SOURCE: A review of Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, in World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 2, Spring, 1993, pp. 459-60.

In the following review, Flores summarizes Jameson's concerns in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.

At the outset we are advised that “it is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten to think historically.” Does that proverblike paradox apply to Postmodernism? Does Fredric Jameson attempt to do what the age is said to have forgotten? Working in a slippery environment, his text seems provocatively tentative and its range of enthusiasms virtually unlimited. Some features of Jameson’s topic (and his style) might be listed: the way in which a range of discourses coalesce, the disappearance of master narratives, the possibility of finding “symptoms” anywhere, the loss of depth and of...