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Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodemity, by John Frow. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1997. Paper, $17.95. Pp. ix, 281.
Given present-day polemics, it is easy to forget that the field of cultural studies emerged in Britain over 30 years ago to focus Marxist attentions on the lives of labor, and that the concept of postmodernism was formulated more than two decades ago to reflect on the extension of commodification into the domain of culture. Addressing what people do when the minutiae of daily life are the objects of profit-taking exchange would seem to compel an ongoing connection between cultural studies and postmodernism, particularly if a commitment to a politics of labor is to be sustained. From this perspective, questions of identity - of how people experience their lives - and problems of fragmentation that result when commodity acquisition appears as the ends of life and labor, would be key features of any current Marxist analysis. But, as it turns out, the various positions that apply the term postmodern admit of no such coherence, nor do the various researches that go by the name of cultural studies. By itself, this is neither problematic nor surprising, for surely terms like capitalism and class organize no corollary conceptual consensus. More troubling is when the linkages to Marxism are disavowed altogether at the cost of a less nuanced historical understanding and a diminished sense of political prospects.
Enter John Frow's subtle and comprehensive treatment of the relation between historical movement and commodity exchange. His lucid rendering of dense philosophical positions, his mastery of disparate literatures in cultural theory, legal studies, anthropology and science, and his ability to expose the political consequences of these arguments are sufficient grounds for a rewarding read of Time and Commodity Culture. But more significantly, after engaging Frow's work, it is more difficult to return to the simple and unproductive polarities too often assigned to various critical tendencies on the left.
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