Jameson - Periodizing The 60s

Periodizing the 60s
Author(s): Fredric Jameson

Source: Social Text, No. 9/10, The 60's without Apology (Spring - Summer, 1984), pp. 178-209
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466541
Accessed: 13-05-2015 22:18 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Text.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Wed, 13 May 2015 22:18:11 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
PERIODIZING
THE60s
FREDRIC
JAMESON
of thegloriesof the60s or abjectpublic

Nostalgic commemoration
andmissedopportunities
are
ofthedecade'smanyfailures
confession
two errorswhichcannotbe avoidedbysomemiddlepaththatthreadsits
sketchstarts
fromthepositionthatHistory
wayin between.The following
is necessity,
thatthe 60s had to happenthe way it did, and thatits
and failures
were inextricably
markedby the
intertwined,
opportunities
and openingsofa determinate
of
historical
situation,
objectiveconstraints
whichI thuswishto offer
a tentative
and provisional
model.
ofthe60s,however,
isnecessarily
To speakofthe"situation"
tothink
in termsof historicalperiodsand to work withmodelsof historical
whichareat thepresent
momenttheoretically
unfashionable,
periodization
Leave
the
existential
factthattheveteransof the
to say the least.
aside
fromyearto
decade,who haveseen so manythingschangedramatically
theclassification
thantheirpredecessors;
by
year,thinkmorehistorically
forus as itwas fortheRussians
of
has becomeas meaningful
generations
the late 19thcentury,
who sortedcharacter
to
typesout withreference
of a certainage now findit normalto
specificdecades.Andintellectuals
theircurrent
narrative
justify
positionsby wayof an historical
("thenthe
limitsof Althusserianism
beganto be evident,"etc.).Now,thisis notthe
inthewriting
ofperiodization
ofhistory,
placefora theoretical
justification
but to thosewho thinkthatculturalperiodization
impliessome massive
withina givenperiod,itmayquickly
and homogeneity
or identity
kinship
be repliedthatit is surelyonlyagainsta certainconceptionof whatis
dominant
or hegemonic
thatthefullvalueoftheexceptionalhistorically
Williams
whatRaymond
callsthe"residual"or "emergent"-canbe assesnotas some
sed. Here,inanycase,the"period"in questionis understood
and uniform
sharedstyleor wayof thinking
and acting,but
omnipresent
ratheras thesharingof a commonobjectivesituation,
to whicha whole
range of varied responses and creativeinnovationsis then possible, but

limits.
always withinthatsituation'sstructural
Yet a whole rangeof ratherdifferent
theoreticalobjectionswill also
178
THE60s
PERIODIZING
bear on the selectivenessof such a historicalnarrative:if the critiqueof

periodizationquestions the possibilitiesof diachrony,these involve the
problems of synchrony and in particular of the relationship to be
establishedbetweenthevarious"levels" of historicalchangesingledout for
attention. Indeed, the present narrativewill claim to say something
meaningfulabout the 60s by way of briefsketchesof but fourof those
levels: the history of philosophy, revolutionarypolitical theory and
practice,culturalproduction,and economic cycles (and thisin a context
limitedessentiallyto the UnitedStates,Franceand the thirdworld.) Such
selectivenessseems not merelyto give equal historicalweightto base and
but also to raise the specterof a practiceof
superstructure
indifferently,
homologies-the kindof analogicalparallelismin which thepoeticproduction of Wallace Stevensis somehow "the same" as the politicalpracticeof
Che Guevara- which have been thoughtabusive at least as farback as
Spengler.
There is of course no reason why specializedand elite phenomena,
such as thewritingof poetry,cannotrevealhistoricaltrendsand tendencies
as vividlyas "real life"--orperhapseven morevisibly,in theirisolationand
semiautonomywhich approximatesa laboratorysituation.In any case,
thereis a fundamentaldifference
between the presentnarrativeand those
of an older organichistorywhich sought"expressive"unificationthrough
analogies and homologies between widely distinctlevels of social life.
Where the latterproposed identitiesbetween the formson such various
levels, what will be argued here is a series of significant
homologiesbetween the breaks in those formsand theirdevelopment.What is at stake
thenis not some propositionabout the organicunityof the 60s on all its
and dynamicsof thefundalevels,but rathera hypothesisabout therhythm
in
levels develop accordingto
mentalsituation which those verydifferent
theirown internallaws.
At thatpoint,what looked like a weakness in thishistoricalor narrain altive procedureturnsout to be an unexpected strength,
particularly
the
of
the
of
strands
narrafor
some
sort
of
"verification"
lowing
separate
tive.One sometimesfeels--especiallyin thearea of cultureand culturalhisnumberof narrativeinterpretations
of
toriesand critiques-thatan infinite
the
the
are
limited
of
ingenuity
practitioners
history
only by
possible,
whose claimto originality
depends on thenoveltyof thenew theoryof histhen,to findtheregularities
torytheybringto market.It is morereassuring,
for
one
field
of
hypothetically
activity(e.g., the cognitive,or the
proposed
or
and surprisingly
the
"confirmed"
aesthetic,
dramatically
revolutionary)
in
the
a
different
and seemof
such
by
reappearance just
regularities widely
as
will
with
in
the
unrelated
be
the
case
the
economic
field,
ingly
present
context.
At any rate,it will alreadyhave become clear thatnothinglike a his179
180 0 FREDRICJAMESON
narrative
sensewillbe offered
here.But
toryof the60s in thetraditional,
historical
is justas surelyincrisisas itsdistant
cousin,thelinrepresentation
earnovel,and formuchthesamereasons.The mostintelligent
"solution"
to sucha crisisdoes notconsistinabandoning
as
altogether,
historiography
an impossible
aimandan ideological
allatonce,butrather-asin
category
themodernist
aesthetic
itself-inreorganizing
itstraditional
on
procedures
a different
level.Althusser's
as
proposalseemsthewisestin thissituation:
narrative
old-fashioned
or "realistic"
becameproblematic,
historiography
thehistorian
hervocation-notanylongerto produce
shouldreformulate
somevividrepresentation
ofHistory
to
"as itreallyhappened,"butrather
Suchwillat leastbe thegambleof thefolproducetheconceptofhistory.
lowingpages.
1. THIRD WORLD BEGINNINGS
It does notseemparticularly
to markthebeginnings
ofwhat
controversial
willcometo be calledthe60s in thethirdworldwiththegreatmovement
in British
of decolonization
and FrenchAfrica.It can be arguedthatthe
mostcharacteristic
first
of a properly
world60s are all later
expressions
incountercultural
thanthis,whether
and
theyareunderstood
terms-drugs
rock--orin thepoliticaltermsof a studentnew leftand a massantiwar
movement.
a first
world60s owedmuchto third-worldIndeed,politically,
ism in termsof politicocultural
models,as in a symbolicMaoism,and,
to warsaimedprecisely
at stemfounditsmissionin resistance
moreover,
forcesin thethirdworld.(Elsewherein this
mingthenew revolutionary
thatthetwofirst
worldnationsin whichthe
work,BeldenFieldssuggests
mostpowerful
studentmassmovements
emerged-theUnitedStatesand
becausethesewere
politicalspacesprecisely
France--becameprivileged
thetwocountries
theFrenchnew left
involvedin colonialwars,although
The one significant
extheresolution
oftheAlgerian
conflict.)
appearsafter
all
in
this
the
most
to
is
first
world
manyways
ception
important
political
movement
of all--thenew blackpoliticsand thecivilrights
movement,
whichmustbe dated,not fromtheSupremeCourtdecisionof 1954,but
in Greensboro,
ratherfromthefirst
sit-ins
NorthCarolina,in February
of
ofdecoloniza1960.Yetitmightbe arguedthatthiswas also a movement
between
tion,andinanycase theconstant
exchangeandmutualinfluences
theAmerican
blackmovements
andthevariousAfrican
ones
andCaribbean
are continuous
and incalculable
this
throughout period.
The independenceof Ghana (1957), the agony of the Congo
inJanuary
of France's
1961),theindependence
(Lumumbawas murdered
sub-Saharan
theGaullist
referendum
of1959,finally
the
coloniesfollowing
markourschemaherewithits
Revolution
Algerian
(whichmightplausibly
internalhighpoint,the Battleof Algiers,inJanuary-March

