Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic Of Late Capitalism

In his most wide-ranging and accessible work, Fredric Jameson argues that postmodernism is the cultural response to the latest systemic change in world capitalism. He seeks here to crystallize a definition of a term which has taken on so many meanings that it has virtually lost all historical significance. He presents an extensive discussion on the cultural landscape-both 'high' and 'low'-of postmodernity, evaluating the political fortunes of the new term and surveying postmodern developments in a range of different fields-from market ideology to architecture, from painting and instalment art to contemporary punk film, from video art and high literature to deconstruction. Finally, Jameson revaluates the concept of postmodernism in light of postmodern critiques of totalization and historical narratives-from the notion of decadence to the dynamics of small groups, from religious fundamentalism to hi-tech science fiction-while touching on the nature of contemporary cultural critique and the possibilities of cognitive mapping in the present multinational world system. This provocative book will be fundamental to all future discussions of postmodernism. Review: Fredric Jameson is America's leading Marxist critic, a prodigiously energetic thinker whose writings sweep magisterially from Sophocles to science fiction...Postmodernism is a intellectual blockbuster ... a timely riposte to fashionable leftist pessimism as much as it is an intellectual feast. -- Terry Eagleton * Irish Times * For anybody hoping to understand not just the cultural but the political and social implications of postmodernism...Jameson's book is a fundamental, nonparaeil text. * Sunday Times * The scope and profundity of Postmodernism, covering theory, architecture, film, video and economics, is truly staggering...Brilliant. * Independent * Author Biography: Fredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. The author of numerous books, he has over the last three decades developed a richly nuanced vision of Western culture's relation to political economy. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. He is the author of many books, including Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The Cultural Turn, A Singular Modernity, The Modernist Papers, Archaeologies of the Future, Brecht and Method, Ideologies of Theory, Valences of the Dialectic, The Hegel Variations and Representing Capital.