What is called postmodern populism is really a symptom of cultural mutation

Evidence

But if this is the case, then it seems at least possible that what wears the mask and makes the gestures of “populism” in the various postmodernist apologias and manifestos is in reality a mere reflex and symptom of a (to be sure momentous) cultural mutation, in which what used to be stigmatized as mass or commercial culture is now received into the precincts of a new and enlarged cultural realm. In any case, one would expect a term drawn from the typology of political ideologies to undergo basic semantic readjustments when its initial referent (that Popular Front class coalition of workers, peasants, and petit bourgeois generally called “the people”) has disappeared. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 195

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how ‘the people’ originally referred to the Popular Front class coalition, now vanished.
• XREF: connects to: Postmodernism’s high-low cultural fusion is populist, unlike avant-garde transgression. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 166; Postmodernism marks a fundamental mutation of culture’s social function — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 156; New Historicism is best understood as a symptom of postmodern immanence — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 437
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Postmodernism’s high-low cultural fusion is populist, unlike avant-garde transgression. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 166; Postmodernism marks a fundamental mutation of culture’s social function — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 156; New Historicism is best understood as a symptom of postmodern immanence — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 437