1957, as withits
diplomaticresolutionin 1962)--all of these signalthe convulsivebirthof
what will come in timeto be known as the 60s:
PERIODIZING
THE60s 0 181
Not so very long ago, the earth numbered two thousand million inhabitants:five
hundred million men and one thousand five hundred million natives. The former
had the Word; the others merelyhad use of it....
Sartre,"Preface" to The Wretchedof the Earth
The 60s was, then,the period in which all these "natives"became human
as well as externally:thoseinnercolonized of the
beings,and thisinternally
firstworld- "minorities,"marginals,and women- fullyas much as its
externalsubjects and official"natives." The process can and has been
describedin a numberof ways,each one of which impliesa certain"vision
of History"and a certainuniquelythematizedreadingof the 60s proper:it
can be seen as a decisive and global chapterin Croce's conception of
historyas the historyof human freedom;as a more classicallyHegelian
process of the coming to self-consciousnessof subject peoples; as some
post-Lukicseanor more Marcusean,new leftconceptionof the emergence
of new "subjects of history"of a nonclass type (blacks, students,third
world peoples); or as some poststructuralist,Foucaultean notion
(significantly
anticipated by Sartre in the passage just quoted) of the
conquest of therightto speak in a new collectivevoice, neverbeforeheard
on theworld stage-and of theconcomitantdismissalof theintermediaries
(liberals,firstworld intellectuals)who hithertoclaimed to talk in your
name; not forgettingthe more properly political rhetoric of selfdeterminationor independence,or the more psychologicaland cultural
rhetoricof new collective"identities."
It is, however,importantto situatethe emergenceof these new collective"identities"or "subjectsof history"in thehistoricalsituationwhich
made thatemergencepossible,and in particularto relatethe emergenceof
these new social and politicalcategories(the colonized, race, marginality,
gender and the like) to somethinglike a crisis in the more universal
categorythathad hithertoseemed to subsume all the varietiesof social resistance,namelytheclassicalconceptionof social class. This is to be underbut ratherin an institutional
sense:
stood, however,not in some intellectual
it would be idealisticto suppose thatdeficienciesin the abstractidea of
social class, and in particularin the Marxianconception of class struggle,
can have been responsibleforthe emergenceof what seem to be new nonclass forces.Whatcan be noted,rather,
is a crisisin theinstitutions
through
which a real class politicshad however imperfectly
been able to express
itself.In thisrespect,the mergerof the AFL and the CIO in 1955 can be
seen as a fundamental"conditionof possibility"forthe unleashingof the
new social and politicaldynamicsof the 60s: thatmerger,a triumphof
securedtheexpulsionof theCommunistsfromtheAmerican
McCarthyism,
labor movement, consolidated the new antipolitical"social contract"
between Americanbusinessand the Americanlabor unions,and createda
situationin which the privilegesof a white male labor force take precedence over the demands of black and women workersand otherminorities. These last have thereforeno place in the classical institutions
of an
182@ FREDRIC
JAMESON
older working-class
politics.They will thusbe "liberated"fromsocial class,
in the chargedand ambivalentsense which Marxismgives to thatword (in
the contextof enclosure,forinstance):theyare separatedfromthe older
and thus "released" to findnew modes of social and political
institutions
expression.
The virtualdisappearanceof theAmericanCommunistPartyas a small
but significant
politicalforcein Americansocietyin 1956 suggestsanother
dimension to this general situation:the crisis of the Americanpartyis
and by the "revo"overdetermined"by its repressionunderMcCarthyism
camlution" in the Soviet bloc unleashedby Khrushchev'sdeStalinization
paign, which will have analogous but distinctand specificequivalentsfor
afterthebriefmotheEuropeanCommunistParties.In France,in particular,
mentof a Communist"humanism,"developed essentiallyby philosophers
in the easterncountries,and with the fallof Khrushchevhimselfand the
definitivefailureof his variousexperimentsin 1964, an unparalleledsituation emergesin which, virtuallyfor the firsttime since the Congressof
Tours in 1919, it becomes possible forradicalintellectualsto conceive of
revolutionarywork outside and independentof the French Communist
Party.(The older attitudes-"we know all about it,we don't like it much,
but nothingis to be done politicallywithout the CP" - are classically
expressedin Sartre'sown politicaljournalism,in particularin Les Communisteset la paix.) Now Trotskyism
gets a new lease on life,and the new
formaMaoistforms,followedby a whole explosion of extraparliamentary
tionsof all ideologicalcomplexions,theso-called"groupuscules,"offerthe
promiseof a new kind of politicsequally "liberated"fromthe traditional
class categories.
Two further
key eventsneed to be noted here beforewe go on. For
many of us, indeed, the crucial detonator- a new Year I, the palpable
demonstrationthatrevolutionwas not merelya historicalconcept and a
museumpiece but real and achievable-was furnishedby a people whose
subjugationhad developed among NorthAmericansa sympathy
imperialist
we could neverhave forotherthirdworldpeoples
and a sense of fraternity
in theirstruggle,
way.YetbyJanuary1,
exceptin an abstractand intellectual
1959, the Cuban Revolutionremainedsymbolicallyambiguous.It could be
read as a thirdworld revolutionof a different
typefromeithertheclassical
enLeninistone or theMaoistexperience,forithad a revolutionary
strategy
event
which
later.
This
also
great
tirelyitsown, thefoco theory,moreabout
announces the impending60s as a period of unexpectedpoliticalinnovaof oldersocial and conceptualschemes.
tionratherthanas theconfirmation
Meanwhile,personaltestimonyseems to make it clear thatformany
whiteAmericanstudents-in particularformanyof thoselateractivein the
rolein
new left-the assassinationof PresidentKennedyplayeda significant
in
the
itself
and
the
state
process,
discrediting parliamentary
delegitimizing
seemingto markthedecisiveend of thewell-knownpassingof thetorchto
THE60s 0 183
PERIODIZING
a younger
ofleadership,
as wellas thedramatic
defeatofsome
generation
newspiritofpublicor civicidealism.
Asforthereality
oftheappearance,
it
sucha viewoftheKennedy
does notmuchmatter
that,inhindsight,
presihis conservatism
and anticonsidering
dencymaybe whollyerroneous,
thegruesome
andhisresponsicommunism,
gambleofthe"missilecrisis,"
in
the
Vietnam
itself.
the
for
American
More
bility
engagement
significantly,
of
the
the
to
of
a
60s
well
legacy
Kennedyregime
development
politicsmay
have been the rhetoric
of youthand of the "generation
gap" whichhe
him
but
which
outlived
and
itself
as an exoffered
exploited,
dialectically
the
discontent
of
American
form
which
students
pressive
through
political
and youngpeoplecouldarticulate
itself.
Suchweresomeofthepreconditions
or "conditions
ofpossibility"in
bothintraditional
institutions
and
thearenaofthe
class
working political
of
state
for
the
social
forces
of the60s to
"new"
legitimation
powerthere
is
as
did.
to
these
new
a
forces,
develop they
Returning
wayinwhich
theirultimate
fatemarkstheclose of the60s as well: theend of "thirdin theU.S. and Europelargely
worldism"
predatestheChineseThermidor,
in
and coincideswiththeawarenessof increasing
institutional
corruption
the
the
of
states
of
Africa
and
almost
many
newlyindependent
complete
militarization
oftheLatinAmerican
aftertheChileancoup of 1973
regimes
in the former
coloniesare
(the laterrevolutionary
Portuguese
triumphs
henceforth
feltto be "Marxist"
rather
than"third-worldist,"
whileVietnam
vanishesfromAmericanconsciousnessas completely
afterthe ultimate
withdrawal
as did AlgeriafromFrenchconsciousness
afterthe
American
Evianaccordsof1963).In thefirst
worldofthelate60s,thereis certainly
a
in theUnited
return
to a moreinternal
as theantiwarmovement
politics,
Statesand May68 in Francetestify.
YettheAmerican
movement
remains
in
linked
the
Vietnam
War
as
to
its
third
world
"occasion"
itself,
organically
wellas to theMaoistinspiration
which
oftheProgressive
Labor-type
groups
emergefromSDS, such thatthe movementas a whole will lose its
momentum
as thewar windsdown and thedraftceases. In France,the
"commonprogram"of the left(1972)- in whichthe currentSocialist
a newturntowardsGramscian
models
findsitsorigins-marks
government
which
and a new kindof "Eurocommunist"
owes
little
to
third
spirit
very
in the U.S.
worldantecedents
the blackmovement
of any kind.Finally,
entersintoa crisisat muchthesame time,as itsdominantideologycultural
linkedto thirdworldmodels
an ideologyprofoundly
nationalism,
-is exhausted.
to thiskind
The women'smovement
also owed something
willknowan
ofthirdworldinspiration,
butittoo,intheperiod1972-1974,
increasingarticulationinto relativelydistinctideological positions
lesbianseparatism,
socialistfeminism).
("bourgeois"feminism,
For reasonsenumeratedabove, and others,itseems plausibleto mark
the end of the 60s around 1972-74; the problemof thisgeneral"break"
will be returnedto at the end of this sketch. For the momentwe must
184 0 FREDRIC
JAMESON
oftheoveralldynamic
ofthird
worldhistory
completeourcharacterization
if it is grantedthatthis dynamicor
duringthis period,particularly
someprivileged
ofinfluence
on the
"narrative
line"entertains
relationship
ofa first
world60s (eitherthrough
directintervention-wars
of
unfolding
theprestigeofexoticpoliticalmodelsnationalliberation-orthrough
theMaoistone-or finally,
mostobviously,
owingto someglobaldynamic
whichbothworldsshareand respondto in relatively
distinct
ways).
Thisis ofcoursethemomentto observethatthe"liberation"
ofnew
forcesinthethirdworldis as ambiguous
as thistermfrequently
tendstobe
as separation
itis the
fromolder,
to putitmoresharply,
(freedom
systems);
momentto recalltheobvious,thatdecolonization
wenthandin
historically
handwithneo-colonialism,
andthatthegraceful,
orviolentendof
grudging
an old-fashioned
meanttheend ofone kindofdomiimperialism
certainly
and construction
nationbutevidently
also theinvention
ofa new kindlikethereplacement
of theBritish
something
Empireby the
symbolically,
International
Fund.Thisis, incidentally,
fashMonetary
whythecurrently
ionablerhetoric
ofpowerand domination
(Foucaultis themostinfluential
butthebasicdisplacement
of theserhetoricians,
fromtheeconomicto the
itis of
politicalis alreadymadein MaxWeber)is ultimately
unsatisfactory:
coursepolitically
to "contest"thevariousformsof powerand
important
butthelatter
cannotbe understood
reunlesstheirfunctional
domination,
toeconomicexploitation
arearticulated-that
is,untilthepolitilationships
cal is once againsubsumedbeneaththeeconomic.(On theotherhandin thehistoricizing
of thepresentessay- it will
particularly
perspective
historicaland social symptomthat,in the
obviouslybe a significant
to expresstheirsenseofthesituation
and
mid-60s,
peoplefeltitnecessary
theirprojectedpraxisin a reified
politicallanguageofpower,domination,
and antiauthoritarianism,
and so forth:here,secondand third
authority
- with theirconceptionsof a "primacyof the
world developments
an interesting
andcuriouscross-lighting.)
political"undersocialism-offer
similar
can be saidof theconceptions
ofcollective
Meanwhile,
something
of thepoststructuralist
and in particular
identity
sloganof theconquestof
to speakinyourown voice,foryourself:
butto articuspeech,oftheright
latenew demands,in yourown voice,is notnecessarily
to satisfy
them,
and to speakis notnecessarily
fromthe
to achievea Hegelianrecognition
Other(or at leastthenonlyin themoresomberand balefulsensethatthe
in a newwayand to invent
Othernow has to takeyou intoconsideration
new methodsfordealingwiththatnew presenceyou haveachieved).In
the"materialist
or ideologirhetoric
kernel"ofthischaracteristic
hindsight,
cal visionofthe60s maybe foundina morefundamental
reflection
on the
natureof cultural
revolution
itself(now independent
of itslocaland now
historicalChinese manifestation).
The paradoxical,or dialectical,combinationof decolonizationand
neocolonialismcan perhaps best be grasped in economic termsby a re-
PERIODIZINGTHE 60s 0 185
on thenatureofanotherprocesswhosebeginning
coincideswith
flection
we havesuggested
thegeneralbeginnings
forthisperiodas a whole.Thisis
a processgenerally
describedin theneutralbutobviouslyideologicallanin agriculture:
theso-calledGreen
of
a
"revolution"
technological
guage
with
its
new
chemical
of
Revolution,
applications
proceduresto fertilizaits
intensified
of
itspredictable
and
celebramechanization,
tion,
strategies
and wonder-working
tionof progress
destined
to
technology,
supposedly
freetheworldfromhunger(theGreenRevolution,
finds
its
incidentally,
inKhrushchev's
disastrous
secondworldequivalent
"virginlands"experiand is theirexport
ment).Buttheseare farfromneutralachievements,
- essentially
the
a
benevolent
and altruistic
pioneeredby
Kennedys
In
the
and
20th
of the
19th
activity.
early
century,
capitalist
penetration
thirdworlddid not necessarily
mean a capitalist
transformation
of the
latter's
traditional
modesofproduction.
Rather,
theywereformostpartleft
structure.
The
intact,'merely'exploitedby a morepoliticaland military
enclave
nature
of
these
older
with
modes-in
combination
very
agricultural
theviolenceof theoccupierand thatotherviolence,theintroduction
of
a
sort
of
that
was
beneficial
the
relation
to
money--established
tributary
fora considerable
metropolis
imperialist
periodoftime.TheGreenRevoluand expansionof the"logicof capital"intoa
tioncarriesthispenetration
new stage.
are
formsof agriculture
and precapitalist
The oldervillagestructures
to be replacedby an industrial
now systematically
agriculture
destroyed,
are fullyas disastrous
whoseeffects
as, and analogousto, themomentof
enclosurein the emergenceof capitalin whatwas to becomethe first
ofvillagesocietiesarenowshattered,
world.The "organic"socialrelations
to the
an enormouslandlesspreproletariat
"produced,"whichmigrates
while
urbanareas(as thetremendous
growthof MexicoCitycan testify),
laborreplacethe
forms
ofagricultural
new,moreproletarian,
wage-working
needsto
kinds.Suchambiguous"liberation"
or traditional
oldercollective
be describedwithall the dialecticalambivalencewithwhichMarxand
of capitalitselfin theManifestoor the
Engelscelebratethe dynamism
achievedby theBritish
historical
occupationof India.
progress
The conception
ofthethirdworld60s as a momentinwhichallover
kindwerethrown
off
theworldchainsandshacklesofa classicalimperialist
is an altogether
ina stirring
waveof "warsofnationalliberation,"
mythical
as muchbythenewpenetration
is generated
Suchresistance
simplification.
withtheolder
as itis by theultimate
of theGreenRevolution
impatience
the latteritselfoverdetermined
structures,
by the historical
imperialist
thirdworldentity,
of anotherformer
namely
spectacleof thesupremacy
in
over
the
old
initial
victories
its
powersinWorld
imperial
sweeping
Japan,
War II. Eric Wolf'sindispensablePeasant Wars of the TwentiethCentury
underscores the relationship between possibilities of resistance, the
ethos, and a certainconstitutivedistance
developmentof a revolutionary
fromthemoreabsolutelydemoralizingsocial and economiclogicof capital.

