Postmodernism marks a fundamental mutation of culture’s social function

Evidence

Everything in the previous discussion suggests that what we have been calling Postmodernism is inseparable from, and unthinkable without the hypothesis of, some fundamental mutation of the sphere of culture in the world of late capitalism, which includes a momentous modification of its social function. Older discussions of the space, function, or sphere of culture (mostly notably Herbert Marcuse classic essay “The Affirmative Character of Culture”) have insisted on what a different language would call the “semiautonomy” of the cultural realm: its ghostly, yet Utopian, existence, for good or ill, above the practical world of the existent, whose mirror image it throws back in forms which vary from the legitimations of flattering resemblance to the contestatory indictments of critical satire or Utopian pain. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 156

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the shift from culture’s ‘semiautonomy’ (ghostly mirror above the world) to postmodernism’s collapse of that separation — central to the parody/pastiche distinction.
• XREF: The Marcuse ‘semiautonomy’ idea maps to the reader’s earlier notes on representation metaphors — culture as mirror image of the existent. — connects to: Postmodernism functions for Jameson as a cultural dominant marked by depthless pastiche. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 484; Expansion of capital and demography dilutes inherited culture into a lower postmodern level. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 165; Postmodernism represents the plebeianization of modernist culture — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 271 (+1 more)