1. Postmodernity & Globalization
3. Reflexive Postmodernism vs. Cultural Imperialism
Globalization I:
Postmodernism
Postmodernism, Representation
and History
Outline
Starting Questions & Quiz
2-1 From Modernity to Postmodernity: a
Review
Postmodern Culture
 2-2 : (Skip --David Harvey) Time-Space
Compression
 2-3: (J. Baudrillard) Simulation
 2-4: (F. Jameson) Loss of Affect & History
 2-5 : Next time: Reflexive Postmodernism
 2-6: Next time: Globalization as Cultural
Imperialism?
Starting Questions & a Quiz
 What is Postmodernity? And modernity?
What are the characteristics of
postmodernism?
What are the examples of postmodernism
that you know of?
 How do we analyze In Country as a
postmodern film? And Forrest Gump?
Postmodernism 2-1
From Modernity to
Postmodernity
From Modernity to Postmodernity
Modernity
Fordism
Postmodernity
Post-Fordism
Organized capitalism
Disorganized capitalism
Mechanical reproduction
Electronic Reproduction
central and rational
organization of manpower
and capital
Standardization of
production
Manufacturing industry;
Products as main
commodity
Flexible accumulation of
capital, sub-contracting
Flexible production of
parts
Service industry;
information as capital.
From Modernity to Postmodernity (2)
Increasing emphasis on
Consumption, lifestyle 
Consumer Society and Biopolitics: Overall
commodification, Reification and fragmentation of
history & human identity, Governing the whole
population and its life through life style and
reproduction
Image/Spectacle Society: Dissociation of Commodities
from their use value, Signs from their traditional
meanings (or signifier from signified)
Compression of Time-Space (skip)
Postmodernism: A Summary
Features：
1. Depthlessness, pastiche,
image and simulation,
commodification
2. metafictional (self-reflexive
後設), ambiguous, eclectic
折衷
3. boundary-crossing ,
pluralistic
4. questioning meta-narrative,
de-doxification質疑大敘述／
真理
Related Theorists and
examples in class
1. F. Jameson (nostalgia film,
Forrest Gump; In Country)
2. L. Hutcheon (The Stunt Man
and Cindy Sherman)
3. Hutcheon (Obasan, Ararat),
and C. Jencks (清水休憩站)
4. F. Lyotard (internet
publication via YouTube,
Blog ???)
Postmodernism 2-2
Cultural/Economic Flows in
Postmodern Time and Space
Postmodern Time and Space
1. Separation of Time, Space and Place from
each other -- thru’
2. Disembeddedness of social relations and
signs – and re-embedding: the re-definition
of traditional signs/relations in a new context.
Postmodern Time and Space (2)
3. Compression:



1) The pace of production and communication get
accelerated so that boundaries are broken and “this world
sometimes seems to collapse inwards upon us" (Harvey
240).
"The central value system . . . is dematerialized and shifting,
time horizons are collapsing, and it is hard to tell exactly
what space we are in when it comes to assessing causes
and effects, meanings or values" (Harvey 298).
"The interweaving of simulacra in daily life brings together
different worlds (of commodities) in the same space and
time. But it does so in such a way as to conceal almost
perfectly any trace of origin, of the labour processes that
produced them, or of the social relations implicated in their
production" (300)
Cultural and Economic Flows –
Worldwide, but uneven
1. Transcultural flows –culture travels to us as
‘signs and commodities’
2. Spreading of Western culture and technologies;
3. Disjunctive Flows –multiple “scape” (scene; e.g.
landscape),. e.g. the disjunctive flows of
ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes,
mediascapes and ideoscapes
4. multiple cores, multiple semi-peripheries and
peripheries.
Postmodernism 2-3:
Simulation
 What is simulation? And
simulacrum?
 Is it possible to know the “Real”?
 Is postmodern representation
completely self-referential (or nonrepresentational).
Simulation and the Hyperreal
Denies the binarism of True/False,
Reality/Fiction by introducing the third term:
the hyperreal (textbook 7: 361)
Hyperreality – the only real is that which
can be reproduced. “the precession of
simulacra” (365)
 no text is original; everything is
simulation. Do you agree? Let’s get some
examples first.
