The Condition of postmodernity

17 Time-space compression and the postmodern condition

the transition from Fordism to flexible accumulation: new organizational forms and new technologies in production----- vertical disintegration reduce turnover time
parallel acceleration in exchange and consumption--- the mobilization of fashion and shift from the consumption of goods to the consumption of services

volatility and ephemerality
1 a temporariness in the structure of both public and personal value systems crack-up of consensus and the diversification of values within a fragmenting society

2 difficult to engage in any long-term planning "yuppie flu" schizophrenic mentality
3 production of volatility entails manipulation of taste and opinion constructnion of new sigh systems and imagery

p289 "The emphemerality of such images can then be interpreted in part as a struggle on the part of the oppressed groups of whatever sort to establish their own identity(in terms of street culture, musical styles, fads and fashions made up for themselves) and the rush to convert those innovations to commercial advantage(Carnaby Street in the late 1960s proved an excellent pioneer.)"
simulacrum
4 the loss of a sense of the future except and insofar as the future can be discounted into the present
a merging of the cinema of distraction with the cinema of futuristic universes (what does "cinema of distraction" mean is it opposed to "cinema of attraction"?)

5 a crisis of explanatory logic "the triumph of effect over cause, of instantaneity over time as depth, the triumph of surface and of pure objectivization over the depth of desire"

an explosion of opposed sentiments and tendencies: insurance, religious revival, the search for authenticity and authorities in politics photographs become a generator of a sense of self that lies outside the sensory overloading of consumerist culture and fashion. The home becomes a private museum to guard against the ravages of time-space compression.


money as unreliable representation of value and a crisis of representation in advanced capitalism
money has never been a clear or unambiguous representation of value, and on occasion it becomes so muddled as to become itself a major source of insecurity and uncertainty.
298 The rapidity with which currency markets fluctuate across the world's spaces, the extraordinary power of money capital flow in what is now a global stock and financial market, and the volatility of what the purchasing power of money might represent, define, as it were, a high point of that highly problematic intersection of money, time, and space as interlocking elements of social power in the political economy of postmodernity.
The central value system, to which capitalism has always appealed to validate and gauge its actions, is dematerialized and shifting, time horizons are collapsing, and it is hard to tell exactly what space we are in when it comes to addressing causes and effects, meanings or values.
The interweaving of simulacra in daily life brings together different worlds (of commodities)in the same space and time. a) divergent possibilities cultivating a whole series of simulacra as milieu of escape, fantasy and distraction b) the search for secure moorings in a shifting world place-identity

新艺术史与视觉叙事 （朱其）