Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
In his most wide-ranging and accessible work, Frederic Jameson argues that postmodernism is the cultural response to the latest systemic change in world capitalism. He seeks here to crystallize a definition of a term which has taken on so many meanings that it has virtually lost all historical significance.
He presents an extensive discussion on the cultural landscape - both ‘high' and ‘low' - of postmodernity, evaluating the political fortunes of the new term and surveying postmodern developments in a range of different fields - from market ideology to architecture, from painting and instalment art to contemporary punk film, from video art and high literature to deconstruction.
Finally, Jameson revaluates the concept of postmodernism in light of postmodern critiques of totalization and historical narratives - from the notion of decadence to the dynamics of small groups, from religious fundamentalism to hi-tech science fiction - while touching on the nature of contemporary cultural critique and the possibilities of cognitive mapping in the present multinational world system.
This provocative book will be fundamental to all future discussions of postmodernism.
Paperback, 464 pages
ISBN: 9780860915379
March 2012
£14.99
Reviews
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“Frederic Jameson is America’s leading Marxist critic, a prodigiously energetic thinker whose writings sweep magisterially from Sophocles to science fiction…Postmodernism is a intellectual blockbuster…a timely riposte to fashionable leftist pessimism as much as it is an intellectual feast.”
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“For anybody hoping to understand not just the cultural but the political and social implications of postmodernism…Jameson’s book is a fundamental, nonparaeil text.”
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“The scope and profundity of Postmodernism, covering theory, architecture, film, video and economics, is truly staggering…Brilliant.”
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The Essential Verso Undergraduate Reading List
If you think the latest tome of Giddens’ Sociology is the one textbook you need to get you through your undergraduate days, think again. Impress your tutor and learn something beyond the lecture theatre with these essential Verso titles.
Bolster any politics, philosophy, economics, literature, sociology or history essay with one of these books and not only score the grade, but begin your lifelong love affair with radical writers.
