The Freudian unconscious may be a historically contingent artifact, not a timeless structure

Evidence

Does this mean that what we used to call the Unconscious was itself a mere historical illusion produced by certain kinds of theories in a certain situation-specific configuration of the social field (including certain kinds of urban objects and certain kinds of urban people)? The point, however, is to search out radical historical difference, and not to take sides or hand out historical certificates of value. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 406

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is the sharpest falsifiability probe in the chapter — if the unconscious is situation-specific, the whole ‘cultural dominant’ claim about it ending becomes testable against actual psychic evidence.
• DEFINE: Illustrates ‘generic dissolution’ — the suffix stripping mechanism where postmodernism detaches modernist techniques from their theoretical groundings.
• XREF: connects to: The Freudian unconscious reintroduces a deceiver-deceived duality rather than explaining bad faith — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 282; The concept of the unconscious was a trap, not a liberation for the mad — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 443; In Freudian terms a girl’s sexual development can stall into frigidity or homosexuality. (+4 more)