Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism and Consumer Society Essay

Fredric Jameson Fredric Jameson (b. 1934) is one of the foremost English-language Marxist literary and cultural critics writing today. Over the past three decades, he has published a wide range of works analyzing literary and cultural texts, while developing his own neo-Marxist theoretical perspectives. His books include Marxism and Form (1971), The Prison-House of Language (1972), The Political Consciousness (1981), Postmodernism or the Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (1992), and Brecht and Method (1998). For many years, he has been teaching literature at Duke University. Jamesons analysis of postmodernism (you will find a synopsis below) synthesizes two articles:†¦show more content†¦192). Two observations should be made here: most of the postmodernisms just mentioned emerged as specific reactions against established forms of high modernism, against this or that dominant high modernism which conquered the university, the museum, the art gallery, and the foundations. Those modern subversions of style, including Abstract Expressionism; the great modernist poetry of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, or Wallace Stevens; the International style (Frank Lloyd Wright); Stravinsky, Joyce, Proust, and Mann--felt to be shocking to our grandparents are, for the generation which arrives at the gate in the 1960s, felt to be the establishment and the enemy--dead, stifling. 2. my project We should clarify a number of features of postmodernism: there are as many forms of postmodernism as high modernisms, since at least initially the former are reactions against those models, and the older distinctions between high culture and mass culture or popular culture has eroded. From an academic perspective, this is the most distressing development. The academy has had a vested interest in preserving high or elite culture against the environment of philistinism, schlock, and kitsch (pp. 192-93). Many of the newer postmodernisms have been fascinated by the whole landscape of advertising, the Las Vegas strip, and so on. They no longer quote texts, as Joyce or Mahler might have done; they incorporate them, to the point where the line between high and low commercial forms isShow MoreRelated`` Postmodernism Or The Cultural Logic Of Late Capitalism `` Essay2351 Words   |  10 PagesFredric Jameson is admired as a standout amongst the most imperative and persuasive artistic and social pundit and theoretician in the Marxist convention of the English speaking world. 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