Sorry for the delay in sorting out my impressions of meeting the legendary footnote, Frederic Jameson, but here we are.
Jameson was invited by the Cultural Center of the city of Belgrade, to close an activity they call 'One Artist's Festival'. The artist is usually, but not necessarily, Belgrade-tied and of past lore. Jameson's role in all of this, the 2 lectures and the Q and As, were to shed some more light on that precipious line we call realism/modernism/postmodernism.
I caught the 2nd lecture, the one dedicated to his re-visitation of a (now) seminal 1984 essay her wrote on the 'Postmodern'. There was a round-table, a full crowd in the audience (not just students!), and two translators in a booth. All worked well.
Thus, what has struck me as important to share -
First, the openness with which he addressed some of our many misconceptions and apprehensions, about the postmodern, about postmodernity, about the future.
Yes, the future.
All of you, who are greatly familiar with the footnote's work, might find this a tad on the ironic side, but he did answer questions involving 'the future'. Not in a Star Trek kind of a way, more in a 'perpetual present' type of an existence.
He dubbed this ('the future') just one of the many singularities we happen to create, not just encounter.
He mentioned Foucault, Derrida, and the rest of 'their gang', almost with a touch of melancholy, when brandishing all of their respective views on discourse and subjectivity.
As I write this, I have been wondering about the whole concept of 'singularity'. Should we even use it as a plural noun? Is it a noun? Can it be a part of language to begin with, since it seems to ellude all form of 'placement'?
Secondly, the ease with which he discussed art and its 'death'. Not wishing to rain on anyone's parade, but Jameson of this lecture, finds music the only one of the existent art forms that might have any credibility to pass as artistic creation (pure mimesis, or as he put it - mimesis of the mimesis) in the present, perpetual or otherwise. And some, but not all, aspects of photography. Mostly, he stressed, its re-creative format as a medium.
Thirdly, the clarity with which he explained for the wider crowds, to many a nodding head, the difference between postmodern, as he uses/used it, and postmodernity as we live it.
A gem of 2 and a half hours.
And did I mention, the translators were cool.
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