A Book Review of Jameson's Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

A Book Review of

Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

By Fredric Jameson

To cover Jameson’s entire text, Postmodernism, is to essentially try and explain one’s surroundings and behaviors in Western culture (in particular the United States) since the Industrial Revolution. That is to say, that Fredric Jameson successfully does this; covering chapter by chapter everything from literature to architecture, and the changing attitudes in everything from Utopia to culture and even film and video (television). Jameson opens the text with an introduction, neither disavowing nor promoting the idea of postmodernism. Instead, Jameson addresses areas in which he sees evidence of a break from the Modernist period, or what he calls “high-modernism.” In an attempt to define what postmodernism might be, and to prove to skeptics that it exists, Jameson has focused on the differences between our own period, postmodernism, and the Modernist period that spans approximately from 1880 to the 1930’s (sometimes referred to the one hundred year period since the Industrial Revolution). This book, although primarily consisting of theory, does have tremendous implications on social behavior, in particular the development of culture under global capitalism. This book, having begun with Jameson’s first essay on postmodernism published in 1984, predicts and sets the stage for what is commonly referred to now as Globalization. In this pre-internet text, Jameson refers to this global system in a few ways: Late Capitalism, Third Stage Capitalism, and Multinational Capitalism. In addressing the symptoms of Late Capitalism seen in Western culture, Jameson’s Marxist point of view becomes clear. Much of the text is spent referring back to “commodity fetishism,” “division of labor,” and a bureaucratic concept of time; the text does this in order to explain how Late Capitalism has affected the psychology of subjects in Western culture. This logic of late capitalism is what Jameson identifies as postmodernism. This review of the book will consolidate, and make commentary, on the social implications of these symptoms, and finally relate the concepts directly to our current state, known as Globalization.
In the introduction, Jameson first informs the reader of the problem in historicizing ourselves within our own period. The problem, he says, is not only that we cannot identify a clear and unique characteristic of our own postmodern behavior, but that we are so obsessed with that idea of encapsulating and labeling ourselves that our past becomes disjointed from us, making our relationship to that past irrelevant to us (xxii). He looks at this obsession of quantifying our time as “schizophrenic” in nature (xxii). This problem is addressed later in the chapters on literature and film, in which the narration of our own history gets projected in those mediums, often affecting social outcomes and society’s perception of reality itself. This problem of how postmodern society views time is addressed throughout the book, occasionally referring back to Marx’s idea of commodity, and invoking in the sociologists mind, Weber’s concern with the work clock.
The first chapter of the book, coming from Jameson’s first essay on the topic in 1984, is titled The Culture of Late Capitalism. This original essay focuses on the behaviors of what might be called a postmodern period. Jameson sees the culture responding to an overwhelming feeling that things are coming to an end. This can, and often does, mean that people become preoccupied with the idea of Armageddon, the End Times, and so on, but Jameson is not limiting our culture only to this symptom. Since the 1950’s, the period in which Jameson begins to see postmodernism emerge, people anticipate the end of Communism, the end of definitive social classes (within the constructs of the American Dream), and perhaps the end of ideology itself (1). The end of ideology is expressed in the artist’s cynicism that nothing new may be created, or ‘it has all been done before.’ The focus on art in culture is important because the any period of literature and art (Romanticism, Victorian, Modernist) has largely been defined by the art that period has produced and the social implications of that art. Jameson’s concern is that in postmodern times, less and less emphasis is placed on these types of achievements (artistic) and more emphasis is placed on technological advancements that increase efficiency of production on the macro scale (Industry) and on the micro scale (the family). Another problem is that the art postmodernists tend to develop is either meaningless or simply too abstract to assign any social meaning to it. Many postmodern artists do this on purpose in order to avoid being pigeonholed into a genre or classification. This in and of itself is a symptom of postmodernism, where the attempt to avoid classification becomes its own classification. Other examples of this will be covered later on. Without larger understandings of how this or that particular work of art situates itself into society, and what it says about society, the image (painting) or idea (literature) can only function on a superficial and surface level—lacking entirely social and historic significance.
