Sunday, November 9, 2014

Brooke Bumgarner -- Reflecting on 11/4

Since I was out of class sick on the 6th, I guess I'll be talking about Jameson and what I did, and did not understand as I left class on Tuesday.

Jameson has a lot to say, and it is a lot to wrap your head around. I think one of the big things I remember thinking as I left my groups discussion was that it's fairly difficult to put into words how Jameson's theory is indeed reflected in our everyday lives. One of the first ideas that really stuck out to me was the idea that postmodernism comes from a radical break. With this thinking, we can see that Jameson is saying something against Habermas because he is claiming that Modernism has indeed ended.

Jameson continues in this line of thinking in explaining that we have had a break from the classics, and the past. He explains that postmodernism is saturated with new kinds of texts that are infused with culture industry that is no longer about the authentic genuine aesthetic forms, but about what can be mass produced the easiest, thus perpetuating capitalism the most.

It's not just culture he says, it's all of society that is altered in a way that relies on consumerism. This is especially relevant to my everyday life I do believe because a lot about the society we live in today is the "bigger, better, faster" mentality. Jameson conquers in this thinking when he explains that it isn't about the actual product or art form anymore; instead it's about how our society relies on a frantic economic urgency which produces fresh waves of what Jameson calls "ever more novel-seeming goods" (409).

This couldn't be more true today. Every six months Apple comes out with a bigger, better, and faster iPhone. Material goods are competing to make it to the top of the market every day, and in order to do so, items need to progress at a greater turnover rate. The faster the better!

It's important to realize that the postmodernism era is much different from classical modernism, essentially because of the economic system of capital. Postmodernism has turned society into a cycle of capitalism and consumerism. It's a totalizing economic system.

This is what I really got out of the first part of Jameson's text, and it is truly visible in our society today.

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