Fiedler celebrated the postmodern at a CIA-funded conference

Evidence

Half-way through the decade the critic Leslie Fiedler, temperamental antithesis of Levin, addressed a conference sponsored by the Congress of Cultural Freedom, set up by the CIA for work on the intellectual front of the Cold War. In this unlikely setting, he celebrated the emergence of a new sensibility among the younger generation in America, who were ‘drop-outs from history’ — cultural mutants whose values of nonchalance and disconnexion, hallucinogens and civil rights, were finding welcome expression in a fresh postmodern literature. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 27

Categorization

• SEED: The irony of the CIA bankrolling what became the demotic, depoliticized celebration of the postmodern is a rich essay angle on how Cold War institutions shaped cultural theory.
• XREF: Resonates with the book’s reading purpose on the political fortunes of the term — echoes documents about covert cultural-front funding.