Jameson views this “break” from Industrial to “postindustrial society,” as being “designated by consumer society, media society, information society, electronic society…and the like” (3). This transition becomes important in explaining the function of cynicism in the older Modernist period because it feeds the cynicism in postmodernism that prevents us from labeling ourselves definitively within our place in time. As the middle class rose in strength here in the United States as well as in Europe in the Industrial Revolution, the people rejected ideas of master narratives, or state issued accounts of our history (i.e. how we are to represent ourselves). This challenge to the state power is seen in the art and literature throughout this period. Jameson reminds the reader of this, to make apparent the origin of our current postmodern cynicism that prevents us from accepting a master narrative, forever limiting our representation of ourselves in that time (which again, defines us as such). The problem, Jameson feels, with rejecting this all-encompassing description or narrative, is that it is only within a consensus or “hegemonic norm that genuine difference could be measured and assessed” (6). How can we separate our own time/period/era from that of the Modernists if there is no consensus on what it is we are doing and why? This is where Marx’s idea of ideology comes in to play. We do not know what it is we are doing that is any different than before, but we need to attempt to understand our subject position to the larger global system in which we operate, if we are ever to understand our role in a historical narrative.
This envisioning, or “cognitive mapping,” is another problem Jameson sees developing in the postmodern mind. Our obsessional division of time coupled with our need to assign definitive images (simulacrum) to periods and cultures has made the mental filing process difficult in a world economic system (5-6). One hundred years ago, the average person would only need to map in their minds a regional area spanning a dozen or so square miles (if that) and a small economic system (local market and so on). Jameson argues that in an expanding multinational economy and with ever expanding military operations around the world, it becomes difficult for the average person to understand their place in this larger system (5). The result is that revolutions become paralyzed, seen as an insignificant mise en scene, in the larger global system (5). Again, the general sentiment is, ‘it’s all been done before,’ and ‘how cute, another uprising.’ In fact, all movements and ideologies in postmodernism immediately get reduced to fad upon being identified in society. This is a direct result of the “schizophrenic” labeling, quantifying, and reification of ideas. This process essentially makes any idea and/or movement a commodity.
Jameson spends some time in chapter 1 describing the differences in artwork coming from both the high-modernist (Industrial) age, and the postmodern (postindustrial) age (8-18). He compares the paintings of van Gogh to Andy Warhol, when looking and portraits of footwear through the last 100 years. The purpose behind this comparison is to once again give example of how postmodern images are without any social commentary lying underneath. Van Gogh’s painting as well as many others from the Modernist (Industrial) age, used representations of torn and tattered work boots to give commentary of a larger social context (conditions of exploited workers). The Andy Warhol painting Diamond Dust Shoes was merely an interesting look at many women’s shoes, perhaps in a shop window (8-18). An argument can be made that because Warhol’s painting looked just like an advertisement, the painting could be understood as a commentary on advertising. The bottom line is that there is no consensus for this assertion and hence the painting gets reduced to ‘just an image,’ or ‘just a commodity,’ hence ‘just a fetish’ [Marx].
The removal of sociological relevance and hermeneutic relation from these images extends well beyond paintings and into virtually everything in postmodernism. Photography is guilty of removing the sociological implications of poverty, squalor, wreckage, destruction, war, etc. (30-34). These images become respected for their artistic merit and the historical and sociological significance is ignored. This attitude toward the image, is according to Jameson, a direct result of the logic of late capitalism, commodifying everything we see instantaneously. This is precisely what Marx meant when he addressed the problem of “commodity fetishism.”
