Postmodern thinking defines itself by taboos against propositions and primary statements.

Evidence

An aesthetics of this new “theoretical discourse” would probably include the following features: it must not emit propositions, and it must not have the appearance of making primary statements or of having positive (or “affirmative”) content. This reflects the widespread feeling that inasmuch as everything we utter is a moment in a larger chain or context, all statements that seem to be primary are in fact only links in some larger “text.” (We think we’re walking firmly on solid ground, but the planet is spinning in outer space.) This feeling also entails another one, which is perhaps only a temporal version of the preceding intuition; namely, that we can never go far enough back to make primary statements, that there are no conceptual (but only representational) beginnings, and that the doctrine of presuppositions or foundations is somehow intolerable as a testimony to the inadequacies of the human mind (which needs to be grounded on something, which in its turn proves to be nothing but fiction, religious belief, or, most intolerable of all, some philosophy of “as if’). — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 839

Categorization

• DEFINE: Jameson defines the ‘theoretical aesthetic’ — the formal self-restriction of postmodern theory against affirmations and foundational claims.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal of defining pastiche/waning-of-affect: this is the epistemological sibling of those aesthetic categories — the refusal of primary statements in theory parallels the retreat from normative stance in art. — connects to: Postmodernism’s self-definition depends on an inadequate account of what it opposes. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 134