The finalambiguitywithwhich we leave thistopic is the following:
the60s,oftenimagined
as a periodin whichcapitaland first
worldpower
are in retreatall over the globe, can just as easily be conceptualizedas a

period in which capital is in full dynamic and innovativeexpansion,
equipped witha whole armatureof freshproductiontechniquesand new
"means of production."It now remainsto be seen whetherthisambiguity,
of the agricultural
and the fargreaterspecificity
developmentsin the third
world, have any equivalentin the dynamicswithwhich the 60s unfoldin
the advanced countriesthemselves.
2. THE POLITICS OF OTHERNESS
If thehistoryof philosophyis understoodnot as some sequence of timeless
yet somehow finitepositionsin the eternal,but ratheras the historyof
attemptsto conceptualizea historicaland social substanceitselfin constant
dialecticaltransformation,
whose aporias and contradictionsmark all of
those successive philosophies as determinatefailures,yet failuresfrom
which we can read offsomethingof thenatureof theobject on whichthey
themselvescame to grief-thenitdoes not seem quiteso far-fetched
to scan
the more limitedtrajectoryof thatnow highlyspecialized disciplinefor
symptomsof the deeper rhythmsof the "real" or "concrete" 60s itself.
As faras the historyof philosophyduringthatperiod is concerned,
one of the more influentialversions of its storyis told as follows: the
gradual supercession of a hegemonic Sartreanexistentialism(with its
essentiallyphenomenologicalperspectives)by what is oftenloosely called
"structuralism,'
namely,by a varietyof new theoreticalattemptswhich
share in common at least a single fundamental "experience"--the
discoveryof the primacyof Languageor the Symbolic(an area in which
remainrelativelyconventional
phenomenologyand Sartreanexistentialism
The momentof highstructuralism
or traditional).
-whose mostinfluential
monumentsare seeminglynotphilosophicalat all,butcan be characterized,
alongside the new linguistics itself, as linguistic transformationsof
and JacquesLacan
anthropologyand psychoanalysisby Claude Levi-Strauss
respectively- is however an inherentlyunstable one which has the
vocation of becoming a new type of universalmathesis,under pain of
vanishingas one more intellectualfad. The breakdownproductsof that
momentof high structuralism
can then be seen on the one hand as the
recutionto a kind of scientism,to sheer methodand analyticaltechnique
of structuralist
(in semiotics); and on the other,as the transformation
active
in
which
into
ethical,politicaland historical
approaches
ideologies
are
drawn
from
the
hitherto
more epistemological
consequences
"structuralist"
this
last
is
of
the
moment
of what is now
course
positions;
known
as
with
familiar
names like
associated
post-structuralism,
generally
PERIODIZING
THE60s 0 187
those of Foucault,Deleuze, Derridaand so forth.That the paradigm,

is not merelylocal can be
althoughobviouslyFrenchin its references,
of theclassicalFrankfurt
Schoolvia
judgedfroman analogousmutation
in theworkofHabermas;or bythecurrent
ofcommunication,
problems
whichhas a homein theworkof RichardRorty,
revivalof pragmatism
feelingto it (Peirceafterall having
grownAmerican"post-structuralist"
precededand outclassedSaussure).
largely
of
andthegradualextinction
institution
Thecrisisofthephilosophical
for
our
time
was
classicpolitical
thephilosopher's
vocation,ofwhichSartre
can in some waysbe said to be aboutthesothesupremeembodiment,
butalso the
calleddeathof thesubject:theindividual
ego or personality,
Subject,thecogitobutalso theauteurofthegreat
supremephilosophical
It is certainly
possibleto see Sartreas one ofthelast
philosophical
system.
of traditional
philosophy(but then at least one
greatsystembuilders
mustalso be seenas an ideologyor a
dimension
of classicalexistentialism
in
choiceand freedom
thatof theheroicpathosofexistential
metaphysic:
in
of
us
Some
more
thevoid,andthatofthe"absurd,"
particularlyCamus).
elementsin theearlySartre(he
dialectical
also came to Marxismthrough
in his own later,more
avenue
this
to
follow
himselfthenturning
up
Reason [1960]).Buton
Dialectical
as
the
Marxianwork,such
Critiqueof
underwent
therichest
work
which
of
his
balancethatcomponent
practical
was his theoryof
his
own
as
well
as
hands
at otherpeople's
elaboration
rewrite
ofHegel'sMaster/Slave
hisstunning
relations,
chapter,
interpersonal
oftheLookas themostconcretemodeinwhichI relateto
hisconception
in
of myalienation
withthem,thedimension
othersubjectsand struggle
us
in whicheach of
by
vainlyattempts,
my "being-for-other-people,"
thebalefulalienating
lookingat theother,to turnthetablesand transform
gaze. Sartrewill
gaze of theOtherintoan objectformyequallyalienating
of
and
to trytoerecta morepositive political
theory
go on,intheCritique,
between
the
sterile
territory: struggle
groupdynamicson thisseemingly
into the struggle
transformed
two people now becomingdialectically
was
however
an anticipatory
The
betweengroupsthemselves. Critique
be
until
not
would
and
work,whoseimport significance
finally recognized
even
have
not
indeed
rich
whose
68
and
fully
consequences
May
beyond,
it to say,in thepresentcontext,thatthe
been drawnto thisday.Suffice
andtocompletetheprojected
terminus,
Critiquefailstoreachitsappointed
the
individual
led
from
was
have
that
to
subjectof existential
highway
It breaksdownat
classes.
social
constituted
all
the
to
way fully
experience
usable
of smallgroups,and is ultimately
the pointof the constitution
ofthe
later
moment
a
bands
of
small
for
(in
guerrilla
principally ideologies
of
the
the
and
of
significance this
period'send):
(at
microgroups
60s)
trajectorywill soon be clear.
However,at the dawn of the 60s, the Sartreanparadigmof the Look
and the strugglefor recognitionbetween individualsubjects will also be
in
fora verydifferent
modelofpolitical
appropriated
dramatically
struggle,
influential
FrantzFanon'senormously
vision(The Wretched
of theEarth,
betweenColonizerand Colonized,wheretheobjecti1961)of thestruggle
oftheLookis apocalyptically
as theactofredempreversal
rewritten
fying
tiveviolenceofSlaveagainstMaster,
in which,infearand the
themoment
positionsof Selfand Other,Centerand
anxietyof death,thehierarchical
are
and
consciousness
reversed, in whichthesubservient
Margin, forcibly
intheface
oftheColonizedachievescollective
and
self-affirmation
identity
of colonizersin abjectflight.
Whatis at once significant
is the way in whichwhathad been a
technical
thenatureof
philosophical
subject(the"problem"of solipsism,
between
individual
or
has
fallen
intothe
subjects "cogitos")
relationships
worldand becomean explosiveand scandalouspolitical
ideology:a piece
of theold-fashioned
technical
of
philosophical
system highexistentialism
and
outside
into
off
migrating
departments
breaking
philosophy
altogether,
a morefrightening
could
of
and
terror.
Fanon'sgreatmyth
landscape praxis
be read at the time,by thoseit appalledequallywell as by thoseit
calltomindless
violence:inretrospect,
andin
as an irresponsible
energized,
thelightofFanon'sother,
clinicalwork(hewasa psychiatrist
with
working
ofcolonization
andofthetorture
and terror
oftheAlgerian
victims
war),it
can moreappropriately
be readas a significant
to a whole
contribution
theoryof culturalrevolutionas the collectivereeducation(or even
collectivepsychoanalysis)of oppressed peoples or unrevolutionary
workingclasses. Culturalrevolutionas a strategyfor breakingthe
immemorial
habitsof subalternity
and obediencewhichhave become
internalized
as a kindof secondnaturein all thelaboriousand exploited
classesin humanhistory-suchis thevasterproblematic
to which,today,
Gramsciand WilhelmReich,Fanonand RudolfBahro,can be seen as
as richlyas themoreofficial
of Maoism.
contributing
practices
3. DIGRESSION ON MAOISM
But with thisnew and fatefulreference,an awkwardbut unavoidableparentheticaldigressionis in order:Maoism,richestof all thegreatnew ideolthisesogies of the60s, willbe a shadowybut centralpresencethroughout
it cannotbe neatlyinserted
at any
say,yetowingto itsverypolyvalence
confronted
on itsown.One understands,
ofcourse,
pointnorexhaustively
hereand abroad,fatigued
must
whyleftmilitants
by Maoistdogmatisms,
have heaveda collectivesighof reliefwhentheChineseturnconsigned
"Maoism"itself
to theashcanofhistory.
areoftenliberTheories,
however,
ated on theirown termswhen theyare thus radicallydisjoinedfromthe

of statepower.Meanwhile,as I have suggestedabove, the
practicalinterests
symbolicterrainof thepresentdebate is fullyas much chosen and dictated
by the rightas by leftsurvivors:and the currentpropagandacampaign,
PERIODIZINGTHE 60s 0 189
in theworld,to Stalinize
and discredit
Maoismand theexperieverywhere
- now rewritten
as yetanother
ence of the Chineseculturalrevolution
aboutit,ispartandparcelof
Gulagto theEast-all ofthis,makeno mistake
it wouldnotbe prudentto
to trashthe60s generally:
thelargerattempt
reconsideration
andwithout
abandonrapidly
anyofthisterrain
thoughtful
to the"otherside."
third-worldism
Asforthemoreludicrous
features
ofWestern
generalversionofMarx'srevolutionaries
ly-a kindofmodernexoticor orientalist
of 1848, who "anxiouslyconjure up the spiritsof (the GreatRevolutionof
1789)to theirserviceand borrowfromthemnames,battlecriesand cosin a morecynicallight,as in

