and dstnctvc thcmcs - that utopan mpulscs
arc nhcrcntly at work n thc rchcd productsoImass commcr-
cal culturc too, sncc thcsc 'cannot bc dcologcal wthout at
onc and thc samc tmc bcngmplctly or cxplctly utopan as
wcll, thcy cannot manpulatc unlcss thcy oIIcr somc gcnunc
shrcd oIcontcnt as a Iantasy brbc to thc publc about to bc so
manpulatcd` - a brbc that wll consst n somc hguraton, no
mattcr howdstortcdor burcd, oIa rcdccmcd collcctvc ordcr.
JhsIuncton]amcsontcrmsthcr'transccndcntpotcntal - that
dmcnson oI cvcn thc most dcgradcd typc oI mass culturc`
whch rcmans 'ncgatvc and crtcal oI thc socal ordcr rm
whch, as a product and a commodty, t sprngs`. Jhc h
whchllustratcthc argumcnt arcJaws and The Godfather.
n thc othcr hand, rcprcscntatons oI utopa propcr n hgh
culturc - Irom Norc to latonov to IcCun - arc nvarably
hcld to dcmonstratc that ths s iust what wc cannot magnc.
'
Rossi, Aldo 108
Rossignol, Jean 130
Rothko, Mark 2 7, 83
Rudolph, Paul 52
Ruskin, John 21, 103
Sartre, Jean-Paul 47, 68, 69-70,
74, 76, 85, 130
Schmitt, Carl 39, 40, 1 34
Schumpeter, Joseph 85
Scully, Vincent 52
Sembene, Ousmane 74
Shakespeare, William 114
Sidky, Ismail 17
Simon, Claude 103
Sjahrir, Sutan 8
Siemon, Stephen 119
Smith, Adam 126
Smithson, Robert 96
Snow, Michael 24
Sokurov, Alexander 103
Salas, Humberto 74, 1 10
Sontag, Susan 67
Soseki, Natsume 74-75
Spanos, William 16
Sprinker, Michael 76
Stalin, Josef 90
Stallabrass, Julian 122-123
Stein, Gertrude 15
Steinberg, Leo 96
Stella, Frank 101
Stern, Robert 21
Stravinsky, Igor 60
Strindberg, August 103
Tafuri, Manfredo 53
Tahimik, Kidlat 75, 124, 129
Tanaka, Kakuei 86
Tate, Allen 15
Tatlin, Vladimir 104
Terry, Quinlan 42
I NDEX
Thatcher, Margaret 91, 135
Thompson, Edward 22
Tinguely, Jean 18
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de
130
Touraine, Alaine 25
Toynbee, Arnold 5-6, 13, 24
Triffn, Helen 119
Trotsky, Leon 117
Truman, Harry 8
Unamuno, Miguel de 4
Vallejo, Cesar 4
Vallotton, Felix 130
Van Gogh, Vincent 60
Vasari, Giorgio 98
Venturi, Robert 20-22, 42, 52,
106
Vuillard, Edouard 130
Walras, Leon 126
Warhol, Andy 18, 20, 60, 67, 96,
99, 100, 103-105
Weber, Max 39, 62, 84-85, 87
Weiss, Peter 4 0
Wiener, Norbert 11
Williams, Raymond 64, 103, 122
Williams, William Carlos 11, 15
Winstanley, Gerard 1 14
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 25, 26, 39,
40
Wollen, Peter 70-71, 83, 97,
104-105, 106-107, 1 1 8,
Xie, Shaobo 120
Yang, Edward 75, 123
Yeats, William Butler 12
Zayyat, Latifa 17
143