Postmodernism emerged as a response to the revolutionary failure of 1968-76.

Evidence

Postmodernism must be understood largely as a response to failure of the great upturn of 1968-76 to fulfil the revolutionary hopes it raised. During this upturn themes which had been marginalized for half a century enjoyed a brief revival — not simply the idea of socialist revolution, conceived as a democratic irruption from below rather than the imposition of change from above, whether by a social democratic administration or a Stalinist party, but also the avantgarde project of overcoming the separation of art and life. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 627

Categorization

• DEFINE: Locates postmodernism’s genesis in a specific historical defeat rather than a spontaneous cultural shift.
• XREF: This is Callinicos’s core counter-thesis to Jameson’s periodization — postmodernism as politics-of-defeat, not late-capitalist logic. — connects to: Poststructuralism’s piecemeal politics arose from dashed 1968 revolutionary hopes. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 347; May 1968 paradoxically advanced the narcissistic individualism its actors opposed — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 534; Postmodernism’s acceptance stems from 1968ers’ class position and disillusionment — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 617 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The New Left’s cultural-political self-conception drove postmodernism’s turn to aesthetics. #expands (0.82) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2200