Literary Theory

Series 1; Handout #14

Jean-Francois Lyotard (1925-1998): French, starts out as a Marxist; called “young conservative” by Habermas because he opposes universalist approaches to emancipation; consequently, he defines postmodernism as “demise of grand narratives.”

“Defining the Postmodern” (1986): modernism had a universal, utopian vision—Le Corbusier’s “City of Tomorrow” and Urban Renewal under Robert Moses were not unrelated to the architecture of the Third Reich (See Triumph of the Will); After Auschwitz, no one can belief in a unified vision of progress; consider the mass demolition of housing projects that replaced vibrant old urban neighborhoods with relatively safe street cultures. The postmodern is the loss of faith in any single vision of “Progress,” if there is such a thing. (This also means the decline of the literary “avant-garde.”)

Frederic Jameson (1934-): American (Yale); drew on Marxism in 1960s when identity-based political movements were more dominant; famous for “Always Historicize!” war cry against New Criticism; but his contextualization is explicitly ideological, that is, Marxist.

“Postmodernism and Consumer Society” (1991): expands ideological criticism to film, art, architecture and so on; defines postmodernism as “reaction against high modernism” and the breakdown of the distinction between “high culture and so-called mass or popular culture.” As a Marxist, he sees postmodernism as expression of the “newly emergent order of late capitalism” in its consumerist, postindustrial, and multinational forms. Nothing offends the bourgeoisie; all is converted into consumer culture; high modern avant-gardism is an anachronism when all is permitted. Late-capitalism (consumer-capitalism) has become impossible to subvert: “Resistance is future. You will be assimilated [into freedom].”

Postmodernism for Jameson is characterized by the following:

1. Pastiche: not parody (which is not possible without a shared culture) so much as reference, borrowing; consider Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972); Andy Warhol and Pop Art. Pastiche is “blank parody” (without ideological focus?)

2. The Death of Subject: individualism is no longer possible; it was an outgrowth of the old bourgeois capitalist culture that has been replaced by consumer capitalism (if the former ever existed). We buy our uniqueness ready-made.

3. Nostalgia Mode: Simulation of the past: Consider American Graffiti (1973), Star Wars (1975); we cannot conceive of an authentic way of life in the present. These films often reflect consumerist modes through representation of specific artifacts, which have a metonymic function (an old time radio puts us in 1930s mode).

3. Hyperspace: considers the Bonaventure Hotel (1977) as instance of disorienting qualities of postmodern architecture: “transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world.” What would he think of Frank Gehry’s recent work?