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El Giro Cultural: Escritos sclecciondos sobre el posmodemismo 1983-1998
Fredric Jameson, a leading voice on the subject of postmodernism, assembles his most powerful writings on the culture of late capitalism in this essential volume. Classic insights on pastiche, nostalgia, and architecture stand alongside essays on the status of history, theory, Marxism, and the subject in an age propelled by finance capital and endless spectacle. Surveying the debates that blazed up around his earlier essays, Jameson responds to critics and maps out the theoretical positions of postmodernism’s prominent friends and foes.
Fredric Jameson has had an immense impact on our understanding of postmodernism. However, until now, his key writings on the subject have been unavailable in an accessible and affordable form. This book is designed as a short and convenient introduction to Jameson's thought for both the student and the general reader.
Fredric Jameson has had an immense impact on our understanding of postmodernism. However, until now, his key writings on the subject have been unavailable in an accessible and affordable form. This book is designed as a short and convenient introduction to Jameson's thought for both the student and the general reader.
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 17, 1998
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1341 people want to read
About the author
Fredric Jameson
166 books678 followersFredric Jameson was an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He was best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jameson's best-known books include Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) and The Political Unconscious (1981).
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
January 15, 2009
Michel Foucault (a thinker who personally rejected both the postmodernist and poststructuralist labels commonly attached to his writings) was once asked "what is postmodernism?" Sure enough, he answered that somewhat silly question with yet another regressive sort of question. He said that before we begin to concern ourselves with the question of what is meant by postmodernity, we need to adequately understand exactly what was meant by the classification of modernity, that cultural specter that continues to haunt most contemporary theory. It's a simple enough idea, not to mention logical. Regardless of what words, symbols, or labels we use to identify historical movements, it is important to be aware of certain historical movements as cultural conditions, ones that influence art, economics, social life, and politics. More importantly, we should be able to describe the characteristic features of these rather unique movements. The problem is that postmodernism has the reputation of being to contemporary theory what the Kantian antinomy is to western philosophy; which more or less means that people tend to view it as an evasive style of thinking that skeptically deconstructs itself on purpose. While that idea is somewhat postmodern in itself, it isn't necessarily true. Fredric Jameson, a thinker who was one of the foremost pioneers of postmodern theory, makes it clear (for the most part) that it isn't all bullshit, but that it still sounds like it.
The Cultural Turn is a collection of Jameson's most popular essays on the subject of postmodernism (connecting the most eclectic array of subjects and examples; architecture, television, film, painting, Marxism, Hegelianism, urban planning, literature, etc.). The book almost functions as a light introduction to his rather daunting masterpiece, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, a text that I've heard fucking horror stories about. The first two essays (Postmodernism and Consumer Society, and Theories of the Postmodern) stand out as the most lucid and readable. They also contain most of his explanation of the transition from modernism to postmodernism, the most notable aspect of this being Jameson's notion of the "death of the subject", by which he means that the struggling "individual" of the traditional modernist piece of art becomes replaced by the object against which, or within which they are struggling. Thomas Pynchon describes this pretty well in his introduction in Slow Learner when he says, "Somewhere I had come up with the notion that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction...". Of course he follows with, "...when the truth, as everyone knows, is directly the opposite". It shows though because the characters in Pynchon's novels may resemble him autobiographically (honestly, who knows?), but their respective struggles seem to mirror something more powerful and profound than individualistic, existential despair. Pastiche is also important to Jameson, being what he calls the most common example of postmodern, artistic expression. He distinguishes it from parody because he feels that pastiche does not mock or satirize the original, but replicates it to the point where the pastiche becomes a creation unto itself. Through the replicative work of art we find an originality that is inevitable. This was a technique that William Gaddis used in the Recognitions several times. Especially in the way the main character Wyatt Gwyon creates faithful replicas of Flemish masterpieces that are such accurate reproductions that they almost look better than the originals.
In the chapter entitled Antinomies of Postmodernism, Jameson goes on at length about the way in which perpetual change becomes cyclical through its attachment to fashion and media change. This is something that Jameson refers to as a temporal paradox; absolute change equals stasis. I think that this, to some degree, explains the nature of the cliches about postmodern theory. Naturally, most people have a problem with negativist deconstruction in the sense that it makes everything seem fucking impossible. The postmodern buzzword entropy comes up, and everyone rolls their eyes in reaction to a thought process that seems to arrive at no functional conclusion. Not that I don't find that to be a reasonable response. I simply think that this particular version of stasis makes sense in a culture so saturated with closed systems, simulacra, and revisions of revisions. It all does seem somewhat cyclical.
