Weak Ties and the Schizophrenic Aesthetic

Jameson's conceptualization of postmodernism or the period he defines as the break from the previous modern era and the development of a cultural production that "becomes empirical, chaotic, and heterogeneous" (1). Along with the erasure of the distiniction between high and low culture and art Jameson locates that the fundamental device of the postmodern text is the employment of "pastiche," as opposed to the modern "parody." Pastiche is "blank parody," the effect of a turning to the past in which "the past as "referent finds itself gradually bracketed, and then effaced altogether, leaving us with nothing but texts" (18). This organization of cultural production is inherrently fragmented causing Jameson to turn to the Lacanian principle of schizophrenia as a break in the "signifying chain" resulting in "the form of a rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers" (20).
While Jameson avoids going into detail of the Oedipal origins of the Lacan conceptualization of the schizophrenic, I feel it is important to understanding how the postmodern, a fragmented state of cultural production, can be viewed in terms of "weak" and "strong ties" in Granovetter's sociological theory. The Name-of-the-Father or the linguistic function that links the subject to the symbolic and allows his ability to conceive and produce meaning through language is a "tie" in that this function ties the subject to language.
Granovetter analyzes the "weak tie" in a social network to be more effective at transmitting meaning or anything. Whereas parody can be conceived as the method of employing "strong ties" the "citation," the text characterized as "pastiche" can be thought of as a text formed on the grounds of only "weak ties," therefore reducing the problem of conflicting historical forms and artifacts, high and low culture, and a distinct temporality. The fragmented postmodern text can therefore call upon a greater though nonexistent referent(s) in order to establish a disjointed text that can be disseminated for the greatest degree of consumption.
This though proposes the problem of conceiving history and culture through theories of the past which may be "outmoded." In this case what is to be said of Benjamin's conceptions that were previously addressed in the course? How can we reconcile these problems?
-sean