the proliferation of semiotic speculation as well, and of myriad concepts of the sign, the simulacrum, the image, spectacle society, immaterialities of all kinds
This is now second-degree abstraction with a vengeance, in which only the simulacra of things can be called upon to take their place and offer their appearance
[...] no description of the postmodern can omit the centrality of the postmodern economy, which can succinctly be characterized as the displacement of old-fashioned industrial production by finance capital.
I follow Giovanni Arrighi in seeing the emergence of a stage of finance capital as a cycl…
[...] in the modernist texts the effort is to identify form and content so completely that we cannot really distinguish the two; whereas in the postmodern ones an absolute separation must be achieved before form is folded back into content.
[...] In this new configuration, even the paintings of classics like Van Gogh or Picasso regain a new lustre; not that of their origins, but rather the novelty of widely advertised brand names.
