The “Culture Logic Of Late Capitalism” is a book by Fredric Jameson
which got published in 1984. Keeping in view the contemporary context Jameson has
brought forward this book having a critical discussion about Modernism and
Post-Modernism and that from a Marxist perspective. Jameson attempts to characterize the nature
of cultural production in the second half of the 20th century,
the era of late capitalism, and to distinguish it from other forms of cultural
production of preceding capitalist eras. He analyzes the works of art and
architecture categorically from what he terms "high modernism" and
postmodern works. The major stress is placed on art and architecture.
It is essential to grasp postmodernism as discussed in his book not as a style,
but as a dominant cultural form indicative of late capitalism.
He
begins his discussion by pointing out the concept of Periodisation in relation
to modernism and postmodernism. Jameson believes that it is possible to speak
of cultural modes with in a defined timeline. Nevertheless, he restricts his
periodization of postmodernism to the unbinding notion of cultural dominant
which has a degree of flexibility which still allows for other forms of
cultural production to coexist alongside it. In the book he says:
“…even if all the
constitutive features of Postmodernism were identical with and coterminous to those
of an older modernism -- a position I feel to be demonstrably erroneous but
which only an even lengthier analysis of modernism proper could dispel -- the two
phenomena would still remain utterly distinct in their meaning and social
function, owing to the very different positioning of Postmodernism in the
economic system of late capital and, beyond that, to the transformation of the
very sphere of culture in contemporary society.”
Fredric extended the work of Ernest Mandel who categorised capitalism into three distinct periods which
coincide with three stages of technological development: industrialized
manufacturing of steam engines starting from the mid 19th century,
the production of electricity and internal combustion engines since the late
90's of the 19th century and the production of electronic and
nuclear devices since the 1940's. These three technological developments match
three stages in the evolution of capitalism: the market economy stage which was
limited to the boarders of the nation state, the monopoly or imperialism stage
in which courtiers expanded their markets to other regions and the current
phase of late capitalism in which borders are no longer relevant.
Jameson
proceeds to match these stages of capitalism with three stages of cultural
production, the first stage with realism, the second with modernism and the
current third one with our present day postmodernism.
Fredric
points out a few of the theoretical issues through this book, which he
considers to be very essential part of post modernism. In order to bring
forward the difference of post modernism with modernism and for doing so
effectively he takes help from the aesthetic world including photography.
The
first point that he brings forward relates to depthlessness. According to
Jameson Postmodernist works are often characterized by a lack of depth, a
flatness. Individuals are no longer anomic, because there is nothing from which
one can sever ties. The liberation from the anxiety which characterized anomie
may also mean a liberation from every other kind of feeling as well. This is
not to say that the cultural products of the postmodern era are utterly devoid
of feeling, but rather that such feelings are now free-floating and impersonal.
Also distinctive of the late capitalist age is its focus on commodification and
the recycling of old images and commodities.
A modern painting, Jameson suggests, invites
interpretation, a hermeneutic development and completion of the world which is
beyond what is represented. In a postmodern work, to put in simply, what one sees
is what one gets, and no hermeneutic. relations will be developed with the
representation. This depthlessness is seen by Jameson as a new kind of
superficiality. Jameson strengthens his point of depthlessness by two
thematically related works: Van Gogh's "A
Pair of Shoes" which
represents high modernism and Andy Warhol's "Diamond Dust Shoes" which are obviously postmodern.
(ANDY WARHOL’S “DIAMOND DUST SHOES) (VAN GOGH’S “A PAIR OF SHOES”)
Jameson quotes Heidegger's interpretation of
Van Gogh's works as one which invites the reconstruction of a whole peasant
world and dire life and offers another possible interpretation of his own which
follows the basic notion of addressing something which is beyond the actual
shoes in the painting.
In contrast, "Diamond dust shoes"
do not "speak to us", as Jameson puts it. Different associations are
possible when looking at a Warhol's work, but they are not compelled by it nor
are they necessarily required by it. Nothing in the postmodern work allows a
lead into a hermeneutic step.
Warhol's work is therefore an example of
postmodern depthlessness because we cannot find anything which stands behind
the actual image. Warhol is of course famous for stressing the
commercialization of culture and the fetishism of commodities of late
capitalism, but the stress in not positive or negative or anything at all, it
just is. The depthlessness of cultural products raises the question of the
possibility of critical or political art in late capitalism, especially when
Jameson argues that aesthetic production today has turned into a part of the
general production of commodities.
