Postmodern Temptations

Abstract

Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Pp. xxii, 438. $34.95 (cloth), $19.95 (paper). Pereat mundus, flat philosophia, flat philosophus, flam! Fredric Jameson has long been among our most sophisticated and influential cultural critics. Combining Marxism and structuralism, Jameson's persistent effort has been to locate and fix the social dimensions of structural cultural patterns. In his most recent book, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Jameson applies this perspective to the important phenomenon of postmodernism. The book ought to be required reading for the many legal academics who have greeted the advent of postmodernism with unrestrained enthusiasm. Jameson, through close attention to the actual cultural manifestations of postmodernism, tells a far darker tale.