pomo...cultural logic of late capitalism

[abner e nolan]

This is a request for opinions, insights, ect. into an
article by Frederic Jameson (Postmodernism, or The Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism: New Left Review 146, 1984).
"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 (from clothing to airplanes), at
ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly
essential structural function and position to aesthetic
innovation and experimentation." What is a simple "cultural
worker" to do in the chew em' up and spit em' out world of
multinational capitalism?

Intrested in anyone wanting to contribute to dialogue on
the Jameson article or anything related.

[Gordon Fitch]

anol...@solix.fiu.edu (abner e nolan):

| This is a request for opinions, insights, ect. into an
| article by Frederic Jameson (Postmodernism, or The Cultural
| Logic of Late Capitalism: New Left Review 146, 1984).
| "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 (from clothing to airplanes), at
| ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly
| essential structural function and position to aesthetic
| innovation and experimentation." What is a simple "cultural
| worker" to do in the chew em' up and spit em' out world of

| multinational capitalism? ...

It seems to me this has been true since the late 19th
century. Hence, the great emphasis placed on "originality"
in that and subsequent periods. As Allen Ginsberg said,
the poem is supposed to be "butchered out of the heart of
the poet, good to eat for a thousand years." However, when
I walk around Soho and look in the galleries, it seems to
me that techniques to provide artificial hearts have been
developed pretty well.
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><

[PR...@cunyvm.cuny.edu]

In article <39pa8o$n...@panix.com>, g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) says:
>
>....As Allen Ginsberg said,

>the poem is supposed to be "butchered out of the heart of
>the poet, good to eat for a thousand years." However, when
>I walk around Soho and look in the galleries, it seems to
>me that techniques to provide artificial hearts have been
>developed pretty well.
>--

Maybe... but the artificial ones still have a long way to go.
It is still a piece-o-cake to tell them apart... especially to
those who have to use them.

[KEFA...@ulkyvm.louisville.edu]

In article <39o522$r...@newshost.fiu.edu>

anol...@solix.fiu.edu (abner e nolan) writes:

>
>This is a request for opinions, insights, ect. into an
>article by Frederic Jameson (Postmodernism, or The Cultural
>Logic of Late Capitalism: New Left Review 146, 1984).
>"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 (from clothing to airplanes), at
>ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly
>essential structural function and position to aesthetic
>innovation and experimentation." What is a simple "cultural
>worker" to do in the chew em' up and spit em' out world of
>multinational capitalism?

I don't know, please elaborate on what you mean with "cultural worker."

>
>Intrested in anyone wanting to contribute to dialogue on
>the Jameson article or anything related.

You might be interested in knowing that a collection of Jameson's articles have
been put together and published under the same heading as the above article.
Also, if you find Jameson interesting, you might wish to check out *The Dialect
ic of Enlightenment* by Horkheimer and Adorno--two writers of the Frankfurt Sch
ool who critique capitalism and it's cultural ramifications, while critiquing
more generally the consequences of the "enlightenment", as only they could.



K.

[Lois Shawver]

abner e nolan (anol...@solix.fiu.edu) wrote:
: What is a simple "cultural

: worker" to do in the chew em' up and spit em' out world of
: multinational capitalism?

Are you looking for a prescription from postmodernism as to what you
'should do' (as a good postmodern)? If you are in a postmodern mood, you
will look into yourself and find the voice as to what you want to do,
then have the courage to speak and let other voices weave their text
around yours. If this postmodern process enables you to act in some way
other than to speak, then that will be in the name of your force as a
personality, not as a postmodern.

But, postmoderns are sometimes modern. Sometimes we fold our conflicted
minds in this intertextual postmodern cloth, but sometimes we pull ourselves
together into real people who wear our personalities like costumes
out into public settings where we sit having coffee with each other,
smiling, telling jokes

"Knock, knock."

Who's there?

A pomo.

Pomo who?

