This Tuesday, we will be
discussing Frederic Jameson’s “The Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism”. It was quite the interesting read. In my opinion, Jameson’s
writing is not as easy comprehend as other theorists. I had to pause and reread
passages several times to understand the message he was trying to convey. Nevertheless,
I was able to pull some interesting ideas out the excerpt for discussion.
The first Jameson quote reads "frantic
economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming
goods" (409). Whenever I see a theorist criticizing hyper-consumerism,
I am immediately reminded of our Habermas reading. Like Habermas, Jameson seems
to be describing “the cult of the new”. In
our current state of of late-stage capitalism, consumerism is at an all time
high. Companies are under immense amounts of pressure to keep up with the manufactured
demand. The production of goods at this scale can best be seen in the fashion
industry. Like we have discussed in class, fashion used to have four seasons to
correspond with the seasons of nature. Now, we have new clothing drops every
week. A key detail I noticed was the phrasing Jameson used. He used the term “novel-seeming”
when describing the goods. These goods being produced are all variations of
things the public has seen before. As Walter Benjamin would say, these goods
are not the original.
Finally,
the most fascinating quote I found from Jameson was about the gap between
modernism and postmodernism. Schizophrenic, he called it. It was "the
breakdown of the signifying chain" (419). I am still wrapping my
head around this concept, but I believe I have found meaning. By comparing the transition
from modernism and postmodernism to schizophrenia, Jameson is emphasizing the
bold contrast between the two. Bipolar would have indicated a switch back. As
we know, there is no return to modernism. The era following postmodernism is
said to be post-postmodernism, but whether we have reached that point yet is
still up for debate.
No comments:
Post a Comment