Jameson, who is the first Presidential Lecturer of the quarter, said that the idea that pure subjectivity can be isolated from time is misguided because the subjective is unrepresentable.
Postmodernism is characterized by commodification and an emphasis on the present.
Only the moment counts. Jameson further argued that current attempts in academic circles to avoid periodization are futile. We cannot not periodize. . . . The First World War, however, brought a blow to these notions of progress. The undesirable vestiges of the modern include asceticism, authoritarianism and teleology, he added.