ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the political ramifications of postmodernism, and how potentials for change that Jameson ascribes to a future possibility may be effective in the present. It looks again at Jameson’s postmodernism theory, as well as more recent works such as Valences of the Dialectic and ‘An American Utopia’. The first part highlights how, for Jameson, commodified production problematises expression and reception of oppositional political ideas. It argues that defining postmodernism in contrast to modernism obscures modernist logics that persist today, and questions whether commodified culture really appears depthless. It then examines Jameson’s treatment of subjective agency, with the idea that, in practice, his structural analysis rarely considers how consciousness functions. His concept of ‘cognitive mapping’ can thus seem more politically valuable by viewing affirmative ideologies as conscious rationalisations that can develop dialectically. The final sections evaluate Jameson’s politics, first in terms of how his work inspires a political vision through its style and cultural focus, then through some examples of more directly political theory, such as his understanding of ‘new social movements’ that embody an excess agency, but remain disconnected from class consciousness. The argument here is that such agency is a potential in all ideologies, and may respond to a common understanding of experienced social contradictions.
