Jameson, Brecht, Lenin and Spectral Possibilities

Abstract

Fredric Jameson’s star rose in the late 1980s when theorists located within the discipline of cultural studies latched onto his essay ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’. This essay became a guiding text for what was perceived as a new epoch. It appeared at a moment when epochalism was rife, and its proclamation of so many endings, and definitions were eagerly sought. The essay claimed to outline this new stage of world history and world culture, dependent on a new scenario in world economics. ‘Postmodernism…’ did not just define a new scene: it was taken as a certain conferment of legitimisation to the new postmodern epoch, tantamount to a justification. Now named and outlined, the new epoch could be lived and affirmed. There was no going back — going back was understood to be a return to ‘modern’ concepts, which were bound up with ‘old style’ Marxist politics and economics and high art elitism, and these two seemingly opposite principles were cast aside as co-dependents in an old, excessively hierarchical world. Despite its critical animus and stance towards the new postmodern world, the essay attested to postmodemity’s existence — if negatively. It became its map. The map turned into a gazetteer. It inflated and became a baggy book of encounters with contemporary culture, which attempted to ‘cognitively map’ comprehensively the era of multinational late capitalism.

Everything changes. You can make A fresh start with your final breath. But what has happened has happened. And the water You once poured into the wine cannot be Drained off again.

What has happened has happened. The water You once poured into the wine cannot be Drained off again, but Everything changes. You can make A fresh start with your final breath

(Bertolt Brecht, c.1944)