Transformation of the Image was the one essay that I almost found completely unreadable. I remember something about Debord's image-driven spectacle being synthesized with phenomenology and aesthetics in an attempt to explain the commodity fetishism of the image in popular culture. See! Even my explanation doesn't make that much sense (or any). Along with the End of Art History (in which Jameson goes on and on, utilizing Hegelian dialectics to come to some crazy-ass anti-conclusion that I hardly understood as an intelligeble idea), and the Brick and the Balloon, the essays that close out the book are the most trying. Honestly, Jameson's writing can occasionally make Derrida seem lucid in comparison. Culture and Finance Capital was a piece that I found prescient and profound enough. I like the idea that capital as a concept in late capitalist markets has become a paper or symbolic abstraction. Therefore, even Marxian concepts such as use-value and commodity fetishism become blurry ideas. To an extent, money itself has become a commodity, etc.
All in all, these essays were engaging enough. Jameson demands a lot of attention though. And his writing style is just so fucking convoluted. He seems to be taking his cue from the Frankfurt School, and is obviously a stalwart admirer of Theodor Adorno, whose influence permeates this collection of writings. For anyone interested in Marxist critical theory in this particular vein, I might suggest reading Zizek or Eagleton instead. I find both of them far more comprehensible than Jameson.
The Cultural Turn is a collection of Jameson's most popular essays on the subject of postmodernism (connecting the most eclectic array of subjects and examples; architecture, television, film, painting, Marxism, Hegelianism, urban planning, literature, etc.). The book almost functions as a light introduction to his rather daunting masterpiece, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, a text that I've heard fucking horror stories about. The first two essays (Postmodernism and Consumer Society, and Theories of the Postmodern) stand out as the most lucid and readable. They also contain most of his explanation of the transition from modernism to postmodernism, the most notable aspect of this being Jameson's notion of the "death of the subject", by which he means that the struggling "individual" of the traditional modernist piece of art becomes replaced by the object against which, or within which they are struggling. Thomas Pynchon describes this pretty well in his introduction in Slow Learner when he says, "Somewhere I had come up with the notion that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction...". Of course he follows with, "...when the truth, as everyone knows, is directly the opposite". It shows though because the characters in Pynchon's novels may resemble him autobiographically (honestly, who knows?), but their respective struggles seem to mirror something more powerful and profound than individualistic, existential despair. Pastiche is also important to Jameson, being what he calls the most common example of postmodern, artistic expression. He distinguishes it from parody because he feels that pastiche does not mock or satirize the original, but replicates it to the point where the pastiche becomes a creation unto itself. Through the replicative work of art we find an originality that is inevitable. This was a technique that William Gaddis used in the Recognitions several times. Especially in the way the main character Wyatt Gwyon creates faithful replicas of Flemish masterpieces that are such accurate reproductions that they almost look better than the originals.
In the chapter entitled Antinomies of Postmodernism, Jameson goes on at length about the way in which perpetual change becomes cyclical through its attachment to fashion and media change. This is something that Jameson refers to as a temporal paradox; absolute change equals stasis. I think that this, to some degree, explains the nature of the cliches about postmodern theory. Naturally, most people have a problem with negativist deconstruction in the sense that it makes everything seem fucking impossible. The postmodern buzzword entropy comes up, and everyone rolls their eyes in reaction to a thought process that seems to arrive at no functional conclusion. Not that I don't find that to be a reasonable response. I simply think that this particular version of stasis makes sense in a culture so saturated with closed systems, simulacra, and revisions of revisions. It all does seem somewhat cyclical.
Transformation of the Image was the one essay that I almost found completely unreadable. I remember something about Debord's image-driven spectacle being synthesized with phenomenology and aesthetics in an attempt to explain the commodity fetishism of the image in popular culture. See! Even my explanation doesn't make that much sense (or any). Along with the End of Art History (in which Jameson goes on and on, utilizing Hegelian dialectics to come to some crazy-ass anti-conclusion that I hardly understood as an intelligeble idea), and the Brick and the Balloon, the essays that close out the book are the most trying. Honestly, Jameson's writing can occasionally make Derrida seem lucid in comparison. Culture and Finance Capital was a piece that I found prescient and profound enough. I like the idea that capital as a concept in late capitalist markets has become a paper or symbolic abstraction. Therefore, even Marxian concepts such as use-value and commodity fetishism become blurry ideas. To an extent, money itself has become a commodity, etc.
