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The Work of Fredric Jameson

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The Work of Fredric Jameson CRITICAL =CHANCE #t 4 : Fall 1983 The Work of Fredric Jameson General Editor's Preface . JAMES J. SOSNOSKI .....................................11 Introduction STEVE NIMIS ........................................... iii Bibliography of Fredric Jameson ............................................. v ItThe Ideological Analysis of Spacet1 FREDRIC JAMESON ........................................ 1 "Does Jameson Have Any Use For Allegory?" CAROL P. JAMES ........................................I 6 "The Jam son Ef feett1 JAMES H. KAVANAUCH ....................................29 'IThe Political Unconscious of Jameson ' s The Political Unconscious" JAMES IFFLAND ..........................................40 "The Marxism Ceconstruction Debate" MICHAEL RYAN ...........................................59 Critical Exchange is published by The Society for Critical Exchange, a not-for-profit corporation organized to encourage "Jameson and the Dialectical Use of CRnre Criticism" cooperative research in criticism and theory. JUNEHOWAARD ............................................ 70 Material published in Critical Exchange is copyrighted by the I1Imagining the Real: Jameson's Use of Lacan" MICHAEL CLARK.. .81 Society with rights re-assigned to authors upon publication. ....................................... For information write: James J. Sosnoski The Society for Critical Exchange "The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology in Spanish P. 0. Box 475 Golden Age Poetry" Oxford, Ohio 45056 JOHN BEE% EY .........................................102 Funding support from the English Department and the College of Arts and Science of Miami University for the publication of this issue is gratefully acknowledged. CRITICAL EXCHANGE INTRODUCTION GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE Steve Nimia James J. Sosnoski At the 1982 MMLA in Cincinnati The Society for Critical Exchange, Miami University of Ohio and its language departmnts sponsored a Critical Exchange is a journal of research in progress. It series of special events centered around the work of Fredric Jame- attempts to bridge the gap between the moment of critical articu- son, consisting of a symposium in Oxford, an address by Jameson at lation and the time of its publication. Under the auspices of the MNLA and two sessions of papers on his work to which Jameson the Society for Critical Exchange (SCE), scholars actively in- responded. The address at the MMLA, "The Ideological Analysis of volved in researching issues central to the development of con- Space," and the eight papers given in the two MMLA sessions are temporary literary theory an brought together to "exchange" reproduced herein. These easays and the interest and excitement their views. Within months of the event, an edited record of they aroused are a testamnt to the profession's recognition and their communal inquiry is published in these pages. acceptance of the contribution which Marxist criticism has been making to the study of literature, society and culture in America; Critical Exchange 15 will publish the proceedings of the 1983 nor is it without cause that one commentator included in this MLA session on "The Institutionalization and Professionalization collection calls this professional recognition "The Jameson Effect, of Literary Studies." It will feature essays by Stanley Fish, for surely it is the substantial scholarly output of Jameson (see Walter Benn Michaels, Richard Ohmann antl Samuel Weber and will be attached bibliography) which has contributed the most to making edited by David Shumway. Marxism unavoidable in America. Is there, however, a pernicious cooptation of Marxism afoot in this professional recognition? Critical Exchange is circulated only among the members of the Or is Jameson, rather, trying to coopt the rest of the literary Society for Critical Exchange. The Spring issue of CEx is usually enterprise? Is he endangering the pointedness of the Marxist cri- These devoted to the SCE MLA session. The Fall issue is uGlly devoted tique of culture by absorbing too much of that enterprise? to some other SCE sponsored event. Any member of SCE is welcome questions and many more are addressed in these essays, and indeed, to develop a proposal for an "exchange"; and, if it is accepted the range of issues which emerge in a discussion of Jameson's work by the Editorial Board, to guest edit the proceedings. If you have indicates the breadth of the Marxist provenance since Jameson has an idea for an "exchange," please write or call. "taken effect." As guest editor of this issue of Critical Exchange, I would Correspondence regarding should be directed to: like to make an observation on that most controversial aspect of The Political Unconscious, the audacious claim that Marxism