Fredric Jameson

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Fredric Jameson

Fredric R. Jameson (* 1934 in Cleveland , Ohio ) is an American Marxist , literary critic and theorist . He is the William A. Lane Professor at Duke University .

life and work

Jameson studied in Munich, Berlin and at Yale University . He did his doctorate on Jean-Paul Sartre under Erich Auerbach .

Jameson's neo-Marxism, with its emphasis on the concept of totality, is strongly influenced by the immanent criticism of Hegel as well as by the works of Georg Lukács , Ernst Bloch , Theodor W. Adorno , Walter Benjamin , Herbert Marcuse , Sartre and especially Louis Althusser . He was best known as a theorist who is in the tradition of critical theory and post-Marxism .

In the 1950s he made known the hitherto unknown western undogmatic Marxism in the USA and thus played a part in the development of the new left in the United States.

Jameson's best-known works are The Political Unconscious , Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism , and Marxism and Form . He has published books on politics , culture and literature . Published in German a. a. 1999 Pleasure and horror of the incessant change of all things (English Brecht on Method ) as well as 2004 Myths der Moderne (English A Singular Modernity ).

He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 . In 2008 Jameson was awarded the lavish Holberg Prize .

Postmodern theory

Jameson is one of the earliest theorists and critics of postmodernism . In his analyzes, he describes that the driving ideas of modernity have lost their tangibility and shape. In place of the emblematic energy of the large machines and fast vehicles of the modern age, picture surfaces and their non-expressive housings have emerged. The technical innovations of the postmodern era only made the virtual projection of things that already exist easier. Postmodernism has lost the feeling for the difference between the real and the cultural world of signs. It is characterized - here follows Jameson Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum - by features that are reminiscent of the world of schizophrenics :

  • Weakening of historical awareness: for postmodernism there are only texts and signs that are present and simultaneously present in space; historical style imitations and quotes replace the understanding of real history
  • Loss of the depth dimension: dominance of the two-dimensional, the decorative, the reflection and the shiny surfaces; This also applies to the disappearance of theoretical “depth models” such as the semiotic opposition between the signifier and the signified
  • Disappearance of the barrier between high and popular culture: the fascination for kitsch, advertising, nostalgia and paraliterature ( airport paperbacks ), the preference for parody and cynicism without political bite (Jameson: the gesture of the " pastiche "), cannibalization and imitation of all are characteristic past aesthetic styles
  • Weakening of the acting subject with simultaneous increase in affects and imagination: also fear, overstimulation through hyperentertainment, euphoria, loss of reality, drug addiction, depression
  • Dominance of reproductive (imaging) instead of productive technologies.

Jameson calls for postmodernism to be thought both positively and negatively at the same time: all the traits of postmodernism are ultimately just exaggerated traits of modernity. But his diagnosis of a loss of the future leads to a predominantly negative assessment of postmodernism.

In doing so, he takes a position opposite to Linda Hutcheon . This attributes an anti-totalitarian effect to postmodern irony. The postmodern handling of history, which is only known to us from the very unreliable historical discourse and is therefore constantly critically revised, quoted and parodied, represents an increased and productive form of self-reflection. It does not share the view that postmodernism gained a foothold across Europe, but instead (1989) considered it primarily a populist reaction to the elitism and snobbery of British culture. In contrast, Jameson recognizes the specific culture of globalization in postmodernism - a culture that becomes big business itself , but culturalises economy and politics and thus leads to cultural struggles (instead of class struggles).

Works

In English:

  • Sartre. The Origins of a Style . Yale Univ. Pr., New Haven 1961.
  • Marxism and Form. Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature . Princeton Univ. Pr., Princeton 1971.
  • The Prison-House of Language. A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism . Princeton Univ. Pr., Princeton 1972.
  • Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist . University of Calif. Pr., Berkeley 1979.
  • The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act . Cornell Univ. Pr., Ithaca NY 1981.
  • The Ideologies of Theory. Essays 1971–1986 . Vol. 1: "Situations of Theory". Univ. of Minnesota Pr., Minneapolis 1988.
  • The Ideologies of Theory. Essays 1971–1986 . Vol. 2: "The Syntax of History". Univ. of Minnesota Pr., Minneapolis 1988.
  • Postmodernism and Cultural Theories. Lectures in China . 1987; Abbreviation :后现代主义与文化理论, Pinyin : Hòuxiàndàizhǔyì yǔ Wenhua lǐlùn (translated by Tang Xiaobing)
  • Ideologies of Modeling . 2 volumes. Routledge, New York / London 1988.
  • Late Marxism. Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic . Versoe, New York / London 1990.
  • Signatures of the Visible . Routledge, New York / London 1990.
  • Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism . Duke Univ. Pr., Durham NC 1991.
  • The Geopolitical Aesthetic. Cinema and Space in the World System . Indiana Univ. Pr., Bloomington 1992.
  • The Seeds of Time. The Wellek Library Lectures at the University of California, Irvine . Columbia Univ. Pr., New York 1994.
  • Brecht and Method . Verso, New York / London 1998.
  • The Cultural Turn . Verso, New York / London 1998.
  • A singular modernity. Essay on the Ontology of the Present . Verso, New York / London 2002.
  • Archaeologies of the Future. The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions . Verso, New York / London 2005.
  • The Modernist Papers . Verso, New York / London 2007.
  • Jameson on Jameson. Conversations on Cultural Marxism Duke Univ. Pr., Durham NC 2007.
  • Fables of aggression. Wyndham Lewis , the Modernist as Fascist (2008; rev. New edition of first publ. 1979)
  • Ideologies of Theory (2008; rev. New edition of the first edition from 1988)
  • Valences of the Dialectic . Verso, New York / London 2009.
  • The Hegel Variations: On the Phenomenology of the Spirit . Verso, New York / London 2010.
  • Representing 'Capital': A Reading of Volume One . Verso, New York / London 2011.
  • The Antinomies of Realism . Verso, New York / London 2015.
  • The Ancients and the Postmoderns. On the Historicity of Forms . Verso, New York / London 2015.
  • Raymond Chandler. The Detections of Totality . Verso, New York / London 2016.

In German translation:

  • The political unconscious. Literature as a symbol of social action . Translated by Ursula Bauer, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1988, ISBN 978-3-499-55461-2 .
  • Late Marxism. Adorno or The Persistence of Dialectics . Translated by Michael Haupt, Argument, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 978-3-88619-391-2 .
  • Pleasure and horror of the incessant transformation of all things: Brecht and the future . Translated by Jürgen Pelzer, Argument, Hamburg 1999. ISBN 978-3-88619-318-9 .
  • Myths of Modernity. Translated by Hans-Hagen Hildebrandt, Kadmos, Berlin 2004; ISBN 978-3-931659-46-2 .
  • Hegel's Variations. On the "Phenomenology of Spirit" . Translated by Andrea Wald, Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-85132-756-4 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Fredric Jameson  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fredric Jameson: Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism . 1991, pp. Ix f., 3-29.
  2. ↑ Linda Hutcheon: The Politics of Postmodernism . London / New York, Routledge 1989.
  3. ↑ Tomislav Medak: Teaching people about new realities. Interview with Fredric Jameson. In: www.springerin.at , 3/2000.
personal data
SURNAME Jameson, Fredric
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jameson, Fredric R.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American political Marxist, literary critic and theorist
DATE OF BIRTH 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Cleveland