All in all, these essays were engaging enough. Jameson demands a lot of attention though. And his writing style is just so fucking convoluted. He seems to be taking his cue from the Frankfurt School, and is obviously a stalwart admirer of Theodor Adorno, whose influence permeates this collection of writings. For anyone interested in Marxist critical theory in this particular vein, I might suggest reading Zizek or Eagleton instead. I find both of them far more comprehensible than Jameson.
July 7, 2013
I'm a Jameson fan, and I don't find his writing to be at all difficult. Perhaps that's because I read in a mainly Marxist/Marxian vein right now (but I do find Adorno 'tricky'). This collection of essays allows for a concise analysis of Jameson's views on postmodernism and its cultural manifestations. I wish I had read this BEFORE Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, as it provides a veritable cheat sheet (in terms of his key points/opinions) and is beautifully subdivided among topics (hooray, many about the arts!). A fun read.
July 23, 2016
Muy buen libro. Se trata de un compilado de textos de Fredric Jameson sobre posmodernismo publicados entre 1983 y 1998. Esta ventana temporal permite ver el arco conceptual en el que Jameson ubica al posmodernismo. No es un estudio histórico, es más bien parte de lo que se conoce como estudios culturales. Sobre la base de una lectura siempre renovada de Hegel y Marx, Jameson propone abordar la posmodernidad no sólo como cultura, sino como una producción de criterios múltiples de pensamiento que cobran sentido cuando se sitúan en el contexto histórico y material del que surgen. Es decir, la cultura es vista como un producto más del capitalismo tardío, al igual que las corporaciones, la globalización o la bolsa de valores. La erudición y lucidez de Jameson le permiten pasar revista no sólo a la economía política, sino también a la arquitectura, la literatura, el cine, la música, todo entendido sobre la base de la ficción del dinero -en el sentido marxista del dinero como abstracción-. Creo que un aporte interesante de este libro es la distinción que introduce Jameson entre parodia y pastiche. La parodia sería moderna y normada, es decir que implica un juicio moral. El pastiche, en cambio, sería posmoderno y vacío, un ensamble que no deriva en juicio moral de ninguna clase. Creo que Jameson toma a la arquitectura como clave para entender los tiempos. Es genial su discusión sobre el Rockefeller Center. También se destaca su agudeza respecto de la literatura y el cine. Si bien este libro es algo difícil de leer sin tener presentes algunos conceptos de Hegel, Marx, Freud, Smith, Godard y Habermas, entre otros, lo que Jameson recupera de cada autor aparece explicado de manera breve, directa y claramente inteligible. Por momentos, la seguridad de Jameson abruma al lector. Ya sea a favor o en contra, pienso que el lector atento debe hacer un esfuerzo por tomar distancia crítica de la prosa fuertemente centrípeta, escurridiza pero hipnótica de Jameson. Este es un atributo positivo, evidencia de la potencia retórica de uno de los más importantes marxistas actuales que se ha dedicado a extender en varias direcciones el pensamiento de Karl Marx. Opino que se trata de un libro muy recomendable para intentar comprender el mundo actual.
July 4, 2022
Jameson is always a challenging thinker, as much for his capacity for dialectical thought as for his authoritative grasp of the different fields of knowledge—history, philosophy, French theory, Marxism, architecture, finance capital—to which he makes reference in the construction of his arguments. In this book, as in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Jameson deploys a Marxist analysis of postmodern culture, arguing that this latter supplies an approach to a reading of the contemporary historical moment which he characterizes, following Ernest Mandel, as “late capitalist.”
The book begins with the much-anthologized essay “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” which first appeared in New Left Review and introduced readers to Jameson’s thought on postmodernism. Later expanded and appearing in its revised form as the first chapter of Postmodernism, the essay is a kind of overview of postmodern culture, exploring among other things what postmodern literature suggests about the blurring of high and low culture in the contemporary moment, what films like Star Wars or Chinatown suggest about our sense of our history, and what contemporary architecture might reflect of our experience of postmodern space. The second essay, “Theories of the Postmodern,” was also revised and expanded for Postmodernism; here, Jameson supplies an instance of what he has elsewhere termed “metacommentary,” discussing not postmodernism itself but rather analyzing how this has been theorized by other thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Manfredo Tafuri. A third essay that was subsequently expanded (appearing in its revised form in The Seeds of Time) is “The Antinomies of Postmodernity,” an analysis of transformations in the categories of space and time through the modern and postmodern moments.
