History, Politics, Theory: Biographies of the Postmodern

Abstract

essays originally published between 1983 and 1998 is one of them; accompanying it is Perry Anderson's overview of Jameson's own postmodern thought. I want to briefly present them together because, for one thing, they raise the same issues; for another, they struggle, as critical models, for legitimacy during a time that has queried the very principles underlying them. Also, Anderson's book was meant to serve as an introduction to Jameson's anthology. In fact, the latter opens with a short foreword by Anderson, while the initial introduction has grown into a full-fledged book on Jameson's theory of the postmodern. Thus, The Cultural Turn and The Origins of Postmodernity make up a complex kind of history. This history contains an intellectual biography of Jameson as well as the biography of an idea, possibly the most influential idea in the literary and studies of the late twentieth century. Appropriately enough, Anderson's book begins with a survey of the pre-Jameson history some would say, pre-history of the term postmodernism and goes on to narrate the cultural turn taken, chiefly owing to Jameson's momentous intervention, by the postmodern debate. But, of course, the trajectory of Jameson's own thought constitutes the main focus here. And The Cultural Turn, to begin with, traces this