English 189-2 - Winter, 2013

Seminar in Literary Studies

Topic: Postmodernism -- Not Yet. The Cultural Logic of Postcapitalism

Class Information

Instructor: Brown, Nathan
CRN: 73745
Time: TR 10:30-11:50
Location: 248 Voorhies

Description

We normally think of "postmodernism" as a style of cultural production dominant during the mid- to late twentieth century--a style expressing the historical contradictions and complexities of "the postmodern condition," or "postmodernity."

In this course we will consider an unfamiliar thesis: that postmodernity is a historical period that has not yet taken place, and that postmodernism is a mode of cultural production which is not yet operative.

The major theorist of postmodernism, Fredric Jameson, argues that postmodernism is "the cultural logic of late capitalism." But there is a tension between the "post" and the "late" in this alignment of cultural and economic periodization. We will explore the implications of this tension by considering the possibility that postmodernism will be the cultural logic of *post* capitalism: that the end of modernity will correspond with the end of capitalism, and the historical and cultural conditions following from such a collapse of the epoch in which we live remain more or less unimaginable to us at present.

Thus, we will read texts that figure our incapacity to imagine a postmodern future, rather than the condition of living within a postmodern present. These are late 20th and early 21st century texts (art, film, literature, philosophy) which cast the shadow of such a future precisely by figuring the representational block that such projections entail. We will also examine theoretical texts which treat the categories "modernism" and "modernity," as well as the current structure and structural limits of capital.

Grading

Term Paper: 50%
Seminar Presentation: 10%
Attendance and Participation: 20%
Discussion Posts: 20%

Texts

Postmodernism, Or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Fredric Jameson
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
The Ice Trilogy, Vladimir Sorokin
The Melancholy of Resistance, Lazslo Krashnohorkai
Primeval and Other Times, Olga Tokarczuk
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