Jameson’s totalization occupies the role the avant-garde once held

Evidence

In the epoch of modernism, revolutionary art generated its own descriptions of the time or intimations of the future, while for the most part its practices were viewed sceptically, or at best selectively, by political or philosophical thinkers of the left. Trotsky’s coolness to futurism, Lukács’s resistance to Brechtian Verfremdung, Adorno’s aversion to surrealism, were characteristic of that conjuncture. In the period of postmodernism, there has been a reversal of roles. Radical strands in the arts, reclaiming or developing legacies of the avant-gardes, have not been lacking. But no doubt in part because of the disorienting coexistence of the citra-modern, of which there was no earlier equivalent, this ‘ultra-modernist’ culture has not produced any confident account of the age, or sense of its general direction. That has been the achievement of Jameson’s theory of the postmodern. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 278

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the Jameson debate framing the reader’s purpose; the avant-garde-to-totalizer migration is a periodization claim central to that dispute. — connects to: Jameson’s three-fold stance divides taste, analysis, and political evaluation of art — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 300; Postmodernism functions for Jameson as a cultural dominant marked by depthless pastiche. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 484; The avant-garde is absorbed and neutralized as entertainment by advanced industrial society — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 319
• SEED: An essay angle: how the theoretical function of the avant-garde migrated to criticism itself once capitalist complacency foreclosed cultural revolution.

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism functions for Jameson as a cultural dominant marked by depthless pastiche. #expands (0.85) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 484
• The avant-garde is absorbed and neutralized as entertainment by advanced industrial society #corroborates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 319