American criticism’s anti-market stance descends from the genteel tradition unchanged

Evidence

Which makes it all the more striking that they do not finally dissent from the genteel/Progressive view of important works of art as in some sense transcending or opposing the market. My further point here is that American literary criticism (even more than American cultural history) has customarily understood itself and the objects of its admiration as being opposed to consumer culture — and, with a few exceptions, continues to do so. No doubt the newly politicized proponents of “oppositional” criticism would reject this assimilation of their work to the genteel tradition. But transforming the moral handwringing of the fifties and sixties first into the epistemological handwringing of the seventies and now into the political handwringing of the eighties does not seem to be much of an advance. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 461

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s challenge of whether ‘oppositional’ criticism escapes the genteel/Progressive frame — directly tests the ‘cultural dominant is inescapable’ thesis with a concrete case.