READING
NOTES from Fredric Jameson. "Notes on
Globalization as a Philosophical Issue." Fredric
Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, Eds. THE
CULTURES OF GLOBALIZATION. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1999, pp. 54-77.
1. There are
four possible positions on globalization:
A. No such
thing.
B. There
always has been globalization back to neolithic
times--nothing new.
C. It is the
world market, the ultimate horizon of capitalism.
D. It is a
new or third, multinational stage of capitalism,
with globalization as an intrinsic feature,
associated with postmodernity. (54) This is the
position Jameson assumes.
2. What is the
concept or "ideological structure" of
globalization?
A. It is a
"communicational concept" (55) that
becomes "a kind of message about a new world
culture." (56) This concept gives rise to a
celebration of "difference &
differentiation: (56), "cultural
pluralism" (57).
B. It is an
economic concept (a transformation of the
communicational concept) that gives "a
vision of the world market and its newfound
interdependence, a global divison of labor on an
extraordinary scale, new electronic trade routes
tirelessly plied by commerce and finance
alike." (56) This concept gives rise to
"increasing identity" rather than
difference, assimilation of local markets
"into a single sphere" . (57)
Standardization, forced integration,
world-system. (57)
C. Jameson
suggests that these positions can be
transferred--"you can project their axes
upon each other." He means that you can
transfer the first concept onto the second and
vice versa: "worldwide Americanization of
culture", "destruction of local
differeinces", "massification of all
the peoples on the planet." (57) Or,
"richness and excitement of the new free
market all over the world." (58)
3. Jameson now
sets out to explore a few paths that follow from the
structural possibilities created by these two
positions and the transfers between them. (58) They
include:
A.
"Globalization means the export and import
of culture." (58) American pop culture
especially, which is not symmetrical with other
cultures because of its world dominance. (59)
(B. He then
parenthetically reviews the significance of the
Gatt and Nafta agreements because they undermine
the quotas of other countries on American
cultural products. This is cultural globalization
moving in the guise of free economic trade.
[60-61])
C. The
globalization of American culture, facilitated by
the doctrine of economic free trade, releases our
most destructive force on the different cultures
left in the world, namely, consumerism.
(64)
D. Some now
celebrate globalization as postmodern culture.
This culture has left behind the old opposition
in colonialist times between Westernizers and
tranditionalists. (66) They can celebrate the
freedoms that have come from the
"proliferation of differences"
(paradoxically coexistent with the hegemonic
standardization process induced by American
consumerism). (66)
--Jameson
cites (without agreeing with) Nestor Garcia
Canclini's celebratory vision: "an immense
global urban intercultural festival without a
center or even...a dominant cultural mode."
(66)
--He rejects
Japan and Europe as candidates to create counter
culture that would compete with American. (67-8)
E. The
identification of globalization with the market
as such leads to "inner conceptual
contradictions". (68)
--He
criticizes the Hayek idea that free enterprise
and political democracy are inseparable. (68)
--He doubts
that non-American cultural production, as in
Brazilian music, can successfully resist the
economic power of globalizing American culture.
(70)
--He offers
the example of a new musical culture of
postmodernity overcoming the
"subalternities" of minorities in
Britain, leading to political unity. (71) But it
is the unity of the racist state.
--He discusses the
dialectic oppositions of Identity and Difference
in revolutionary situations in Latin
America--"with the specific content of unity
versus multiplicity." (73) Then he offers an
hypothesis about this: "these differences do
not have to do with Difference so much as with
where it is located or positioned." (74) He
plays with Difference and Identity in high or low
political places, which can adapt to support
Difference or Identity in a globalized context
depending on where it is and what the conditions
locally are (I think). (74)
4. SUMMATION.
Jameson says he has been trying to emphasize that we
will theorize and understand globalization only if we
use Hegelian categories, "the modes and forms of
thought in which we inescapably have to think things
through, but which have a logic of their own to which
we ourselves fall victim if we are unaware of their
existence and their in-forming influence on us."
(75)
--Then he
riffs on Hegel's handling of Identity and
Difference, the two categories Jameson has been
examining above. (75-6) They are "an
inseparable Opposition...they must always be
thought together." (76)
Index of
Hegel pieces in rpr/WORKS:
Reading notes: ADVENTURES
OF THE WORLD-SPIRIT RISING In The
Philosophy of History, G. W.
F. Hegel gave us one of modernity's grand
narratives, and it is summarized here.
(12 February 2001)
HEGELIAN
OPPOSITIONS HELP EXPLAIN GLOBALIZATION. Fredric Jameson.
"Notes on Globalization as a
Philosophical Issue." Fredric
Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, Eds. THE
CULTURES OF GLOBALIZATION. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1999, pp.
54-77. (19 November 2000)
ARTIFACTS
FROM THE HEGEL DIG A reading of
Hegel's Preface
becomes an archaeological search for the
shapes of modern consciousness. (26 June
2000)
I, MYSELF,
ACCORDING TO HEGEL Alexandre
Kojeve's lectures on Hegel are synopsized
in the form of an imaginary telling to
the folk around the fire. (19 February
2000) A quote from
Kojeve keynotes rpr/WORKS.
And
Hegel's ideas are at play also in the
following:
DO INTERNAL
DISUNITIES IMPERIL EMPIRES MODERN AS WELL
AS ANCIENT? Michael Grant's
revisit to Gibbon's great text makes one
wonder about 1976 CE as well as 476 CE.
(17 December 2000)
THE FINITE
SPACE OF THE GLOBE HOLDS THE KEY TO THE
HUMAN STORY The daring
thought of the Jesuit paleontologist,
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, converges
with the postmodern theories of Fredric
Jameson. (17 July 2000)
|
19 November 2000; modified 18 March 2001 Copyright © 2001 Richard P.
Richter