tumes"- theseare now widelyunderstood
ofpoliticalmodernity
"In France,theColumbuses
RegisDebray'sremark:
were
China
La
thatfollowing
Godard's Chinoisethey
discovering
thought
in
in Paris,whenin facttheywerelanding California."
Mostparadoxicaland fascinating
of all,however,is theunexpected
to
the
and unpredictable
Sino-Soviet
splititself:thenew Chinese
sequel
and
as revisionistic
the
Soviet
intent
on
rhetoric,
bureaucracy
castigating
content
of
will
the
class
have
the
of
curious
effect
evacuating
"bourgeois,"
disand
theseslogans.Thereis thenan inevitable
terminological
slippage
thenewbinaryoppositeto theterm"bourgeois"willno longer
placement:
for
and thenew qualifications
be "proletarian"
butrather"revolutionary,"
in
of
or
terms
class
this
kind
made
of
are
no
longer
politicaljudgements
to
in
but
rather
terms
of
affiliation
personallife--yourrelationship
party
and
luxuries
and
dachas
to
middle-class
managerial
special privileges,
we are
own monthly
incomesand otherperks- Mao Tse-tung's
"salary,"
As
in
American
dollars.
of
a
hundred
the
was
told, something
neighborhood
with all formsof anticommunism,
this rhetoriccan of course be
of theend of
of "bureaucracy,"
thematics
by theanti-Marxist
appropriated
how for
it
But
is
to
understand
and
social
etc.
class,
important
ideology
and
tactical
militants
whatbegantoemergefromthisatfirst
western
merely
will
to
a
which
come
shift
was a wholenewpolitical
rhetorical
space, space
which
and
into
is
the
be articulated
the
"the
political,"
slogan,
personal
by
turns-the
-in one ofthemoststunning
and unforeseeable
ofhistorical
move at the end of the decade,
women'smovementwill triumphantly
kindwhichis stillimpregnable
a Yenanofa newandunpredictable
building
at thepresentmoment.
4. THE WITHERING
AWAY OF PHILOSOPHY
The limitas well as thestrength

