Expansion of capital and demography dilutes inherited culture into a lower postmodern level.
Evidence
The authority of the past, constantly dwindling under pressures of economic innovation in the First World, sinks in another way with demographic explosion in the Third World, as fresh generations of the living come to outnumber all the legions of the dead. This expansion of the bounds of capital inevitably dilutes its stocks of inherited culture. The result is a characteristic drop in ‘level’ with the postmodern. The culture of modernism was inescapably elitist: produced by isolated exiles, disaffected minorities, intransigent vanguards. An art cast in heroic mould, it was constitutively oppositional: not simply flouting conventions of taste, but more significantly, defying the solicitations of the market. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 165
Categorization
- XREF: The ‘drop in level’ and modernism-as-oppositional theme connects to Jameson’s periodization claims and this reader’s chapter on cultural shifts. — connects to: Toynbee dated the postmodern age from industrialism breaking the bounds of nationality. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 12; Postmodernism erases the high culture versus mass culture boundary. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 38; Culture’s dissolution means total expansion, not its disappearance — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 157 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Culture’s dissolution means total expansion, not its disappearance
#expands(0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 157 - Postmodernism erases the high culture versus mass culture boundary.
#complicates(0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 38 - Postmodernism marks a fundamental mutation of culture’s social function
#corroborates(0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 156 - Cultural forms are causally rooted in the daily circulation of capital.
#expands(0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1888 - Culture as shared meaning-making became democratized rather than elite civilization.
#qualifies(0.72)