Postmodern groups cannot be subjects, undermining any master narrative of history

Evidence

The representational paradoxes involved in any narrative whose fundamental category is the postmodern “group” can then be articulated as follows: since the ideology of groups comes into being simultaneously with the well-known “death of the subject” (of which it is simply an alternate version) — the psychoanalytic undermining of experiences of personal identity, the aesthetic attack on originality, genius and modernist private style, the waning of “charisma” in the media age and of “great men” in the age of feminism, the fragmentary, schizophrenic aesthetic alluded to above (which in reality begins with existentialism) — the consequence will be that these new collective characters and representations that are groups cannot any longer, by definition, be subjects. This is, of course, one of the things that problematize the visions of history or “master narratives” of either bourgeois or socialist revolution (as Lyotard has explained), for it is hard to imagine such a master narrative without a “subject of history.” — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 748

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Lyotard’s ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’ and the reader’s own project of explaining postmodernism as a cultural dominant. — connects to: Coexisting cultures cannot be ranked by any single historical clock. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 822
• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘death of the subject’ and ‘ideology of groups’ are alternate versions of the same phenomenon, tying together several threads the reader needs for her parody/pastiche explanation.