of thestarkFanonianmodel of strugglewas
of the colonial situation;thiscan be shown in
set by the relativesimplicity
two ways, firstof all in the sequel to the "war of nationalindependence."
For with the Slave's symbolicand literalvictoryover the (now former)
Master,the "politicsof otherness"touchesitslimitas well; therhetoricof a
JAMESON
190 0 FREDRIC
conquest of collectiveidentityhas thennowhereelse to go but intoa kind
of secessionarylogic of which black culturalnationalismand (later on)
lesbianseparatismare the mostdramaticexamples(the dialecticof cultural
and linguisticindependence in Quebec province would be yet another
instructiveone). But thisresultis also contradictory,
insofaras the newly
constitutedgroup (we here pick up Sartre'saccount in the Critique)needs
outsideenemiesto surviveas a group,to produce and perpetuatea sense of
in the absence of the clear-cut
collectivecohesion and identity.
Ultimately,
Manichaean situation of the older imperialistperiod, this hard-won
collectiveself-definition
of a firstmomentof resistancewill break up into
the smallerand more comfortableunitiesof face-to-face
microgroups(of
which the officialpoliticalsects are only one example).
The gradual waning of the Fanonian model can also be described
from the perspective of what will shortlybecome its "structuralist"
critique.On thisview,itis stilla model based on a conceptionof individual
subjects,albeitmythicaland collectiveones. It is therebyboth anthropoin thesense in whichnothingintervenesbetween
morphicand transparent,
thegreatcollectiveadversaries,betweentheMasterand the Slave,between
the Colonizer and the Colonized. Yet even in Hegel, therewas always a
thirdterm,namelymatteritself,the raw materialson which the slave is
made to laborand to workout a long and anonymoussalvationthroughthe
restof history.The "thirdterm"of the60s is howeverratherdifferent
from
this.It was as thoughthe protractedexperiencesof the earlierpartof the
decade graduallyburnedintothemindsof theparticipants
a specificlesson.
In the UnitedStates,itwas theexperienceof theinterminable
VietnamWar
itself; in France, it was the astonishing and apparently invincible
technocratic dynamism, and the seemingly unshakeable inertia and
resistance to deStalinization of the French Communist Party; and
everywhere,it was the tremendousexpansion of the media apparatusand
the cultureof consumerism.This lesson mightwell be describedas the
politicalpraxis,
discovery,withina hithertoantagonisticand "transparent"
with
of the opacityof the Institution
itselfas the radicallytransindividual,
its own innerdynamicand laws, which are not those of individualhuman
actionor intention,
somethingwhich Sartretheorizedin theCritiqueas the
and
"practico-inert," which will take the definitiveform,in competing
"structuralism,"of "structure" or "synchronic system," a realm of
impersonallogic in termsof whichhumanconsciousnessis itselflittlemore
thanan "effectof structure."
On thisreading,then,the new philosophicalturnwill be interpreted
less in the idealisticperspectiveof some discoveryof a new scientific
truth
and so(the Symbolic)thanas the symptomof an essentiallyprotopolitical
cial experience,the shock of some new, hard,unconceptualized,resistant
object which the older conceptualitycannotprocess and which thusgradually generatesa whole new problematic.The conceptualizationof this
PERIODIZING
THE60s 0 191
new problematicin the coding of linguisticsor information
theorymay
then be attributedto the unexpected explosion of information
and messages of all kindsin the media revolution,about which more in the following section. Sufficeit to remarkat thispoint thatthereis some historical
ironyin theway in which thismoment,essentiallythe ThirdTechnological
Revolutionin the West (electronics,nuclear energy)--in other words, a
whole new stepin theconquestof natureby humanpraxis-is philosophically greeted and conceptuallyexpressed in a kind of thoughtofficially
designatedas "antihumanist"and concerned to thinkwhat transcendsor
the Second Technoescapes humanconsciousnessand intention.Similarly,
logical Revolutionof the late 19thcentury-an unparalleledquantumleap
in human power over nature-was the momentof expressionof a whole
rangeof nihilismsassociatedwith "modernity"or withhighmodernismin
culture.
In thepresentcontext,theAlthusserian
experimentof themid-to late
60s is the most revealingand suggestiveof the various "structuralisms,"
since it was the only one to be explicitlypoliticaland indeed to have very
wide-rangingpoliticaleffectsin Europe and LatinAmerica.The storyof
can be told onlyschematically
here:itsinitialthrustis twoAlthusserianism
the
Stalinist
tradition
fold,against
designatedby
(strategically
unliquidated
the code words "Hegel" and "expressive causality"in Althusser'sown
texts),and againstthe "transparency"of the easternattemptsto reinventa
Marxisthumanismon the basis of the theoryof alienationin Marx's early
is essentiallya meditationon the "instimanuscripts.That Althusserianism
tutional"and on the opacityof the "practico-inert"
may be judged by the
three successive formulationsof this object by Althusserhimselfin the
course of the 60s: thatof a "structurein dominance" or structured dominante (in For Marx), thatof "structural
causality"(in Reading Capital), and
thatof "ideologicalstateapparatuses"(in the essay of thatname). Whatis
less oftenremembered,but what should be perfectly
obvious fromany reFor
is
the
this
new
Marx,
readingof
originof
problematicin Maoismitself,
in Mao Tse-tung'sessay "On Contradiction,"in which the
and particularly
overdetermined
notionof a complex,already-given
conjunctureof various
kindsof antagonisticand non-antagonistic
contradictionsis mapped out.
The modificationwhich will emerge fromAlthusser's"process of
theoreticalproduction"as it works over its Maoist "raw materials"can be
conveyedby theproblemand slogan of the "semi-autonomy"of thelevels
of social life (a problem already invoked in our opening pages). This
formulawill involvea struggleon two fronts:on the one hand againstthe
monismor "expressivecausality"of Stalinism,in which the "levels" are
identified,conflated,and brutallycollapsed into one another(changes in
economic productionwill be "the same" as politicaland culturalchanges),
and, on the other,againstbourgeois avant-gardephilosophy,which finds
justsuch a denunciationof organicconceptsof totalitymostcongenial,but
192 @ FREDRIC
JAMESON
celebrationof
draws fromit the consequence of a post- or anti-Marxist
of the various
The notion of a semi-autonomy
Nietzscheanheterogeneity.
levels or instances,most notably of the political instance and of the
in
dynamicsof statepower,will have enormousresonance(outstandingly
the work of Nicos Poulantzas),since it seems to reflect,and to offera way
the enormousgrowthof thestatebureaucracysince thewar,
of theorizing,
the "relative autonomy" of the state apparatus fromany classical and
in the service of big business,as well as the very
reductivefunctionality
active new terrainof politicalstrugglepresentedby governmentor public
sector workers.The theorycould also be appealed to to justifya semiautonomyin theculturalsphere,as well,and especiallya semi-autonomous
cultural politics, of a variety which ranges from Godard's films and
situationnismeto the "festival"of May 68 and theYippie movementhere
(not excluding,perhaps,even those formsof so-called "terrorism"which
aimed, not at any classicalseizure of statepower,but ratherat essentially
demonstrations,
e.g., "forcingthe state to
pedagogical or informational
fascistnature").
reveal its fundamentally
of the levels
Nonetheless,the attemptto open up a semi-autonomy
with one hand, while holding them all togetherin the ultimateunityof
some "structural totality" (with its still classical Marxian ultimately
instanceof theeconomic),tendsunderitsown momentum,in
determining
ithad itselfelaborated,to selfthecentrifugal
forceof thecritiqueof totality
of Hindessand Hirst).What
so in the trajectory
destruct(mostdramatically
will emerge is not merelya heterogeneityof levels- henceforth,semiautonomywill relax into autonomytoutcourt,and it will be conceivable
that in the decenteredand "schizophrenic"world of late capitalismthe
to one anotherat
variousinstancesmay reallyhave no organicrelationship
the idea will emergethatthe strugglesapproall-but, more importantly,
priateto each of these levels (purelypoliticalstruggles,purelyeconomic
mayhave
purely"theoretical"struggles)
purelyculturalstruggles,
struggles,
no necessary relationship to one another either. With this ultimate
"meltdown" of the Althusserian
apparatus,we are in the (stillcontemporary)world of microgroupsand micropolitics-variouslytheorizedas local
or molecular politics, but clearly characterized,however differentthe
various conceptionsare, as a repudiationof old-fashionedclass and party
politicsof a "totalizing"kind,and mostobviouslyepitomizedby the challenge of the women's movementwhose unique new strategiesand concerns cut across (or in some cases undermineand discreditaltogether)
many classical inheritedformsof "public" or "official"politicalaction,
includingthe electoralkind.The repudiationof "theory"itselfas an essentiallymasculineenterpriseof "power throughknowledge"in Frenchfeminism(see in particularthe work of Luce Irigaray)may be takenas the final
momentin thisparticular"witheringaway of philosophy."
a way
Yet thereis anotherway to read thedestinyof Althusserianism,
PERIODIZING
THE60s 0 193
which will formthe transition
to our subsequentdiscussionof the transformationof the culturalspherein the 60s; and thisinvolvesthe significance
of the slogan of "theory"itselfas it comes to replace the older term"philosophy" throughoutthisperiod.The "discovery"of the Symbolic,thedethematics(as, e.g., in thenotionof undervelopmentof itslinguistic-related
standingas an essentiallysynchronicprocess, which influencesthe consuch as the Althusserian
one
structionof relativelyahistorical"structures,"
described above), is now to be correlatedwith a modificationof the
texts,
practice of the symbolic,of language itselfin the "structuralist"
henceforthcharacterizedas "theory,"ratherthanwork in a particulartraditional discipline. Two featuresof this evolution, or mutation,must be
stressed.The firstis a consequence of the crisisin,or thedisappearanceof,
the classicalcanon of philosophicalwritingswhich necessarilyresultsfrom
the contestationof philosophyas a disciplineand an institution.
Henceforth,the new "philosophical" text will no longer draw its significance
froman insertionintothe issues and debatesof the philosophicaltradition,
whichmeansthatitsbasic "intertextual"
referencesbecome random,an ad
hoc constellationwhich formsand dissolveson the occasion of each new
text. The new text must necessarilybe a commentaryon other texts
inter(indeed,thatdependence on a body of textsto be glossed,rewritten,
connected in freshways, will now intensify
if anything),yet those texts,
drawnfromthemostwildlydistantdisciplines(anthropology,
lipsychiatry,
will
in
be selected a seeminglyarbitrary
faterature,historyof science),
shion: Mumfordside by side with AntoninArtaud,Kant with Sade, preSocratic philosophy,PresidentSchreber,a novel of Maurice Blanchot,
Owen Lattimoreon Mongolia,and a host of obscure Latinmedicaltreatises
fromthe 18thcentury.The vocationof what was formerly
"philosophy"is
and displaced:since thereis no longera traditionof
therebyrestructured
philosophicalproblemsin termsof which new positionsand new statementscan meaningfully
be proposed,such worksnow tend towardswhat
can be called metaphilosophy--theverydifferent
work of coordinatinga
seriesof pregiven,alreadyconstitutedcodes or systemsof signifiers,
of producinga discoursefashionedout of the alreadyfashioneddiscourseof the
constellationof ad hoc referenceworks. "Philosophy" therebybecomes
radicallyoccasional; one would want to call it disposable theory,the
one next season,
productionof a metabook,to be replaced by a different
ratherthan the ambitionto express a proposition,a positionor a system
with greater"truth"value. (The obvious analogy with the evolution of
literaryand culturalstudiestoday,withthe crisisand disappearanceof the
latter'sown canon of greatbooks-the lastone havingbeen augmentedto
include the once recalcitrant
"masterpieces"of highmodernism-will be
takenforgrantedin our next section.)
All of thiscan perhaps be graspedin a different
way by tracingthe
effectsof anothersignificant
featureof contemporarytheory,namelyits
194 0 FREDRIC
JAMESON
Traditional
privilegedthemein theso-calledcritiqueof representation.
philosophy will now be graspedin those terms,as a practiceof representation
in which thephilosophicaltextor system(misguidedly)
attemptsto express
somethingotherthanitself,namelytruthor meaning(whichnow standas
the "signified"to the "signifier"of the system).If, however,the whole
aesthetic of representation is metaphysical and ideological, then
philosophicaldiscoursecan no longerentertainthisvocation,and it must
stand as the mereadditionof anothertextto what is now conceived as an
infinite
chainof texts(not necessarilyall verbal-daily lifeis a text,clothing
is a text,state power is a text,thatwhole externalworld, about which
"meaning" or "truth"were once assertedand which is now contempis an
tuouslycharacterizedas the illusionof referenceor the "referent,"
of
texts
of
all
Whence
the
indeterminate
kinds).
significance
superposition
when sounded in the
of the currently
fashionableslogan of "materialism,"
here means the dissolutionof
area of philosophyand theory:materialism
in
in
the
any belief "meaning" or
"signified"conceived as ideas or concepts which are distinctfromtheirlinguisticexpressions.However paradoxical a "materialist"philosophymay be in this respect,a "materialist
the veryfunctionand operation
theoryof language"will clearlytransform
of "theory,"since it opens up a dynamicin which it is no longerideas, but
rathertexts,materialtexts,which strugglewith one another.Theory so
defined,(and itwillhave become clearthatthetermnow greatlytranscends
what used to be called philosophyand itsspecializedcontent)conceives of
itsvocation,not as the discoveryof truthand the repudiationof error,but
ratheras a struggleabout purelylinguisticformulations,
as the attemptto
formulateverbal propositions(materiallanguage)in such a way thatthey
are unable to implyunwantedor ideologicalconsequences. Since thisaim
is evidentlyan impossibleone to achieve,what emergesfromthe practice
of theory-and thiswas mostdramaticand visibleduringthehighpointof
itselfin 1967-68-is a violentand obsessivereturnto ideoAlthusserianism
logical critiquein the new formof a perpetualguerrillawar among the
materialsignifiersof textual formulations.With the transformation
of
a
we
material
touch
a
into
on
practice,however,
development
philosophy
that cannot fullybe appreciateduntil it is replaced in the context of a
general mutationof culturethroughoutthis period, a context in which
"theory"will come to be graspedas a specific(or semi-autonomous)form
of what mustbe called postmodernismgenerally.
5. THE ADVENTURES OF THE SIGN
Postmodernismis one significantframeworkin which to describe what