The book continues to explore the concept of image in postmodernism through experimental video in the 1970’s. Edward Rankus, working at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, produced a video entitled AlienNATION, in which seemingly random images are placed in succession of each other, signifying nothing for the viewer (79). This art piece, for Jameson, captures succinctly the postmodern attitudes toward the image. The interesting thing about Jameson’s interpretation of this video, is not that the images cannot mean anything to us, but rather that the images contain so many immediate connections to brand names, jingles, commercials, family memories, and even historical context (social class, racism, gender etc.), that our postmodern minds get lost, so to speak, in the connections we are making so immediately. Jameson, never assumes that our postmodern minds are ‘stupid,’ and perhaps incapable of making deep connections, but on the contrary he is saying that the Modernist deconstruction of meanings within a text are so immediate, that we dismiss many of those previously made connections (social class, racism, gender, etc) and move on to try and further disassociate the image into all of its infinite factions and connections. These are what Jameson refers to as “deeply embedded” simulacrum (85). This is a prime example of how a subject can ‘get lost’ in the postmodern age and exhibit “schizophrenic” attachments to stimuli, inhibiting larger social significance to solidify in the subjects mind.
The problem of orientation in the “world economic system” is expressed through the architecture of the postmodern period as well. Jameson sees Spatial Equivalents in the World System, in chapter 4. The exemplary postmodern building for Jameson is the house of a postmodern architect, Frank Gehry. Gehry’s house is an old 1920’s house with red Spanish tiles on the roof. When the house was purchased in the early 1970’s, Gehry decided to keep a portion of the old house in tact, while demolishing the rest and rebuilding a modern addition. The modern part of the house has a glass cube over the kitchen and sharp protruding corrugated metal and fencing surrounding it. The older part of the house is kept in its original 1920’s style, including the furniture. This monstrosity can be seen from the outside as quite a disorienting mess, but from the inside is seen as innovative and stunningly beautiful (97-129). Jameson articulates this embodiment of the postmodern problem:
“In a more articulated way it confronts us with the paradoxical impossibilities (not least the impossibilities of representation) which are inherent in this latest evolutionary mutation of late capitalism toward “something else” which is no longer family or neighborhood, city or state, nor even nation, but as abstract and nonsituated as the placelessness of a room in an international chain of motels or the anonymous space of airport terminals that all run together in your mind.” (116)
This impossibility, of situating our mind in a transitional period that seems to make no consolation for its incongruity, creates a disjunction and isolation of the subject from the whole of the system. A resulting speculation might be deviation from social norms, but even worse is the total lack of a norm to begin with. These earlier stages of Globalization lack the meta-narrative needed to understand our subject position to the larger system. Each piece (person, building, idea) making up the larger system must be categorized as separate in order to prevent disorientation. This requires assigning quick referents (images) to our understanding of things, abandoning any attempt to make sociological connections as the Modernists did; it would simply be too much for our minds to handle (or so we may think). The cry of the Modernist was to “make it new” [Pound] but because this very attitude is seen as a dead discourse assigned to a dead period containing old texts and dead men, its useful application in today’s society is rendered impotent (121). “The problem is still representation,” Jameson says (127). Just as in Gehry’s house, unable to fluidly connect the dots from the old to the new, we see people’s difficulty in representing through the image, an overwhelming “complex global network” that appears to swallow any attempt to reify it (127). To summarize, Frank Gehry’s house is the closest thing people have to a representation of the dialectical problem of cognitive mapping and historical placement of two period antagonisms (high-modernism and postmodernism).
The social implications of this dialectic can also be seen in American’s inability to understand world poverty as it relates to global capitalism. If capitalism works and reasonably sustains families, how can third world poverty conditions exist in capitalist societies, ours included? This idea antagonizes the mind’s eye, where America is situated at the center of technological superiority, abundance and comfort, and yet its system can create such exploitive poverty (128). In order to cope with the problem of orientation in such a complex global system, the postmodern mind can simply ignore social consequence and focus on surface meaning, primarily images. The new concern for spatial and cognitive mapping supersedes phenomenological concerns. Generalities are then made about people in certain cultures, generally reacting certain ways to the market—effects of advertising, fluctuations in economy, popular cultural fads etc. (134-135). This of course is the truth behind demographic research done by large corporations, not the academic concerns of establishing universal truths within cultural studies.
