Reviews
Το μεταμοντέρνο ή Η πολιτισμική λογική του ύστερου καπιταλισμού, by Χάρης Βλαβιανός, Fredric Jameson
altruest's review against another edition
4.0
So I super didn't read this book, I read the 40 page article it was based on but it was a lot of work so I'm logging it lol. The essay was a really interesting look into a world of culture criticism that I've never really been exposed to before, I understand maybe 30% of it but I had a good time.
4/5 stars
4/5 stars
casparb's review against another edition
4.0
O it's complicated but also written with a good deal of discipline so the technical language isn't so overpowering.
I'm not really sure how to talk about this book. It really seems to cover everything. It's also (deceptively) a mammoth - the conclusion alone is about 120 pages. But there are excellent teaching points here too. I learnt plenty about architecture and Paul DeMan and the 18th century and the nouveau roman.
It's a little difficult to pin down the philosophical approach here - there seems to be more of a debt to Deleuze than Jameson seems willing to admit, perhaps because of his Hegelian allegiances. I don't know. But the thought-approaches are excellent so I highly recommend this for that if nothing else.
I think I was tempted to do 5 star but it would seem I have not. :)
I'm not really sure how to talk about this book. It really seems to cover everything. It's also (deceptively) a mammoth - the conclusion alone is about 120 pages. But there are excellent teaching points here too. I learnt plenty about architecture and Paul DeMan and the 18th century and the nouveau roman.
It's a little difficult to pin down the philosophical approach here - there seems to be more of a debt to Deleuze than Jameson seems willing to admit, perhaps because of his Hegelian allegiances. I don't know. But the thought-approaches are excellent so I highly recommend this for that if nothing else.
I think I was tempted to do 5 star but it would seem I have not. :)
promisedlands's review against another edition
i did not actually finish this but it finished me so it’s going towards my goodreads goal. I am NOT taking questions at this time
variouslilies's review against another edition
Fredric Jameson may be the biggest name in American contemporary Marxist cultural theory, with a heavy catalogue of theoretical work. Jameson has a reputation in being a challenging author, and I did find his style of writing convoluted and complex at times. However, the core themes of what he proposes in this book are intriguing enough to warrant wading through the heavy prose and subject matter.
What Jameson tries to do in this book [which is based on a long essay he wrote in 1982] is to carve out the historical niche of the current cultural moment, by analyzing the ways in which contemporary culture has gone under major shifts. Through this effort, Jameson grounds postmodernism by treating it as a historically contingent phenomenon, emerging in a specific context, and open to be diagnosed and described: The emerging logic of late capitalism. This historically materialist approach is one that chips away a lot of the confusions around what postmodernism is and how it can be studied. His approach can be identified through this short paragraph from the book:
Jameson borrows various categorization of capitalism’s modes of production and expansion from Marxist thinkers and superimposes the cultural implications on them. For him, the late capitalism is not the capitalism that is about to die, but capitalism as of late, in its expanded and accelerated state, having permeated every aspect of our lives. This expansion itself is something he presses on further in the book, touching on phenomena such as commodification of various forms of culture and art in late capitalism.
Jameson goes on to extensively explore the characteristics of postmodernity and how these characteristics manifest in culture, by drawing various examples from postmodern works of art and literature and how they differ from high modernist and modernist works of art. A wealth of such works are mentioned, by the way, and gradually getting familiar with them while you read the book can greatly assist in understanding Jameson's points and interpretations.
This book is highly interesting, stimulating and influential. If you are not familiar with Jameson and his work, it might surprise you just how many pieces of artistic and literary criticism you have encountered in the last two decades have been directly and indirectly influenced by his work. Particularly in tandem with Mark Fisher's books (and preferably read prior to picking up Fisher; Since Fisher applies Jameson's lens to later stages of capitalism's expansion and 21st century), it has so many interesting observations and vital theories to offer about our current state of living within postmodern culture.
What Jameson tries to do in this book [which is based on a long essay he wrote in 1982] is to carve out the historical niche of the current cultural moment, by analyzing the ways in which contemporary culture has gone under major shifts. Through this effort, Jameson grounds postmodernism by treating it as a historically contingent phenomenon, emerging in a specific context, and open to be diagnosed and described: The emerging logic of late capitalism. This historically materialist approach is one that chips away a lot of the confusions around what postmodernism is and how it can be studied. His approach can be identified through this short paragraph from the book:
The conception of Postmodernism outlined here is a historical rather than a merely stylistic one. I cannot stress too greatly the radical distinction between a view for which the postmodern is one (optional) style among many others available and one which seeks to grasp it as the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism: the two approaches in fact generate two very different ways of conceptualizing the phenomenon as a whole: on the one hand, moral judgments (about which it is indifferent whether they are positive or negative), and, on the other, a genuinely dialectical attempt to think our present of time in History.