[KEFA...@ulkyvm.louisville.edu]

In article <39o522$r...@newshost.fiu.edu>
anol...@solix.fiu.edu (abner e nolan) writes:

>

A passage relative, I think, is this from _The NAture and Logic of Capitalism_,
Heilbroner, Robert L., 1985:

"One further issue requires our attention before leaving the immense subje
ct of "culture"as ideology. This brings us back to the problem of the impact o
f the regime of capital on the commodification of life--the systematic search f
or aspects of daily existence that can be incorprated within the M-C-M [money-c
ommodity-money, Marx] circuit. This aspect of capitalist culture has been so w
idely noted and deplored that it seems unecessary to add to the many critical w
ords that have already been written. I would note instead another consequence
of commodification that affects the culture of capitalism in ways that are more
benign, though perhaps ultimately more destructive. This is the tendency of t
he regime of capital to regard *ideas* as commodities, so that it becomes a cha
racteristic of bourgeois culture that the most outrageous--indeed, even overtly
subversive--books, games, motion pictures, art, or even style can quickly becom
e absorbed ("coopted") by the system.
There is, of course, a countertrend to this commercially motivated acquies
ence in, or indifference to, ideas. A general suspicion of, or self-imposed ce
nsorship of, anti-capitalist views provides a considerable degree of protection
for the system, the power of capital serving as the same indirect source of di
scipline in the ideolodical world as it does in the allocation of scarce resour
ces. Nonetheless, no social formation is without its means of self-defense aga
inst hostile or subversive ideas. What is striking about capitalism is the wil
lingness to accept potentially subversive influences once they are denatured by
becoming commodities. Thus anti-capitalist or anti-bourgeois books become
"best-sellers"; essentially critical games such as Monopoly or even Class Strug
gle are sold with much the same indifference to their content as Parcheesi; Ant
i-establishment motion pictures are promotedwith the same zest as films of econ
omic piety, providing they have box-office appeal; anti-bourgeois art or styles
--the fad for working-men's clothes, for instance--are eagerly embraced as succ
esful items for merchandising without the smallest awareness of, or concern for
, their symbolic rejection of the values of the larger culture.
All this, of course, is part of the extraordinary richness and creativity
of capitalist culture. At the same time it is necessary to comment on two aspe
cts of this cultural face of capitalism. The first is that the extraordinary
tolerance for heretical, skeptical, or disconcerting thought and cultural activ
ity is a direct consequence of the desacralization we have emphasized as the ce
ntral characteristic of capitalist ideology. It should be noted, for instance,
that in general the tolerance for subversive thought is much greater within th
e sphere of capital itself than in the realm of government. *Lese majeste* rem
ains a legal offense, but *lese capitale* has not yet become one.
Second, it is only *because* ideas are commodities that they can be so lig
htly and indifferently regarded. A culture based on sacred beliefs would have
great difficulty in tolerating continuous threats to the validity and sanctity
of its world view. As I have written elsewhere, this poses serious for those w
ho believe that "socialism" will be naturally compatible with the intellectual
freedom that is capitalism's remarkable achievement--an achievement whose basis
is, I think, a devotion not to John Stuart Mill's faith in liberty but rather t
o the all-to-revealing depiction of the contest of thoughts as a *marketplace*
of ideas. I do not wish to ally myself with those who equate capitalism with e
nlightenment, or socialism in whatever form as inseperable from intellectual re
pression: the realities ar emore complicated than that. But it is important to
reflect on the cushioning protection afforded to intellectual life under capita
lism precisely because it is in its nature that it develops a complex ideologic
al system; and it is necessary as well to ponder the form in which a more ideol
ogiacally unified society would cope with intellectual dissent.
This absortive capacity of capitalism is, however, also a weakness for the
system. The ceaseless outpouring of commodified culture, the cacaphony of ten
thousand books, magazines, and television impressions is in the end a recipe fo
r confusion rather than enlightenment. Where Whirl is king, anarchy is ruler.
Capitalism's view of its own existence, unlike that of all other social formati
ons, lacks the basis of religious certaint, the granite in which other world vi
ews are imprisoned but on which they can build with utter confidence. If scien
ce is capitalism's closest substitute for a religious underpinning for its hist
oric life history, it is also the fact that science ia at its core only a gener
al method, itself in a consant state of flux.
The ideological aspect of the culture of capitalism, then, is not merely t
he imprint that the imperatives of capital leave on its productions. Rather, i
n parallel to the narrowness of the capitalist economic vision, and of its poli
tical conceptions, what is notable about its cultural outlook is the compressio
n of the realm of culture itself. It is part of the nature of capitalism that
the circuit of capital has no intrinsic moral dimension, no vision of art or id
ea aside from the commodity form in which it is embodied. In this setting, ide
as thrive but morality languishes, and the regime of capital becomes the breedi
ng ground for an explosion of ideational and esthetic creations that conceal be
neath their brilliance the absence of an organizing moral force (137-140)."