from The Chronicle (Duke University)
Fredric Jameson,William A. Lane Jr. professor of comparative literature and romance studies, is one of today’s preminent voices on literary theory and Marxian cultural analysis as well as author of Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. In an office with a typewriter, no computer and floor-to-ceiling books in at least five different languages, Towerview’s Brian Contratto sat down with the professor to talk about trends in philosophy, Duke and Ke$ha.
excerpt:
What do you mean when you speak of postmodernism, and does the title still apply today?
I’m thinking of it as a period, not stylistically. It’s not just a fashion, but a whole new historical moment. You could describe it in terms of the computer, or globalization — or in terms of deregulation by Reagan and Thatcher in the Anglo-Saxon world. Little by little that spreads to the whole world. Computerization is certainly a sign: It’s changed our relationship with language and consumption objects. That’s one way of describing it. It’s hard to see what this could turn into. We’re seeing a lot of convulsions in the system—does it mean we’re at an end? Systems can evolve, but do they really change without some cataclysmic event?
If you talk about sit-ins, the occupation of a factory — well there aren’t any factories any more — but the Occupy movement is kind of a variant. And the Wisconsin union protests — these are two very important moments. All that is building up and now there are — what do you call these new things with your cell phones — flash mobs. All those are political possibilities that haven’t been fully explored. As in Egypt, you can win with mass crowds but what after that? That’s the point: We can’t really predict where it will end.
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Fredric Jameson in the catalog