Because of the challenging forms Jameson employs to express his ideas in the later versions of these essays, I find it extremely useful to have these earlier versions, in which his thought seems more accessible, because it is in a comparatively rudimentary form.
The essay “Marxism and Postmodernism” is sort of like a break after the rigors of the first three essays: while it, too, is a theoretical work, exploring the relations between the two topics mentioned in the title, it is as personal an essay as I have ever seen from Jameson, who writes here in response to those commentators who had assumed, incorrectly, that Jameson’s beginning his work on postmodernism signified his movement away from Marxist thought.
Following this, we return to the rarefied heights of postmodern theory. I can but scratch the surface of “‘End of Art’ or ‘End of History’?“ in describing it as an essay in which Jameson adds another level of complexity to his analysis of postmodernism by deploying not only Marxist but Hegelian thought as well in an exploration of two ideas associated with postmodernism, i.e. the “end of art” (see, for instance, Arthur Danto’s book) and the “end of history,” a phrase most closely associated in the postmodern moment with Francis Fukuyama. Moreover, here Jameson employs a reading of the contemporary moment as a comment on Hegel, noting which of the philosopher’s predictions with respect to history turned out to be correct, which turned out to be wrong, and what may have been the causes of Hegel’s mistakes in the latter instances.
“Transformations of the Image in Postmodernity” is another dense, complex and highly theoretical essay. One passage in particular, in which Jameson employs Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Alain Robbe-Grillet and a number of other writers in an analysis of “image culture” I found particularly entertaining.
In the last two essays, Jameson employs the notion of finance capital as a term with which to mediate postmodern culture with capitalism. “Culture and Finance Capital” is the more general of the two, while “The Brick and the Balloon: Architecture, Idealism and Land Speculation” is an exploration of what contemporary architecture reflects of the postmodern moment.
Acquired Nov 15, 2005
Powell's City of Books, Portland, OR
The book begins with the much-anthologized essay “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” which first appeared in New Left Review and introduced readers to Jameson’s thought on postmodernism. Later expanded and appearing in its revised form as the first chapter of Postmodernism, the essay is a kind of overview of postmodern culture, exploring among other things what postmodern literature suggests about the blurring of high and low culture in the contemporary moment, what films like Star Wars or Chinatown suggest about our sense of our history, and what contemporary architecture might reflect of our experience of postmodern space. The second essay, “Theories of the Postmodern,” was also revised and expanded for Postmodernism; here, Jameson supplies an instance of what he has elsewhere termed “metacommentary,” discussing not postmodernism itself but rather analyzing how this has been theorized by other thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Manfredo Tafuri. A third essay that was subsequently expanded (appearing in its revised form in The Seeds of Time) is “The Antinomies of Postmodernity,” an analysis of transformations in the categories of space and time through the modern and postmodern moments.
Because of the challenging forms Jameson employs to express his ideas in the later versions of these essays, I find it extremely useful to have these earlier versions, in which his thought seems more accessible, because it is in a comparatively rudimentary form.
The essay “Marxism and Postmodernism” is sort of like a break after the rigors of the first three essays: while it, too, is a theoretical work, exploring the relations between the two topics mentioned in the title, it is as personal an essay as I have ever seen from Jameson, who writes here in response to those commentators who had assumed, incorrectly, that Jameson’s beginning his work on postmodernism signified his movement away from Marxist thought.
Following this, we return to the rarefied heights of postmodern theory. I can but scratch the surface of “‘End of Art’ or ‘End of History’?“ in describing it as an essay in which Jameson adds another level of complexity to his analysis of postmodernism by deploying not only Marxist but Hegelian thought as well in an exploration of two ideas associated with postmodernism, i.e. the “end of art” (see, for instance, Arthur Danto’s book) and the “end of history,” a phrase most closely associated in the postmodern moment with Francis Fukuyama. Moreover, here Jameson employs a reading of the contemporary moment as a comment on Hegel, noting which of the philosopher’s predictions with respect to history turned out to be correct, which turned out to be wrong, and what may have been the causes of Hegel’s mistakes in the latter instances.
“Transformations of the Image in Postmodernity” is another dense, complex and highly theoretical essay. One passage in particular, in which Jameson employs Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Alain Robbe-Grillet and a number of other writers in an analysis of “image culture” I found particularly entertaining.
