Unconvincing, from start to finish--and what a poor start! Yes, the obvious texts in courses on postmodernism are a few decades old; it takes time for things to

Unconvincing, from start to finish--and what a poor start! Yes, the obvious texts in courses on postmodernism are a few decades old; it takes time for things to filter into the academy. It would be easy to argue for more recent authors like Bolano, David Foster Wallace, Eugenides, or Zadie Smith as examples of postmodern fiction. Step outside literature and it's even more blatant. Kanye West, the high-grossing Marvel movies, prestige TV--these can be, and often are, read as postmodern. But rather than pick apart at cultural examples, I want to take issue with a more central claim: "The shift from modernism to postmodernism did not stem from any profound reformulation in the conditions of cultural production and reception." This is not an uncontroversial claim. Theorists like Fredric Jameson describe postmodernism as precisely a change in material conditions. I don't have space to describe all of Jameson's arguments here, but I'd encourage anyone curious about the shift from modernism to postmodernism to look into them. They're more robust and convincing than this article, for sure.