is James J. Sosnoski (57 3) 523-8574 the ultimate horizon of all literary inquiry. One should perhaps General Editor, CEx or 529-2328 say the audacity of the claim is controversial, for I suspect that The Society for mtical Exchange the point 1s the prospect of monolith (as opposed to a speci- P.0. Box 475 any Oxford, Ohio 45056 fically Marxist one) being proposed in an enterprise which takes pride in its tolerance of competing paradigms that is audacious. From the standpoint of modern academia, in fact, the claim that literary studies have an all-encompassing framework is somewhat of a scandal, since it was the good-natured flexibility of the profes- sion which let these "pinkosWin in the first place. The theoreti- cal plausibility of the "totalizing" impulse behind Jameson's "sub- sumptiont8 of all other interpretive modes and systems by historiciz- ing them will no doubt be pilloried for sometime to come, and in some quarters Jameson's audacity will provoke immediate dismissal. But most are likely to remain more ambivalent, for the possibility of articulating some unified goal for literqry studies has a secret attraction inherent to collective enterprises such as all professions are. In his presidential address to the MMLA, Wayne Booth candidly admits having difficulty identifying the "center" around which the di- verse activities of that association swirl, but he is sure there is one. iii CRITICAL EXCHANGE CRITICAL EXCHANGE "Critical understandingn captures it best for Booth; but since he BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FREDRIC R. JAMESON is a diplomat, there is no necessity of embracing this formulation even when spoken ex cathedra: Books : But I know better than to expect others to accept my proprietary name for the center. Perhaps, after Sartre: The Origins of a Style, Yale University Press, 1961 this skirmishing with the impossible task of defini- tion, I could for tonight just ask each of you to Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of slot in, whenever I say 'critical understanding1 your Literature, Princeton University Press, 1971 own version of whatever central experience attracted The Prison-House of Language, Princeton University Press, 1972 you to this profession and keeps you here now. Call it "experience X." Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, The Modernist as Fascist (s98, p. 318) University of California Press, 1979 Naming that "centerw is always "tainted" (page 317), always makes one vulnerable to derision. There is something fundamentally dif- The Political Unconscious, Cornell University Press, 1981 ferent, however, about Booth's waffling and Jamesonls "audacity." The former is calculated to maintain the swirl around the center, Articles: the latter is calcuated to make a landing. However bad-mannered this latter course may be, there is something strategically more "T.W. Adorno; or, Historical Tropes" Salmagundi No. 5: 3-43 attractive about it. The fear that we will somehow be suddenly saddled with a stifling monolith strikes me as an exaggeration (1967 of the power of the "Jameson effect." The swirl of our myriad "On Politics and Literature" Salmagundi 2 (iii) : 17-26 (1968) discourses is not likely to disappear; and the essays in this Salmagundi No. 10-1 1 : 52-68. volume critical of various aspects of Jamesonls work testify to "Walter Benjamin; or, Nostalgia" this fact. But even granting some grounds for this fear, the (1969) state of the profession today could use a dose of Jamesonls au- "The Case for Georg Lukacsn Salmagundi No. 13: 3-25 (1970) dacity: his explicit call for some collective goal for literary studies may not be superior in all times and all places to Booth's "On Raymond Chandler" Southern Review 6:624-650 (1970) mandate to reproduce in our students some intensely personal ex- "Seriality in Modern Literaturen Bucknell Review 18: 63-80 perience of literature from our youth, but it may be just the (1970) medicine (pharmakon) for the day. "La Cousine Bette and Allegorical Realism" 86: 241-254 71971 ) Classlcs Department ftMetacommentaryl~ 86: 9-18 (1971) Miami University !!The Great American Hunter: Ideological Content in the Novel" College English 34: 180-197 (1972) "Introduction" to and translation of W. Dilthey, "The Rise of Hermeneutics" New Literary History 3: 229-244 (1972) "Three Methods in Sartre's Literary Criticism" in J.K. Simon ed. Modern French Criticism University of Chicago Press, pp. 193-227 (1972) "Generic Discontinuities in Science Fiction: Brian Aldiss' Starship" Science Fiction Studies No. 2: 57-68 (1973) 'lIntroduction" to Henri Avren, Marxist Esthetics Cornell Uni- versity Press vii-xxiv (1973) CRITICAL EXCHANGE CRITICAL EXCHANGE "The Vanishing Mediator: Narrative Structure in Max Weber" New German criti ue 1 : 52-89 (1973) and Working Papers in "The Ideology of Form: Partial Systems in La Vieille Filler*
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