In the last two essays, Jameson employs the notion of finance capital as a term with which to mediate postmodern culture with capitalism. “Culture and Finance Capital” is the more general of the two, while “The Brick and the Balloon: Architecture, Idealism and Land Speculation” is an exploration of what contemporary architecture reflects of the postmodern moment.
Acquired Nov 15, 2005
Powell's City of Books, Portland, OR
November 16, 2017
A set of essays by American cultural theorist Fredric Jameson. I am basing my review on both the content of The Cultural Turn and a lecture I watched of him speaking at the Georg Forster Lecture in 2012 titled "The Aesthetics of Singularity: Time and Event in Postmodernity". There's a lot to take in with Jameson's work and I am dazzled with a lot of impressions, not all of which I am sure are accurate. The most important for me is connected to Jameson's distinction between postmodernism and postmodernity. The former is a kind of intellectual practice that has come and gone while the latter is a period of history from which it seems we are yet to emerge. Postmodernity is marked by a worldwide culture of globalism, consumerism, and standardization where all of the world's cultures have been put in a melting pot and everything is increasingly homogenized. This is considered in light of the "end of history", which is a point in time where our sociocultural evolution appears to have stalled. All of the ideas and grand narratives humans are capable of have already been thought up. There is nothing original in thought and culture, all that is left is pastiche, fragmentation, and recombination. To this end, Hegel predicted the end of art, the end of politics, and the end of philosophy, the basic idea of which was itself recycled in Marx, Kojève, Fukuyama, and others. This is not to say that in this picture there is a literal end where cultural production disappears altogether, but rather, we have reached an apotheosis where civilization bumbles on in spite of itself, using technology to recycle old ideas in novel ways and argue for their relevance.
This seems to me to be the essential groundwork of Jameson's worldview which he connects to several topics which include consumerism, Marxism, art, history, architecture, and economics. All of these are interesting, but of note is that postmodern economics to Jameson manifests in finance capital, which he describes as a play of monetary entities which need neither production nor consumption and exist without reference to older ways of doing things. As an economic illiterate I can't say I fully understand or appreciate this, but since he mentions finance capital every other sentence, it is clearly very important to his overall project. I also wonder how he feels about cryptocurrencies.
There are some excellent insights in The Cultural Turn. I recommend the essay "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" and "End of Art? or End of History" in particular for anyone who who is looking for a better understanding of postmodernism. I'll see how I feel about it once I've studied more philosophy of history and economics, but for now, it has left quite an impression on me.
This seems to me to be the essential groundwork of Jameson's worldview which he connects to several topics which include consumerism, Marxism, art, history, architecture, and economics. All of these are interesting, but of note is that postmodern economics to Jameson manifests in finance capital, which he describes as a play of monetary entities which need neither production nor consumption and exist without reference to older ways of doing things. As an economic illiterate I can't say I fully understand or appreciate this, but since he mentions finance capital every other sentence, it is clearly very important to his overall project. I also wonder how he feels about cryptocurrencies.
There are some excellent insights in The Cultural Turn. I recommend the essay "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" and "End of Art? or End of History" in particular for anyone who who is looking for a better understanding of postmodernism. I'll see how I feel about it once I've studied more philosophy of history and economics, but for now, it has left quite an impression on me.
June 27, 2025
Reading The Cultural Turn is like sitting across from Fredric Jameson at a candlelit seminar where he’s both the speaker and the chorus, explaining how every film, novel, TV ad, skyscraper, and sneaker design is secretly a battleground of late capitalism’s cultural contradictions. This isn’t a casual read — this is Jameson in full Marxist regalia, giving us a grand tour of postmodernism as the aesthetic logic of a system that no longer knows how to imagine alternatives.
The essays in this collection — written between 1983 and 1998 — track the slow, sticky slide of culture into hyper-representation, depthlessness, fragmentation, and what Jameson calls “the waning of affect.” But don’t mistake that for hand-wringing — Jameson isn’t lamenting the end of truth. He’s trying to map the system that replaced it. And in doing so, he redefines cultural critique itself as a form of cartography under capitalism.
When I read this to prep an article titled Postmodernism Today, I remember thinking — “This man isn’t describing the past. He’s diagnosing the exact moment I’m living in.” Every insight Jameson lays out — about pastiche replacing parody, nostalgia replacing history, spectacle replacing memory — felt unnervingly close to home. Like the essay on The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism wasn’t just theory, but a weather report for my phone screen, my Netflix queue, my social feed, my every ironic sigh.
