The ideas that you touched on, which excited me the most, are as follows:
1. On Art: Post-Modernity is categorised by the absence of the work of art itself for the general public (replaced by images of the work of art), and by the death of the "art object" as such. Today, the artist has new avenues for pursuing his/her work, which does not produce a singular work of art, but instead produces and reproduces an idea or mood. For example, photography. Today, according to you, Prof Jameson, photography is huge because it is no longer hemmed in by reality-- photography has embraced the practice of changing and abstracting itself in order to relate its concept. Another example? The installation. Which you, quite rightly because I remember nodding aggressively, connected to the Happenings of the '60s. The installation fills a space and is part of that space, and as it moves from gallery to gallery or space to space it is thereby never the same twice. The installation is truly art of the post-modern period because it embraces the spacial over the temporal. It is concerned with the here and now of the current installation's existence in space, without any concern for its status into the future as a stable work of art, and without too much concern for what or how future incarnations of itself will look like/be created. You told us that nowadays we (the generally interested public, i.e. me and my friends) consume art as we consume the very communicatory process (the photograph is in an online magazine, the installation shown at a party, the curation of coolness is disseminated by blogs). In this way, the curator today has fierce and unthinkable powers.
2. On Affect: you touched on affect! I almost cried. The first thing you did was to take back a quote from your Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) where you said that the waning of affect is a symptom of postmodernity. Instead of the term affect, you proposed instead, "the waning of named emotion." Named emotion is different from affect because it (named emotion) is derived from a Kantian idea of emotions as conscious and intentional, whereas affect is connected to emotions that are embodied and unintentional. This is a distinction, Prof Jameson, that makes clear for me how post-modern affect is part and parcel with post-psychoanalytic and post-feminist discourse. In fact, in order not to problematize the female body it must necessarily be "post" both these disciplines. You said that you decided to change your position in affect and post-modernity because in the realm of the post-modern, there has been a real shift towards the body as the focus of self-knowledge. This made me think of cyborgs.
3. On the Singularity of Derivatives (As in, the Financial Tool): Prof Jameson, I have been listening to these Planet Money podcasts from NPR (you should too), and they have been explaining things like futures markets and toxic assets to me in basically the same tone of voice Ira Glass uses to tell me stories on This American Life. You see, mood is at the center of everything. So anyway, I got kind of excited when you started talking about derivatives (click here if, like me, you still do not understand derivatives). According to you, though, Prof Jameson, financial derivatives represent a singularity. A singularity is an unrepeatable event in time. Similarly, a derivative is a tool that relies on so many contingencies, including things like international currency values and the future prices of any number of commodities, that the actual derivative becomes an utterly unique, non-repeatable event, that can only be talked about in the past tense. Once it is sold, that is. After the derivative is sold it is a thing which can be talked about: it has a price. However, before it is sold, the derivative represents a symptom of post-modernity inasmuch as it is only possible in an age of computerisation and globalisation. And here is the clincher: because each derivative is an unrepeatable singularity, it cannot be effectively regulated through any standardized system.
Again, Prof Jameson, I feel terribly lucky to have listened to your talk. Thank you.