Jameson borrows various categorization of capitalism’s modes of production and expansion from Marxist thinkers and superimposes the cultural implications on them. For him, the late capitalism is not the capitalism that is about to die, but capitalism as of late, in its expanded and accelerated state, having permeated every aspect of our lives. This expansion itself is something he presses on further in the book, touching on phenomena such as commodification of various forms of culture and art in late capitalism.
...what we have been calling postmodern (or multinational) space is not merely a cultural ideology or fantasy but has genuine historical (and socioeconomic) reality as a third great original expansion of capitalism around the globe (after the earlier expansions of the national market and the older imperialist system, which each had their own cultural specificity and generated new types of space appropriate to their dynamics).
Jameson goes on to extensively explore the characteristics of postmodernity and how these characteristics manifest in culture, by drawing various examples from postmodern works of art and literature and how they differ from high modernist and modernist works of art. A wealth of such works are mentioned, by the way, and gradually getting familiar with them while you read the book can greatly assist in understanding Jameson's points and interpretations.
This book is highly interesting, stimulating and influential. If you are not familiar with Jameson and his work, it might surprise you just how many pieces of artistic and literary criticism you have encountered in the last two decades have been directly and indirectly influenced by his work. Particularly in tandem with Mark Fisher's books (and preferably read prior to picking up Fisher; Since Fisher applies Jameson's lens to later stages of capitalism's expansion and 21st century), it has so many interesting observations and vital theories to offer about our current state of living within postmodern culture.
heavenlypit's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
snowwhitehatesapples's review against another edition
2.0
I picked up this book because I've a module on postmodernist literature and I find postmodernism in itself fascinating. What I didn't expect is an incredibly dense collection of essays that 1/4 bored me to tears, 3/4 gave me a migraine while trying to decipher the text even with my understanding of the other theories, concepts, etc. referred here. Even so, it can be said that Jameson's arguments and ideas are interesting and compelling (it certainly does give one a solid perspective to look at postmodernism!) but the amount of time, patience and the constant rereading made it less enjoyable for me.
dubiousdeeds's review against another edition
4.0
Two heads-up warnings to people reading this:
1) this is at least 50% essays which were released elsewhere before and thus not always coherent
2) Jameson quotes a lot (Althusser, Adorno and Horkheimer, Kant, Williams, Sartre, Marx, Hegel, Heidegger, Gramsci, Laclau and Moffe, Benjamin, Lacan, Derrida, Barthes, Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault etc.) and often only touches on what he refers to which occasionally leaves the reader that isn't familiar with the lot of philosophy since the 18th century with the refreshing feeling of swimming in open water.
That being said, when this book is good (like in the Culture, Economics, Film chapters and the conclusion) it is really good, evolves some great ideas about culture and thinking and constantly proposes ideas which will stay with the reader.
1) this is at least 50% essays which were released elsewhere before and thus not always coherent
2) Jameson quotes a lot (Althusser, Adorno and Horkheimer, Kant, Williams, Sartre, Marx, Hegel, Heidegger, Gramsci, Laclau and Moffe, Benjamin, Lacan, Derrida, Barthes, Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault etc.) and often only touches on what he refers to which occasionally leaves the reader that isn't familiar with the lot of philosophy since the 18th century with the refreshing feeling of swimming in open water.
That being said, when this book is good (like in the Culture, Economics, Film chapters and the conclusion) it is really good, evolves some great ideas about culture and thinking and constantly proposes ideas which will stay with the reader.
noahregained's review against another edition
3.0
maybe I haven't read Adorno in a minute, but there are some really staggeringly unhelpful sentences in this joint. "The postmodern thus invites us to indulge a somber mockery of historicity in general, wherein the effort at self-consciousness with which our own situation somehow completes the act of historical understanding, repeats itself drearily as in the worst kind of dreams, and juxtaposes, to its own pertinent philosophical repudiation of the very concept of self-consciousness, a grotesque carnival of the latter's various replays."
I'm starting to think that you can sensibly pull any statement about anything from the maelstrom that gets called the "postmodernist debate."
I'm starting to think that you can sensibly pull any statement about anything from the maelstrom that gets called the "postmodernist debate."