Postmodern ‘waning of affect’ fragments the subject into depthless, spasmodic flux.
Evidence
For Jameson, this is a general condition of postmodern experience, marked by a ‘waning of affect’ that ensues as the bounded self of old begins to fray. The result is a new depthlessness of the subject, no longer held within stable parameters, where the registers of high and low are unequivocal. Here, by contrast, psychic life becomes unnervingly accidented and spasmodic, marked by sudden dips of level or lurches of mood, that recall something of the fragmentation of schizophrenia. This swerving, stammering flux precludes either cathexis or historicity. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 154
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the ‘waning of affect’ and connects it to schizophrenic fragmentation — a core Jameson concept.
- XREF: connects to: Modernist interiority’s deep probing tends to dissolve the very subject it explores — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 108; Postmodern pathology displaces anxiety and alienation with the subject’s fragmentation — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 68; Postmodernism replaced temporality with space and rejected phenomenological perception — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 331 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Postmodern pathology displaces anxiety and alienation with the subject’s fragmentation
#corroborates(0.92) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 68 - Psychic fragmentation names the postmodern condition better than alienation does
#corroborates(0.90) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 241 - Postmodernism transformed the modernist experience of self-loss into a celebrated utopia of unbelonging
#complicates(0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 271 - The self fragments into subject and object when stress ruptures immediate experience
#expands(0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 22 - Postmodern identity is shaped by constant media channel-switching rather than fixed subjectivity
#exemplifies(0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 796 - Postmodernism replaced temporality with space and rejected phenomenological perception
#complicates(0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 331