Postmodernism represents the plebeianization of modernist culture

Evidence

For is not something very close to this the relation of Modernism to Postmodernism, viewed historically? The passage from the one to the other, as cultural systems, appears marked by just such a combination of diffusion and dilution. ‘Plebeianization’ in this sense does mean a vast broadening of the social basis of modern culture; but by the same token also a great thinning of its critical substance, to yield the flat postmodern potion. Quality has once again been exchanged for quantity, in a process which can be looked at alternatively as a welcome emancipation from class confinement or as a dire contraction of inventive energies. Certainly, the phenomenon of cultural coarsening, whose ambiguities caught Gramsci’s attention, is on global display. Mass tourism, the greatest of all industries of the spectacle, can stand as its monument, in its awesome mixture of release and despoilment. But here the analogy poses its question. In the time of the Reformation, the vehicle of descent into popular life was religion: it was the protestant churches that assured the passage of post-mediaeval culture to a more democratic and secular world. Today, the vehicle is the market. Are banks and corporations plausible candidates for the same historical role? — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 271

Categorization

• XREF: Anderson’s periodization of Modernism-to-Postmodernism via diffusion/dilution directly frames the Jameson debate this book is a gateway to. — connects to: Postmodernism functions for Jameson as a cultural dominant marked by depthless pastiche. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 484; Postmodernism’s high-low cultural fusion is populist, unlike avant-garde transgression. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 166; Jameson periodized postmodernism into a creative seventies phase followed by regression. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 306 (+10 more)
• QUESTION: The closing question — whether the market can play the Reformation’s historical role — is the unresolved hinge of Anderson’s whole comparison.

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism elevates modernist aberrations into its dominant cultural logic #expands (0.84) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 216
• Postmodernism marks a fundamental mutation of culture’s social function #expands (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 156
• Modernism pursues the New substantively while postmodernism only clocks variations #complicates (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 8