happened to culturein the 60s, but a fulldiscussionof thishotlycontested
concept is not possible here. Such a discussion would want to cover,
among other things, the following features: that well-known post-
THE60s 0 195
PERIODIZING
structuralist
theme, the "death" of the subject (includingthe creative
the
auteur
or the "genius"); thenatureand functionof a cultureof
subject,
thesimulacrum(an idea developed out of Plato by Deleuze and Baudrillard
of a reproducibleobject world,not of copies or
to convey some specificity
as
of trompe-l'oeilcopies
marked
such, but of a proliferation
reproductions
witboutoriginals);the relationof thislastto media cultureor the "society
of the spectacle" (Debord), undertwo heads: 1/the peculiarnew statusof
the image, the "material" or what mightbetterbe called the "literal,"
a materiality
or literality
fromwhich the oldersensoryrichnessof
signifier:
the mediumhas been abstracted(justas on the otherside of the dialectical
of the subjectand his/her"brushstrokes'
relationship,the old individuality
have equally been effaced); and 2/ the emergence, in the work's
of an aestheticof textualityor what is often described as
temporality,
schizophrenictime; the eclipse, finally,of all depth,especiallybistoricity
itself,with the subsequentappearance of pasticheand nostalgiaart (what
the French call la mode retro),and includingthe supercession of the
in philosophy(the various
accompanyingmodels of depth-interpretation
as well as the Freudianconceptionof "repression,"
formsof hermeneutics,
of manifestand latentlevels).
What is generallyobjected to in characterizations
of thiskind is the
that
all
these
features
be
observation
of
can
empirical
abundantlylocatedin
this or thatvarietyof high modernism;indeed, one of the difficulties
in
lies
in
its
or
to
specifyingpostmodernism
symbiotic parasiticalrelationship
the latter.In effect,with the canonizationof a hithertoscandalous, ugly,
dissonant,amoral,anti-social,bohemian high modernismoffensiveto the
middle classes, its promotionto the very figureof high culturegenerally,
its enshrinement
in the academic institution,
and perhapsmost important,
as
a
creative
of
space forartistsnow
postmodernismemerges
way making
those
henceforth
oppressed by
hegemonicmodernistcategoriesof irony,
and particularly,
aestheticand
complexity,ambiguity,dense temporality,
In
utopian monumentality. some analogous way, it will be said, high
modernismitselfwon itsautonomyfromthe precedinghegemonicrealism
of classical or market
(the symboliclanguage or mode of representation
capitalism).But there is a differencein that realismitselfunderwenta
significantmutation:it became naturalism and at once generated the
representationalformsof mass culture (the narrativeapparatus of the
contemporarybestselleris an inventionof naturalismand one of the most
stunninglysuccessfulof French culturalexports). High modernismand
mass culturethen develop in dialecticalopposition and interrelationship
with one another.It is preciselythe waningof theiropposition,and some
new conflationof the formsof highand mass culture,which characterizes
postmodernismitself.
The historicalspecificity
of postmodernismmustthereforefinallybe
of cultureitself.As statedabove,
arguedin termsof the social functionality
196 0 FREDRIC
JAMESON
highmodernism,whateveritsovertpoliticalcontent,was oppositionaland
marginalwithina middle-classVictorianor philistineor gildedage culture.
is equallyoffensivein all therespectsenumerated
Althoughpostmodernism
it is no longerat all "oppositional"in
(thinkof punk rockor pornography),
thatsense; indeed,itconstitutestheverydominantor hegemonicaesthetic
serves the latter'scommodity
of consumersocietyitselfand significantly
productionas a virtuallaboratoryofnew formsand fashions.The argument
fora conceptionof postmodernismas a periodizingcategoryis thusbased
on the presuppositionthat,even if all the formalfeaturesenumerated
above were alreadypresentin the older high modernism,the verysignificanceof those featureschangeswhen theybecome a culturaldominant,
witha precisesocioeconomic functionality.
At thispoint it may be well to shiftthe terms(or the "code") of our
one of a cultural"sphere,"a
descriptionto the seeminglymore traditional
conceptiondeveloped by HerbertMarcusein what is to mymindhis single
Characterof
most importanttext, the great essay on "The Affirmative
Culture."(It should be added that the conception of a "public sphere"
generally is a very contemporaryone in Germany in the works of
Habermasand of Negtand Kluge,wheresuch a systemof categoriesstands
in interesting
contrastto the code of "levels" or "instances" in French
Marcusethererehearsesthe paradoxicaldialecticof the
poststructuralism.)
classical (German)aesthetic,which projects as play and "purposefulness
withoutpurpose" a utopianrealmof beautyand culturebeyond the fallen
empirical world of money and business activity,thereby winning a
powerfulcriticaland negativevalue throughitscapacityto condemn,by its
of whbat
own veryexistence,thetotality
is, whileat thesame timeforfeiting
all abilityto social or political interventionin what is, by virtueof its
constitutivedisjunctionor autonomyfromsocietyand history.
The accounttherefore
beginsto coincidein a suggestiveway withthe
problematicof autonomous or semi-autonomouslevels developed in the
preceding section. To historicizeMarcuse's dialectic, however, would
demand thatwe takeinto account the possibilitythatin our timethisvery
autonomyof theculturalsphere(or level or instance)maybe in theprocess
of modification; and also, that we develop the means to furnisha
descriptionof the process wherebysuch modificationmighttakeplace, as
well as of the prior process wherebyculturebecame "autonomous" or
"semi-autonomous"in the firstplace.
This requiresrecourseto yet another(unrelated)analyticcode, one
more generallyfamiliarto us today,since it involves the now classical
structural
(the
concept of the sign, withits two components,the signifier
materialvehicle or image- sound or printedword) and the signified(the
mentalimage,meaningor "conceptual" content),and a thirdcomponentthe externalobject of the sign, its referenceor "referent"-henceforth
expelled fromthe unityand yethauntingit as a ghostlyresidualaftereffect
THE60s 0 197
PERIODIZING
value of thisconceptionof thesignwill
(illusionor ideology).The scientific
be bracketedhere since we are concerned,on the one hand, to historicize
it as a conceptualsymptomof developmentsin the period,
it, to interpret
and on the other,to "set it in motion,"to see whetherchangesin itsinner
structurecan offersome adequate small-scaleemblemor electrocardiogram
of changes and permutationsin the culturalsphere generallythroughout
thisperiod.
Such changes are alreadysuggestedby the fateof the "referent"in
the "conditionsof possibility"of the new structural
concept of the sign(a
however
be
of the sign notormust
noted:
theorists
significant
ambiguity
as
from
a
of
reference
iouslyglide
conception
designatinga "real" object
a
the
and
to
outside
unityof Signifier Signified
positionin which the Signified itself-or meaning,or the idea or the concept of a thing-becomes
withthereferent
and stigmatized
somehow identified
along withit;we will
returnto this below). Saussure,at the dawn of the semioticrevolution,
likedto describethe relationshipof Signifier
to Signifiedas thatof the two
the
recto and verso, of a sheet of paper. In what is then a logical
sides,
sequel, and a text which naturallyenough becomes equally canonical,
Borges will push "representation"to the point of imagininga map so rigthatit becomes coterminouswithitsobject. The stage
orous and referential
is thenset forthe structuralist
emblempar excellence,the Moebius Strip,
which succeeds in peelingitselfoffitsreferent
altogetherand thusachieves
a free-floating
closure in the void, a kind of absolute self-referentiality
and
fromwhich all remainingtraces of reference,or of any
autocircularity
have triumphantly
been effaced.
externality,
To be even more eclectic about it, I will suggestthatthisprocess,
explanatory
seeminglyinternalto the Sign itself,requiresa supplementary
and fragmentation
at
code, thatof the more universalprocess of reification
one withthelogic of capitalitself.Nonetheless,takenon itsown terms,the
inner convulsions of the Sign is a usefulinitialfigureof the process of
which mustin some firstmoment(that
transformation
of culturegenerally,
describedby Marcuse)separateitselffromthe "referent"theexistingsocial
and historicalworld itself,only in a subsequentstageof the60s, in whatis
here termed "postmodernism,"to develop furtherinto some new and
self-referential
heightened,free-floating,
"autonomy."
The problemnow turnsaround thisveryterm,"autonomy,"withits
paradoxical Althusserianmodification,the concept of "semi-autonomy."
The paradox is thatthe Sign,as an "autonomous" unityin itsown right,as
a realmdivorcedfromthe referent,
can preservethatinitialautonomy,and
the unityand coherence demanded by it, only at the price of keepinga
phantomof referencealive, as the ghostlyreminderof its own outsideor
exterior,since this allows it closure, self-definitionand an essential
boundary line. Marcuse's own tormented dialectic expresses this
dramaticallyin the curious oscillationwherebyhis autonomous realm of
JAMESON
198 0 FREDRIC
beauty and cultureboth returnsupon some "real world" to judge and
negateit,at the same timethatit separatesitselfso radicallyfromthatreal
world as to become a place of mere illusionand impotent"ideals," the
"infinite,"etc.
The firstmomentin the adventuresof the Sign is perplexingenough
in themostcharacteras to demandmoreconcrete,ifschematic,illustration
It
in the
well
be demonstrated
isticculturalproductionsthemselves. might
the
French
nouveau
roman
novels
of
Robbe-Grillet
classical
(in particular,
himself),which establishedits new language in the early 1960s, using
systematicvariationsof narrativesegmentsto "undermine"representation,
an appetite
thislastby teasingand stimulating
yetin some sense confirming
forit.
As an American illustrationseems more appropriate, however,
somethingsimilarmay be seen in connectionwiththe finaland canonical
formof highmodernismin Americanpoetry,namelythe work of Wallace
Stevens,which becomes, in the yearsfollowingthe poet's death in 1956,
institutionalizedin the universityas a purer and more quintessential
fulfillment
of poetic languagethan the stillimpure(read: ideologicaland
political)works of an Eliot or a Pound, and can thereforebe numbered
among the literary"events" of the early 60s. As Frank Lentricchiahas
of Stevens'poetic
shown, in Beyond theNew Criticism,the serviceability
production for this normativeand hegemonic role depends in large
measureon the increasingconflation,in thatwork,of poetic practiceand
poetic theory:
This endlesslyelaboratingpoem
Displays the theoryof poetry
As the life of poetry...
of aestheticsand aesthetic
"Stevens" is thereforea locus and fulfillment
as
as
the
latter's
much
exemplar and privilegedexegetical
theoryfully
the
or
aesthetic
ideology in question being very much an
object;
theory
affirmationof the "autonomy" of the cultural sphere in the sense
developed above, a valorizationof the supreme power of the poetic
offers
imaginationover the "reality"it produces. Stevens'work,therefore,
in
which
the
autonomizato
observe
an extraordinary
situation
laboratory
tion of cultureas a process: a detailed examinationof his development
(somethingforwhichwe have no space here)would show how some initial
"set towards" or "attentionto" a kind of poetic pensde sauvage, the
opens up a vastinnerworld in
operationof greatpreconsciousstereotypes,
which littleby littlethe images of thingsand their"ideas" begin to be
thisexperience
substituted
forthethingsthemselves.Yetwhatdistinguishes
in all this,the operationof a
in Stevensis the sense of a vast systematicity
whole set of cosmic oppositions far too complex to be reduced to the
schemataof "structuralist"
binaryoppositions,yet akin to those in spirit,
and somehow pregivenin theSymbolicOrderof themind,discoverableto
THE60s 0 199
PERIODIZING
the passive exploration of the "poetic imagination,"that is, of some
heightenedand impersonalpower of freeassociationin the realmof "obshow
jectivespirit"or "objectiveculture."The examinationwould further
the strategiclimitationof this process to landscape, the reductionof the
ideas and imagesof thingsto thenames forthings,and finallyto thoseirreducibles which are place names,among which the exotic has a privileged
function(Key West,Oklahoma,Yucatan,Java). Here the poetic "totality"
of theimperialbeginsto tracea ghostlymimesisor analogon of thetotality
ist world systemitself,with thirdworld materialsin a similarlystrategic,
marginalyet essentialplace (much as Adorno showed how Schoenberg's
twelve-tonesystemunconsciouslyproduceda formalimitationof the "total
system"of capital).This veryunconsciousreplicationof the "real" totality
of the world systemin the mind is then what allows cultureto separate
itselfas a closed and self-sufficient
"system"in itsown right:reduplication,
and at the same time,floatingabove the real. It is because of thisessential
lack of contentin Stevens' verse thathis poetryultimatelycomes to be
with a vengeance, takingas its primalsubject matterthe
auto-referential
very operationof poetic productionitself.This is an impulse shared by
in
mostof thegreathighmodernisms,as has been shown mostdramatically
the recent critiques of architecturalmodernism, in particularof the
International
style,whose greatmonumentalobjects constitutethemselves,
and utopianspiritof transformation,
by projectinga protopolitical
against a
end up
fallencityfabricall around themand, as Venturihas demonstrated,
this
and
of
themselves
alone.
also
Now,
necessarilydisplaying
speaking
accountsforwhatmustpuzzle any seriousreaderof Stevens'verse,namely
the extraordinarycombination of verbal richness and experimental
in it (the latterbeing attributable
as well to
hollownessor impoverishment
the impersonalityof the poetic imagination in Stevens, and to the
essentiallycontemplativeand epistemologicalstance of the subject in it,
over and againstthe staticobject world of his landscapes).
The essential point here, however, is that this characteristic
movementof the highmodernistimpulseneeds to justifyitselfby way of
an ideology,an ideologicalsupplementwhichcan generallybe describedas
that of "existentialism"(the supreme fiction,the meaninglessnessof a
contingentobject-worldunredeemedby the imagination,etc.). This is the
most uninteresting
and banal dimensionof Stevens' work, yet it betrays
with
other
existentialisms
(e.g., Sartre'streeroot in Nausea) thatfatal
along
seam or link which must be retainedin order for the contingent,the
"outside world," the meaninglessreferent,to be just present enough
to be overcome withinthe language:nowhereis thisultimate
dramatically
so
point clearlydeduced, over and over again,as in Stevens,in the eye of
the blackbird,theangelsor the Sun itself-thatlastresidualvanishingpoint
of referenceas distantas a dwarfstarupon the horizon,yetwhich cannot
disappearaltogetherwithoutthe whole vocation of poetryand the poetic
200 0 FREDRIC
JAMESON
imaginationbeingcalled back intoquestion.Stevensthusexemplifiesforus

