Signatures of the Visible. [From the back cover.]

The book is one in a Series on Post-Contemporary Interventions, edited by Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson.

Cover illustration of the paperback: Diamond Dust Shoes, 1980 by Andy Warhol. It suggests the conversion of human necessities into the estheticized commodities valued by the postmodern sensibility.

The title essay originally appeared in 1984 in New Left Review, no. 146 (July-August): 59-92.

There is no bibliography apart from the notes and index.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. CULTURE: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism 1

2. IDEOLOGY: Theories of the Postmodern 55

3. VIDEO: Surrealism Without the Unconscious 67

4. ARCHITECTURE: Spatial Equivalents in the World System 97

5. SENTENCES: Reading and the Division of Labor 131

6. SPACE: Utopianism After the End of Utopia 154

7. THEORY: Immanence and Nominalism in Postmodern Theoretical Discourse 181

8. ECONOMICS: Postmodernism and the Market 260

9. FILM: Nostalgia for the Present 279

10. CONCLUSION: Secondary Elaborations 297

SELECTED SUMMARY NOTES ON THE TEXT

INTRODUCTION

This Introduction is a densely-packed look at the definition of postmodernism, postmodern theory, the relation of modernism to postmodernism, the loss of a sense of modernist history, the roots of postmodernist theory in The Frankfurt School, the label "postmodernism," the Raymond Williams idea of "the structure of feeling," the ideological task of postmodernism, interpretation of the new textuality, Utopia, survivals of the modern in the postmodern, and "repressed" historicity. We preserve rather copious direct quotes here because of their relevance to themes developed elsewhere in THE PROGRAMME.

MODERN VS. POSTMODERN: "Postmodernism is what you have when the modernization process is complete and nature is gone for good." (ix) It follows that "culture" becomes a "veritable 'second nature.'" (ix)

MODERNISM: "Modernism was still minimally...the critique of the commodity and the effort to make it transcend itself. Postmodernism is the consumption of sheer commodification as a process." (x) [NOTE: We think of the critical stance of, say, Edmund Wilson, Maxwell Geismar, H. L. Mencken and have the sense that they still were capable of a critique of the commodity whereas today's critics may not be.]

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL: "...any sophisticated theory of the postmodern ought to bear something of the same relationship to Horkheimer and Adorno's old 'Culture Industry' concept as MTV or fractal ads bear to fifties television series." (x) [NOTE: We are not sure of J.'s full meaning here, but we celebrate his pervasive awareness of The Frankfurt School in the cultural critique leading up to the postmodern moment.]

CRITICAL THEORY: "...economic forecasts, marketing studies, culture critiques, new therapies, the (generally official) jeremiad about drugs or permissiveness, reviews of art shows or national film festivals, religious 'revivals' or cults--have all coalesced into a new discursive genre,...'postmodernism theory...." (x)

HISTORICAL DEAFNESS: J. sees "postmodernism theory" as a desperate attempt to "recuperate" from "historical deafness." (xi) "Modernist history" dies in the birth of the postmodern. (xi)

METANARRATIVES: Modernist history, with traces of the idea of progress and teleology, is said to have vanished in the postmodern. J. says two things about that:

(A) This idea is "impure" because it is self-contradictory: "everything significant about the disappearance of master narratives has itself to be couched in narrative form." (xi)

(B) "...any [theoretical] observation about the present" becomes "a symptom and an index of the deeper logic of the postmodern." (xii) The effect is to turn the postmodern condition "into its own theory and the theory of itself." (xii)

UNIQUENESS OF THE POSTMODERN: J. joins David Harvey in denying that postmodernism is an "historically original" situation; but for analytical purposes he announces he will "[pretend] to believe that the postmodern is as unusual as it thinks it is." (xiii)

THE NAME "POSTMODERNISM": J. thinks it caught on because competing formulations such as poststructuralisim were not broad enough. (xiii-xiv)

THE TASK OF POSTMODERNISM: J. cogently suggests that the "fundamental ideological task" of p.m. is to COORDINATE new habits of thought and behavior with the new form of capitalism in postmodernity. (xiv) He compares that task with the earlier task in the modern era of producing "'new people'" capable of thriving in the delayed gratification of the...'modern' labor process. (xv) However, J. short-circuits this insight: such an objective social agenda is absorbed in the notion of postmodern culture itself and reverts from potential for action into mere theory.

[NOTE: We relate J.'s sense of this task to the question of whether THE PROGRAMME has a socially useful purpose or is merely the play of unmediating thought. We broach the question of mission or purpose in Table Talk One. We discover ourself voicing just this ideological task in a commencement speech on "agility" at the 1995 graduation ceremonies of Montgomery County Community College.]

