ABSTRACT
Theories have the obvious ideological mission of demonstrating, to their own relief, that the new social formation in question no longer obeys the laws of classical capitalism, namely, the primacy of industrial production and the omnipresence of class struggle. High modernism is thus credited with the destruction of the fabric of the traditional city and its older neighborhood culture, while the prophetic elitism and authoritarianism of the modern movement are remorselessly identified in the imperious gesture of the charismatic Master. A last preliminary word on method: what follows is not to be read as stylistic description, as the account of one cultural style or movement among others. The postmodern is, however, the force field in which very different kinds of cultural impulses—what Raymond Williams has usefully termed "residual" and "emergent" forms of cultural production—must make their way.
