ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that postmodern culture is not just a reflection of intellectual feebleness; more specifically, it is an outcome of the restructuring and globalization of capital's circuit, which have significantly impacted political strategies, class organization, and life chances in the West. It talks about postmodern trends. Nonetheless, many of the features associated with postmodernity are best theorized as reactive and crisis-driven responses to modern phenomena that have been in existence for several generations. The chapter attempts to "periodize" postmodernism by tracing its emergence to the perceived end of the postwar period (circa 1945–1968). It identifies the following tendencies in support of such a thesis. These are the ascendency of financial capital, a speedup of labor and of capital's circuit, new types of exchanges between the state and elites that promote new versions of privatism and the marginalization of subjects capable of reconciling personal integrity with public-mindedness.