"STRUCTURE OF FEELING:" J. takes this notion from Raymond Williams to characterize the "new forms of practice and social and mental habits" needed in postmodernity. (xiv) [NOTE: We think J. here is in full accord with Steve Goldman et al in their description of the conditions of "agile competition and virtual organizations. As we argued in our commencement speech at Montco, the conditions of postmodernity call for a new kind of person, with a new "structure of feeling," a new sensibility, let's say. The failure to change into such a person will result in the personal failure to function effectively in postmodernity. We believe that this is a critically important theme for further exploration in THE PROGRAMME.]

RESIDUAL TRACES OF MODERNISM: These persist in postmodernism not as anachronisms but as "necessary failures [in an impure postmodernism] that inscribe the particular postmodern project back into its context, while at the same time reopening the question of the modern itself for reexamination." (xvi) J. sees "theoretical discourse" as quintessentially postmodern, but redolent of the modernist penchant for creating movements (avant-gardes) that are not supposed to exist in p.m.--most notably, DECONSTRUCTION and THE NEW HISTORICISM. (xvi)

"LATE CAPITALISM:" J. attributes the term to The Frankfurt School, but Horkheimer and Adorno meant "administered society" or "state capitalism", not the global capitalist system of postmodernity. (xvii-xix)

1973--THE KEY YEAR: J. argues that the new postmodernist landscape emerged from the dust clouds of change in that year, when we saw Bretton Woods gold standard abandoned, the oil crisis, etc. He says the "economic system and the cultural 'structure of feeling' somehow crystallized." (xx) In "postmodernism" he does not see the predominance of either the economic or the cultural: the terms "collapse back into one another." (xxi) This obligates us "to talk about cultural phenomena at least in business terms if not in those of political economy." (xxi) [NOTE: Hence the kind of conflation we see in John Kennedy Jr.'s magazine, George, and the effort of Haber to find a postmodern politics in the critique of culture.]

Chapter 1: THE CULTURAL LOGIC OF LATE CAPITALISM:

We summarize this chapter in an essay on Jameson's impact on THE PROGRAMME at a certain point in its evolution in mid-February 1996. It is entitled Are These Shoes Made for Dancing?

Chapter 2: THEORIES OF THE POSTMODERN

Jameson identifies four positions for a critical theory on postmodernism, all of them noteworthy by their positive or negative view of modernism and postmodernism:

(1) ANTIMODERN/PROPOSTMODERN. He cites early critics of modernism in this position, such as Ihab Hassan, Derrida and Heidegger, and Foucault. Later expressions come from Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House. (p.. 56)

(2) PROMODERN/ANTIPOSTMODERN. He cites Hilton Kramer and The New Criterion. (p. 58)

(3) ASSIMILATION OF POSTMODERN BACK INTO HIGH MODERNISM, POSITIVE. Lyotard takes this position. Postmodernism is seen to precede the resurgence of some new high modernism, turning on "the antirepresentational thrust of modernism and postmodernism." (p. 60) It involves "prophetic faith in the possibilities and promise of the new society in its full emergence." (p.60)

(4) ASSIMILATION OF POSTMODERN BACK INTO HIGH MODERNISM, NEGATIVE. Manfredo Tafuri represents this view. (p.60-61) This view sees postmodernism as a further degeneration of "the already stigmatized impulses of high modernism proper." (p.60)

Jameson positions himself against all of these dualisms because they suggest a simplistic choice of "good" vs. "evil". He thinks that a satisfactory theory of the postmodern can only emerge from a dialectical process from within the culture in question. This is consistent with his Marxist orientation. By studying a postmodern feature, he thinks we can tell something about the modern, and perhaps vice versa. That's about as far as his theorizing will go. (pp. 64-66). "An ever more rapid alternation between them [modern and postmodern analyses] can at the least help the celebratory posture or the old-fashioned fulminatory moralizing gesture from freezing into place." (p. 66)

[COMMENT: Jameson's call for a dialectic places him in the company of the old boys from Frankfurt, Adorno and Horkheimer. He locates their younger protege, Jurgen Habermas, in the promodern/antipostmodern camp. Habermas differs from Adorno and Horkheimer in his espousal of the Enlightenment values of liberalism; they saw the Enlightenment philosophes as having "a misguided will to power and domination over nature." (p. 58) Here again we sense the importance of the Frankfurt School in the movement toward a postmodern sensibility.(p. 58)]

EVALUATION, SIGNIFCANCE, AND RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER WORKS