Lost Trailer Utopias: The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Fifties America *. (Essays)

Postmodernism has been particularly important in acknowledging 'the multiple forms of otherness as they emerge from differences in subjectivity, gender and sexuality, race and class, temporal and spatial geographic locations and dislocations'. Postmodernism also ought to be looked at as mimetic of the social, economic, and political practices in society. The meta-narratives that the postmodernists decry were much more open, nuanced, and sophisticated than the critics admit. The rhetoric of postmodernism is dangerous for it avoids confronting the realities of political economy and the circumstances of global power. The sharp categorical distinction between modernism and postmodernism disappears, to be replaced by an examination of the flux of internal relations within capitalism as a whole. The reproduction of the social and symbolic order through the exploration of difference and 'otherness' is all too evident in the climate of postmodernism.

The condition of postmodernity

Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of ”postmodernism”. Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.

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Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

This book extends the theme of Raymond Williams's earlier work in literary and cultural analysis. He analyses previous contributions to a Marxist theory of literature from Marx himself to Lukacs, Althusser, and Goldmann, and develops his own approach by outlining a theory of 'cultural materialism' which integrates Marxist theories of language with Marxist theories of literature. Williams moves from a review of the growth of the concepts of literature and idealogy to a redefinition of 'determinism' and 'hegemony'. His incisive discussion of the 'social material process' of cultural activity culminates in a re-examination of the problems of alignment and commitment and of the creative practice in individual authors and wider social groups.

Marxism and literature

Uncovering startling connections between the Cold War and its effect on American family life, this classic of Cold War literature challenges assumptions about the happy days of the 1950s. . In the 1950s, the term containment referred to the foreign policy-driven containment of Communism and atomic proliferation. Yet in Homeward Bound May demonstrates that there was also a domestic version of containment where the sphere of influence was the home. Within its walls, potentially dangerous social forces might be tamed, securing the fulfilling life to which postwar women and men aspired. Homeward Bound tells the story of domestic containment - how it emerged, how it affected the lives of those who tried to conform to it, and how it unraveled in the wake of the Vietnam eras assault on Cold War culture, when unwed mothers, feminists, and secular humanists became the new enemy. This revised and updated edition includes the latest information on race, the culture wars, and current cultural and political controversies of the post-Cold War era.

Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

acceptance of what is given extends into subtleties of language when dealing with contemporary China. Thus, on p. 158 the Mount Sung monasteries were "sacked" by the warlord Feng Yfi-hsiang in 1926, but were "troubled" once again during the Cultural Revolution. A second major limitation of Morris’s book is in its selection of comparative illustrations. In this it stands in contrast to the broad selection offered by Keswick. With the exception of one small color illustration from the Palace Museum, Taipei, all of the Chinese paintings reproduced by Morris come from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some are excellent and apropos; others would have been much better chosen from other collections, here and abroad, so as to provide the apt illustration of a point or place discussed in the text. Thus the late, poor copy of The Sp~JngFestival on the River gives no idea of either the original handscroll now in Peking, nor of what the great Northern capital looked like at the beginning of the twelfth century. Far worse, though, and indicative of some aesthetic confusion on the author’s part, is the full page illustration on page 109 purporting to show Tiger Hill in Suchou. The caption suggests a panoramic photo-view, but the poor reproduction is of an equally poor painting giving a very poor idea of Tiger Hill. What I describe as aesthetic confusion is also apparent in the short section devoted to the Astor Garden Court at the Metropolitan (pp. 243-6). Here the author shares the misapprehension of another writer unfamiliar with art, Edward C. Banfield, whose The Democratic Muse (The Twentieth Century Fund, 1984) makes heavy use of the idea of the "perfect reproduction." The Chinese garden of the Astor Court is indeed a good introduction for the Westerner to some appearances of the gardens of Suchou. But that it is a "perfect unity" and a "perfect reproduction" simply is not true and the sooner we recognize it, the sooner we may find our way to the delights of the original. Finally, a fine opportunity was lost to use positive comparative approaches in considering the Chinese garden in relation to the various Japanese and Western approaches to garden art. Too often Morris simply puts down the nonChinese garden rather than use the comparative method to improve our understanding of the special contributions made by all. On page 213 Morris writes that the solution of the Zen monks for garden art was the dry-garden format, thus leaving out a large number of water, moss, and shrubbery designs of importance equal to the dry type. The Gardens of China is useful, principally because of its horticultural content, but not a reliable guide to the background, ambience, and development of the Chinese garden. There are numerous signs of hasty proof-reading: even on the page with chapter headings, Chapter 4 is listed as beginning on 08 rather than 68; and on page 221 complete editorial confusion reigns between Sir William Temple and Sir William Chambers, the latter being the true author of the Dissertation on Oriental Gardening. We still need a fine work of haut-vulga~4sation for the still little-known art of the Chinese garden. Sherman E. Lee is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C., 27514.

Lost Trailer Utopias: The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Fifties America *. (Essays)

References

The condition of postmodernity

Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Marxism and literature

Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

Discovering the vernacular landscape