Modernist machinery offered a representable emblem of energy that postmodern tech lacks

Evidence

It is appropriate to recall the excitement of machinery in the moment of capital preceding our own, the exhilaration of futurism, most notably, and of Marinetti’s celebration of the machine gun and the motorcar. These are still visible emblems, sculptural nodes of energy which give tangibility and figuration to the motive energies of that earlier moment of modernization. The prestige of these great streamlined shapes can be measured by their metaphorical presence in Le Corbusier’s buildings, vast Utopian structures which ride like so many gigantic steamship liners upon the urban scenery of an older fallen earth. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 130

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘sculptural nodes of energy’ giving ‘tangibility and figuration to motive energies’ prefigures the book’s later argument about postmodernism’s waning of affect — machinery was a locus of legible affect that the computer is not. — connects to: Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 236
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 236

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism is a tendency within late modernism, not its successor #complicates (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 236