Simulation Fable
 A Borges tale: the cartographers of the
Empire draw up a map so detailed that it
ends up exactly covering the territory
 with the decline of the Empire this map
becomes frayed and finally ruined, a few
shreds still discernible in the deserts
 The shreds [like Ozymandias’ status in
Shelley’s poem]: an aging double ends up
being confused with the real thing
Some of Baudrillard’s Examples
 A. the biological and scientific -- 1. simulation of symptoms;
10. DNA model reproduction; 11. Nuclear deterrence
 B. the religious -- 2. the simulacrum of divinity;
 C. museumification of culture -- 3. the return of the Tasaday;
4. the salvage of Rameses' mummy, 5. return of the parts
of a Cloister to its origin
 D. popular culture -- 6. Disney; 9. the filming of the Loud
family in California ( Madonna)
 E. the political -- 7. Watergate; 12. Vietnam war, Algerian
war
 F. social crimes -- 8. all holdups, hijacks ( Face Change
高天民)
Textbook 366
 “But what if God himself can be simulated,
that is to say, reduced to signs which attest to
his existence? Then the whole system
becomes weightless; it is no longer anything
but a gigantic simulacrum; not unreal, but a
simulacrum, never again exchanging for what
is real, but exchanging in itself, in an
uninterrupted circuit without reference or
circumference.” -- religious icon  God a
copy of a copy?
Representation and Simulation
(textbook 385)
These would be the successive phases of
the image:
1. It is the reflection of a basic reality.
2. It masks and perverts a basic reality.
3. It masks the absence of a basic reality.
4. It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is
its own pure simulacrum.
Kate’s handout pp. 13-14
Representation and Simulation—
assumption of an essential reality
Central Issue: The Postmodern Debate
Positive (e.g. critical arts
and social practices)
De-centering (subversive of
mainstream systems);
Empowering the margins
Anti-foundationalism,
Pluralism
Boundary-breaking
Constructing subjectivity
Parody
Negative (e.g. media
postmodernism, consumer
culture)
A-political, complicitous,
intensifying its logic of overall
commodification; imperialistic
Skepticism, Relativism, lack of
critical distance;
Death of the subject (loss of
affect); Loss of History;
Pastiche, kitsch
Textbook – no point of reference,
anything goes (p. 361)
2016/3/18
Critique of Postmodernism: F. Jameson
as an Example (1) Loss of Affect
 Van Gogh’s peasant
shoes
 Andy Warhol’s
Diamond Dust Shoes
Monroe by Andy Warhol
Postmodernism 2-4: History
 Nostalgia Film
F. Jameson’s Critique (2): Loss of History
 Pastiche (大雜燴 blank parody--parody with no critical intent
or [central]point of reference) Eclipses Parody (critical of a
norm)-- style becomes codes, reassembled playfully and
without critical intent (e.g. Top Gun Hot Shot, Moulin
Rouge, Ferris Beuler’s Day Off 蹺課大王, Date Movie)
 Nostalgia Film -- the past becomes a composite of
stereotypes, spectacles; no stars (with 'personality' in the
older sense)
e.g. 1) historical films – 《大宅門》、《康熙》、 《雍正》、
《乾隆 》
e.g. 2) Postmodern pastiche or sci-fi – Somewhere in Time,
Back to Future, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, etc.)
F. Jameson’s Critique (2): Loss of History
 “Nostalgia for the Present” e.g. Time Out of Joint, Blue
Velvet (see notes)
 Presents the 50’s as a composition of images (e.g. Blue
Velvet)
 the evil (e.g. Frank): “the emptiest form of sheer
Otherness (into which any type of social content can be
poured at will). (textbook 404)
 No historical novel (of the 19th century type) anymore
 historical novel: emergence of historicity
 nostalgia film: its enfeeblement and repression
 Historicity defined: a perception of the present as history;
that is, as a relationship to the present which somehow
defamiliarizes it and allows us that distance from immediacy
which is at length characterized as a historical perspective
(textbook 399-40)  cognitive map
Postmodernism 2-5
 (Self-)Reflexive Postmodernism
Reflexive Postmodernism (chap 6 pp. 152-)
‘the figural’ over the ‘discursive’ 
aestheticization of everyday life.
 The readers or consumers thus get
their choices in the aesthetic
combination/interpretation of signs.