The final and most important social implication of Jameson’s concern with postmodern thought is its connection to Marxist “use-value” (231-235). The central connection between postmodern reification and quantification of periods, images, movements… you name it, removes the social connections and implications of these things on the rest of society, creating a mystery of its “exchange value.” If every idea, image and revolution is seen as remote, isolated and insignificant to the whole system, then “the whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden” (231 [Jameson quoting Marx]). An individual with his/her lifestyle or ideology has no “use-value” but when that individual gains enough members in that revolution or ideology, the movement is quickly assigned a “value or equivalence” (231). In this way, any culture or lifestyle, or social movement, can be assigned to a specific image and sold accordingly, turned into a “commodity fetish.” Examples of this can be seen in every teenager’s choice of social dissidence and rebellion against authority. Any and all forms of rebellion that may have happened organically (punk rock and do-it-yourself culture and the ecological movement known as the Green movement) can be purchased as an image at the local shopping mall in the form of commodities. One only needs to purchase a t-shirt of the Cuban revolutionary Che Gueverra, buy spikes for their clothing or simply a reusable handbag for the grocery store. The only unifying principle behind all of these images (reified principles) becomes global capitalism itself.
When words like “man” or “tree” are used to represent a universal, there is a type of “exchange” (Marxian equivalence) taking place (233). The postmodern mind assigns images and labels for all kinds of people and behaviors but has no universal principle to connect with, other than global capitalism as its underlying system. All of the semi-autonomous ways of thinking (Modernist, postindustrialist, poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, etc) then just become commodities with “exchange values,” within this system (235-240). This is how Jameson makes the connection that global capitalism is indeed a Marxist socialism. No one culture, idea, academic discourse, or politics is revered over another, but only seen as having some “use-value” in the global trading system. “The object thus elected has an impossible role to fulfill because it is both a thing in the world, with a potential value just like all the other things, and something removed from the object world that is called upon, from the outside, to mediate the latter’s new value system” (235). This goes for value systems (morals) held by differing cultures as well. What happens is that a value system in one culture now must be situated with some “exchange value” in relation to the dominant cultural power operating within global capitalism (United States). The values held in the Middle East, in regards to women for instance, are now assigned an ‘exchange value” in regards to our own value system (265). There in lies the problem—equivalence of these reified-simplified representations of these differing cultures is made without regard to their historical and sociological origin.
In our constant dissection of concepts and time into new labels and sub-systems, along with their corresponding-representative images, children get integrated and assimilated into this bureaucratic and “schizophrenic” system, losing all concept of free-play in free-time. Play-dates are arranged and organized down to the minute, from birth to after-school soccer practice. The very idea of freedom and equality can only exist (or be understood) in a system that limits or prohibits it (262-263). The commodifying of time, “time is money,” extends into new territory, where reality itself can be assigned an image and sold. Truth, facts, and information all pulled from “reality” and packaged and sensationalized; brands such as FOX NEWS, CNN, and MSNBC, reify and commodify information to a point that reality itself loses its social impact when delivered through this glossy, postmodern, image-obsessed, commodity obsessed, media format. Films no longer attempt to solidify our social struggles through narrative as the rising middle class once projected themselves into the Victorian novel because the image itself is now king (279-283). Jameson could not have predicted something like the Internet as the solution to this disorientation in the world system, but he speculates throughout the book that technology will in fact make attempts to keep track of all our assigned images. His speculation comes from the use of media (primarily television and film) to assign images for us, to all parts of the world and their corresponding cultures. This, he believes, is perhaps our best attempt at orientation in a postmodern world, however ineffective in its ability to contain all sociological implications. Only in a newly emerging virtual reality, or virtual space (the internet), can the postmodern mind begin to situate itself in this ever increasingly complex world system—facilitated of course through images, on a screen.

Work Cited
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism: Or, The Logic of Late Capitalism. Duke University Press. Durham NC, 1991.