Jameson doesn’t just talk about what postmodernism is. He shows how it works. How it aestheticizes politics and politicizes aesthetics. How it flattens time, collapses genre, and sells rebellion as style. The chapter on architecture, with its Las Vegas kitsch and glass-and-steel sameness, is pure gold — you start seeing shopping malls as dialectical manifestos. And the piece on cyberpunk? It basically predicted the Black Mirror aesthetic a decade early.
But here’s the twist: for all his dense vocabulary, Jameson isn’t trying to bury meaning. He’s trying to retrieve it — to carve a tunnel back to history, class, utopia — things postmodernism obscures with cleverness and excess. He even dares to ask: Can we still imagine the future? That’s what’s most radical here — not his critique, but his yearning for a new form of narrative that resists commodification.
And Perry Anderson’s foreword? It’s like being handed a torch before entering the labyrinth. He doesn’t simplify Jameson — but he clarifies his stakes: that culture, under capitalism, is never neutral. It is, always, a terrain of ideological struggle.
So yes — The Cultural Turn is not for the faint of heart. It’s theory with teeth, prose that somersaults, and critique that refuses to be pinned down. But it’s also incredibly generous in its ambition. Jameson invites you not to agree with him, but to think historically again — to see how even your choice of wallpaper or playlist might be an unconscious reflection of a deeper world-system at play.
The essays in this collection — written between 1983 and 1998 — track the slow, sticky slide of culture into hyper-representation, depthlessness, fragmentation, and what Jameson calls “the waning of affect.” But don’t mistake that for hand-wringing — Jameson isn’t lamenting the end of truth. He’s trying to map the system that replaced it. And in doing so, he redefines cultural critique itself as a form of cartography under capitalism.
When I read this to prep an article titled Postmodernism Today, I remember thinking — “This man isn’t describing the past. He’s diagnosing the exact moment I’m living in.” Every insight Jameson lays out — about pastiche replacing parody, nostalgia replacing history, spectacle replacing memory — felt unnervingly close to home. Like the essay on The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism wasn’t just theory, but a weather report for my phone screen, my Netflix queue, my social feed, my every ironic sigh.
Jameson doesn’t just talk about what postmodernism is. He shows how it works. How it aestheticizes politics and politicizes aesthetics. How it flattens time, collapses genre, and sells rebellion as style. The chapter on architecture, with its Las Vegas kitsch and glass-and-steel sameness, is pure gold — you start seeing shopping malls as dialectical manifestos. And the piece on cyberpunk? It basically predicted the Black Mirror aesthetic a decade early.
But here’s the twist: for all his dense vocabulary, Jameson isn’t trying to bury meaning. He’s trying to retrieve it — to carve a tunnel back to history, class, utopia — things postmodernism obscures with cleverness and excess. He even dares to ask: Can we still imagine the future? That’s what’s most radical here — not his critique, but his yearning for a new form of narrative that resists commodification.
And Perry Anderson’s foreword? It’s like being handed a torch before entering the labyrinth. He doesn’t simplify Jameson — but he clarifies his stakes: that culture, under capitalism, is never neutral. It is, always, a terrain of ideological struggle.
So yes — The Cultural Turn is not for the faint of heart. It’s theory with teeth, prose that somersaults, and critique that refuses to be pinned down. But it’s also incredibly generous in its ambition. Jameson invites you not to agree with him, but to think historically again — to see how even your choice of wallpaper or playlist might be an unconscious reflection of a deeper world-system at play.
May 12, 2024
Jameson's writings on economics, markets, money, political economy, and how it all relates to cultural/theoretical questions sinks this collection with euphemisms and terminological imprecisions.
For a Marxist, Jameson never has any curiosity about the labor theory of value or the wages system.
His 1980s is just Reagan-Thatcher tax breaks, his 1990s just computerization. Is Jameson ever curious about the class struggle in general, or the hard-fought unions battles (and defeats) of that period? Likewise, no detectable curiosity about socialist Cuba or the 1979 revolutions in Nicaragua, Grenada, or Iran.
A good counterbalance to this book is:
https://www.pathfinderpress.com/produ...
And
https://www.pathfinderpress.com/produ...
For a Marxist, Jameson never has any curiosity about the labor theory of value or the wages system.
