Fredric Jameson

Robert T. Tally

Description

Fredric Jameson is the most important Marxist critic in the world today. While consistently operating at the cutting edge of literary and cultural studies, Jameson has remained committed to seemingly old-fashioned philosophical discourses, most notably dialectical criticism and utopian thought.



In Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism, Robert Tally surveys Jameson's entire oeuvre, from his early studies of Sartre and formal criticism through his engagements with postmodernism and globalisation to his recent readings of Hegel, Marx and the valences of the dialectic.



The book is both a comprehensive critical guide to Jameson’s theoretical project and itself a convincing argument for the power of dialectical criticism to understand the world today.
Series Editors' Preface

Acknowledgements

Selected Works by Fredric Jameson

Introduction: Jameson as Educator

1. “… the dialectic requires you to say everything simultaneously …”

2. The Task of the Translator

3. The Untranscendable Horizon

4. The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

5. Cognitive Mapping and Globalization

6. The Thing about Modernity

7. Other Spaces are Possible

Conclusion: Reading Jameson

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Philosophie politique
• Jacques Derrida
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Karl Marx
• Louis Althusser
• Bertolt Brecht
• Theodor W. Adorno
• Déconstruction
• Walter Benjamin
• Herbert Marcuse
• Ernest Mandel
• Ernst Bloch
• Communisme
• Erich Auerbach
• Georg Lukács
• Perry Anderson
• Gilles Deleuze
• Terry Eagleton
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Deconstruction
• Postmodernism
• György Lukács
• Western Marxism
• Communism
• Philosophy
• Theodor Adorno
• Philosophie et théologie
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Political
• Political Ideologies

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783711604
• Langue: English

Extrait

Fredric Jameson
Marxism and Culture
Series Editors: Professor Esther Leslie, Birkbeck, University of London Professor Michael Wayne, Brunel University
 
Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction Edited by Mark Bould and China Miéville
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Magical Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination Andy Merrifield
Philosophizing the Everyday: The Philosophy of Praxis and the Fate of Cultural Studies John Roberts
Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture Gregory Sholette
Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism Robert T. Tally Jr.
Marxism and Media Studies: Key Concepts and Contemporary Trends Mike Wayne
Fredric Jameson
The Project of Dialectical Criticism
Robert T. Tally Jr.
 

Pluto Press
www.plutobooks.com
First published 2014 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
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Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Robert T. Tally Jr. 2014
The right of Robert T. Tally Jr. to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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In memory of Rick Roderick, who encouraged me to do better
Contents
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Selected Works by Fredric Jameson

Introduction: Jameson as Educator
1.
“… the dialectic requires you to say everything simultaneously …”


Timely Meditations


Making Things Difficult


Meanwhile
2.
The Task of the Translator


Sartre


Marxism and Form


The Prison-House of Language
3.
The Untranscendable Horizon


Fables of Aggression


The Political Unconscious


The Ideologies of Theory: Situations of Theory and The Syntax of History
4.
The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism


Late Marxism


Signatures of the Visible


Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
5.
Cognitive Mapping and Globalization


