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Jameson on Jameson

Conversations on Cultural Marxism

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Post-Contemporary Interventions

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Pages: 296

Published: December 2007

Author: Fredric Jameson

Editor: Ian Buchanan

Fredric Jameson is one of the most influential literary and cultural critics writing today. He is a theoretical innovator whose ideas about the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences. Bringing together ten interviews conducted between 1982 and 2005, Jameson on Jameson is a compellingly candid introduction to his thought for those new to it, and a rich source of illumination and clarification for those seeking deeper understanding. Jameson discusses his intellectual and political preoccupations, most prominently his commitment to Marxism as a way of critiquing capitalism and the culture it has engendered. He explains many of his key concepts, including postmodernism, the dialectic, metacommentary, the political unconscious, the utopian, cognitive mapping, and spatialization.

Jameson on Jameson displays Jameson’s extraordinary grasp of contemporary culture—architecture, art, cinema, literature, philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis, and urban geography—as well as the challenge that the geographic reach of his thinking poses to the Eurocentricity of the West. Conducted by accomplished scholars from United States, Egypt, Korea, China, Sweden, and England, the interviews elicit Jameson’s reflections on the broad international significance of his ideas and their applicability and implications in different cultural and political contexts, including the present phase of globalization.

The volume includes an introduction by Jameson and a comprehensive bibliography of his publications in all languages.

Interviewers
Mona Abousenna
Abbas Al-Tonsi
Srinivas Aravamudan
Jonathan Culler
Sara Danius
Leonard Green
Sabry Hafez
Stuart Hall
Stefan Jonsson
Ranjana Khanna
Richard Klein
Horacio Machin
Paik Nak-chung
Michael Speaks
Anders Stephanson
Xudong Zhang

Praise

“Jameson on Jameson will be useful to scholars in need of accessible thematic and methodological introductions to Jameson’s form of historical materialism and cultural studies. Further, the interviews do allow Jameson to explain some of his concepts in relation to each other and in contexts different from those they were first proposed to explain, such as any possible relationship between the political unconscious and the postmodern understood as an epiphenomenon of late capital, and to reflect on topical questions within the frame of the broader inquiry he is dedicated to.” - Daniel Gustav Anderson, Rocky Mountain Review

“[T]his book will disclose all the qualities one can find in Jameson’s books: an exceptional mix of political commitment and erudition, of curiosity and stubbornness, of sophistication and clear-cut convictions.” - Jan Baetens, Leonardo Reviews

“Fredric Jameson may well be the greatest intellectual produced by the United States in the last half century. It is difficult to think of anyone else who has made as many, as lasting, and as wide- ranging contributions as Jameson. . . . The present collection of interviews from 1981 to the present, then, stands as a welcome commentary on Jameson’s vast work and an important reflection of the changes in American intellectual life in the period from the last days of the Cold War to the end of the second Bush administration.” - Paul Allen Miller, Intertexts

“In just ten interviews, key concepts like allegory, utopia, the dialectic, postmodernism, and metacommentary all come under consideration in a variety of contexts, from literature, architecture, and psychoanalysis to politics, global culture, and religion. But if the very least of this book’s achievements is to orient the reader towards a more sustained engagement with Jameson’s work, then it will certainly have served its purpose.” - Aaron F. Hodges, Science & Society

“Jameson . . . well known for the amazing variety of subjects he discusses. The many readers who find his style hard to grasp will find considerable help in this collection. . . . The book makes his key concepts accessible. . . . Recommended for literary and cultural criticism collections.” - Library Journal

“One of the most influential literary and cultural critics writing today, Jameson . . . is credited with reshaping the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences.” - Duke Magazine

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Awards Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Fredric Jameson is William A. Lane Jr. Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. He is the author of many books, including Signatures of the Visible; Late Marxism: Adorno; or, The Persistence of the Dialectic; The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act; The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism; and Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. His books Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, winner of the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize, and The Cultures of Globalization (coedited with Masao Miyoshi) are both also published by Duke University Press.

Ian Buchanan is Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University. He is a coeditor (with Caren Irr) of On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization. His books Deleuzism: A Metacommentary and A Deleuzian Century? are both also published by Duke University Press.

Fredric Jameson is William A. Lane Jr. Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. He is the author of many books, including Signatures of the Visible; Late Marxism: Adorno; or, The Persistence of the Dialectic; The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act; The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism; and Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. His books Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, winner of the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize, and The Cultures of Globalization (coedited with Masao Miyoshi) are both also published by Duke University Press.

Ian Buchanan is Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University. He is a coeditor (with Caren Irr) of On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization. His books Deleuzism: A Metacommentary and A Deleuzian Century? are both also published by Duke University Press.

Table Of Contents

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Foreword ix

Introduction: On Not Giving Interviews 1

Interview with Leonard Green, Jonathan Culler, and Richard Klein 11

Interview with Anders Stephanson 44

Interview with Paik Nak-chung 74

Interview with Sabry Hafez, Abbas Al-Tonsi, and Mona Abousenna 99

Interview with Stuart Hall 113

Interview with Michael Speaks 123

Interview with Horacio Machin 135

Interview with Sara Danius and Stefan Jonsson 151

Interview with Xudong Zhang 171

Interview with Srinivas Aravamudan and Ranjana Khanna 203

Bibliography 241

Interviewers 269

Inex 273

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Sales/Territorial Rights: World

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Awards

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Fredric Jameson is the recipient of the 2008 Holberg Prize

Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-4109-3 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-4087-4 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-9017-6 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390176

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