Modernism gained hegemony by repressing naturalism, which now returns in postmodern form.

Evidence

Meanwhile, the aesthetic consequences of the debate over nature, gold, and authenticity are also central and find their expression in the (equally postcontemporary and canonical) critiques of representation as such, which resurface here in the few brilliant pages on trompe l’oeil where Michaels uses and undermines Greenberg’s conception of the modern all at once: “The painting that can represent nothing and still remain a painting is ‘money itself,’ and the modernist (or, perhaps, literalist) aesthetic of freedom from representation is a goldbug aesthetic” (GS165). … This is an ungrateful way of treating one’s allies, but it underscores the problematic position of modernism at the present time. The ideology of the modern achieved its hegemony by repudiating and repressing the naturalist moment with which it radically broke; thus even a literary revindication of this peculiar moment, which does not seem to fit into the triumphant modernist narrative (or into a realistic optic either), will involve serious mixed feelings about the classical positions of high modernism (even where those derive from painting rather than from poetry). As a consequence, the very revival of naturalism itself today, in full Postmodernism, can be seen as something like a return of the repressed, whose relationship to postmodern readings of the modern (such as Michael Fried’s) must remain ambivalent at best. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 451

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Return of the repressed’ structure parallels the waning-of-affect and periodization themes central to the book’s overall argument.