Another important factor related to post
modern culture relates to “the wanning of affect”. For the explanation of this
factor jamesom argues that human figure is the best example. As Jameson in the
book describes:
“The
waning of affect is, however, perhaps best initially approached by way of the
human figure, and it is obvious that what we have said about the
commodification of objects holds as strongly for Warhol's human subjects: stars
-- like Marilyn Monroe -- who are themselves commodified and transformed into
their own images. And here too a certain brutal return to the older period of
high modernism offers a dramatic shorthand parable of the transformation in
question. Edward Munch's painting The
Scream is, of course, a canonical expression of the great modernist
thematics of alienation, anomie, solitude, social fragmentation, and isolation,
a virtually programmatic emblem of what used to be called the age of anxiety.
It will here be read as an embodiment not merely of the expression of that kind
of affect but, even more, as a virtual deconstruction of the very aesthetic of
expression itself, which seems to have dominated much of what we call high
modernism but to have vanished away -- for both practical and theoretical
reasons -- in the world of the postmodern.”
(WARHOL’S “MARILYN MONROE”)
(EDWARD
MUNCH’ S “THE SCREAM”)
When we look at modern painting with human
figures we will most often find in them a human expression which reflects and
inner experience, such as in Edvard Munch's "The Scream" which
epitomizes the modern experience of alienation and anxiety. In contrast,
Jameson holds to that in postmodern art feelings wane (therefore "the
waning of affect").
The
concept of expression, Jameson notes, presupposes a model of inside and
outside, a distinction between ones inner and outside world and the individual
person as a single monad. But when we look at postmodern portrait such as
Warhol's Marilyn we can hardly speak of any expression, and that is because,
Jameson holds, postmodernism rejects traditional models of the depth such as
the Freudian model of conscious and unconscious or the existential model of
authentic and unauthentic.
Another contemporary capitalistic bourgeois
notion for Jameson is the idea of the subject as a monad, individual. Jameson
notes how the crisis of alienation and anxiety gave way to the fragmentation of
subject or "death of the subject. Jameson proceeds to describe the waning
of affect through the process in which the subject has lost his active ability
to create a sense of continuity between past and future and to organize his
temporal existence into one coherent experience. This reduces his cultural
production abilities to nothing but random and eclectic "piles of
fragments"
Jameson brought forward the idea of Pastiche as one of the main characteristics of
cultural production in the age of postmodernism according to Fredric Jameson.
The existence of an autonomous subject was an essential part of artistic as
cultural production in the modern times, Jameson argues. It allowed for the
artist as subject to the address his consumer as subject and thus to affect
him. But with the waning of affect the artist's unique individuality, one a
founding principle, has been reduced in the postmodern age to a neutral and
objectifying form of communication. With the fragmentation of subjectivity and
subjectivity in a sense coming to a gloomy end, it is no longer clear what
postmodern artists and authors are supposed to do beside appealing to the past,
to the imitation of dead styles, an "empty parody" without any deep
or hidden meanings, a parody that Jameson calls pastiche.
Pastiche, like parody, is the imitation of
some unique style, but it is an empty neutral practice which lacks the
intension and "say" of parody, not satirical impulse and no
"yin" to be exposed by the "yang". The postmodern artist is
reduced to pastiche because he cannot create new aesthetic forms, he can only
copy old ones without creating any new meanings.
Pastiche leads to what is referred to in
architectural history as "historicism" which is according to Jameson
a random cannibalism of past styles. This cannibalism, pastiche, in now
apparent in all spheres of cultural production but reaches its epitome in the
global, American centered, television and Hollywood culture.
When
the past is being represent through pastiche the result is a "loss of
historicalness". The past is being represented as a glimmering mirage.
Jameson calls this type of postmodern history "pop history" – a
history founded on the pop images produces by commercial culture. One of the
manifestations of this pastiche pop history are nostalgic or retro films and
books which present the appearance of an historical account when in fact these
are only our own superficial stereotypes applied to times which are no longer
accessible to us. Jameson famously analyzes the postmodern features of the
L.A. Westin Bonaventure hotel. His main argument concerning the
Bonaventure hotel is that this building, as other postmodern architecture, does
not attempt to blend into its surroundings but to replace them. The Bonaventure
hotel attempts to be a total space, a whole world which introduces a new form
of collective behavior. Jameson sees the total space of the Bonaventure hotel
as an allegory of the new hyper-space of global market which is dominated by
the corporations of late capitalism.
Depthlessness,
pastiche, the fragmentation of the subject and other characteristics of
postmodern culture introduced by Fredric Jameson (see previous parts of the
summary) strongly question the notion of "high culture" as opposed to
popular culture. Jameson notes how boundaries between high and low culture have
been transgressed in postmodern times with kitsch and popular culture
integrating with forms of high culture to produce one big varied consumer
culture.
Postmodernism
according to Jameson is an historical situation, and therefore it will be wrong
to assess it in terms of moral judgments. Jameson proposes to treat
postmodernism in line with Marx's thought which asks us to "do the
impossible" of seeing something as negative and positive at the same time,
accepting something without surrendering judgment and allowing ourselves to
grasp this new historical form.
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