Postmodernism functions for Jameson as a cultural dominant marked by depthless pastiche.

Evidence

This passage contains in nuce Jameson’s more recent analysis of the ‘cultural logic of late capitalism’. Postmodernism has become, he argues, a ‘cultural dominant’. Art produced under its reign is char­ acterized by a peculiar depthlessness, a draining away of any emo­ tional content; instead, it celebrates the disintegration of the subject and offers mere pastiches of a historical past nostalgically reduced either to a lost world of political commitment or to a source of glossy retro-style images; the strange exhilaration Postmodern art induces is an instance of the ‘hysterical sublime’, of the excitement and terror with which we respond to the realization that the workings of the global economic system can no longer be represented or imagined. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 484

Categorization

• DEFINE: Summarizes the four signature traits of Jameson’s postmodernism — depthlessness, emotional draining, subject disintegration, nostalgic pastiche.
• XREF: connects to: Postmodernism is a cultural dominant allowing coexisting subordinate features, not a uniform style. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 41; Postmodernism marks a fundamental mutation of culture’s social function — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 156; Postmodernism elevates modernist aberrations into its dominant cultural logic — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 216 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism is a cultural dominant allowing coexisting subordinate features, not a uniform style. #expands (0.90) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 41
• Postmodern pastiche blurs the present into a timeless simulacral past #expands (0.90) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 86
• Postmodernism elevates modernist aberrations into its dominant cultural logic #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 216
• Postmodern pastiche empties the subject and borrows styles, where moderns invented their own worlds. #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 329
• Postmodernism marks a fundamental mutation of culture’s social function #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 156
• Extreme postmodernism erases historical specificity into a millennia-old cultural constant #expands (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 129
• Postmodernism represents the plebeianization of modernist culture #expands (0.75) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 271