Every major early theorist of postmodernity either lamented or celebrated it
Evidence
The antithetical judgements of Levin and Fiedler, the late Hassan and Jencks, Habermas and Lyotard, offer a set pattern. From a range of distinct political standpoints, the critic could either lament the advent of the postmodern as a corruption of the modern, or celebrate it as an emancipation. Very early on âsoon after his Whitney lecture â Jameson mapped out an ingenious combinatory of such oppositions in âTheories of the Postmodernâ, reproduced in The Cultural Turn. The purpose of his exercise was to point the way out of this closed, repetitive space. Jamesonâs own political commitments were well to the left of any of the figures charted within it. He alone had firmly identified postmodernism with a new stage of capitalism, understood in classical Marxist terms. But mere excoriation was no more fruitful than adhesion. Another kind of purchase was needed. â Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 168
Categorization
- STORYSTEM: The combinatory-matrix structureâevaluating a cultural shift along lament/celebrate and left/right axesâcould seed a narrative device for mapping any ideological debate.
- XREF: connects to: Postmodern theorists collapsed analysis of new trends into celebration of them.