The Geopolitical Aesthetic


The Seeds of Time


The Cultural Turn
6.
The Thing about Modernity


Brecht and Method


A Singular Modernity


The Modernist Papers
7.
Other Spaces Are Possible


Archaeologies of the Future


The Ideologies of Theory Redux


Valences of the Dialectic
Conclusion: Reading Jameson

The Hegel Variations

Representing Capital

Notes
Index
Series Editors’ Preface
It is entirely appropriate that the first book in this series to be devoted exclusively to a single figure should focus on Fredric Jameson. The longevity of Jameson’s research program, along with the authority he brings to his work, means that several generations of students and scholars alike have become acquainted with Marxist cultural theory in a context (academia) which is often at best ignorant or indifferent to it, and at worst actively hostile. Jameson has pursued his interest in and defense of such key concepts for Marxism as the dialectic, totality, and utopianism with a remarkable consistency. This is especially the case when we consider how driven by fashionable trends academia can be. The scope of Jameson’s interests in culture and the range of alternative theoretical paradigms he engages with (and subsumes) have often been remarked upon and may be regarded as a model for maintaining the vibrancy and relevance of academic Marxism. Yet second only to Jameson’s position within academe, the contours of his work have perhaps been most shaped by the fact that, for all his cosmopolitanism, he is emphatically an American Marxist. While British Marxists might be especially concerned with the cultural power and characteristics of the most successful ruling class in the world, French Marxists with the centrality of the state, and Marxists in the global South with the legacies of colonialism and imperialism, Jameson is above all concerned with capital in one of the ‘purest’ capitalist economies in the world. This makes his work at once highly particular and, given the global hegemony of the United States and its increasing power to shape others in its own image, internationally resonant. Jameson’s continued extraordinary productivity means that happily this book will not be the definitive exposition of his still expanding oeuvre .
We can only hope that this series will last as long as Jameson’s project. If it proves to be even slightly as influential as his work, we will be happy indeed. We would like the series to become, for academics, activists and artists everywhere, a natural home for Marxists interested in the cultural question.
Series Editors Mike Wayne Esther Leslie
Acknowledgements
As is indicated in the title of my introduction and implicit throughout this study, the literary critic and cultural theorist Fredric Jameson is above all an educator. I have benefited from being his student, first in the classroom, then while a visiting scholar in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University, and more recently in my own career as a literature professor. As a teacher, mentor, and scholar, Jameson has contributed mightily to my own intellectual and professional formation. Many others have helped along the way, and I would especially like to thank the professors, students, and friends who contributed to my studies of dialectical criticism and who helped foster a sense of community, among them Jonathan Arac, John Beverley, Paul A. Bové, Eric Clarke, Sara Danius, Lawrence Goodwyn, Sabine Hake, Stefan Jonsson, Ronald Judy, Carol Kay, Marcia Landy, Toril Moi, Michael Morton, Michael V. Moses, Valentin Mudimbe, Dana Polan, Rick Roderick, James Rolleston, Kenneth Surin, Xiaobing Tang, Phillip Wegner, and, above all, Sandy Mills. I would also like to acknowledge my comrades in the Marxist Literary Group, an organization Jameson helped to establish, which has provided a forum for spirited discussion and fellowship.
Koonyong Kim invited me to speak on Jameson’s cultural cartography of the world system as part of his seminar at the American Comparative Literature Association’s annual meeting in 2013, and my presentation there turned out to be an early version of this study’s Chapter 1 . I am grateful to the organizers of Simon Fraser University’s Dreaming Dangerously graduate conference for inviting me to present a plenary talk on utopia as literary cartography, and the insightful comments and questions from audience members there have contributed to my thoughts on Jameson’s utopianism. Moreover, I am indebted to the many generous scholars of Jameson’s work whose insights have informed my reading; among these, let me single out Phillip E. Wegner, who graciously shared with me the manuscript of his then forthcoming book, Periodizing Jameson: Dialectics, the University, and the Desire for Narrative . The Jameson people, “Fred-heads,” form a rare and marvelous community.
Although I have not included any previously published material in this book, the feedback I received from editors and readers of some of my earlier writings on Jameson has certainly helped to inform the present study. These writings include “Jameson’s Project of Cognitive Mapping: A Critical Engagement,” in Rolland G. Paulston, ed., Social Cartography: Mapping Ways of Seeing Social and Educational Change (New York: Garland, 1996); my reviews of Valences of the Dialectic in the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books and of Representing Capital in Historical Materialism ; parts of my Spatiality (London: Routledge, 2013); and much of the overall argument in my Utopia in the Age of Globalization: Space, Representation, and the World System (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). I am grateful to the editors, publishers, and readers whose attentiveness and support have aided me in thinking about Jameson’s work. I would also like to thank David Castle of Pluto Press, copy-editor Anthony Winder, and the anonymous referees, whose sharp eyes and insightful comments have helped to make this book better than it would otherwise have been. I am especially grateful to Esther Leslie and Mike Wayne, editors of the Marxism and Culture series, for their enthusiastic and encouraging support for this project.
This book is dedicated to my late advisor and friend Rick Roderick, who first recommended Marxism and Form as essential reading if I wished to integrate my literary and philosophical interests and who encouraged my explorations in modern critical theory. Rick was an inspiring teacher, scholar, and activist, a comrade who thoroughly embodied a commitment to the spirit of Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach.
And, as always, Reiko Graham has been there for me with love and support.
Selected Works by Fredric Jameson
(in chronological order)
Sartre: The Origins of a Style . Second edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. (First published by Yale University Press, 1961.)
“On Politics and Literature,” Salmagundi 2.3 (Spring–Summer 1968), pp.17–26.
Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical