Mapping the Postmodern Labyrinth

A: Fredric Jameson's seminal argument is that postmodernism isn't just a fleeting style. He sees it as the 'cultural logic of late capitalism', a fundamental shift deeply integrated into our economic system.

B: So it’s more than just a new aesthetic or changing trends, like modernism before it? It's a pervasive condition?

A: Precisely. High Modernism was often *oppositional*, standing against established norms, offering critique. Picasso, Joyce, they challenged. Postmodernism, however, tends to *integrate* into commodity culture, becoming part of the system itself. This leads to features like 'depthlessness' and the 'waning of affect'.

B: Depthlessness? How does that look in art?

A: Take Van Gogh's 'Peasant Shoes'—it conveys a world of agricultural misery, a utopian transformation. You sense a profound depth, a story. Now, compare that with Andy Warhol's 'Diamond Dust Shoes'.

B: Ah, those are just... fetish objects, aren't they? No real lived world, just a commodified, sparkling surface.

A: Exactly. And for the 'waning of affect,' think Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'—raw modernist alienation, that intense inner anguish.

B: A cry from the soul.

A: Yes. But then you have Warhol's celebrity portraits. They show a *fragmentation* of the subject into reproducible images. The raw emotion fades, replaced by a cool, detached surface. Building on these ideas of depthlessness and the waning of affect, Jameson then moves into a related concept: the disappearance of history. He argues for a crucial shift from parody to something he calls 'pastiche.' Parody, as we know, satirizes a stable norm, right? It needs that original to twist and mock.

B: And pastiche... is it just imitation without the bite? Like, a neutral copy?

A: Precisely. It's 'blank parody'—an imitation of dead styles in a world where there's no longer a stable norm to satirize. This also ties into the 'simulacrum': an identical copy for which no original ever existed. This is where history starts to unravel.

B: So, the past isn't a true referent anymore? Just a collection of images?

A: Exactly. The 'waning of historicity' means the past becomes a vast archive of images and stereotypes, not an organic, lived experience. Think of 'nostalgia films' like *Chinatown* or *Body Heat*. They don't historically represent the 1930s or 50s; they convey 'pastness' through stylistic cues—fashion, music, a certain film language.

B: So, they're evoking a *feeling* of the past, rather than reconstructing it truthfully?

A: A powerful evocation, yes. It's about stylistic connotation. And Jameson even brings in literature, pointing to E.L. Doctorow's novel *Ragtime* as another prime example. It represents our pop images of history, our collective memory of stereotypes about the past, not history itself. So, we've explored depthlessness, the waning of affect, and the disappearance of history through pastiche. Now, let's really lean into how postmodernism shifts our understanding of space itself. Jameson argues there's a dominance of *spatial* logic over traditional *temporal* logic.

B: Spatial over temporal? Can you give a concrete example of this in the real world, how it manifests physically?

A: Absolutely. Jameson points to John Portman's Bonaventura Hotel in downtown Los Angeles as the quintessential 'postmodern hyperspace.' Imagine a huge, reflective glass skin that actively repels the city around it, literally mirroring distorted images rather than engaging with its context. The entryways are de-emphasized, almost hidden, severing the building from its urban fabric.

B: So, you don't even really feel like you're entering a traditional building? And what happens once you're inside? Is it as disorienting?

A: Exactly. Inside, it's a labyrinth. A disorienting interior that defies any attempt to form a coherent mental map. Jameson argues this new space transcends the individual's capacity to locate themselves, reflecting our broader inability to 'map' the vast, decentered network of multinational capital. It abolishes critical distance, meaning culture is no longer a separate sphere from which to critique society; we're immersed in it.

B: If we're so lost, literally and metaphorically, is there any way out? Does Jameson propose a solution?

A: He does. His proposed solution is a new political aesthetic he calls 'cognitive mapping.' It's an attempt to help us represent our position within this unrepresentable global system—to re-establish a sense of place and agency in a world that intentionally disorients us.