> I don't understand in what sense "postmodernism is the cultural logic
> of multinational capitalism."
Postmodernism is the lit-crit term for "multinational consumerism", which includes everything from Web aesthetics to videogames, superstores to cellphones -- the characteristic styles, fashions and forms of this consumerism.
> And I also do not understand how
> "globalization"--which started in a serious way with the steamship
> and the telegraph--is merely one face of "postmodernity."
He said the latest face. I shortened the summary, but Fred spent a lot of time rebutting the argument that there's nothing new under the sun, pointing out that this is exactly what folks said in the 19th century when national capitalism was emerging, and that the argument didn't hold water then, either -- the rule of the pound sterling was very different from that of Queen Elizabeth. The issue is, how do you diagnose a mode of production, to figure out how it works, and how it might be changed, and there's no question but that multinational capitalism is a whole new beast, with very different social structures and cultural sensibilities than its monopoly-national predescessors.
-- Dennis