His 1980s is just Reagan-Thatcher tax breaks, his 1990s just computerization. Is Jameson ever curious about the class struggle in general, or the hard-fought unions battles (and defeats) of that period? Likewise, no detectable curiosity about socialist Cuba or the 1979 revolutions in Nicaragua, Grenada, or Iran.
A good counterbalance to this book is:
https://www.pathfinderpress.com/produ...
And
https://www.pathfinderpress.com/produ...
June 27, 2021
Very few theorists can claim to have pinned down so accurately late capitalism or postmodernism, the cultural production of the late capitalist economy. Yet, the paradox of Frederic Jameson: if you read him and agree with him, don't you feel a moral injunction to not be reading him? This is most glaring in the last two essays of the volume, where Jameson is not economist or urbanist enough to turn in satisfying analyses of finance capital or the Rockefeller Center. Instead, Jameson speaks the language of post-structuralism with that same winking belletrism of Foucault and Derrida, yet he deploys this language for Marxist analyses of the post-Fordian capitalist funhouse. If you're interested in these things, in late capitalism and postmodernity, you want to read Jameson, and when you read him, you come away with an opinion of postmodernist culture that's as expansive and accurate as it is, well, low and disapproving. Jameson, of course, is right about that. His best moments—among which I count the first five essays in this volume—are essential reading to understand our present, and although it turns out postmodernity is substantially more stupid than Jameson could have anticipated, he's still fairly prophetic about the state of aesthetics these days and their relation to a distorting, alienated capitalist system unmoored from local industry. And occasionally, between the cold bars of the iron Latinate hyper-referential abstract prose, you see a sterling description of an idea you've had and fumbled to put into words, and you remember that Jameson was a French lit professor, and that he's also grasping for something never before put into words, and he gets at something beautiful. I thought I was clever for thinking that theory and continental philosophy have come to absorb the hermeneutic energies of English lit departments that were formerly reserved for poetry and literature, and Jameson articulates that idea wonderfully in "'End of Art' or 'End of History'?," the most surprising essay here.
Takeaway:
"Indeed, the richness of Hegel's thought – as with any interesting thinker – stems not from the ingenuity or the pertinence or any particular individual concept, but rather from the way in which, in the thinker in question, several distinct systems of concepts coexist and fail to coincide. Imagine models floating above each other as in distinct dimensions: it is not their homologies that prove suggestive or fruitful, but rather the infinitesimal divergences, the imperceptible lack of fit between the levels – extrapolated out into a continuum whose stages range from the pre-choate and the quizzical gap, to the nagging tension and the sharpness of contradiction itself – genuine thinking always taking place within empty spaces, these voids that suddenly appear between the most powerful conceptual schemes. Thinking is thus not the concept, but the breakdown in the relationships between the individual concepts, isolated in their splendour like so many galactic systems, drifting apart in the empty mind of the world."
Takeaway:
"Indeed, the richness of Hegel's thought – as with any interesting thinker – stems not from the ingenuity or the pertinence or any particular individual concept, but rather from the way in which, in the thinker in question, several distinct systems of concepts coexist and fail to coincide. Imagine models floating above each other as in distinct dimensions: it is not their homologies that prove suggestive or fruitful, but rather the infinitesimal divergences, the imperceptible lack of fit between the levels – extrapolated out into a continuum whose stages range from the pre-choate and the quizzical gap, to the nagging tension and the sharpness of contradiction itself – genuine thinking always taking place within empty spaces, these voids that suddenly appear between the most powerful conceptual schemes. Thinking is thus not the concept, but the breakdown in the relationships between the individual concepts, isolated in their splendour like so many galactic systems, drifting apart in the empty mind of the world."
October 6, 2025
Remarkably conservative both in its motivating argument (attempting to define and periodize postmodernity), its source material (Anglo, French, German), and its style. Thankfully it’s not weighed down by the stylistic tomfoolery for which its contemporaneous French superstars are best known (Derrida, Lacan, etc etc), but still—prosody with the poetics of industrial cardboard. Union made cardboard, sure—but cardboard. Combined, a cocktail of critical cowardice.
Finishing this text, I had the profound sense of: who gives a flying fuck?
Finishing this text, I had the profound sense of: who gives a flying fuck?
November 5, 2019
I am led to believe many of these essays were the source work for Jameson's book, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, and cover some of the same material. However, that is not to say these chapters should be skipped, and with the inclusion of several essays that followed the publication of Postmodernism, this book gives deeper insight into Jameson's truly singular contribution to the subject.
