Postmodernism,
or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism - In this essay, Jameson lays out the
differences in culture between the modern and postmodern periods. He also devotes a lot of
time to the effects of these changes on the individual. Jameson is concerned with the
cultural expressions and aesthetics associated with the different systems of production.
He is not interested in a mechanism of change. This is a primarily descriptive article.
Jameson draws on the fields of architecture, art and other culturally expressive forms to
illustrate his arguments. The heaviest emphasis is placed on architecture. It is essential
to grasp postmodernism as discussed here not as a style, but as a dominant cultural form
indicative of late capitalism.
spc.uchicago.edu/ssr1/PRELIMS/Strat/stadd.html#JAMESON
Limits of Postmodern Theory- The impetus
behind this paper has been the recent publication of Fredric Jameson's 1991 Welleck
Lectures, The Seeds of Time.1 As these lectures were delivered a decade after
Jameson's initial attempts to map the terrain of postmodernity it appeared to me to
provide an occasion to reflect upon the current status of Jameson's highly influential and
much criticised theory of postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism. -
shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/sihomer/limits.html
Postmodernism: What One Needs to Know
by William Grassie, for Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, March 1997.
Abstract. This essay is an introduction to postmodernism and deconstruction as they relate
to the special challenges of scholarship and teaching in the science and religion
multidiscipline. - users.voicenet.com/~grassie/Fldr.Articles/Postmodernism.html
Unacknowledged Roots and Blatant Imitation:
Postmodernism and the Dada Movement - David Locher - Dept. of Social Sciences -
Missouri Southern State College
Abstract: This paper is an attempt to stimulate thought and discourse toward postmodern
social theory. The writings of Baudrillard and Lyotard are deconstructed with a focus on
their conceptualization of the postmodern. The author argues that there really is no such
epoch as the postmodern era. Direct quotes from Baudrillard, Lyotard, and several Dadaists
are used to support these claims. This paper is not an attack on the logic or internal
consistency of postmodernism, but rather addresses the validity of claims about the unique
and original nature of postmodern thought itself. This lack of originality points to a
greater question about the validity of the concept of a postmodern era. -
sociology.org/content/vol004.001/locher.html
Postmodernism -
colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html
Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an area
of academic study since the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a
concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art,
architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology.
It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when
postmodernism begins.
Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about postmodernism is by thinking about
modernism, the movement from which postmodernism seems to grow or emerge. Modernism has
two facets, or two modes of definition, both of which are relevant to understanding
postmodernism.
Rethinking Post-Modernity: Some Lessons in
"Equal Treatment" of Capitalism and State Socialism
By Zdenek Konopasek, Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University
Contemporary social theory is untouched by truly sociological analyses of the phenomenon
of European State socialism. Theories both of postmodernity and modernity have been based
almost exclusively on studying capitalist societies in the West. State socialist societies
made themselves visible for the theoretically ambitious sociologists of the post/modern
only by their own collapse at the end of the 80s. The postmodern was approached then as
the force (of capitalist origin) that had helped to dismantle the communist regimes in the
Soviet block. According to such a stance, the postmodern is antithetical to the "real
socialism." The disappearing state socialism of Eastern Europe was suddenly
discovered as "modernity in its most determined mood and most decisive posture;
modernity streamlined, purified of the last shred of the chaotic, the irrational , the
spontaneous, the unpredictable" (Bauman). In this way, the postmodern debate helps to
retrospectively understand the state socialist (as non-postmodern).
I will offer an alternative story. In this paper I intend to show that discussing
retrospectively - state socialism might advance our understanding of the postmodern (as
non-modern, in Bruno Latour's term). First, however, we have to abandon the modernist view
of state socialism as centralized, strictly hierarchical, universalist, and
non-spontaneous social order, the very opposite of the pluralist and democratic regimes of
the postmodern era. We should trust less to political scientists and look more instead, in
a reflexive, ethnographic mood, at ordinary life under the communist regime. What we see
then is rich and active social lige proliferating under the modern-like surface:
constantly mobilized and paralyzed networks competing with each other; theoretically
impersonal and universal institutions (money, law, science, and the state) submitted in
every individual situation to the particular local and personal context; actors
emancipated from structure. We realize that although state socialist society was
officially governed by materialists and followers of objective truth, the nature of
reality has been as much practically problematized (relativized) by that social order as
never before in the history. It becomes clear that it was not the strength of the formal
state power but precisely this unvisible and unrepresented, yet commonly known (to the
insiders) operations of life in state socialized society which allowed the communist
regime to persist so long. As soon as we approach the phenomenon of former state socialism
with postmodern sensitivity it becomes clear that it in many respects resembles the
reality of disorganized capitalism in the contemporary Western societies.
Thus, with the advent of postmodern era it becomes possible to think about socialism and
capitalism symmetrically, in the same terms. Socialism and capitalism can be studied
together. Unexpected similarities and parallels emerge, once established asymmetries and
distinctions become problematic. In my view, this offers an opportunity for a more
balanced notion of the post/modern.- bsos.umd.edu/socy/conference/papers/konoabs.html
Anachronism of the Moral Sentiments? Integrity,
Post-Modernism and Justice - This is an essay about the relationship between
post-modernism and justice. My topic is the apparent disjunction between post-modernists'
moral and political intuitions on the one hand and their philosophical views and cultural
leanings on the other. Crudely put, the essay asks what we can learn from the fact that
someone who rejects the notion of "integrity" as either a psychological, moral
or textual quality, nevertheless condemns the Dean or the Senator for having "no
integrity," admires the display of principled consistency in public life or the
interpretation of the Constitution, and would characterise the difference between, say,
Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton, as the difference between a principled ascetic who would
endure jail or death for his beliefs and a pack of cut-out caricatures, reshuffled at
every shift in public opinion, held together only by an expensive suit and a set of
selfish appetites. - James Boyle - wcl.american.edu/
Contemporary Philosophy, Critical Theory and
Postmodern Thought carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/postmodern.html |