Page 155 - Contemporary Cultural Theory

POSTMODERNISM

whereas in fact the dominant rôle of each has now become primarily
interpretive and specific. If the changing rôle and self-perception of
the Western intelligentsia is indeed itself central to the postmodernist
reorientation of cultural discourse, as Bauman argues, then the very
generality of that reorientation nonetheless bespeaks the possibility
that postmodernist culture might still have deep structural roots in
some distinctively postmodern socio-political reality, whether
characterizable as post-industrialism, consumerism, late capitalism,
or whatever.
There is some agreement as to the more characteristic features of
this new way of life: new mass media; new post-industrial technologies;
mass marketing and an increasingly affluent mass market; new systems
of fast transport and communication; some would add to the list the
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distinctly American, or at least “post-European”, character of this
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postmodern “hyper-reality”. For both liberal and conservative analysts,
the new society is essentially post-industrial, and thus by implication
post-capitalist: despite their respectively antipathetic and enthusiastic
responses to postmodernism, both Bell and Lyotard are agreed as to
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the general significance of the coming of post-industrial society. By
contrast, Jameson’s Marxism leads him to insist that this “late
capitalism” constitutes something very close to capitalism in its purest
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form. Postmodernism, Jameson argues, represents the final and full
commodification of art: “What has happened is that aesthetic
production today has become integrated into commodity production
generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of
ever more novel-seeming goods…at ever greater rates of turnover,
now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position
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to aesthetic innovation and experimentation”. Thus understood,
postmodernism is a commodity culture in a double sense: both as a
set of commodified artefacts actually available for sale in the culture
market, and as a set of texts the very textuality of which often affirms
their own commodity status. As Jameson insists, “the various
postmodernisms…all at least share a resonant affirmation, when not
an outright celebration, of the market as such”. 64
Here, it seems to me, Jameson captures much of what it is that is
truly distinctive about our contemporary culture. The more
commodified that culture has become, the less plausible the
intelligentsia’s erstwhile pretensions to legislative cultural authority
have appeared, both to themselves and to their prospective audiences.

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