This is great! Really appreciate this as someone who is young and trying to orient (cognitively map?) myself in the sea of different "leftist" thinkers/positions. I have been drawn recently to Zizek, and I know Jameson and Zizek were friends and thinkers who had a relationship like Zizek has with Badiou. Do you see this Jamesonian synthesis as similar to Zizek's redefinition of the universal? Of rather than some trans-historical positivist essence, a produced substance that in Zizek's case is the focus of a sort of totalizing (in this sense of totalize you define for Jameson here) revolution. I apologize if I might be misusing terms here and stepping onto my own toes as it were, I am just curious what you think! I look forward to your review of WPPP by Rockhill. I think that work is a LaRochean trainwreck diametrically opposite to cognitive mapping and thoroughly in the conspiratorial as you sketch in this piece. (Speaking of Zizek, Rockhill's piece on Zizek completely misunderstands the totality/universality piece and engages in almost a proscription that such a practice is akin to Pastiche in Jameson's sense. I don't know, really baffling stuff to be honest. He does this same "eclecticism" argument in his "debate" with David Guignion here: https://youtu.be/TtHYZ73eySA )
I read his book on Adorno recently as I was writing a long review of Rockhill’s book on the FS. I did not touch on it in this piece but I do address it elsewhere. That review I wrote should be out soon.
I think that Jameson’s importance (already massive in his own day) will return in new, unexpected ways over the coming decades. He would’ve wanted it to be obsolete by now, but unfortunately that is not the case
Really good and insightful!
That book shaped my art historical work when I was a grad student in nyc beginning in the early 1980s. Thank you so much for these commentaries.
This is great! Really appreciate this as someone who is young and trying to orient (cognitively map?) myself in the sea of different "leftist" thinkers/positions. I have been drawn recently to Zizek, and I know Jameson and Zizek were friends and thinkers who had a relationship like Zizek has with Badiou. Do you see this Jamesonian synthesis as similar to Zizek's redefinition of the universal? Of rather than some trans-historical positivist essence, a produced substance that in Zizek's case is the focus of a sort of totalizing (in this sense of totalize you define for Jameson here) revolution. I apologize if I might be misusing terms here and stepping onto my own toes as it were, I am just curious what you think! I look forward to your review of WPPP by Rockhill. I think that work is a LaRochean trainwreck diametrically opposite to cognitive mapping and thoroughly in the conspiratorial as you sketch in this piece. (Speaking of Zizek, Rockhill's piece on Zizek completely misunderstands the totality/universality piece and engages in almost a proscription that such a practice is akin to Pastiche in Jameson's sense. I don't know, really baffling stuff to be honest. He does this same "eclecticism" argument in his "debate" with David Guignion here: https://youtu.be/TtHYZ73eySA )
You don’t mention Adorno. Doesn’t Jameson’s maneuver seem Adornian in setting up a continuous dialectic?
I read his book on Adorno recently as I was writing a long review of Rockhill’s book on the FS. I did not touch on it in this piece but I do address it elsewhere. That review I wrote should be out soon.
I think that Jameson’s importance (already massive in his own day) will return in new, unexpected ways over the coming decades. He would’ve wanted it to be obsolete by now, but unfortunately that is not the case