Jameson’s postmodernism theory is the culminating synthesis of Western Marxism.

Evidence

It is this verdict Jameson’s work has so perfectly belied. His theorization of postmodernism, starting in the early eighties, takes its place among the great intellectual monuments of Western Marxism. Indeed, one could say that here this tradition reached its culmination. Arising once again from an experience of political defeat — the quelling of the turmoil of the sixties —and developing in critical contact with new styles of thought —structuralist, deconstructive, neo-historicist — far from Marxism, Jameson’s work on the postmodern has answered to the same basic coordinates as the classic texts of the past. But if in that sense it is the continuation of a series, it is also a recapitulation of the set at a second level. For here different instruments and themes from the repertoire of Western Marxism are blended in a formidable synthesis. From Lukács, Jameson took his commitment to periodization and fascination with narrative; from Bloch, a respect for the hopes and dreams hidden in a tarnished object-world; from Sartre, an exceptional fluency with the textures of immediate experience; from Lefebvre, the curiosity about urban space; from Marcuse, pursuit of the trail of high-tech consumption; from Althusser, a positive conception of ideology, as a necessary social imaginary; from Adorno, the ambition to represent the totality of his object as nothing less than a ‘metaphorical composition’. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 178

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The synthesis account maps Jameson’s whole theoretical inheritance debt-by-debt — foundational for any reader of Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic.
• XREF: Directly frames Jameson’s methodological synthesis as the payoff of this intellectual lineage — central to understanding his periodization. — connects to: Jameson’s first two major books reconstructed both Western Marxism and structuralist linguistics — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 139; Western Marxism’s central concern was the aesthetics of developed capitalist culture. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 175

Broader Connections

• Western Marxism’s central concern was the aesthetics of developed capitalist culture. #expands (0.85) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 175