Postmodernist texts resist thematic meaning and are flawed when interpretation succeeds

Evidence

If interpretation is understood, in the thematic way, as the disengagement of a fundamental theme or meaning, then it seems clear that the postmodernist text — of which we have taken the videotape in question to be a privileged exemplar — is from that perspective defined as a structure or sign flow which resists meaning, whose fundamental inner logic is the exclusion of the emergence of themes as such in that sense, and which therefore systematically sets out to short-circuit traditional interpretive temptations (something Susan Sontag prophetically intuited in the appropriately titled Against Interpretation, at the very dawn of what was not yet called the postmodern age). New criteria of aesthetic value then unexpectedly emerge from this proposition: whatever a good, let alone a great, videotext might be, it will be bad or flawed whenever such interpretation proves possible, whenever the text slackly opens up just such places and areas of thematization itself. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 243

Categorization

• XREF: Directly complements Sontag’s Against Interpretation, which the reader likely knows; also bears on the parody/pastiche distinction where pastiche empties meaning the way this text resists it. — connects to: Technical perfection in postmodern film substitutes tactical values for meaning. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 165; Free verse expresses what communication cannot, through alien classical ruins; Complex literary texts are overdetermined and resist reduction to one factor — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 472 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Recasts the falsifiability problem: if a text is ‘good’ precisely when it resists interpretation, how could one ever verify the claim empirically — a good reading disqualifies the text.