August 10, 2024
4.5/5
Al ser un «amigo ideológico» de Zizek -en sus propias palabras- Su lectura se me hizo un poco más comprensible ya que llaman en sus discusiones a bastantes autores similares y obras tanto literarias como culturales (sobretodo música clásica, películas y arquitectura).
Jameson se preocupa por tratar de definir las tendencias modernas de la cultura contemporánea, es decir, la postmodernidad, o la fase del capitalismo tardío en su fase financiera, a través de sus análisis dialecticos y sistemáticos de raigambre marxista clásico.
Al ser un «amigo ideológico» de Zizek -en sus propias palabras- Su lectura se me hizo un poco más comprensible ya que llaman en sus discusiones a bastantes autores similares y obras tanto literarias como culturales (sobretodo música clásica, películas y arquitectura).
Jameson se preocupa por tratar de definir las tendencias modernas de la cultura contemporánea, es decir, la postmodernidad, o la fase del capitalismo tardío en su fase financiera, a través de sus análisis dialecticos y sistemáticos de raigambre marxista clásico.
June 26, 2019
Sus descripciones estéticas son difíciles de seguir, pero se trata de una serie de 8 conferencias de lo más interesantes para adentrarse en muchos de los problemas que plantea el término "posmoderno". Quizás salgas con más dudas de las que entraste, pero para eso sirve el conocimiento.
July 24, 2023
Supero las expectativas que tenía como un libro de introducción a mis intereses por los estudios Culturales, muy amigable la forma en la que escribe el autor, recomendado para introducirse en los estudios culturales.
August 8, 2023
Jameson was spraying and a lot of ppl caught bullets.
This is as close to tangible as postmodern writing can be, imo. Yet I am still wavering on it’s practicality. Writers like Jameson are not concerned with applicability, though. So he’s got me there.
This is as close to tangible as postmodern writing can be, imo. Yet I am still wavering on it’s practicality. Writers like Jameson are not concerned with applicability, though. So he’s got me there.
June 21, 2019
compilations and redundant repetitions of his previous ideas, boring and useless. POTCLOLC is still his best work, pardon my French, but Fred is a tedious leftist with outdated worldview.
July 9, 2020
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Read
May 10, 2022Jei renkate knygas su klaidom, nesnauskite ir susiraskite lietuvišką leidimą. Jis išleistas su gramatine klaida nugarėlėje ir papuoš kiekvieną tokią kolekciją.
December 19, 2023
Top notch stuff. Such scope for such a slender volume. Sharp as a razor.
September 26, 2025
Good first essay on the postmodern. Others not as interesting.
October 2, 2025
Two all-timer essays here ("Theories of the Postmodern" and "End of History/End of Art"), one clunker ("Culture and Finance Capital"), and some bits you'd know from reading his other stuff.
February 21, 2009
i sometimes get lost in the multiple references that jameson's writing builds upon, ranging from experimental film to hegelian philosophy. i find myself googling the many names that i do not know, trying to develop a deeper understanding of what jameson is actually trying to get at. by the time i have read the book that he is talking about, or the movie that he analyzes, i have already forgotten the main idea that i was looking for, and began putting together a different set of thoughts on the material that i have been exposed to. this perhaps is an indirect way of saying that jameson's writing is always inspirational, but at the same time, difficult to criticize. the potential holes in his argument are filled in so effortlessly by these references.
of the essays in this book, i enjoyed 'culture and finance capital' and 'the brick and the balloon: architecture, idealism and land speculation,' possibly because it may inform my own work. as i close the cultural turn, i'm curious to read arrighi's book [and braudel's and mandel's and worringer's....:].
of the essays in this book, i enjoyed 'culture and finance capital' and 'the brick and the balloon: architecture, idealism and land speculation,' possibly because it may inform my own work. as i close the cultural turn, i'm curious to read arrighi's book [and braudel's and mandel's and worringer's....:].
January 10, 2010
Love Fredric Jameson, brilliant writing, brilliant thoughts, immense scope, and for me? A very useful way of thinking about postmodernism...
September 5, 2010
Also the best of Jameson.
August 7, 2012
Not as easy to follow on the power dynamics of architecture as, say, Mike Davis, but worth wrestling with.
September 10, 2014
old man
May 29, 2015
Slim, provocative volume.
Read
July 14, 2016Simon
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