thefundamental
paradoxof the "autonomy"of theculturalsphere:thesign
can only become autonomous by remainingsemi-autonomousand the
realmof culturecan absolutizeitselfover againstthe realworld onlyat the
priceof retaininga finaltenuoussense of thatexterioror externalworld of
which it is the replicationand the imaginarydouble.
All of which can also be demonstratedby showing what happens
when, in a second moment,the perfectlylogicalconclusionis drawnthat
the referent
is itselfa mythand does not exist,a second momenthitherto
describedas postmodernism.
Its trajectory
can be seen as a movementfrom
the older nouveau roman to thatof Sollersor of properly"schizophrenic"
writing,or fromthe primacyof Stevensto thatofJohnAshbery.This new
momentis a radicalbreak(whichcan be localizedaround 1967 forreasons
to be givenlateron), but it is important
to graspitas dialectical,thatis, as a
in
from
which
thesame force,reachinga certain
to
passage
quantity quality
thresholdof excess, in itsprolongationnow producesqualitatively
distinct
effectsand seems to generatea whole new system.
That force has been describedas reification,
but we can now also
with
to
make
some
connections
another
begin
figurallanguageused earlier:
in a firstmoment,reification
"liberated"the Signfromitsreferent,
but this
is not a forceto be released withimpunity.Now, in a second moment,it
the interiorof the Sign itself
continuesits work of dissolution,penetrating
and liberating
theSignifier
fromtheSignified,
or frommeaningproper.This
freedfrom
play,no longerof a realmof signs,but of pureor literalsignifiers
the ballastof theirsignifieds,
theirformermeanings,now generatesa new
kindof textuality
in all thearts(and in philosophyas well,as we have seen
above), and beginsto projectthe mirageof some ultimatelanguageof pure
which is also frequently
associatedwithschizophrenicdiscourse.
signifiers
(Indeed, the Lacanian theoryof schizophrenia- a language disorderin
which syntacticaltime breaks down, and leaves a succession of empty
Signifiers,absolute momentsof a perpetual present,behind itself-has
offered one of the more influential explanations and ideological
forpostmodernist
textualpractice.)
justifications
in some detailby way of
Allof whichwould have to be demonstrated
a concreteanalysisof thepostmodernist
experiencein all theartstoday:but
the presentargumentcan be concluded by drawingthe consequences of
or of theSimulacrum-for
thissecond moment-the cultureof theSignifier
the whole problematicof some "autonomy"of the culturalspherewhich
has concerned us here. For thatautonomousrealmis not itselfspared by
the intensifiedprocess by which the classical Sign is dissolved: if its
autonomydepended paradoxicallyon its possibilityof remaining"semiautonomous" (in an Althusserian
sense) and of preservingthe last tenuous
linkwithsome ultimatereferent
(or,in Althusserian
language,of preserving
the ultimateunityof a properly"structural
totality"),thenevidentlyin the
THE60s ? 201
PERIODIZING
new culturalmomentculturewill have ceased to be autonomous,and the
realm of an autonomous play of signs becomes impossible,when that
ultimatefinalreferent
to whichtheballoon of themindwas mooredis now
cut. The break-upof the Sign in mid-airdeterminesa fallback
definitively
into a now absolutelyfragmented
and anarchicsocial reality;the broken
now fallingagain intothe world,as
pieces of language(the pure Signifiers)
so many more pieces of materialjunk among all the other rustingand
superannuated apparatuses and buildings that litter the commodity
landscape and thatstrewthe "collage city,"the "deliriousNew York" of a
postmodernistlate capitalismin fullcrisis.
to a Marcuseanterminology,
all of thiscan also be said
But,returning
in a different
way: with the eclipse of cultureas an autonomous space or
sphere, culture itself falls into the world, and the result is not its
disappearancebut its prodigiousexpansion, to the point where culture
becomes coterminouswithsocial lifein general:now all thelevelsbecome
"acculturated,"and in the societyof the spectacle,the image,or the simuhas at lengthbecome cultural,fromthe superstructures
lacrum,everything
down into the mechanismsof the infrastructure
itself.If thisdevelopment
then places acutelyon the agenda the neoGramscianproblem of a new
culturalpoliticstoday-in a social systemin which the verystatusof both
cultureand politics have been profoundly,functionallyand structurally
modified-it also rendersproblematicany further
discussionof what used
to be called "culture" proper,whose artifactshave become the random
experiencesof dailylifeitself.
6. IN THE SIERRA MAESTRA
Allof which willhave been littlemore thana lengthyexcursionintoa very
specialized(or "elite") area,unlessitcan be shown thatthedynamictherein
of the laboratory
visible, with somethingof the artificialsimplification
and distant
situation,findsstriking
analogiesor homologiesin verydifferent
areas of social practice. It is precisely this replicationof a common
diachronicrhythmor "geneticcode" which we will now observe in the
realitiesof revolutionary
verydifferent
practiceand theoryin thecourse of
the 60s in the thirdworld.
From the beginning,the Cuban experience affirmeditselfas an
originalone, as a new revolutionarymodel, to be radicallydistinguished
frommore traditional
formsof revolutionary
practice.Foco theory,indeed,
as it was associated with Che Guevara and theorizedin Regis Debray's
influential
handbook,Revolutionin theRevolution?,asserteditself(as the
title of the book suggests) both against a more traditionalLeninist
conception of partypracticeand against the experience of the Chinese
revolutionin its firstessentialstage of the conquest of power (what will
later come to be designatedas "Maoism," China's own very different
JAMESON
202 0 FREDRIC
CulturalRevolution,will
"revolutionin therevolution"or GreatProletarian
not become visibleto theoutsideworlduntilthemomentin whichthefate
of the Cuban strategyhas been sealed).
A readingof Debray'stextshows thatfocostrategy,
thestrategy
of the
is
conceived
as
a
mobile guerrillabase or revolutionary
yet third
foyer,
either
the
as
distinct
from
traditional
model
of class
term, something
urban
a
proletariatrisingagainst bourgeoisie or
struggle(an essentially
or
the
Chinese
rulingclass)
experienceof a mass peasantmovementin the
little
in
has
common eitherwith a Fanonianstrugglefor
countryside(and
between
Colonizer
and Colonized). The foco, or guerrilla
recognition
is
as
operation, conceptualized being neither"in" nor "of" eithercountry
of course, it is positionedin the countryside,yet
or city:geographically,
that location is not the permanently"liberatedterritory"of the Yenan
region,well beyond thereachof theenemyforcesof ChiangKai-shekor of
theJapaneseoccupier.It is not indeed located in the cultivatedarea of the
peasantfieldsat all, butratherin thatthirdor non-placewhichis thewilderness of theSierraMaestra,neithercountrynor city,but rathera whole new
elementin which the guerrillaband moves in perpetualdisplacement.
This peculiarityof the way in which the spatialcoordinatesof the
Cuban strategyis conceived has thenimmediateconsequences fortheway
in which the class elementsof the revolutionary
movementare theorized.
Neithercitynor country:by the same token,paradoxically,the guerrillas
themselvesare grasped as being neitherworkersnor peasants (stillless,
but rathersomethingentirelynew, forwhich the prerevoluintellectuals),
class
tionary
societyhas no categories:new revolutionary
subjects,forged
in the guerrillastruggleindifferently
out of the social materialof peasants,
city workers or intellectuals,yet now largelytranscendingthose class
categories(just as thismomentof Cuban theorywill claimlargelyto transcend the older revolutionaryideologies predicatedon class categories,
whetherthose of Trotskyist
workerism,Maoistpopulismand peasantconor
of
Leninist
sciousness,
vanguardintellectualism).
Whatbecomes clear in a textlikeDebray's is thattheguerrillafocoso mobileas to be beyondgeographyin thestaticsense-is in and of itselfa
figureforthetransformed,
revolutionary
societyto come. Its revolutionary
militantsare not simply"soldiers" to whose specializedrole and function
one would then have to "add" supplementary
roles in the revolutionary
divisionof labor,such as politicalcommissarsand the politicalvanguard
partyitself,both explicitlyrejectedhere. Rather,in themis abolished all
such prerevolutionary
divisionsand categories.This conceptionof a newly
emergentrevolutionary"space" - situated outside the "real" political,
social and geographicalworld of countryand city,and of the historical
social classes,yetat one and thesame timea figureor small-scaleimageand
of the revolutionarytransformation
of thatreal world-may
prefiguration
be designatedas a properlyutopianspace, a Hegelian"invertedworld,"an
THE60s@ 203
PERIODIZING
autonomous revolutionarysphere, in which the fallenreal world over
into a new socialistsociety.
againstit is itselfset rightand transformed
For all practicalpurposes, this powerfulmodel is exhausted,even
before Che's own tragicdeath in Bolivia in 1967, with the failureof the
guerrillamovementsin Peru and Venezuelain 1966; not uncoincidentally,
that failurewill be accompanied by somethinglike a disinvestmentof
revolutionarylibido and fascinationon the part of a firstworld left,its
return(withsome leaveningof the newer Maoism) to theirown "current
situation,"in the Americanantiwar movement and May 68. In Latin
America,however, the radical strategywhich effectivelyreplacesfoco
theoryis that of the so-called urban guerrillamovement,pioneered in
Uruguayby theTupamaros:it will have become clear thatthisbreak-upof
theutopianspace of theolderguerrillafoco,
thefallof politicsback intothe
of
world in the formof a verydifferent
style politicalpracticeindeed-one
thatseeks to dramatizefeaturesof statepower,ratherthan,as in traditional
movements,to build towardssome ultimateencounterwith
revolutionary
be
here as somethingof a structural
interpreted
equivalentto the
it--will
finalstage of the sign as characterizedabove.
Several qualificationsmust be made, however. For one thing,it is
clear that this new form of political activity will be endowed, by
association, with something of the tragic prestige of the Palestinian
liberationmovement,which comes intobeing in itscontemporary
formas
a resultof the Israeliseizureof the WestBank and the Gaza Stripin 1967,
and which will thereafter
become one of thedominantworldwidesymbols
in
of revolutionary
praxis thelate60s. Equallyclearly,however,thestruggle
of this desperate and victimized people cannot be made to bear
responsibilityfor the excesses of this kind of strategyelsewhere in the
world,whose universalresults(whetherin LatinAmerica,or withCointelpro in theUnitedStates,or,belatedly,in WestGermanyand Italy)have been
to legitimizean intensification
of the repressiveapparatusof statepower.
This objective coincidence between a misguidedassessmentof the
social and politicalsituationon the partof leftmilitants(forthe most part
studentsand intellectualseager to force a revolutionaryconjunctureby
voluntaristic
acts) and a willingexploitationby the stateof preciselythose
provocationssuggeststhatwhatis oftenloosely called "terrorism"mustbe
the object of complex and properlydialecticalanalysis.However rightlya
responsibleleftchooses to dissociate itselffromsuch strategy(and the
Marxianoppositionto terrorism
is an old and establishedtraditionthatgoes
back to the 19thcentury),itis importantto rememberthat"terrorism,"
as a
is
also
an
of
the
and
must
therefore
refused
be
right
"concept,"
ideologeme
in thatform.Alongwiththedisasterfilmsof thelate60s and early70s, mass
cultureitselfmakesclear that"terrorism"--the
imageof the "terrorist"--is
one of the privilegedformsin which an ahistoricalsocietyimaginesradical
social change; meanwhile,an inspectionof the content of the modern
thrilleror adventurestoryalso makes it clear thatthe "otherness"of sohas begun to replaceolder imagesof criminal"insanity"as
called terrorism
an unexaminedand seemingly"natural"motivationin the constructionof
plots--yetanothersignof the ideologicalnatureof thisparticularpseudoconcept. Understoodin this way, "terrorism"is a collectiveobsession, a
symptomatic fantasy of the American political unconscious, which
demands decoding and analysisin its own right.
As for the thingitself,forall practicalpurposes it comes to an end
withtheChileancoup in 1973 and thefallof virtually
all theLatinAmerican
countriesto various formsof militarydictatorship.The belated reemergence of thiskind of politicalactivityin WestGermanyand in Italymust
to thefascistpastof thesetwo countries,
surelyat leastin partbe attributed
to theirfailureto liquidatethatpast afterthewar,and to a violentmoralrevulsion againstit on the part of a segmentof the youthand intellectuals
who grew up in the 60s.
7. RETURN OF THE
"ULTIMATELY DETERMINING INSTANCE"
The two "breaks" which have emergedin the precedingsection-one in
the generalarea around 1967, the otherin the immediateneighborhoodof
1973- will now serve as the frameworkfor a more generalhypothesis
about the periodizationof the60s in general.Beginningwiththesecond of
these,a whole series of other,seeminglyunrelatedevents in the general
area of 1972-1974 suggeststhatthismomentis not merelya decisiveone
on the relativelyspecializedlevel of thirdworldor LatinAmericanradical
end of whatis called the60s in a farmore
politics,but signalsthe definitive
In
the
first
for
world,
example, the end of the draftand the
global way.
withdrawalof AmericanforcesfromVietnam(in 1973) spell the end of the
mass politics of the antiwarmovement(the crisisof the new leftitselfwhichcan be largelydated fromthebreak-upof SDS in 1969-would seem
related to the other break mentioned,to which we will returnbelow),
while the signingof the Common Programbetween the CommunistParty
and the new SocialistPartyin France (as well as the wider currencyof
slogans associated with "Eurocommunism"at this time) would seem to
marka strategicturnaway fromthe kindsof politicalactivitiesassociated
withMay68 and itssequels. This is also themomentat which,as a resultof
the Yom Kippurwar, the oil weapon emergesand administersa different
kind of shock to the economies, the politicalstrategies,and the dailylife
habits of the advanced countries.Concomitantly,on the more general
cultural and ideological level, the intellectuals associated with the
in the UnitedStates)beginto recoverfrom
itself(particularly
establishment
the fright
and defensiveposturewhich was theirsduringthe decade now
PERIODIZING
THE60s @ 205
ending,and again findtheirvoices in a seriesof attackson 60s cultureand
60s politicswhich, as was noted at the beginning,are not even yet at an
end. One of the more influential
documentswas Lionel Trilling'sSincerity
and Authenticity(1972), an Arnoldiancall to reverse the tide of 60s
countercultural"barbarism."(This will, of course, be followed by the
in terms
diagnosisof some 60s concept of "authenticity"
equallyinfluential
of a "cultureof narcissism".)Meanwhile,inJuly1973,some ratherdifferent
"intellectuals," representingvarious concrete forms of political and
economic power,will begin to rethinkthe failurein Vietnamin termsof a
new global strategy for American and first world interests; their
establishmentof the TrilateralCommissionwill at least symbolicallybe a
markerin the recoveryof momentumby what mustbe called
significant
"the rulingclasses." The emergenceof a widely accepted new popular
concept and term at this same time, the notion of the "multinational
as theauthorsof Global
corporation,"is also anothersymptom,signifying,
Reach have suggested,the momentin which privatebusiness findsitself
obliged to emergein public as a visible "subject of history"and a visible
actor on the world stage- thinkof the role of ITT in Chile- when the
Americangovernment,having been badly burned by the failureof the
Vietnamintervention,
is generallyreluctantto undertakefurther
venturesof
thiskind.
For all thesereasonsitseems appropriateto markthedefinitive
end of
the "60s" in thegeneralarea of 1972-1974. Butwe have omitteduntilnow
the decisiveelementin any argumentfora periodizationor "punctuation"
of this kind,and this new kind of materialwill directour attentionto a
"level" or "instance"which has hithertosignificantly
been absentfromthe
present discussion, namely the economic itself.For 1973-1974 is the
momentof the onset of a worldwide economic crisis,whose dynamicis
stillwith us today,and which put a decisive full stop to the economic
characteristic
of thepostwarperiodgenerallyand
expansionand prosperity
of the 60s in particular.
When we add to thisanotherkeyeconomic marker
- the recessionin West Germanyin 1966 and thatin the otheradvanced
countries,in particularin the UnitedStatesa yearor so later-we maywell
therebyfindourselvesin a betterpositionmore formallyto conceptualize
thatsense of a secondarybreakaround1967-68 whichhas begunto surface
on the philosophical,cultural,and politicallevels as theywere analyzedor
"narrated"above.
Such confirmationby the economic "level" itselfof periodizing
readingderivedfromother,sample levels or instancesof social lifeduring
the 60s will now perhaps put us in a betterpositionto answer the two
theoreticalissues raised at the beginningof thisessay. The firsthad to do
with the validityof Marxistanalysis for a period whose active political
categoriesno longerseemed to be those of social class, and in which in a
JAMESON
206 0 FREDRIC
more generalway traditional
formsof Marxisttheoryand practiceseemed
to have entered a "crisis." The second involved the problem of some
"unifiedfieldtheory"in termsof which such seeminglydistantrealitiesas
mass culture(or indeed,
third-world
peasant movementsand first-world
levels like philosophyand
more abstractly,
intellectualor superstructural
culturegenerally,
and those of mass resistanceand politicalpractice)might
conceptuallybe relatedin some coherentway.
A pathbreakingsynthesis by Ernest Mandel, in his book Late
Capitalism, will suggesta hypotheticalanswer to both thesequestionsat
once. The book presents,among other things,an elaborate systemof
businesscyclesundercapitalism,whose mostfamiliar
unit,the 7-to-10year
alternationof boom, overproduction,recession and economic recovery,
adequatelyenough accounts forthe mid-pointbreak in the 60s suggested
above.
Mandel'saccountof theworldwidecrisisof 1974,however,drawson
a farmore controversialconceptionof vastercycles of some thirty
to fifty
to
yearperiodseach-cycles whichare thenobviouslymuchmore difficult
or "phenomenologically"insofaras theytranscend
perceiveexperientially
the rhythmsand limits of the biological life of individuals. These
"Kondratievwaves" (named afterthe Soviet economistwho hypothesized
them)have accordingto Mandel been renewed fourtimessince the 18th
century,and are characterizedby quantum leaps in the technologyof
production,which enable decisiveincreasesin the rateof profitgenerally,
untilat lengththe advantagesof the new productionprocesseshave been
explored and exhausted and the cycle therewithcomes to an end. The
latestof these Kondratievcycles is thatmarkedby computertechnology,
nuclear energy and the mechanization of agriculture(particularlyin
and also primarymaterials),which Mandel dates from1940 in
foodstuffs
NorthAmericaand the postwarperiod in the otherimperialist
countries:
what is decisive in the present context is his notion that, with the
worldwide recessionof 1973-74, the dynamicsof thislatest"long wave"
are spent.
The hypothesisis attractive,
however,not onlybecause of itsabstract
usefulnessin confirming
our periodizationschemes,butalso because of the
actual analysis of this latest wave of capitalistexpansion, and of the
properlyMarxianversionhe givesof a whole rangeof developmentswhich
have generallybeen thoughtto demonstratethe end of the "classical"
capitalismtheorizedby Marxand to requirethisor thatpostMarxist
theory
of social mutation(as in theoriesof consumersociety,postindustrial
society,
and the like).
We have already described the way in which neocolonialism is
characterized by the radically new technology (the so-called Green
new farmingmethods,and new
Revolutionin agriculture:
new machinery,
of
chemical
fertilizer
and
types
geneticexperimentswithhybridplantsand
PERIODIZING
THE60s @ 207
the like), with which capitalismtransforms
its relationshipto its colonies
froman old-fashionedimperialist
controlto marketpenetration,
destroying
the older villagecommunitiesand creatinga whole new wage-laborpool
The militancyof the new social forcesis at one and
and lumpenproletariat.
the same timea resultof the "liberation"of peasantsfromtheirolder selfgenerally
sustainingvillagecommunities,and a movementof self-defense,
originatingin the stableryet more isolated areas of a given thirdworld
form
country,againstwhatis rightly
perceivedas a farmorethoroughgoing
of penetrationand colonizationthan the older colonial armies.
It is now in termsof thisprocessof "mechanization"thatMandelwill
make the linkbetweentheneocolonialisttransformation
of thethirdworld
the
60s
and
the
that
of
during
seeminglyverydifferent
thingin
emergence
the firstworld, variouslytermedconsumersociety,postindustrial
society,
media society,and the like:
Far from representing a postindustrial society, late capitalism. . constitutes
generalized universal industrialization forthe firsttime in history.Mechanization,
standardization,overspecialization and parcellizationof labor, which in the past
determined only the realm of commodity production in actual industry,now
penetrate into all sectors of social life. It is characteristicof late capitalism that
agricultureis step by step becoming just as industrializedas industry,the sphere of
circulation[e.g., creditcards and the like] just as much as the sphere of production,
and recreationjust as much as the organizationof work.
With this last, Mandel touches on what he elsewhere calls the

