“Postmodernism” by Fredrick Jameson is revolutionary in thought. Jameson lays down the basis of post modernism with two ideas that seem to encapsulate this movement; albeit a reductive word to describe the philosophy. Jameson discusses meta narratives that have been replacing each other for past few decades, each time boasting superiority over their predecessors, and how post-modernism rejects them to be truth. Paradoxically, post modernism is a meta narrative that rejects meta narratives. Moving further, the reading emphasizes on “Pastiche” in the post-modern day and its strong in influence in post-modern art forms.
However, what seems to be the truly engrossing aspect of the post-modernist lens is the concept of “Schizophrenia”. While inappropriately named for the sake of jargon, and far from the clinical sense of the word, the idea is ground breaking as it jostles the reader’s reality. Schizophrenia, according to Jameson, is the state of mind of an individual who has no identity, or ego. Jameson says people build identities, that are partially contributed towards by their culture. However, a subject of late capitalism, whose survival of self depends on the consumption of mass media and culture, becomes schizophrenic as they are numbed by the vast diversity within the culture that they consume due to the proliferation of its production that pastiche enables in the age of late capitalism, which Jameson dubs as the post 1980 era.
Schizophrenia is an elemental part of late capitalism as it perpetuates it, and conserves it. Capitalism would not flourish if people formed identities yet it wouldn’t flourish in the complementary case either. Capitalism requires people to form identities that are easily dissolved. This allows people to consume the diverse culture that surrounds them yet somehow find enough moments of identity, and relatability to create their own and contribute to the production of media as well. A modern day analogy can perhaps be easier to understand. Let us consider memes, you can consume all sorts of memes (once again pastiche never fails to seep into modern culture, as most memes are just subtle copies of each other) however there will be some that will be relatable enough for you create one of your own, this creates an in nite sea of memes that will never run out unless the schizophrenic cycle is broken.
As usual, the exploration of theory influenced by Marxism feels nothing short of a conspiracy theory and putting it to test feels akin to pure confirmation bias. However, in my opinion, it is worth exploring the effects of simply opting out of the “schizophrenia-inducing cycle of late capitalism” that Jameson ever so eloquently lays down for us. The thought experiment, however, remains merely theoretical as doing so in practicality may as well be declared as social suicide because paradoxically the late capitalism that inhibits its subjects from forming a true identity simultaneously also provides them with one that is strong enough to keep them contained. Who wants to hang out with the dude who doesn’t get any of your references and inside jokes anyway?
Bibliography
Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism, or, The cultural logic of late capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
