The (post) modern spectacle: A study in ideological fantasy and 20th century American culture (Wallace Stevens, Charles Bernstein)

In examining 20th century American culture through poetry and film, this dissertation intends to demonstrate how postmodernism is both a symptom of a deeper social pathology—as Fredric Jameson argues—and a misnomer for the persistent influence of modernism's more experimental and political strains. Building on Jameson's thesis that postmodernism is in fact nothing but the most recent cultural expression of a deep-rooted social dialectic, I will argue that the socio-economic logic guiding postmodern cultural production is that of spectacle, a material and ideological space of manufactured fantasy. In order to demonstrate exactly how the collective repression/deferment of political and social tensions is channeled into the cultural fantasy space of spectacle, I will rely primarily on the dialectical materialist theories developed in 20th century Marxist philosophy and psychoanalysis. As the cultural studies of the Frankfurt School, as well as those of Jameson, have demonstrated, the intersection of these two dialectical theories can prove invaluable when attempting to uncover the hidden or unconscious socio-political sympathies of a text.; The dissertation is divided into three major parts, with an Introduction and a Conclusion. The Introduction offers a basic summary of the modern/postmodern debate, covering the dialectical underpinnings of Jameson's critique. Parts I and II examine the interconnectedness between modernism and postmodernism as expressed in the respective work of two 20th century American poets, Wallace Stevens and Charles Bernstein. Part III addresses the issue of spectacle and its relation to fantasies of liberation in late 20 th century American cinema. Utilizing the socio-psychoanalytic theories of Baudrillard and Lacan, I will demonstrate how popular films like The Matrix and Fight Club, while adhering to what could be generally termed a postmodern cinematic aesthetic, nonetheless convey a very modernist desire for socio-political autonomy, specifically from manufactured market values and ideological consumption fantasies. Moreover, in the Conclusion to the dissertation, I offer a more philosophical analysis of the modern/postmodern divide by analyzing the metaphysical and socio-psychological questions posed by the film Memento. By highlighting the existential pragmatism of the main character's psychological denial, the Conclusion demonstrates that the idea of the divide itself is already symptomatic of an ideologically induced denial that dismisses the continuity of the past in an effort to maintain a sense of contemporaneity to the present.