Week 2 Reading Notes and Comments

Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"
David Harvey's "The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Social Change"

Fredric Jameson attempts to describe 'Postmodernism' in a roundabout way by discussing examples of it in film, literature and architecture. Jameson links the emergence of postmodernism to that of the consumer/multinational capitalist society. David Harvey’s essay continues the discussion on popular capitalism in his critique of the Reagan presidency. Their analysis of the consumer culture couldn’t be more applicable today. I wonder how the rise of the Internet and our new “information age” would change these essays if they were written in 2007. (Jameson writes of “the disappearance of a sense of history” – this might be true since I already place these two essays in the past and question how much they speak of present issues.)

I agree with Jameson’s analysis of the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. I visited the building a couple years ago and came across many of the same issues that Jameson highlights. I entered the hotel from one of the elevated entrances and assumed that there must be some other more prominent main entrance that I had missed (apparently there isn’t). I remember finding the hotel difficult to navigate and waiting a long time for the heavily used elevators.

I question the ability to assign a category (such as postmodern, high modern, nostalgic, etc.) to every work, as Jameson and Harvey so readily do. Does every work have to be categorized? Is it right to do so? The author of a work might have been thinking of very different ideas than those ideas imposed on it by the assignment of a category.