Postmodern Self-Reflexive Texts: the
other types
 Questioning Boundaries between reality and
fiction
Vanilla Sky; Mulholland Drive
The Purple Rose of Cairo, 暗戀桃花源, Stuntman
 Questioning Consumer Culture
 Icicle Thief
 Questioning History
 Ararat and 阮玲玉
 Novels by 平路、張大春, etc. etc.
2016/3/18
Postmodernism 2-6
 Cultural Imperialism vs.
Globalization
Cultural Imperialism argument (textbook
chap 5:115- )
 --the dominance , worldwide, of a standardized,
'homogenized' consumer culture, emanating
from western (and particularly North American)
capitalism, represents a form of global cultural
regulation.
 Basic thesis: certain dominant cultures
threaten to overwhelm other more vulnerable
ones. e.g. America over Europe, "the West
over the Rest," the core over the periphery,
capitalism over more or less everyone.
Cultural Imperialism argument:
two major strands:
 1. "anti-Americanism"--against American
cultural and economic dominance, could be a
form of cultural protectionism (e.g. the banning
of importation or use of satellite dishes in
Islamic states).
 Danger of protectionism or nationalism: who
are "we" that get represented in national
culture?
Cultural Imperialism argument:
two major strands:
 2. against transnational capitalism
supported by communication systems- Examples of cultural domination: Disney, Hollywood
Film [e.g. the film Evita], MacDonald's, Coca-Cola,
Nike—and even Internet.
 Hides the facts of exploitation;
 Liking them (esp. those cultural texts such as Mu
Lan and Sex in the Cities), we absorb their
ideologies, too.
Cultural Imperialism argument:
Counter-Argument
 1. not predominantly American culture—
The complex cross-cutting and overlay of communication
paths and flows takes on a less benign aspect: now it
appears as a 'web' which enmeshes and binds all
cultures.
the dominant culture as "the 'distanciated' influences"
which order our everyday lives
b. imports operate at a 'cultural discount'
Cultural Imperialism argument:
Counter-Argument
2. Viewer reception: the viewers may receive
dominant culture differently.
-- patterns of TV viewing--a. 'primetime'
scheduled for local shows
-- A research done of the viewer reception of
Dallas (朱門恩怨) in Holland, which shows
indeed a diversity of more localized
responses.
Cultural Imperialism argument:
Counter-Argument
3. the 'decentring' of capitalism from the
West
--against core-periphery argument: This structuring of
the global capitalist system assures the continued
economic weakness, cultural subordination and
conditions for the exploitation of the Third World by the
First. It does not adequately grasp the complexities
of the operation of global capitalism.
But how about the influences of Japan and
Korea here?
 Multiple Cores and peripheries.
Cultural Imperialism argument:
Counter-Argument
 Globalization is a global project
 Globalization is unlikely to produce an entirely
regulated, homogenized global culture.
A. 'indegenization' of Western cultural goods,
localization
B. deterritorialization caused by the capital; by
the immigrants from Asia, Africa or Latin
America
References
Mike Featherstone (ed.), Global Culture.
Nationalism, globalization and modernity.
London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage,
pp. 31-55
Frederic Jameson -http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticis
m/postmodernism/jameson.htm
Notes 1
Philip K. Dick – the author of stories based
on which Blade Runner and Total Recall
were made.
波坦金村(Potemkin village)有一次凱薩琳
大帝要出巡波坦金的領地時，波坦金為了
使女皇對他領地的富足有個良好印象，不
惜工本，在凱薩琳大帝視察百姓生活情況
時必經的路旁建起一批豪華的假村莊。
Notes 2: Time Out of Joint
 The protagonist Ragle Gumm believes that he lives in the year 1959
in a quiet American suburbHis unusual profession consists of
repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper competition
called, "Where will the little green man be next?".
 Gumm's 1959 has some differences from ours: the Tucker car is in
production, and Uncle Tom's Cabin was recently written. As the
novel opens, strange things begin to happen to Gumm. A soft-drink
stand disappears, replaced by a small slip of paper with the words
"Soft-Drink Stand" written on it. Pieces of our 1959 turn up: an article
on Marilyn Monroe (who didn't exist in their world), and radios
(which had been abandoned at the dawn of television).
 Gumm actually lives in a then-future Earth (circa 1998). (source:
Wikipedia)
Note 3 Blue Velvet
Opening scene – images of the 50’s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM975_L
d9S0