mechanizationof the superstructure,
or in otherwords the penetrationof
cultureitselfby what the Frankfurt
and
School called the cultureindustry,
of whichthegrowthof themedia is onlya part.We maythusgeneralizehis
descriptionas follows:late capitalismin general(and the 60s in particular)
constitutea process in which the lastsurvivinginternaland externalzones
of precapitalism--thelastvestigesof noncommodifiedor traditional
space
withinand outsidetheadvanced world-are now ultimately
penetratedand
colonized in theirturn.Late capitalismcan thereforebe describedas the
moment in which the last vestiges of Nature which survived on into
classicalcapitalismare at lengtheliminated:namelythe thirdworldand the
unconscious.The 60s willthenhave been themomentoustransformational
takes place on a global scale.
period in which thissystemicrestructuring
Withsuch an account,our "unifiedfieldtheory"of the60s is giventhe discoveryof a singleprocess at workin firstand thirdworlds,in global
economy and in consciousnessand culture,a properlydialectical process,
in which "liberation"and dominationare inextricably
combined. We may
now thereforeproceed to a finalcharacterization
of the period as a whole.
The simplestyetmostuniversalformulation
surelyremainsthewidely
shared feelingthatin the 60s, fora time,everything
was possible: thatthis
period,in otherwords,was a momentof a universalliberation,a global unbindingof energies.Mao Tse-tung'sfigureforthisprocess is in thisrespect
JAMESON
208 0 FREDRIC
most revealing:"Our nation," he cried, "is like an atom .... When this
atom's nucleusis smashed,the thermalenergyreleasedwill have reallytremendous power!" The imageevokes the emergenceof a genuinemass deand
mocracyfromthe breakupof the older feudaland villagestructures,
fromthe therapeuticdissolutionof thehabitsof thosestructures
in cultural
revolutions:yetthe effectsof fission,the releaseof molecularenergies,the
unbindingof "materialsignifiers,"can be a properlyterrifying
spectacle;
and we now know thatMao Tse-tunghimselfdrew back fromthe ultimate
consequences of the process he had set in motion,when, at the supreme
momentof the CulturalRevolution,thatof the foundingof the Shanghai
Commune,he called a haltto the dissolutionof thepartyapparatusand effectivelyreversedthe directionof this collectiveexperimentas a whole
(withconsequences only too obvious at the presenttime).In thewest also,
the greatexplosionsof the60s have led, in theworldwideeconomic crisis,
to powerfulrestorations
of the social orderand a renewalof the repressive
power of the variousstateapparatuses.
Yet the forcesthesemustnow confront,containand controlare new
ones, on which the older methods do not necessarilywork. We have
describedthe60s as a momentin whichtheenlargement
of capitalismon a
global scale simultaneously
produced an immensefreeingor unbindingof
social energies,a prodigiousreleaseof untheorizednew forces:the ethnic
forces of black and "minority"or thirdworld movementseverywhere,
regionalisms,the developmentof new and militantbearers of "surplus
consciousness" in the studentand women's movements,as well as in a
hostof strugglesof otherkinds.Such newlyreleasedforcesdo notonlynot
seem to compute in the dichotomousclass model of traditional
Marxism;
they also seem to offera realm of freedomand voluntaristpossibility
Yet this
beyond the classical constraintsof the economic infrastructure.
sense of freedomand possibility--which
is forthe course of the 60s a moas well as (fromthehindsight
of the80s) a histormentarily
objectivereality,
ical illusion-may perhapsbestbe explainedin termsof thesuperstructural
movementand play enabled by the transitionfromone infrastructural
or
of
to
The
were
in
imanother.
60s
that
sense
an
systemicstage capitalism
mense and inflationary
credit;a universalabanissuingof superstructural
donmentof the referential
an
gold standard; extraordinary
printingup of
ever more devalued signifiers.With the end of the 60s, with the world
economic crisis,all the old infrastructural
billsthenslowlycome due once
on a world scale, to
more; and the 80s will be characterizedby an effort,
proletarianizeall those unbound social forceswhich gave the 60s their
energy,by an extensionof class struggle,in otherwords, into the farthest
reachesof theglobe as well as themostminuteconfigurations
of local institutions(such as the university
forcehere is the new
system).The unifying
vocationof a henceforth
global capitalism,which may also be expected to
THE60s @ 209
PERIODIZING
or local resistancesto the process. And this
unifythe unequal, fragmented,
is finallyalso the solutionto the so-called "crisis" of Marxismand to the
of its formsof class analysisto the new social
widelynoted inapplicability
realitieswith which the 60s confrontedus: "traditional"Marxism,if "untrue" duringthisperiod of a proliferation
of new subjectsof history,
must
when
the
true
realities
of exploitation,
dreary
necessarilybecome
again
and the resistanceto it in the
extractionof surplusvalue, proletarianization
form of class struggle,all slowly reassert themselves on a new and
expanded world scale, as theyseem currentlyin the process of doing.

Jameson - Periodizing The 60s

Încărcat de

Informații document

Descriere originală:

Titlu original

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Jameson - Periodizing The 60s

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Periodizing the 60s

Author(s): Fredric Jameson

of thegloriesof the60s or abjectpublic

range of varied responses and creativeinnovationsis then possible, but

bear on the selectivenessof such a historicalnarrative:if the critiqueof

internalhighpoint,the Battleof Algiers,inJanuary-March

PERIODIZINGTHE 60s 0 185

fromthemoreabsolutelydemoralizingsocial and economiclogicof capital.

are in retreatall over the globe, can just as easily be conceptualizedas a

those of Foucault,Deleuze, Derridaand so forth.That the paradigm,

ated on theirown termswhen theyare thus radicallydisjoinedfromthe

PERIODIZINGTHE 60s 0 189

1789)to theirserviceand borrowfromthemnames,battlecriesand cosin a morecynicallight,as in

The limitas well as thestrength

imaginationbeingcalled back intoquestion.Stevensthusexemplifiesforus

With this last, Mandel touches on what he elsewhere calls the

S-ar putea să vă placă și