Postmodernism’s high-low cultural fusion is populist, unlike avant-garde transgression.

Evidence

The culture of postmodernism, Jameson has argued, is by contrast far more demotic. For here another and more sweeping sort of de-differentiation has been at work. The bypassing of borders between the fine arts has usually been a gesture in the unaccommodating tradition of the avant-garde. The dissolution of frontiers between ‘high’ and ‘low’ genres in the culture at large, celebrated by Fiedler already at the end of the sixties, answered to a different logic. From the start, its direction was unequivocally populist. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 166

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes postmodern high-low dissolution from the avant-garde’s historical border-crossing — a key conceptual distinction for the Jameson debate.
• XREF: Fiedler reference ties to the mid-sixties ‘literature of the new frontier’ debate the reader will encounter in rival accounts. — connects to: What is called postmodern populism is really a symptom of cultural mutation; Postmodernism erases the high culture versus mass culture boundary. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 38; Deconstructivism reacted against populist postmodernism by fusing literary theory with avant-garde architecture. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 592 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism erases the high culture versus mass culture boundary. #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 38
• Postmodernism represents the plebeianization of modernist culture #expands (0.85) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 271
• What is called postmodern populism is really a symptom of cultural mutation #responds-to (0.80)
• Postmodernism’s transgressive features have been absorbed into official Western public culture. #contradicts (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 43
• Deconstructivism reacted against populist postmodernism by fusing literary theory with avant-garde architecture. #complicates (0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 592
• Expansion of capital and demography dilutes inherited culture into a lower postmodern level. #expands (0.72) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 165
• Global postmodernism celebrates a commodified ethnic difference that high modernism could not acknowledge #expands (0.70)