Commonplaces: the woman in the street: text and image in the work of fenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger

The starting point for this chapter is a question raised by Frederic Jameson about the relationship between postmodernism and consumer capitalism:

There is some agreement that the older modernism functioned against its society in ways which are variously described as critical, negative, contestatory, subversive, oppositional and the like. Can anything of the sort be affirmed about postmodernism and its social moment? We have seen that there is a way in which postmodernism replicates or reproduces — reinforces — the logic of consumer capitalism; the more significant question is whether there is also a way in which it resists that logic.

(Jameson 1984: 73) The use of the designation ‘postmodern’ can be seen as part of a strategy to classify and contain diverse and complex practices and to cover over difficulties and differences. ¹ The term ‘postmodern’ has been applied (usually in description rather than definition) in many different, often contradictory ways, suggesting that the usefulness of the term is often greater for critics' careers than conceptually. Certainly it is revealing that already the most prominent names associated with postmodern art and literature tend to be those of men.