Postmodern critics of modernity sometimes treat the latter not only as the pursuit and ambition for totality; they treat it as a totality, as an undifferentiated whole. But if postmoderns are right, even modernity was fragmented and frayed at the edges, and the appearance of totality is a modernist ruse. A truly postmodern critique of modernity then would have to much more nuanced and differentiated, questioning even the usefulness of the category of modernity. Postmoderns also sometimes treat postmodernism as... Read more

A subsidiary thesis: Modernity is motivated by a desire for purity, by dirt-avoidance – dirt being, as Mary Douglas says, “matter out of place.” Counter-modernity is dirt’s revenge, celebration of dirt. Read more

Featherstone once again. He points out that sometime in the 18th century, upper class culture divided from lower class culture: “in 1500 the educated strata despised the common people although they shared their culture. Yet by 1800 their descendants had ceased to join spontaneously in popular culture and were rediscovering it as something exotic and interesting” – the carnivalesque popular culture of “folksongs, folktales, devotional images, mystery plays, chapbooks, fairs, and festivals.” Romantics and bohemians reveled in the spectacle of... Read more

In his 1987 book, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism , C. Campbell attempts to explain the origins of contemporary obsession with novelty, pleasure in the new, self-expression through consumption of goods. He traces it to romanticism’s focus on “imagination, fantasy, mysticism, creativity and emotional exploration” (Featherstone’s summary). Campbell himself says, “The essential activity of consumption is . . . not actual selection, purchase or use of products, but teh imaginative pleasure-seeking to which the product image... Read more

A couple of further notes from Featherstone’s very stimulating book. First, citing Pierre Bourdieu, he notes the limits of seeing consumption as an isolated marker of status. The signs “that betray a person’s origins and trajectory through life are manifest in body shape, size, weight, stance, walk, demeanour, tone of voice, style of speaking, sense of bodily ease or discomfort, and so on. Hence culture is incorporated [we might say ‘incarnated’], and it is not just a question of what... Read more

Cultural elites have, Featherstone suggests, an inherently ambivalent relationship with the market. His argument, if I understand it, goes something like this: Cultural elites want to preserve a monopolization of cultural products. Hence, for instance, peer review of scholarly work; work that hasn’t passed peer review can be dismissed as amateurish, uninformed, not from around here. It needn’t even be read. The (obscure) publisher’s imprint is sufficient to pass judgment. At the same time, cultural elites want to distribute their... Read more

McDonald’s provides a helpful glimpse at the complexities surrounding postmodernity. On the one hand, the global reach of McDonald’s seems a perfect illustration of one part of the postmodern situation – the global diffusion of American culture and tastes, the plasticity and airiness of postmodern culture, the breaching of national boundaries. On the other hand, as George Ritzer explains, “McDonaldization” involves “the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of... Read more