Postmodernism elevates modernist aberrations into its dominant cultural logic

Evidence

But it may now be appropriate to identify Roussel’s peculiar experiments as a kind of anticipation of Postmodernism within the older modernist period; at any rate, it seems at least arguable that aberrations and excesses which were marginal or subordinate in the modernist period become dominant in the systemic restructuration that can be observed in what we now call Postmodernism. It is nevertheless clear that experimental video, whether we date it from the work of the ancestor Paik in the early 1960s or from the very floodtide of this new art which sets in in the mid 1970s, is rigorously coterminous with Postmodernism itself as a historical period. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 216

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is the crux of the cultural-dominant thesis — if postmodern forms were already latent in modernism, what makes the boundary a hard period break rather than a shift of emphasis? Worth pushing on falsifiability.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal of testing whether the cultural-dominant claim is falsifiable — the ‘marginal becomes dominant’ formulation is exactly what needs a measurable criterion. — connects to: Lyotard defines postmodernism as a modernism that celebrates the loss of ordered totality; Postmodernism functions for Jameson as a cultural dominant marked by depthless pastiche. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 484; The modern’s present-absolute nature generates recurring postmodern markers — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 28 (+8 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies the periodization claim at the core of the whole book: postmodernism is a systemic restructuring, not a style menu.